a great deal of Democratic enthusiasm which could suggest a higher turnout election.
Trump’s fundamental problem in Pennsylvania is that the state Republican Party is a mess, and the RNC has no get out the vote operation. Trump’s get out the vote operation seems to consist of doing rallies. Trump has wasted campaign days with stops in places like Indiana, PA, a town in a rural red county that Trump won by more than 30 points in both 2016 and 2020 and Butler, PA.
The biggest problem with Trump’s Pennsylvania strategy is that he is not trying to appeal to the state’s large pool of swing voters. Trump is trying to drive up turnout among rural MAGA and hoping that will be enough to carry him to victory, even though Republicans have been losing statewide in Pennsylvania with this same strategy.
Polling has consistently shown Kamala Harris leading Pennsylvania, and if Harris were to win Pennsylvania by four points, it would be lights out for Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is “an unserious man” and a “sore loser” who aspires to dictatorship, Vice President Kamala Harris warned the satellite radio host Howard Stern in a Tuesday afternoon appearance.
“Donald Trump has this desire to be a dictator,” Harris said. “He admires strongmen. And he gets played by them, because he thinks that they’re his friends.”
Harris made the comments on Stern’s Sirius XM show as part of a breakneck media blitz that has also included recent stops on the podcast Call Her Daddy, CBS News’ 60 Minutes and The View. The wide-ranging, sympathetic interview with Stern—in which the former shock jock unequivocally pledged his vote to Harris—covered topics from abortion and election denial to Harris’ preferred breakfast cereals (Raisin Bran and Special K) and typical morning workout routine (30 minutes on the elliptical machine).
The two also returned repeatedly to the subject of Trump’s character, which Stern knows firsthand as a former friend and fellow traveler of the 45th president. “How could anyone justify any of this? I don’t get it, it’s madness,” Stern said of Trump’s behavior. “And I’ve known Donald Trump for so many years—he was at my wedding and I always had a good time with him. But not as president of the United States.”
Stern has repeatedly pilloried Trump over his handling of issues including abortion and the Covid-19 pandemic, both of which cropped up in his conversation with Harris. Of abortion, Harris said, Trump “hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court to do exactly what they did: Take away the right of an individual to make decisions about their own body.”
The pair also discussed a damning new report on Trump’s relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward, secretly sent Covid-19 test machines to Putin during the pandemic and has had private conversations with the Russian dictator as recently as this spring. (The Trump campaign has said the book contains “made up stories.”)
Trump “admires dictators,” Harris said, and has promised “to be a dictator on day one.” Stern asked Harris if she would feel safe remaining in the US should Trump win; Harris dodged the question, saying instead that she is “doing everything I can” to win the election.
But that battle has grown “surreal,” the vice president acknowledged, as her opponent continues to veer into conspiracies and untruths. Harris described feeling a sense of unreality during her September 10 debate with Trump, when the former president spouted a baseless internet rumor about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats and dogs. “This was a very serious moment to earn the votes of the American people,” she said. “And he was talking about things that were factually untrue and quite ridiculous.”
The unscripted, hour-long appearance with Stern represented something of a deviation for Harris, who has historically kept the press at arm’s length and has sat for only three TV interviews in the month of September. She plans to do twice as many in the first week and a half of October, according to the Washington Post, which on Monday reported that Harris’ sudden media blitz was designed to engage voting blocs that haven’t fully embraced the vice president.
To that end, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, have hit a series of podcasts and other digital media ventures that don’t typically make the campaign circuit, including Call Her Daddy, All the Smoke, and SmartLess. Call Her Daddy is the single most popular podcast among women in the US; All the Smoke is a sports podcast aimed at Black men, and SmartLess is a comedy podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett.
Trump and his running mate, meanwhile, have appeared on podcasts hosted by influencers like YouTuber Logan Paul and stand-up comedian Theo Von. The former president also appears to be keeping abreast of his opponents’ press appearances.
“Lyin’ Kamala … is being exposed as a ‘dummy’ every time she does a show,” Trump wrote Tuesday afternoon on Truth Social.
First, Kamala Harris: The 2024 60 Minutes Interview. And, Scott Pelley speaks with the Arizona Republican election officials working to restore confidence in the 2024 results
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Watch as Vice President Kamala Harris discusses the economy, immigration, the ongoing war in the Mideast, and the differences between herself and former President Trump during a 2024 election interview.
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Kamala Harris has been a candidate for president for just two-and-a-half months and the post convention “honeymoon” is over. With the election just 29 days away, Harris and her running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz face unrelenting attacks from Donald Trump, and the race remains extremely close.
We met the 59-year-old vice president this past week on the campaign trail and later at the vice president’s residence in Washington, DC. We spoke about the economy and immigration, Ukraine, and China, but we began with the escalating war in the Middle East, one year after the Hamas terror attack on Israel.
Bill Whitaker: The events of the past few weeks have pushed us to the brink, if—if not into an all-out regional war in the Middle East. What can the U.S. do at this point to stop this from spinning out of control?
Vice President Kamala Harris: Well, let’s start with October 7. 1,200 people were massacred, 250 hostages were taken, including Americans, women were brutally raped, and as I said then, I maintain Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And how it does so matters. Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. This war has to end.
Bill Whitaker: We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden-Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire. He’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. Does the U.S. have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Vice President Kamala Harris: The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles.
Bill Whitaker: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening.
Vice President Kamala Harris: We are not gonna stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.
Bill Whitaker: Do we have a–a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Vice President Kamala Harris: I think, with all due respect, the better question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people. And the answer to that question is yes.
While the war in the Middle East has dominated recent headlines, it’s the economy that most concerns American voters this election year, as always.
Bill Whitaker: There are lots of signs that the American economy is doing very well, better than most countries, I think. But the American people don’t seem to be feeling it. Groceries are 25% higher and people are blaming you and Joe Biden for that. Are they wrong?
Vice President Kamala Harris: We now have historic low unemployment in America among all groups of people. We now have an economy that is thriving by all macroeconomic measures. And, to your point, prices are still too high. And I know that, and we need to deal with it, which is why part of my plan—you mentioned groceries. Part of my plan is what we must do to bring down the price of groceries.
Bill Whitaker and Vice President Kamala Harris
60 Minutes
Harris says she’ll press Congress to pass a federal ban on price gouging for food and groceries, but details are yet to be defined.
Bill Whitaker: You want to give tax breaks to first-time home buyers.
Vice President Kamala Harris: Yes.
Bill Whitaker: And people starting small businesses.
Vice President Kamala Harris: Correct.
Bill Whitaker: But it is estimated by the Nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget that your economic plan would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. How are you gonna pay for that?
Vice President Kamala Harris: OK, so the other econ- economists that have reviewed my plan versus my opponent and determined that my economic plan would strengthen America’s economy. His would weaken it.
Bill Whitaker: But–
Vice President Kamala Harris: My plan, Bill, if you don’t mind, my plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class, and you strengthen America’s economy. Small businesses are part of the backbone of America’s economy.
Bill Whitaker: But—but pardon me, Madame Vice President, I– the– the question was, how are you going to pay for it?
Vice President Kamala Harris: Well, one of the things is I’m gonna make sure that the richest among us, who can afford it, pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a har– a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations.
Bill Whitaker: But—but
Vice President Kamala Harris: And I plan on making that fair.
Bill Whitaker: But we’re dealing with the real world here.
Vice President Kamala Harris: But the real world includes—
Bill Whitaker: How are you gonna get this through Congress?
Vice President Kamala Harris
60 Minutes
Vice President Kamala Harris: You know, when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about, ’cause their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about. Their constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses. Their constituents are middle-class, hard-working folk.
Bill Whitaker: And Congress has shown no inclination to move in your direction.
Vice President Kamala Harris: I– I disagree with you. There are plenty of leaders in Congress who understand and know that the Trump tax cuts blew up our federal deficit. None of us, and certainly I cannot afford to be myopic in terms of how I think about strengthening America’s economy. Lemme tell you something. I am a devout public servant. You know that. I am also a capitalist. And I know the limitations of government.
Kamala Harris has been in government for decades; she was first elected San Francisco district attorney in 2003, then California attorney general, she went on to the U.S. Senate, and now vice president.
Bill Whitaker: A quarter of registered voters still say they don’t know you. They don’t know what makes you tick. And– and why do you think that is? What–what’s the disconnect?
Vice President Kamala Harris: It’s an election, Bill. And I take– it seriously that I have to earn everyone’s vote. This is an election for president of the United States. No one should be able to take for granted that they can just declare themselves a candidate and automatically receive support. You have to earn it. And that’s what I intend to do.
Bill Whitaker: Lemme tell you what your critics and the columnists say.
Vice President Kamala Harris: OK.
Bill Whitaker: They say that the reason so many voters don’t know you is that you have changed your position on so many things. You were against fracking, now you’re for it. You supported looser immigration policies, now you’re tightening them up. You were for Medicare for all, now you’re not. So many that people don’t truly know what you believe or what you stand for. And I know you’ve heard that.
Vice President Kamala Harris: In the last four years I have been vice president of the United States. And I have been traveling our country. And I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground. I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds. And what the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus. Where we can figure out compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing, as long as you don’t compromise your values, to find common-sense solutions. And that has been my approach.
But one issue that has proven impervious to compromise is immigration. Over the past four years, the Biden/Harris approach has been inconsistent, and Republicans are convinced immigration is the vice president’s achilles heel.
Bill Whitaker: You recently visited the southern border and– embraced President Biden’s recent crackdown on asylum seekers. And that crackdown produced an almost immediate and dramatic decrease in the number of border crossings. If that’s the right answer now, why didn’t your administration take those steps in 2021?
Vice President Kamala Harris: The first bill we proposed to Congress was to fix our broken immigration system, knowing that if you want to actually fix it, we need Congress to act. It was not taken up. Fast forward to a moment when a bipartisan group of members of the United States Senate, including one of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, got together, came up with the border security bill. Well, guess what happened? Donald Trump got word that this bill was afoot and could be passed and he wants to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem, so he told his buddies in Congress, “Kill the bill. Don’t let it move forward.”
Bill Whitaker: But I’ve been covering the border for– for years. And so I know this is not a problem that started with your administration.
Vice President Kamala Harris: Correct. Correct.
Bill Whitaker: But there was an historic flood of undocumented immigrants coming across the border the first three years of your administration. As a matter of fact, arrivals quadrupled from the last year of President Trump. Was it a mistake to loosen the immigration policies as much as you did?
Vice President Kamala Harris: It’s a longstanding problem. And solutions are at hand. And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.
Bill Whitaker and Vice President Kamala Harris
60 Minutes
Bill Whitaker: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?
Vice President Kamala Harris: I think– the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem, okay? But the–
Bill Whitaker: But the numbers did quadruple under your–
Vice President Kamala Harris: And the numbers today–
Bill Whitaker: –under your watch–
Vice President Kamala Harris: –because of what we have done– we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half. We have cut the–
Bill Whitaker: But should you have done that–
Vice President Kamala Harris: –flow of fentanyl–
Bill Whitaker: –should you have done that–
Vice President Kamala Harris: –by half. But we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.
Bill Whitaker: You have accused Donald Trump of using racist tropes when it comes to Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, when it comes to birtherism, when it comes to Charlottesville. In fact, you have called him a racist and divisive. Yet Donald Trump has the support of millions and millions of Americans. How do you explain that?
Vice President Kamala Harris: I am glad you’re pointing these comments out that he has made, that have resulted in a response by most reasonable people to say, “It’s just wrong. It’s just wrong.”
Bill Whitaker: With so many people supporting Donald Trump, a man you have called a racist. How do you bridge that seemingly unbridgeable gap?
Vice President Kamala Harris: I believe that the people of America want a leader who’s not tryin’ to divide us and demean. I believe that the American people recognize that the true measure of the strength of a leader is not based on who you beat down, it’s based on who you lift up.
The Harris campaign has been hopscotching the country and with less than a month to go, the pace is picking up. The vice president told us, she’s lost track of how many states she’s visited.
Vice President Kamala Harris: How are you doing?
Bill Whitaker: I’m doing well.
Vice President Kamala Harris: You well?
We joined her on the trail late last week, in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin, in the town of Ripon, the birthplace in 1854 of the Republican Party.
And at a rally plastered with “country over party” banners, Harris appeared with staunch conservative Liz Cheney. As vice chair of the House January 6th Committee, Cheney became one of Donald Trump’s fiercest critics.
Liz Cheney: I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris (applause)
That proclamation spurred a chant of approval from the crowd…
Bill Whitaker: Four years ago if someone had told you that you would be campaigning with Liz Cheney, what would you have said to them?
Vice President Kamala Harris: That’d be great. (laughter)
Liz Cheney: She’s really diplomatic. (laughter)
Bill Whitaker: Would you ever have thought that you’d be campaigning with Kamala Harris?
Liz Cheney: I hope that if you had said to me four years ago, “Our constitution is going to be under threat and it’s gonna be crucial for the parties to come together– and to support Vice President Harris because she’ll defend the rule of law”– I know I would’ve said, “That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
Whoever wins the presidency will take on a host of daunting challenges, especially beyond our borders. Back in Washington, Vice President Harris told us she’s determined the U.S must win the economic competition with China for the 21st century. And as for the war between Russia and Ukraine?
Bill Whitaker: What does success look like in ending the war in Ukraine?
Vice President Kamala Harris: There will be no success in ending that war without Ukraine and the UN charter participating in what that success looks like.
Bill Whitaker: Would you meet with President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a solution to the war in Ukraine?
Vice President Kamala Harris: Not bilaterally without Ukraine, no. Ukraine must have a say in the future of Ukraine.
Bill Whitaker: As president, would you support the effort to expand NATO to include Ukraine?
Vice President Kamala Harris: Those are all issues that we will deal with if and when it arrives at that point. Right now, we are supporting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked aggression. Donald Trump, if he were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now. He talks about, “Oh, he can end it on day one.” You know what that is? It’s about surrender.
Bill Whitaker: A hard left turn here. But– you recently surprised people when you said that you are a gun owner and that if someone came into your house–
Vice President Kamala Harris: That was not the first time I’ve– I’ve–
Bill Whitaker: –they would get shot.
Vice President Kamala Harris: –talked about it. That’s not the first time I’ve talked about it.
Bill Whitaker: So what kind of gun do you own, and when and why did you get it?
Vice President Kamala Harris: I have a Glock, and– I’ve had it for quite some time. And– I mean, look, Bill, my background is in law enforcement. And– so there you go.
Bill Whitaker: Have you– ever fired it?
Vice President Kamala Harris: Yes. (laugh) Of course I have. At a shooting range. Yes, of course I have.
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz was little-known outside Minnesota just two months ago. He didn’t exactly come from nowhere. He was a six-term congressman and now is governor of Minnesota, where he has championed abortion rights, gun control, and other progressive ideas. But it was calling former President Trump and Sen. JD Vance “weird” that may have landed him on the ticket.
60 Minutes
Bill Whitaker: Two months ago, you and Kamala Harris barely knew each other. Now, you’re running together, vying for the top offices in the land. It’s not possible that you agree on everything.
Gov. Tim Walz: Yeah.
Bill Whitaker: What have been some disagreements you’ve had since you became a team?
Gov. Tim Walz: Well—I—she’d probably disagreed with—she said, “Tim, you know, you need to be a little more careful on how you say (laugh) things,” whatever it might be.
Whatever it might be, Walz has been criticized for embellishing or telling outright falsehoods about his military record, and about his travels to Asia in the 1980s.
Bill Whitaker: In your debate with JD Vance, you said, “I’m a knucklehead (laugh) at times.” And I think you were referring to the time that you said that you were in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square unrest when you were not.
Gov. Tim Walz: Yeah.
Bill Whitaker: Is that kind of misrepresentation, isn’t that more than just being a knucklehead?
Gov. Tim Walz: I think folks know who I am. And I think they know the difference between someone expressing emotion, telling a story, getting a date wrong by–you–rather than a pathological liar like Donald Trump.
Bill Whitaker: But I think it comes down to the question of whether—whether you can be trusted to tell the truth.
Gov. Tim Walz: Yeah. Well– I can– I think I can. I will own up to being a knucklehead at times, but the folks closest to me know that I keep my word.
Walz proudly touts his record as governor of Minnesota, but it also has opened him up to criticism from his Republican opponents.
Bill Whitaker: Former President Trump says that you and your administration here in Minnesota has been dangerously liberal. Radical left, he calls it. So, what do you say to that criticism, that rather than leading the way, you and Minnesota are actually out of step with the rest of the country?
Gov. Tim Walz: President Trump may be referring to that – that our children get breakfast and lunch in school so that they can learn. He may be talkin’ about we have a paid family medical leave policy that was promoted by the business community. Donald Trump spends his time tearing down states rather than lifting up the things we do, the best of it. Donald Trump’s critiques of that, not only are they wrong, but I’m waiting for, “What—what is his solution? Here in Minnesota, we’re so optimistic, we walk on water half the year (laugh).
It was that kind of humor and candor that helped land Tim Walz the job as Kamala Harris’s running mate.
Bill Whitaker: Before you joined the– ticket, you called Republicans “weird.” And that’s sort of become a rallying cry for Democrats. Why do you think that label stuck?
Gov. Tim Walz: I was really talking about the behaviors. Being obsessed with people’s personal lives in their bedrooms and their reproductive rights, making up stories about legal –folks legally here eating cats and dogs, they’re dehumanizing. They go beyond weird because I said this: it becomes almost dangerous. Let’s debate policy in a real way and let’s try and find an objective truth again.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are in a full sprint to November 5th, hoping their arguments will give them a chance to cross the line ahead of Donald Trump and JD Vance.
Bill Whitaker: You are sitting here with us. The Trump campaign canceled an interview that they had agreed to, to participate in this broadcast. What do you make of that?
Vice President Kamala Harris: If he is not gonna give your viewers the ability to have a meaningful, thoughtful conversation, question and answer with you, then watch his rallies. You’re gonna hear conversations that are about himself and all of his personal grievances. And what you will not hear is anything about you, the listener. You will not hear about how he is gonna try to bring the country together, find common ground. And, Bill, that is why I believe in my soul and heart, the American people are ready to turn the page.
Produced by Marc Lieberman and Rome Hartman. Associate producers: Cassidy McDonald, Matthew Riley and LaCrai Scott. Broadcast associates: Mariah Johnson and Georgia Rosenberg. Edited by Warren Lustig and Craig Crawford.
Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.
Former President Donald Trump marked Oct. 7 at a memorial in Queens, New York, while in Washington, Vice President Kamala Harris planted a pomegranate tree, a symbol of a hope. Nancy Cordes has more on how Israel’s war with Hamas is unavoidably a factor in the U.S. presidential election.
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For more than two decades, the low rent on Marina Maalouf’s apartment in a blocky affordable housing development in Los Angeles’ Chinatown was a saving grace for her family, including a granddaughter who has autism.
But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.
The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, hiked rent from $1,100 to $2,660 in 2021 — out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.
While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years alone.
It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.
Marina Maalouf, a longtime resident of Hillside Villa, watches as her granddaughter feeds fish in their apartment in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024.
Jae C. Hong / AP
Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program established in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.
“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.
That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.
The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.
“If we are losing the homes that are currently affordable and available to households, then we’re losing ground on the crisis,” said Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
“It’s sort of like having a boat with a hole at the bottom,” she said.
Actions by tenants, state to keep rents low
Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep them low-cost by relying on several levers.
Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability, or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.
Marina Maalouf, a longtime resident of Hillside Villa, sits for a photo in her apartment in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024.
Jae C. Hong / AP
Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.
There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.
“Politically, you’re rewarded for an announcement, a groundbreaking, a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who previously was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development.
“You’re not rewarded for being a good manager of your assets and keeping track of everything and making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit,” she said.
Maalouf stood in her apartment courtyard on a recent warm day, chit-chatting and waving to neighbors, a bracelet with a photo of Che Guevarra dangling from her arm.
“Friendly,” is how Maalouf described her previous self, but not assertive. That is until the rent hikes pushed her in front of the Los Angeles City Council for the first time, sweat beading as she fought for her home.
Now an organizer with the LA Tenants’ Union, Maalouf isn’t afraid to speak up, but the angst over her home still keeps her up at night. Mornings she repeats a mantra: “We still here. We still here.” But fighting day after day to make it true is exhausting.
Maalouf’s apartment was built before California made LIHTC contracts last 55 years instead of 30 in 1996. About 5,700 LIHTC units built around the time of Maalouf’s are expiring in the next decade. In Texas, it’s 21,000 units.
A general view of Hillside Villa, where Marina Maalouf is a longtime tenant, is seen in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024.
Jae C. Hong / AP
When California Treasurer Fiona Ma assumed office in 2019, she steered the program toward developers committed to affordable housing and not what she called “churn and burn,” buying up LIHTC properties and flipping them onto the market as soon as possible.
In California, landlords must notify state and local governments and tenants before their building expires. Housing organizations, nonprofits, and state or local governments then have first shot at buying the property to keep it affordable. Expiring developments also are prioritized for new tax credits, and the state essentially requires that all LIHTC applicants have experience owning and managing affordable housing.
“It kind of weeded out people who weren’t interested in affordable housing long term,” said Marina Wiant, executive director of California’s tax credit allocation committee.
But unlike California, some states haven’t extended LIHTC agreements beyond 30 years, let alone taken other measures to keep expiring housing affordable.
Colorado, which has some 80,000 LIHTC units, passed a law this year giving local governments the right of first refusal in hopes of preserving 4,400 units set to lose affordability protections in the next six years. The law also requires landlords to give local and state governments a two-year heads-up before expiration.
Still, local governments or nonprofits scraping together the funds to buy sizeable apartment buildings is far from a guarantee.
Continuous cycle
Stories like Maalouf’s will keep playing out as LIHTC units turn over, threatening to send families with meager means back into the housing market. The median income of Americans living in these units was just $18,600 in 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“This is like a math problem,” said Rossbert of Housing Colorado. “As soon as one of these units expires and converts to market rate and a household is displaced, they become a part of the need that’s driving the need for new construction.”
“It’s hard to get out of that cycle,” he said.
Colorado’s housing agency works with groups across the state on preservation and has a fund to help. Still, it’s unclear how many LIHTC units can be saved, in Colorado or across the country.
It’s even hard to know how many units nationwide are expiring. An accurate accounting would require sorting through the constellation of municipal, state and federal subsidies, each with their own affordability requirements and end dates.
A wall in Marina Maalouf’s apartment is adorned with family photos as an El Salvadoran flag is draped over an American flag in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024.
Jae C. Hong / AP
That can throw a wrench into policymakers’ and advocates’ ability to fully understand where and when many units will lose affordability, and then funnel resources to the right places, said Kelly McElwain, who manages and oversees the National Housing Preservation Database. It’s the most comprehensive aggregation of LIHTC data nationally, but with all the gaps, it remains a rough estimate.
There also are fears that if states publicize their expiring LIHTC units, for-profit buyers without an interest in keeping them affordable would pounce.
“It’s sort of this Catch-22 of trying to both understand the problem and not put out a big for-sale sign in front of a property right before its expiration,” Rossbert said.
Meanwhile, Maalouf’s tenant activism has helped move the needle in Los Angeles. The city has offered the landlord $15 million to keep her building affordable through 2034, but that deal wouldn’t get rid of over 30 eviction cases still proceeding, including Maalouf’s, or the $25,000 in back rent she owes.
Rubie Caceres, a granddaughter of Marina Maalouf, a longtime resident of Hillside Villa, plays with a toy camera in her apartment in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024.
Jae C. Hong / AP
In her courtyard, Maalouf’s granddaughter, Rubie Caceres, shuffled up with a glass of water. She is 5 years old, but with special needs, her speech is more disconnected words than sentences.
“That’s why I’ve been hoping everything becomes normal again, and she can be safe,” said Maalouf, her voice shaking with emotion. She has urged her son to start saving money for the worst.
“We’ll keep fighting,” she said, “but day by day it’s hard.”
“I’m tired already.”
___
Bedayn reported from Denver.
___
Bedayn is a corps member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Vice President Kamala Harris declared Sen. JD Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” to be “mean and mean spirited,” and said recent comments by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ about her for not having biological children reveal that Sanders doesn’t understand “a whole lot of women out here.”
Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, addressed the Vance-prompted national discourse over whether women — and national leaders — have biological children on the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast with host Alexandra Cooper, which posted Sunday.
Cooper asked Harris what she makes of Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comments — comments the Republican nominee for vice president has tried to explain, but from which he hasn’t backed down. In 2021, Vance said the country was being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Since then, Vance has suggested that politicians without biological children don’t have a stake in the nation’s future.
“I just think it’s mean and mean spirited,” said Harris, who has two grown stepchildren. “And I think that most Americans want leaders who understand that the measure of their strength is not based on who you beat down. The real measure of a strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”
Echoing Vance, Sanders last month also critiqued Harris for not having biological children. Last month, Sanders — who was White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump — said, “my kids keep me humble” and, “unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.” Cooper, whose podcast has nearly 1 million subscribers on YouTube, asked Harris how that made her feel.
“I don’t think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble,” Harris said of Sanders. “Two, a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life and children in their life. And I think it’s really important for women to lift each other up. You know, I’ll tell you Alex, one of the things that I have really enjoyed about where the discussion has gone, one of the places it’s gone, we have our family by blood, and then we have our family by love. And I have both. And I consider it to be a real blessing. And I have two beautiful children, Cole and Ella, who call me Momala. We have a very modern family. My husband’s ex-wife is a friend of mine, you know?”
“And also, I’ll tell you, look, I’m a child of divorced parents,” Harris continued. “And when I started dating Doug, my husband, I was very thoughtful and sensitive to making sure that until I knew that our relationship was something that was going to be real, I didn’t want to—to form a relationship with the kids and then walk away from that relationship. I just, my own experience tells me that you know, children form attachments and you really want to be thoughtful about it. And so I waited to meet the kids. And they are my children. And I love those kids to death. And family comes in many forms, and I think that, increasingly, you know, all of us understand that this is not the 1950s anymore. Families come in all kinds of shapes and forms. And they’re family nonetheless.”
Harris said there are “so many forces that come in very different ways that are just trying to make people feel small and alone.”
Some Republicans have criticized Vance for his “childless cat lady” comments, particularly former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
In recent presidential election cycles, women have consistently broken for Democrats, while men as a whole have broken for Republicans. That appears to be the case in this election cycle, too. Among likely voters in August, 56% of women said they planned to vote for Harris, while 54% of men said they planned to vote for Trump.
The “Call Her Daddy” interview is one of several interviews Harris has recently conducted that will roll out this week. She spoke to 60 Minutes’ Bill Whittaker in an interview that will air Monday night as part of their election special, which for decades has featured both presidential candidates but Trump backed out after previously indicating he would be on the show. Harris will also be on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The View.”
JUNEAU, Wis. (AP) — Donald Trump on Sunday visited Wisconsin for the fourth time in eight days as his campaign showers attention on a pivotal state where Republicans fret about his ability to match Democrats’ enthusiasm and turnout machine.
“They say that Wisconsin is probably the toughest of the swing states to win,” Trump said in his opening remarks at an airplane hangar in a rural Juneau where the overflow crowd spilled out on to the tarmac. “I don’t think so.”
Voters in Wisconsin are already casting absentee ballots and in-person early voting begins Oct. 22. Trump stood on stage for nearly two hours, touching the third rail of Wisconsin politics by overlapping with a Green Bay Packers game, drawing derision from Democrats. But that didn’t stop thousands of people from sticking with Trump as he urged supporters to begin to vote by mail and early, when the time comes, so they turn out “in record numbers.”
“If we win Wisconsin, we win the presidency,” Trump said.
Wisconsin is perennially tight in presidential elections but has gone for the Republicans just once in the past 40 years, when Trump won the state in 2016. A win in November could make it impossible for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to take the White House.
“In the political chatter class, they’re worried,” said Brandon Scholz, a retired Republican strategist and longtime political observer in Wisconsin who voted for Trump in 2020 but said he is not voting for Trump or Harris this year. “I think Republicans are right to be concerned.”
Trump won the state in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 23,000 votes and lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes.
On Tuesday, Trump made his first-ever visit to Dane County, home to the liberal capital city of Madison, in an effort to turn out the Republican vote even in the state’s Democratic strongholds. Dane is Wisconsin’s second most-populous and fastest-growing county; Biden received more than 75% of the vote four years ago.
“To win statewide you’ve got to have a 72-county strategy,” former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said at that event.
Juneau is a a town of 2,000 about 50 miles north of Madison in Dodge County, which Trump won in 2020 with 65% of the vote.
Early arrivals filled the hangar, far exceeding the available seating. One large banner behind the bleachers inside said “Vote Early.”
“Make sure we turn out because guess what, I’ve been to Madison,” said U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, who is from Juneau, at the event. “I’ve been to liberal Madison and they’re going to show up. We need to do the same thing because we are the firewall to keep this country independent and free.”
Jack Yuds, chairman of the county Republican Party, said support for Trump is stronger in this part of the state than it was in 2016 or 2020.
“I can’t keep signs in,” Yuds said. “They want everything he’s got. If it says Trump on it, you can sell it.”
Trump’s campaign and outside groups supporting his candidacy have outspent Harris and her allies on advertising in Wisconsin, $35 million to $31 million, from when she became a candidate on July 23 through Oct. 1, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact.
Harris and outside groups supporting her candidacy had more advertising time reserved in Wisconsin from Oct. 1 through Nov. 5, more than $25 million compared with $20 million for Trump and his allies.
What to know about the 2024 Election
The Harris campaign has 50 offices across 43 counties with more than 250 staff members in Wisconsin, said her spokesperson Timothy White. The Trump campaign said it has 40 offices in the state and dozens of staffers.
Harris rallied supporters in Madison in September at an event that drew more than 10,000 people. On Thursday, she made an appeal to moderate and disgruntled conservatives by holding an event in Ripon, the birthplace of the Republican Party, along with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of Trump’s most prominent Republican antagonists.
Harris and Trump are focusing on Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the “blue wall” states that went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in the next election.
While Trump’s campaign is bullish on its chances in Pennsylvania as well as the Sunbelt states, Wisconsin is seen as more of a challenge.
“Wisconsin, tough state,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita, who worked on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s winning reelection campaign in 2022.
“I mean, look, that’s going to be a very tight — very, very tight, all the way to the end. But where we are organizationally now, comparative to where we were organizationally four years ago, I mean, it’s completely different,” LaCivita said.
He also cited Michigan as more of a challenge. “But again, these are states that Biden won and carried and so they’re going to be brawls all the way until the end and we’re not ceding any of that ground.”
The candidates are about even in Wisconsin, based on a series of polls that have shown little movement since Biden dropped out in late July. Those same polls also show high enthusiasm among both parties.
Mark Graul, who ran then-President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign in Wisconsin, said the number of campaign visits speaks to Wisconsin’s decisive election role.
The key for both sides, he said, is persuading infrequent voters to turn out.
“Much more important, in my opinion, than rallies,” Graul said.
Mark Seelman, from Watertown, said the energy and size of the crowd sends a message that Trump is strong in Wisconsin.
“Everybody’s into it,” he said during Trump’s speech. “It’s time for a change.”
___
Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Jill Colvin in Butler, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
VILAS, N.C. (AP) — Brad Farrington pulls over to grab a case of water bottles being passed out in Vilas, a small rural community tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He’s on his way to help a friend who lost much of what he owned when Hurricane Helene blew through last weekend.
His friend, like countless others across western North Carolina, is starting over, which explains why Farrington isn’t thinking too much about politics or the White House race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris right now.
“I don’t believe people’s hope is in either people that are being elected,” he said.
Farrington pauses, then gestures toward a dozen volunteers loading water and other necessities into cars and trucks.
“I believe we’re finding a lot more hope within folks like this,” he said.
In the election’s final weeks, people in North Carolina and Georgia, influential swing states, are dealing with more immediate concerns: widespread storm damage. If that weren’t enough, voters in Watauga County, a ticket-splitting Appalachian county that has become more Democratic in recent years, must contend with politicians laying blame while offering support as they campaign in a race that could be decided by any small shift.
Large uprooted trees litter the sides of roads, sometimes blocking driveways. Some homes in Vilas are inaccessible after bridges collapsed and roads crumbled. More populous areas like Boone, home of Appalachian State University, saw major flooding.
After Trump went to Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday, 20-year-old Fermin Herrera said the former president clinched his vote with his display of caring, not out of any frustration with how President Joe Biden and Harris, the vice president, are handling the federal disaster response. Herrera already leaned toward voting for Trump.
“I feel like everybody’s kind doing what they can,” he said. “All the locals are appreciating the help that’s coming.”
“I’m not thinking about voters right now,” Trump insisted after a meeting with Gov. Brian Kemp, R-Ga., on Friday. “I’m thinking about lives.”
Biden pushed back hard, saying he is “committed to being president for all of America” and has not ordered aid to be distributed based on party lines. The White House cited statements from the Republican governors of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee expressing satisfaction with the federal government’s response.
FEMA’s head, Deanne Criswell, told ABC’s “This Week” that this “truly dangerous narrative” of falsehoods is “demoralizing” to first responders and creating “fear in our own employees.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
Criticism of aid efforts so soon after a natural disaster is “inappropriate,” especially when factoring in the daunting logistical problems in western North Carolina, said Gavin Smith, a North Carolina State University professor who specializes in disaster recovery. He said the perilous terrain from compromised roads and bridges and the widespread lack of power and cellphone service make disaster response in the region particularly challenging.
Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has made several stops in western North Carolina, including Watauga County and surrounding areas, and Biden viewed the extensive damage via an aerial tour.
A focus on recovering and rebuilding
In Watauga County, Jessica Dixon was scraping muck and broken furniture off the ground with a shovel, then dumping it in the bucket of a humming excavator. The 29-year-old stood in a home she bought two years ago. It’s now gutted after a rush of water forced Dixon, her boyfriend and their two dogs to flee to safety.
Without flood insurance, Dixon is not sure what will happen over the next month. She said she filled out a FEMA application but hasn’t checked her email since. She had given the presidential election some thought before Helene, but now she’s preoccupied with cleaning her home.
“It wouldn’t change my views on anything,” said Dixon, who was planning to vote for Harris.
The presidential election isn’t top of mind for 47-year-old Bobby Cordell, either. He’s trying to get help to neighbors in western Watauga County, which has become inaccessible in some parts.
His home near Beech Mountain is one of those places, he said, after a bridge washed away. Cordell rescued his aunt from a mudslide, then traveled to Boone and has been staying in Appalachian State’s Holmes Convocation Center, which now serves as a Red Cross emergency shelter.
He’s trying to send disaster relief back where he lives by contacting officials, including from FEMA. That conversation, he said, “went very well.”
Accepting help isn’t easy for people in the mountains, he said, because they’re used to taking care of themselves.
Now, though, the people who are trapped “need everything they can get.”
Helping neighbors becomes more important in Helene’s aftermath
Over the past week of volunteering at Skateworld, where Farrington stopped for water, it’s become harder for Nancy Crawford to smile. She’s helped serve more than 1,000 people, she said, but the emotional toll has started to settle in for “a lot of us that normally are tough.”
That burden added to the weight she was already feeling about the election, which she said was “scary to begin with.” Crawford, a registered Republican, said she plans to vote for Harris. As a Latina of Mexican descent, she thinks Trump’s immigration policies would have harmful effects on her community.
The storm, she said, likely won’t change her vote but has made one thing evident.
“It doesn’t matter what party you are, we all need help,” she said.
Jan Wellborn had a similar thought as she made her way around the Watauga High School gym collecting supplies to bring to coworkers in need. A 69-year-old bus driver for the school district, she said the outpouring of support she’s seen from the community has been a “godsend.”
She takes solace from the county’s ability to pull together. The election matters, she said, but helping people make their way through a harrowing time matters more.
“The election, it should be important,” Wellborn said. “But right now we need to focus on getting everybody in the county taken care of.”
——
Associated Press writer Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.
Tonight, on a 60 Minutes election special, Bill Whitaker asks Vice President Kamala Harris how she’ll fund her economic plan and how she’d get it through Congress.
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Vice President Kamala Harris sits for an interview with Alex Cooper on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
Call Her Daddy
Vice President Kamala Harris was all business in an interview on the sex-positive “Call Her Daddy” podcast that aired Sunday.
Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, spent the bulk of the roughly 40-minute conversation litigating her case against Donald Trump, blasting the Republican nominee’s track record on abortion and women’s rights.
“There are now 20 states with Trump abortion bans,” Harris told “Call her Daddy” host Alex Cooper. “This is the same guy that said women should be punished for having abortions.”
In 2022, three Supreme Court justices whom Trump nominated during his presidency were part of a majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that for a half-century had said there was a federal right to abortion. The decision allowed individual states to restrict or permit abortions as they saw fit.
The “Call Her Daddy” podcast is largely popular with young women, a voter base Harris already polls strongly with.
But the podcast does not typically broach political topics, Cooper noted.
“I am so aware I have a very mixed audience when it comes to politics, so please hear me when I say my goal today is not to change your political affiliation,” Cooper said on the podcast before she began interviewing Harris.
Read more CNBC politics coverage
Harris’ appearance on “Call Her Daddy” is part of a larger media storm her campaign has scheduled for the upcoming week, an attempt to elbow Trump out of the news cycle.
Earlier Sunday, Trump’s wife, former first lady Melania Trump, doubled down on her own pro-choice abortion stance, bucking the Republican party line in a Fox News interview.
Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, responded Sunday to Eric Trump’s implication that his father’s Democratic opponents were responsible for the attempts on former President Trump’s life, saying the innuendo was “of course” inaccurate but political candidates on both sides of the aisle “need to deescalate” their rhetoric.
“No, of course not,” Turner said in his latest appearance on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” after being asked whether he believes there was truth to claims made by the former president, his son Eric, and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance, at a rally where each either implied or suggested Democrats tried to kill him.
Trump returned Saturday to Butler, Pennsylvania, to speak to supporters gathered at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds, the site of the July 13 assassination attempt against him. A gunman facing Trump on the podium at that rally opened fire into the crowd, grazing Trump’s ear, killing one attendee and injuring two others, according to authorities. The gunman was killed by a Secret Service sniper, officials said.
Another apparent assassination attempt happened in September when a suspect pointed a gun in Trump’s direction on the Florida course where he was playing golf. The FBI has opened probes into both incidents.
Rep. Mike Turner on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Oct. 6, 2024.
CBS News
Trump, his son and Vance all acknowledged the assassination attempt in Butler at Saturday’s campaign event.
“Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me impeached me indicted me tried to throw me off the ballot and, who knows, maybe even tried to kill me,” said the former president, while Eric Trump claimed his father’s political opponents “tried to kill him, and it’s because the Democratic party, they can’t do anything right.”
Vance, in his remarks, addressed Trump’s Democratic challenger in the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris, and suggested that the Republican nominee “took a bullet for democracy.”
Brennan asked Turner: “You don’t mean to imply here anything that would suggest Eric Trump’s allegations that Democrats are trying to kill him?”
“No, of course not,” Turner responded. “But I do think that Vice President Harris needs to actively state and acknowledge that her administration is saying a foreign power, which would be an act of war, is actively trying to kill her opponent.”
The attempts on Trump’s life came after a citizen of Pakistan with ties to Iran was arrested and charged with allegedly planning a murder-for-hire scheme targeting Trump, among others. Although the timing of the charges coincided with the first attempt, there was no indication that the two incidents were related.
Turner criticized Harris for what he viewed as a failure to openly condemn the alleged plot.
“I think there’s certainly a role for her to play and for the president to play in this, in both identifying that there are threats against Donald Trump that need to be acknowledged and responded to, to deter,” he said. “I think all the candidates need to de-escalate, certainly in their language.”
But the congressman did acknowledge that a Biden-Harris Justice Department official, Matthew Olsen, the head of the national security division, said the U.S. government has been “intensely tracking Iranian lethal plotting efforts targeting former and current U.S. government officials — and that includes the former president.”
Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
Even supporters of the Democratic candidate for president Kamala Harrishave complained that the current vice president remains a mystery to broad swaths of the country. Though media outlets (including this one) have noted that coverage of Harris and her campaign attracts a greater readership than coverage of her opponent, Republican nominee and former presidentDonald Trump, those outlets have struggled to convince Harris to sit down for an interview. It’s a decision that’s concerned even the journalists who seem receptive to her message, and prompted observers such as media writer Jon Allsopto note that as of late September, Harris and running mate Tim Walz “had taken part in seven interviews or press conferences, compared with Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s combined seventy-two.” Of those, Harris personally has participated in just three.
But all that changes this week, as Harris is launching into a set of sit-downs and interviews at the national level, presumably in an effort to—as Democratic strategist James Carvillerecently put it——win the news cycle. Here’s where to find an interview with Kamala Harris this week:
TBD: Call Her Daddy
Harris sat for an interview with influential podcast host Alex Cooper on Tuesday, for an episode slated to be released on an at-yet-undisclosed day this week. Quoting the Harris campaign, the Washington Postreports that the interview focused on “reproductive rights and ‘other critical issues important to women.’” Listeners can find the episode on Spotify when it’s released.
Monday: 60 Minutes
For decades, the venerable CBS newsmagazine has hosted an interview with both presidential candidates in the weeks leading up to the election, with Trump famously walking out on that conversation in 2020. Via statement, the show says, “This year, both the Harris and Trump campaigns agreed to sit down with 60 Minutes. Vice President Harris will speak with correspondent Bill Whitaker. After initially accepting 60 Minutes’ request for an interview with Scott Pelley, former President Trump’s campaign has decided not to participate. Pelley will address this Monday evening. Our election special will broadcast the Harris interview on Monday as planned.” According to the show, expect questions about “the economy, immigration, and the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel.” 60 Minutes will air on CBS on Monday, October 7 at 8 p.m. ET, and will be available for streaming via CBSNews.com, on the CBS News app, or Paramount+.
Kamala Harris appears on ABC’s “The View” on Friday, July 12, 2019.
Jenny Anderson/Getty Images
Tuesday: The View
Harris will travel to New York on October 8 for an in-person interview with the ABC roundtable talk show. Planned topics of discussion with hosts Sunny Hostin, Joy Behar, Ana Navarro, Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin have not been released. ABC broadcasts The View on weekdays at 11 a.m. ET, 10 a.m. CT and PT., with episodes streaming at a later date on ABC.com and Hulu.
Tuesday: The Howard Stern Show
The iconic interviewer’s once-controversial style is far less shocking in these days of wildly popular batshit podcasters, but with an audience of listeners who followed him to incessant spam call network SiriusXM, he arguably still enjoys some pull. Stern’s show airs live on Sirius’s channel 100 from 7-11 a.m. ET, with clips and segments typically shared to its YouTube channel in the hours following the broadcast.
Tuesday: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Harris will cap off her busy Tuesday with an appearance on the late night talk show hosted by frequent Trump antagonistStephen Colbert. (Other guests for the episode have yet to be announced.) The October 8 episode will air from 11:35 p.m. to 12:37 ET on CBS and will be available to stream on Paramount+.
After the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his campaign spent a lot of time in courtrooms and on the airwaves seizing on every rumor or right-wing conspiracy theory about voter fraud to back up his claims he had a right to overturn a “stolen election.” The courts dismissed nearly all of his lawsuits, people laughed at his clownish lawyers, and ultimately his big bid on January 6 to seize the presidency failed.
In his 2024 comeback bid, Trump hasn’t let go of any of those fatuous 2020 claims — and this time he’s dispensed with the toil and trouble of alleging tangible, verifiable violations of election or voting rules. Instead, Trump is relying on vast, sweeping claims of “election interference” that seem to be designed to justify whatever he choses to do if he loses again. Below is a running list.
The claim that has the most merit is that the members of Congress that impeached and tried him for his insurrectionary behavior on January 6, 2021, wanted to stop him from running again. That was indeed their hope in seeking to convict the former president of high crimes and misdemeanors and making him ineligible to serve in that office again. So he’s got a legitimate beef there, aside from the fact that he was, you know, guilty.
When the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack turned to Trump’s role in the Capitol Riot in early 2022, Trump blasted it as designed to frustrate his political plans:
“The Unselect Committee’s sole goal is to try to prevent President Trump, who is leading by large margins in every poll, from running again for president, if I so choose,” Trump said in a statement. “By so doing they are destroying democracy as we know it.”
The Committee nonetheless makes a criminal referral to the Justice Department involving the attempted insurrection, which leads eventually to criminal indictments.
In 2023, a large number of Trump chickens came home to roost as the former president faced civil and criminal charges on a range of illicit activities, from hush money payments to a porn star just prior to the 2016 election, to mishandling of presidential documents while in the White House, to both federal and stage charges stemming from the events of January 6. He and his supporters quickly found a convenient way to dismiss them all as politically motivated to interfere with his 2024 campaign, which he had announced in November of 2022. The conservative Washington Examiner presented the official MAGA spin:
The story of the 2024 campaign so far is the effort by Democrats and their appointees to use criminal charges and lawsuits to force former President Donald Trump out of the race for a second term in the White House. The name for such an effort is lawfare — that is, “the strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent,” to cite one law dictionary.
Henceforth any progress on these cases — other than dismissal of charges or delays in proceedings — were denounced by Team Trump as illustrations of a Democratic conspiracy stretching from Manhattan to Atlanta to Washington to damage Trump campaign and perhaps put him behind bars before he could complete his triumphant return as president.
For some time MAGA folk have claimed that social media platforms “stole” the 2020 election by “censoring” stories that might have hurt Joe Biden, particularly COVID-19 anti-vaxx fables and the rabbit hole involving Hunter Biden’s laptop. In his recent debate with Tim Walz, J.D. Vance called Big Tech censorship a bigger threat to democracy than the January 6 insurrection. But Trump now has a newer example of this alleged menace aimed at him, as NBC News reported:
Last week, Trump posted without evidence on his social media account that Google is engaged in “blatant interference of elections” — the second time he has recently claimed that it is trying to illegally alter the White House race. Trump claimed in the post that Google manipulated its systems to reveal “bad stories” about him and “good stories” about Vice President Kamala Harris. He said he would “request” the prosecution of Google at the “maximum levels” for what he called “illegal activity,” though neither he nor his campaign offered any specific allegation of criminal conduct.
Tangentially, Trump has accused Kamala Harris of somehow being behind or benefiting from an Iranian hack of some of his campaign data, suggesting she should resign over it.
Trump and his campaign have repeatedly called the maneuver whereby Joe Biden withdrew from the campaign and endorsed Harris as an “unconstitutional coup,” suggesting it illicitly robbed Trump of the opponent he thought he’d face and exposing Democrats’ willingness to do anything to keep the 45th president from returning to office.
A very old canard that Trump deployed in 2016 and occasionally later was that Democrats were stealing elections by opening the border so that non-citizens could vote in huge numbers. There’s never been any evidence of significant non-citizen voting (which is illegal in federal elections, with deportation and imprisonment as penalties), despite constant conservative efforts to look for it. The phantom menace has come back with a vengeance late in this election cycle as Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have promoted the idea that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are recruiting undocumented immigrants to flood the polls and counteract the big Republican majority among American citizens.
In a revised filing compelled by Trump’s partial victory in the U.S. Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity earlier this year, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has issued a new indictment that provides a few spicy new details of the January 6 disaster but mostly covers old ground. How did Trump react? You guessed it:
Former President Donald Trump called the unsealing of documents in his election interference case by special counsel Jack Smith a “weaponization of the government” during an exclusive interview with NewsNation on Wednesday in Houston, Texas. The Republican nominee was at a private fundraiser when he told NewsNation’s Ali Bradley that Smith is a “deranged person” following the dismissal of his separate classified documents case in July.
“This was a weaponization of the government … and released 30 days before the election,” Trump said of Wednesday’s developments. “My poll numbers have gone up instead of down. It is pure election interference.”
The latest Trump clam is that the alleged inadequacy of his Secret Service detail is a “kind of election interference,” on the theory, I guess, that the tautly stretched protective agency is interfering with his beloved outdoor rallies by encouraging him to utilize smaller and easier-to-secure venues for his ranting and raving events.
It’s a good time to recognize that absolutely anything Trump doesn’t like is going to be called “election interference,” and that the vagueness and impossibility of documenting the effect of this or that Trump grievance is a feature, not a bug. He has clearly made enough claims that the election is rigged against him to justify (at least to the satisfaction his followers) that any course of action he chooses to take if he loses is fully justified, and even righteous.
Former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
Evan Vucci | AP
Former President Donald Trump is set to hold a Saturday rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of his July 13 rally that erupted in chaos after a gunman opened fire in a failed attempt to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee, killing one crowd member instead.
Trump first announced his plan to return to Butler in July, 13 days after the rally shooting.
With roughly four weeks until the Nov. 5 election and early voting well underway, the Trump campaign has been working to gin up hype around the Butler event. It could be one of Trump’s final high-profile opportunities to make his case to the American public, in a key swing state no less.
“BUTLER ON SATURDAY — HISTORIC!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
But Trump returns to Butler in a very different presidential race.
Ahead of that first Butler visit, Trump was still reveling in the disastrous performance of President Joe Biden at their June 27 debate, which spurred Democrats’ growing doubt about their candidate’s ability to win a second term.
Since then, Biden has dropped out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris has taken the helm of the Democratic ticket and she has begun to erode Trump’s edge.
Trump’s second Butler rally will also spotlight his new entourage.
Tesla CEO and new Trump ally Elon Musk announced Saturday that he would speak at the rally. Musk officially endorsed Trump hours after the Butler assassination attempt, marking a stark pivot in their formerly hostile relationship.
Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, will also deliver an opening speech.
Family members of Corey Comperatore, the crowd member who was shot and killed at the July rally, are also expected to join, according to the campaign.
Going into Saturday’s rally, the Secret Service said it beefed up its security plan.
The Butler shooting put the Secret Service under intense scrutiny as questions lingered about how a gunman could come within shooting distance of a former president at a public event. That outrage mounted further after Trump was the target of another assassination attempt in September.
On Friday, the Secret Service pledged that it had “made comprehensive changes and enhancements” to its communications abilities and resources.
“The former President is receiving heightened protection and we take the responsibility to ensure his safety and security very seriously,” spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
Polymarket, the blockchain-based prediction platform, recorded a trading volume of $533.51 million in September, driven largely by interest in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and geopolitical developments in the Middle East.
According to Dune Analytics, this marks a $61.51 million increase from August’s $472 million. The platform also saw a 41% rise in active users, growing from 63,616 in August to 90,037 in September.
Polymarket’s Growth
With the U.S. election just over a month away, demand for Polymarket has surged. Data from Dune Analytics shows that the platform’s most active market, “Presidential Election Winner 2024,” recorded $89.07 million in trading volume over the last 30 days. As of October 4, the odds for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are locked in a tie, with each candidate holding a 50% chance of winning.
September 30 marked its busiest day, with 16,702 participants placing trades, contributing to a record 89,958 new account registrations throughout the month. The platform’s highest daily volume was initially recorded on September 11, but new daily trading records were set on October 2 and 3, signaling sustained momentum as election day approaches.
Although open interest dipped slightly at the start of September, it recovered, reaching a high of $136 million fueled by rumors of a potential token launch. A report from The Information revealed that the blockchain prediction service is in talks to raise $50 million in funding.
The company is also considering launching its token, which could allow users to verify the outcomes of real-world events.
Election Betting Dominates
By the end of September, election-related predictions accounted for 84% of its total market activity, with 64% of users engaging in election betting. Other high-interest markets included predictions on geopolitical events like “Israeli Forces Enter Lebanon in September?” and financial forecasts such as “Fed Interest Rates: November 2024.”
Polymarket’s recent surge in activity is linked to growing interest in decentralized prediction markets, fueled by global events like elections, economic policies, and rising geopolitical tensions that have captured public attention.
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“Jamie Dimon has not endorsed anyone. He has not endorsed a candidate,” Dimon spokesman Joe Evangelisti told CNBC in a phone call.
Trump on Truth Social had posted a screenshot falsely claiming, “New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President.”
The claim appears to have originated from a verified account on X earlier Friday. It was quickly amplified on social media by other pro-Trump accounts, and then the former president himself, before the bank issued its denial.
When NBC News asked Trump about the post later Friday, Trump said he did not know about it and that it was not posted by him.
“Somebody put it up,” Trump said, adding, “I don’t know.”
The post, published at 1:56 p.m. ET, was still visible on Trump’s official account more than two hours later.
The Trump campaign did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Former President and GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump post a Truth that claims J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has endorsed Trump for President.
Source: @realDonaldTrump | Truth Social
In September, Dimon said that he is not backing either Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“I’m not endorsing anyone at this time,” Dimon told CNBCTV-18 at the JPMorgan Investor Summit in Mumbai.
Dimon has at times offered qualified praise for Trump, but the two men have also clashed repeatedly over the years.
During the Republican presidential primary season, Dimon had urged corporate leaders to support former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump.
Trump tore into Dimon for siding with Haley, saying he “had to live with this guy when he came begging to the White House.”
Trump 46%
Casey 52% (+10)
