你是一名新闻报告编辑，负责2024届美国总统选举大事件的新闻汇编。
阅读上传的文档并作为素材，按照以下格式用英文撰写新闻报告，要求语言客观，内容尽可能详细（每个章节至少3段），尤其是6.Media Reaction部分，另外该章节要按照media名字：text段落生成。具体文章格式和内容要求如下：

Title: <News Event Title>
Date: <Date of the News Event>
Location: <Location of the News Event>
Key Figures: <not more than 3 of Key People or Groups Involved>
Reporting Agency：<DEM/REP/CEN>
1.Event Overview
<Briefly describe the main content and background of the event>
<Describe the key details and turning points of the event>
 
2.Background Information
<Provide historical or relevant background information about the event>
<Explain why the event is important or newsworthy>
 
3. Main Points
<Summarize the views and reactions of different people or groups regarding the event>
<Quote direct statements or opinions from relevant individuals》
 
4.Impact and Consequences
<Analyze the possible direct and indirect impacts of the event>
<Predict the long-term effects or potential developments of the event>
 
5.Relevant Data and Statistics
<Provide relevant data or statistics to support the analysis>
<Use charts or lists to present the data>
 
6.Media Reaction
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2024 Democratic National Convention
Protests erupt, Chicago businesses board up as the DNC kicks off Day 1 festivities
Democratic lawmakers will gather in Chicago, Illinois, this week for the 2024 DNC. Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to formally accept her party's nomination on Thursday.

Fast facts
Democrat lawmakers are expected in Chicago, Illinois, this week for the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to formally announce her acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president.

Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in the weeks leading up to the 2024 DNC.

President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are expected to speak at the 2024 DNC, among others.

Democrats kicked off their national convention in Chicago on Monday with a parade of prominent speakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden.

Speakers celebrated Biden's presidency but also hyped up Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden's speech was ultimately delayed for hours. It was initially scheduled for prime time, but he was pushed later and later as speakers took up more time. His speech didn't conclude until after midnight.

Many critics slammed the event planners for forcing the president to wait, with some observers saying it is just more evidence that Democrats have thrown out Biden in favor of Harris.

Meanwhile, anti-Israel protesters swarmed around the Chicago venue, with some of them breaking through police barriers. The widespread protests threw a wrench in Democrats' hopes to present a united front behind Harris at the convention.

Biden mentioned the protesters during his address.

"Those, those protesters out in the street, they have a point," Biden told the crowd in the United Center after anti-Israel protesters marched on the convention calling for an end to the U.S. support of Israel. "A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides."

"We're working around the clock," Biden said. "To end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war."

Posted by Anders Hagstrom

2.DNC Day 4: VP Harris Calls On Democrats To Fight
On the final night of the Democratic National Convention, a keynote speech from Vice President Kamala Harris who called for Democrats to rally around her in what she predicts will be a close fight for the presidency. Harris laid out policy ambitions for her administration, like legislation to address crises in housing, the economy, and immigration. President Trump called into FOX News following the end of her speech, questioning why VP Harris could not achieve these plans while she is currently in the White House. FOX News Radio’s Josh Kraushaar and Jared Halpern joined the Rundown to analyze the policy agenda that VP Harris laid out in her address, how she will square herself as “the change candidate” while she is currently in power, and the state of the race just a few short months from Election Day.

This week’s Democratic National Convention spotlighted the Harris campaign’s economic agenda and some of their more progressive policies. The Democrats tried to sell their plans to bring relief to families and businesses at a time when the most recent FOX News Power Rankings show that voters feel more comfortable with former President Donald Trump handling the economy than Vice President Harris. Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Leary Ventures and star of ABC’s Shark Tank, joins to give his take on the state of the economy and weigh in on Vice President Kamala Harris’ agenda, including her plan to stop so-called “price-gouging.”

3. As DNC ramps up for Day 2, Dems fall in line behind Harris

Fast facts
Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, President Joe Biden, among others, spoke at Day 1 of the 2024 DNC.

Former President Barack Obama is expected to headline Tuesday, Day 2 of the 2024 DNC.

On Wednesday, Kamala Harris' vice presidential pick, Tim Walz, will formally accept his Democratic nomination.

The finale of the 2024 DNC will see Vice President Kamala Harris accept her presidential nomination for the Democratic Party.

CHICAGO – Former President Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on Tuesday evening, praising President Biden just weeks after reportedly helping oust Biden from his re-election effort.

"It's been 16 years since I had the honor of accepting this party’s nomination for president. And I know that's hard to believe since I haven’t aged a bit, but it’s true. And looking back, I can say without question that my first big decision as your nominee turned out to be one of my best. And that was asking Joe Biden to serve by my side as vice president," Obama said on Tuesday evening from the DNC.

"Other than some common Irish blood, Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers. And as we worked together for eight – sometimes, pretty tough – years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts and experience, but it was his empathy and his decency. And his hard-earned resiliency and his unshakable belief that everyone in this country deserves a fair shot."

Harris became the Democrat nominee for president upon Biden's withdrawal from the race after his disastrous June debate performance against former President Trump, which included the president losing his train of thought, stumbling over his words and appearing more subdued than during other public events in recent years. The debate performance opened the floodgates to traditional Democrat allies and legacy media outlets joining conservatives in their concerns over Biden’s mental acuity and age.

This is an excerpt of an article by Fox News' Emma Colton

Posted by Anders Hagstrom


4. Gov. Burgum to Newsmax: DNC a 'Hollywood-style Lovefest'
The Democrat National Convention in Chicago is a beguiling event set up to distract from the issues surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris, North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum told Newsmax on Wednesday.

Speaking to "Greg Kelly Reports" about the DNC, Burgum stated, "This is a crazy, orchestrated, Hollywood-style love fest that's in keeping with what the mainstream media has done for Kamala for the last 30-plus days."

"And, you know," he added, "the mainstream media covered up Joe Biden's incompetence for years, which led to the spot we're in right now. And now they're all complicit in not holding her to task.


"I mean, there's never been a presidential candidate in history that didn't have to go through a primary this time. She's never been asked any of the tough questions. She's hardly been asked a question at all. And so they're really covering up the fact that she has to own every one of the failed Biden policies for the last 1,400 days."

Nick Koutsobinas 
Nick Koutsobinas, a Newsmax writer, has years of news reporting experience. A graduate from Missouri State University’s philosophy program, he focuses on exposing corruption and censorship.


5. At Least 55 Arrested in Clashes With Police During DNC
At least 55 protesters were arrested following violent clashes with police in Chicago on the second night of the Democratic National Convention, a situation the police chief called "a danger to our city."

Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said Wednesday that those arrested outside the Israeli Consulate, about 2 miles from the United Center where Democrats were meeting, "showed up with the intention of committing acts of violence, vandalism."

"As the Chicago Police Department, we did everything that we could to de-escalate that situation," Snelling said during a news conference. "But there's only so much de-escalation that you can attempt before it becomes excessive repetition."


The intense confrontations between pro-Palestinian protesters and officers began minutes into the demonstration, after some protesters — many dressed in black, their faces covered — charged at a line of police who had blocked their march. They eventually moved past the officers but were penned in several times throughout the night by police in riot gear who did not allow protesters to disperse.

Snelling said protesters showed up to "fight with the police."

"We were not the initiators of violence, but we responded to it," Snelling said.

Snelling said that between 55 and 60 people were arrested. Two people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, one for knee pain and one with a finger injury, Snelling said. Two officers were injured but they refused medical attention because they did not want to leave fellow officers, Snelling said. He said three journalists were among those arrested, but he did not have details on charges.

"Last night was a danger to our city and a danger to our citizens in this city, our residents' property. And CPD has to protect that," Snelling said.

The Israeli Consulate has been the site of numerous demonstrations since the war in Gaza began in October, and protests during the DNC have largely focused on opposing the Israel-Hamas war.

The group behind the protest Tuesday night is not affiliated with a coalition of more than 200 groups that has organized permitted rallies and marches — one that took place Monday and two more expected Wednesday and Thursday. Another rally, organized by the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, a Palestinian and Arab community-based organization, is planned for Wednesday afternoon near the United Center.


On Tuesday night, organizers rallied demonstrators under the slogan "Make it great like '68," invoking the anti-Vietnam War protests that seized the city during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

"That was what they brought here to Chicago," Snelling said. "It's 2024. And the Chicago Police Department proved that. So let's get off of 1968. Let's stop talking about 1968. This is 2024."

A large portion of the arrests happened at the end of the night, as police pinned demonstrators in a plaza and blocked them from leaving. Snelling denied that police had "kettled" protesters, a tactic that involves corralling people in a confined area, which is banned under a federal consent decree.

Snelling, who has been present at all major demonstrations so far during the convention, praised his officers. He said some female police officers were subjected to "vicious, nasty, sexually explicit" comments but that they "stood their ground and they did what they had to do."

"I could not be more proud of the work that the men and women of this department are doing right now to keep this city safe," he said.

Snelling rejected criticism that the police response was overwhelming.

"We wanted to overwhelm them," Snelling said. "We wanted to overwhelm those people who decided to come to our city and destroy it. Now, overwhelming doesn't mean that we were excessive. The response was proportionate."

The largest protest so far, which attracted about 3,500 people on Monday, was largely peaceful and resulted in 13 arrests, most related to a breach of security fencing. Two were arrested Sunday night during another mostly peaceful march.

Also on Wednesday, a man who escaped from a Mississippi courthouse and is wanted on murder and armed robbery charges was taken into custody following a standoff with police at a restaurant about half a mile from the United Center. There was no indication that he had any connection to the convention.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.


6. Pro-Palestinian Activists Stung by Snub From Harris, DNC
Pro-Palestinian activists were left angry and reeling from a Democratic National Convention that denied them a speaker during the four-day event and didn't provide a condemnation of Israel from presidential nominee Kamala Harris in her keynote speech Thursday night.
The Uncommitted National Movement, which rallied some 700,000 Democrats nationally to vote against President Joe Biden in the otherwise meaningless primaries, had 30 delegates represented in Chicago that have now directed their ire at Harris, The Hill reported Friday.
"There's no shift from Biden. The messenger has changed, but the message hasn't changed," Daniel Engelhart, an uncommitted delegate from Minnesota, told The Hill. "Clearly, there's no policy shift or change of direction."

The pro-Palestinian activists say the Biden-Harris administration has not been forceful enough with Israel in cease-fire talks in Gaza and continues to publicly support Israel, the United States' longstanding global ally and its only one in the Middle East, against the terrorist group Hamas. 

Harris refused the activists a speaker during the convention, according to The Hill, an omission the director of the Arab American Institute called a "boneheaded move" and "unforced error."

"I think they made a mistake by not having a Palestinian speaker," Jim Zogby told The Hill. "They may end up making it difficult for some people to vote because they didn't have a Palestinian speaker."

Further, another pro-Palestinian group has now changed its name from Abandon Biden to Abandon Harris.

"She ended up proving Abandon Biden correct and now there is no doubt that she will not be different than Joe Biden," spokesperson Hudhayfah Ahmad told The Hill. "The time has come for us to be ... committed towards holding the Democrats accountable for the genocide. The carrot has not worked. Now it's time for the stick."


7. DNC Taps Ex-ABC Exec Who Produced J6 Hearings To Produce More Anti-Trump Content For Convention

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) reportedly tapped former ABC News president James Goldston, who produced the Jan. 6 Committee hearings, to create two short films, Political Playbook reported on Wednesday.

Goldston will reportedly “build on his work” for the House Jan. 6 Committee by creating the short films that are set to air at the convention on Wednesday night, according to Politico Playbook. The first film will reportedly be titled, “Big Lie,” and the second will revolve around the events that occurred at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Democrats hired Goldston, who joined the Jan. 6 committee as an adviser in 2022, to “produce” the Jan. 6 committee’s hearings nationally televised on June 9, 2022. Viewers of the televised committee hearing witnessed a slew of pre-recorded footage, live witness accounts, official White House photographs and some surveillance footage from inside the Capitol.

The televised hearings produced by Goldston aired on ABC News, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and NBC News at 8 p.m., raking in more than 20 million viewers. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Here Are The Early Cable Ratings For The First Jan. 6 Hearing)

Then-Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy accused Democrats of hiring Goldston “to choreograph their Jan. 6 political theater.”

“The Democrats have turned to the former ABC News exec, under whose leadership ABC spiked a story on Jeffrey Epstein, to choreograph their Jan 6 political theatre,” McCarthy said in a June 6, 2022 statement.

Goldston left his position at ABC News in late January of 2021 after being the head of the company’s news division since 2014. He served as ABC News’ president when the network came under fire for allegedly quashing former anchor Amy Robach‘s interview with Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre in 2015, when Buckingham Palace reportedly threatened the network for including Prince Andrew in the story.


8. Kamala Harris Caps Off DNC Without Releasing Policy Platform

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday despite failing to release a policy platform since launching her campaign.

Harris headlined the final night of the Democratic National Convention, accepting the nomination that the delegates had voted to give her weeks before in a virtual roll call. The vice president largely spoke about her personal background and attacked former President Donald Trump, while sprinkling in some vague policy positions and campaign themes.

“On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America,” Harris said early on in her speech.

Harris began the speech with her personal story, speaking about how a childhood friend being abused led her to become a prosecutor and her mother telling her never to do things “half-assed.” She transitioned to some basic policy outlines, pledging to pass bipartisan border legislation that failed in the Senate earlier this year and to pass national protections for abortion access.

She also promised to continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself after expressing sympathies to the plight of Palestinians and calling for a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza.

The other dominant theme was attacks on Trump. Harris characterized her opponent as a threat to freedoms such as abortion access, and said he was found liable for sexual assault and only cares about his own interests.

“I will not cozy up to tyrants or dictators who are rooting for Trump. They know he is easy to manipulate. He will not hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be one himself,” she said.

For his part, Trump promised a live “play-by-play” of Harris’s speech on Truth Social earlier Thursday. He posted 37 times during her 41-minute speech.

The convention opened up on Monday with a day devoted to President Joe Biden and his decision to drop out of the race and endorse Harris. The DNC was running behind schedule and pushed Biden’s speech past primetime as he wrapped up after midnight. The president — to cheers of gratitude — encouraged the country to vote for Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.

“We need you to vote. We need you to keep the Senate and the House of Representatives. And above all, we need you to beat Donald Trump,” Biden said. The speech lasted nearly an hour.

Observers, including renowned pollster Nate Silver, remarked that Biden’s speech could’ve been delayed to decrease his visibility as the party shifts its focus to Harris.

“The media is very East Coast focused though, you’ve gotta be pretty naive to think the prolonged DNC tonight is for any reason other than diminishing Biden’s visibility,” Silver tweeted.

But despite the night for Biden, the DNC was entirely forward focused on Harris and her role in the party. Noticeably absent from Harris’s speech was much commentary on her record as vice president. Former President Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama and second gentleman Doug Emhoff headlined night two.

“I am feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible; because we have a chance to elect someone who has spent her entire life trying to give people the same chances America gave her, someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you, the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris,” Barack Obama said.

Despite the buzz around Harris’ nomination, Trump and his campaign have been highlighting the vice president’s avoidance of the media and lack of platform. Since launching her campaign four weeks ago, Harris is yet to hold a press conference or do a sit-down interview. Though Harris told reporters she would do an interview by the end of August, Biden sat down for an interview with CBS News before her. (RELATED: ‘Dam Is Going To Break’: Trump Insiders Forecast Counterattack Against Kamala’s Basement Campaign)

On the final day of the convention, Harris is yet to have a policy platform on her website. In response, the Trump campaign released its own webpage detailing Harris’ “dangerous policies.” The Democratic National Committee released its platform on the first day of the convention, though it made 19 references to a “President Biden’s second term” and 150 to Trump.


9. DNC highlights
Tim Walz gives speech to accept nomination on Day 3
Updated August 22, 2024 at 12:04 a.m. EDT|Published August 21, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. EDT

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), the running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris, said it was the honor of his life to accept the vice-presidential nomination. “We’re all here tonight for one beautiful, simple reason,” he said. “We love this country.” Earlier, Oprah Winfrey called on independent and undecided voters to show up in November for Democrats. “You’re looking at a registered independent who’s proud to vote again and again and again because that’s what Americans do,” she said. Former president Bill Clinton painted a picture in his speech of former president Donald Trump as a man out only for himself. “So the next time you hear him, don’t count the lies. Count the I’s,” he said.

Chicago pastor William Emmanuel Hall gave a benediction Wednesday night at the DNC in which he called for “peace in Palestine, peace for Palestinians, peace for Israelis.” His comments came the same night that reports emerged that pro-Palestinian delegates will not receive a speaking slot at the convention.

Analysis: Democrats set her up for success. Now Harris has to stick the landing.
CHICAGO — The first three nights of the Democratic National Convention have been a study in skillful political choreography, replete with star power, showmanship, creative twists and few glitches other than running long. What will matter most, however, is the impression Vice President Kamala Harris leaves with voters when she delivers her acceptance speech Thursday night.


10. What Barack Obama’s DNC speech was actually about
Beneath the campaign rhetoric, Obama offered a strikingly philosophical defense of American liberalism.

by Zack Beauchamp

Aug 21, 2024, 1:45 PM GMT+8

During his 2024 Democratic National Convention address on Tuesday night, former President Barack Obama made no secret of his disdain for Donald Trump. But his speech was more than just a partisan broadside: It was a philosophical brief in defense of liberalism, a kind of first-principles moral argument that no other major convention speaker offered.

Liberal, in this context, does not refer to the term’s use in partisan American politics. It refers instead to the centuries-old philosophical tradition that sees politics as fundamentally oriented around the values of freedom and equality. Government, for liberals, exists to enable people to live according to their own vision for their lives; it has no business telling people what god to worship or giving certain groups of people more rights than others.

Obama was a thoroughly liberal president, and Trump a thoroughly illiberal one. This clearly troubled Obama — troubled him so much, in fact, that he dedicated this most high-profile speech to explaining why Trump must be defeated not just politically but also philosophically.

The stakes of 2024, according to Barack Obama
Obama is hardly the first person to declare Trump a mortal enemy of liberalism. Ever since 2016, there’s been a library’s worth of books published on liberalism’s Trump-induced crisis and how it ought to be resolved.

Some of Obama’s remarks followed this literature rather closely. Like many, Obama sees Trump’s divisive political style as opposed to liberalism’s core principle of equality: that all citizens deserve to be treated equally, each free to pursue a good life in the way they see fit (as long as they don’t hurt others in doing so).

Trump, Obama says, draws an elemental distinction “between the real Americans, who of course support [Trump], and the outsiders who don’t.” And that Trump and his allies believe “one group’s gain is another group’s loss,” and that “freedom means the powerful can do pretty much whatever they please.”

This, Obama says, is wrong. It’s wrong not just for Democrats and progressives, but for Americans — citizens of a country whose very existence grew out of liberal thought. The Harris campaign, in his telling, is tapping into a fundamental liberal impulse that permeates the American body politic.

“The vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided,” Obama said. “We want something that’s better. We want to be better. And the joy and excitement surrounding this campaign tells us that we’re not alone.”

Living this liberal vision, for Obama, means accepting the diversity inherent to a large society made up of people with all sorts of beliefs and worldviews: recognizing that “our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.” It means understanding “true freedom” as something that gives all of us the right “to make decisions about our own life [and] requires us to recognize that other people have the right to make decisions that are different than ours.” And it means seeing democracy as more than “just a bunch of abstract principles and a bunch of dusty laws in a book somewhere,” but rather “the values we live by.”

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This, to be clear, is not a case that Trump is un-American and thus will definitely lose: Obama took great pains to emphasize that the race was still close and could go either way. Rather, Obama is saying that what Trump stands for contradicts many of the values that Americans claim to hold dear — our core sense of what our country is about and what it stands for. That America’s truest identity is liberal, and that this identity can transcend those things that divide us.

I want to agree with that. But as I argue in my recent book, there is a deeply illiberal strain in American politics — an ideology born out of the essential contradiction between America’s stated liberal ideals and the reality of chattel slavery at its founding.

This tradition, like Trump, rejects core liberal-democratic ideals about equality. It is no more and no less American than our loftier stated ideals; both represent authentic aspects of America’s identity, and both have triumphed at different times throughout our country’s history.

The question, then, is not whether American liberalism can reassert its naturally dominant place. It is whether the America that Obama believes in will triumph in this round of a centuries-old struggle against an authoritarian twin.


11. Tim Walz misrepresented his experience with IVF. It’s not hard to see why
2024 Presidential Election, Tim Walz, IVF
Posted on AllSides August 22nd, 2024

Just over two weeks after Vice President Kamala Harris announced Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, Walz has already come under fire for not sharing the truth about things ranging from his 1995 drunk driving arrest to his rank in the military. The latest falsehood has to do with the journey he and his wife went on to begin a family. While the governor implied they used in vitro fertilization, his wife, Gwen Walz, made clear during an appearance on CNN that it was intrauterine insemination instead.

Considering how the Left uses the issue of reproductive rights to demonize the pro-life Right, the distinction is important.

IVF involves fertilizing eggs with sperm in a lab setting outside the uterus. Generally, more than one embryo is created to increase the chances of a successful pregnancy. During fertility treatment, embryos that are not used are frozen, donated, adopted, or destroyed.
On the other hand, IUI greatly increases the chance of pregnancy with a much simpler treatment: “During intercourse, only a few hundred sperm reach the egg under ideal conditions. But with IUI, your doctor places millions of healthy sperm directly in the uterus,” Penn Medicine explains. While the former involves fertilized embryos, the latter involves only sperm.
During a TV interview in July, Walz said, “Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.” And at a rally this month, he again brought up IVF, saying, “This one’s personal for me about IVF and reproductive care. When we wanted to have children, we went through years of fertility treatment.”

His story certainly won over some listeners. Faith Hill, a staff writer for the Atlantic, published an article on Aug. 8 titled “More People Should Be Talking About IVF the Way Tim Walz Is.” In it, Hill writes of Walz, “His strength doesn’t just lie in the fact that he has experienced IVF; he could champion access to it regardless. What’s special is the way he’s sharing this part of himself. Reproductive rights are almost always framed as a women’s issue. Walz reminds us that they affect men too.” 

The Harris-Walz campaign has made “reproductive freedom” an important part of its election season narrative. Harris doesn’t have any biological children of her own. Walz does. This is just one of the reasons he’s portrayed as “America’s dad.” Except the IVF story he has repeated is different from what actually occurred.

Not only is Walz a fabulist, but this particular lie feeds a narrative that Republicans are anti-family. The pro-life community has real concerns with IVF that have to do with the lab-grown creation and possible destruction of a human embryo. Despite that, Harris, Walz, and their fellow Democrats continue to present themselves as the ones who truly care about women. And they do this all while promoting abortion. 

The Democrats have no interest in being honest about any aspect of abortion. It is sold as just a routine part of women’s healthcare. Their fervor only increased following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022. Now, with President Joe Biden out of the picture and Harris at the helm, women’s issues are front and center. Added to that is Walz as he praises IVF and claims Republicans are the bad guys. If one believes both the lies about abortion and Walz’s continued embellishments, it’s a powerful combination.

Protecting the health of both the mother and baby in every pregnancy is the ultimate goal for pro-lifers. A political party that focuses on just the mother is missing the other half of the equation.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Democrats constantly frame pregnancy as only involving a woman. The value of an unborn human life, in their eyes, depends on whether it is wanted or not. This is a tragedy. Pro-lifers fully understand that life is precious, regardless of location or stage of development. And life is worth defending whether it’s wanted and in the womb or an optional embryo frozen and waiting in a storage facility. 

IVF will remain a controversial topic. When it comes to human life, it is imperative politicians speak the truth. This is something Democrats, particularly Walz, would be wise to remember.

Kimberly Ross (@SouthernKeeks) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog and a columnist at Arc Digital.


12. We’re Probably Approaching Peak Kamala-Mania
By Jim Geraghty
August 21, 2024 5:44 PM
For Kamala Harris, the timing of the big campaign events of the past month has lined up just about as perfectly as she and her team could have wished. President Biden announced he was quitting the race one month ago, on July 21.

Then on August 6, Harris selected Tim Walz, and despite the belated recognition that he lies a lot – Axios gently calls him “a gaffe factory” – Harris was carried along by a wave of ludicrously generous coverage of Walz. (Amazing how Walz can be a “gaffe factory” without doing any interviews or press conferences, hm?)

Then this week, on August 19, the Democratic convention began, and candidates usually get some sort of minor bump from the conventions, as party allies and the nominee get four nights to make a prime-time sales pitch for themselves.

So for the Trump campaign, the good news is that Harris has enjoyed one solid month of just about the gushing, cheerleading mainstream media coverage you’ll find this side of Barack Obama or Beto O’Rourke… and the race is pretty much a tie.

Harris leads by 1.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics head-to-head matchup, and 1.6 percentage points when the minor party candidates are included. She’s up by a point in Wisconsin and two points in Michigan.

Trump leads by two-tenths of a percentage point in Pennsylvania, the same margin in Arizona, one point in Georgia, 1.4 percentage points in Nevada, 1.2 percentage points in North Carolina. That’s a jump ball race.


13. The DNC was avoiding controversy — then it refused to give Palestinians airtime
Denying them a spot risks fracturing an already fragile coalition.

by Abdallah Fayyad

Aug 23, 2024, 7:31 AM GMT+8

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) was on track to closing out with little controversy until yesterday, when the Democratic National Committee decided to reject pro-Palestinian delegates’ efforts to get a Palestinian American speaker on the main stage. As a result, “uncommitted” delegates — representing a Democratic primary campaign that encouraged voters to choose “uncommitted” over President Joe Biden to express their discontent over the president’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza — staged a sit-in outside the convention hall. Now, “uncommitted” delegates and their allies have launched a last-minute pressure campaign to get a speaker on the last night.

One of the potential speakers that Uncommitted National Movement organizers put forward was Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American and a Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives. She told me that she and the “uncommitted” delegates had felt optimistic about getting a speaking slot because up until yesterday, the Democratic National Committee had still been in discussions with the group and hadn’t said no to their request.

On the surface, it might seem obvious that the Democrats wouldn’t want a speaker criticizing the Biden administration over its handling of the war. But Romman, who had prepared a speech just in case convention organizers tapped her to come on stage, had no such intention. Instead, she simply wanted to highlight the human story behind Palestinian suffering. Her draft speech urges people to support the Harris-Walz ticket and criticizes former President Donald Trump for using the word Palestinian as a slur.

That’s why the Democrats’ refusal to elevate a Palestinian voice to the main stage, despite giving a speaking slot to family members of an Israeli American hostage, is rubbing many voters the wrong way — especially those who hoped that Harris would have a more sympathetic approach to Gaza compared to Biden. The group Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, for example, promptly disbanded after news broke that there would be no Palestinian speaker at the convention.

And for Romman, the fact that the party welcomed Republicans on the stage and not her felt like a slight, not just to her but to Palestinians more broadly. “When I saw [Republican former] lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan on that stage, knowing that the party rejected me — a member of the party and a Democratic elected official — frankly, it was just too much,” she said.

This episode is yet another roadblock to softening the opposition Harris is facing from Arab and Muslim American voters, as well as others who view the Gaza war as a major concern. After Biden dropped out, Harris has had an opportunity to distance herself from the “genocide Joe” rallying cry that became common in pro-Palestinian protests. And by requesting a speaking slot, the uncommitted movement had offered her an olive branch — a small gesture to show that she’s listening. But by rejecting that offer, the Harris campaign is risking fracturing an already fragile coalition.

What the fight over the speaking slot is really about
After Biden stepped aside, many anti-Biden Democrats concerned about the Gaza war saw an opportunity for a reset.

The “uncommitted” delegates initially indicated that the Harris campaign was much more open than the Biden campaign to discussing their concerns. And in the weeks since Harris became the nominee, the Democratic Party has made a handful of gestures to show that they’re listening to voters’ concerns about Gaza. The Harris-Walz campaign manager, for example, met with the Uncommitted National Movement. And the Democratic National Committee gave Palestinians a space to hold a panel in which doctors who worked in Gaza during the war spoke about the horrors they witnessed.

But on their own, those gestures haven’t been enough to assuage voter concerns, especially because denying a Palestinian American speaking time at the convention sends a signal that the party isn’t interested in elevating the issue. And there have been moments when the campaign has been dismissive of pro-Palestinian voters altogether. At a rally in Detroit earlier this month, for example, Harris shut down protesters advocating for a ceasefire. “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking,” she said, clearly irritated by the activists. If she wants to actually reassure pro-Palestinian voters, Harris has the difficult task of distancing herself from Biden while still serving as his number two. But that’s why small gestures like a speaking slot can go a long way.

“This was supposed to be the symbolic bare minimum ask,” said Romman, the representative from Georgia. “We understand that we can’t change policy in a single election cycle, and this was supposed to be an easy way for the party to unite us on this issue. A lot of people care about this. Anybody who’s at the convention has seen the amount of people wearing pins and keffiyehs and flags. It is everywhere.”

It also seems like giving a Palestinian American a speaking slot would not necessarily be as risky as the party appears to think, especially among the Democratic base. Some members of Congress and other Democratic officials have been pushing the party to host a Palestinian speaker at the convention, and groups like the United Auto Workers union endorsed the idea as well. And Israel’s actions in Gaza have been deeply unpopular among Democrats, with polls showing that a majority of Americans disapprove of Israel’s handling of its war.

When asked by Vox why the Democratic National Committee wouldn’t agree to having a Palestinian speaker at the convention, the Harris campaign declined to answer. But given that “uncommitted” delegates had been asking the party for a speaking slot for nearly two months and the Democratic National Committee didn’t officially say no until yesterday, it seems like fitting in a speaker might have been on the table.

The problem for the Democratic Party is that while it pitches itself to be a big tent, it’s now falling short of actually walking the walk. It’s safe to assume that not every speaker up on that stage in Chicago represents Harris’s views or policy objectives, and even official party platforms don’t represent everything that a president will push for while they’re in the White House. So even if a Palestinian speaker were to say something that the Harris campaign disagrees with, that’s not the end of the world — after all, that’s what a big tent looks like.

For much of the convention, Democrats have focused their messaging on civil rights, human dignity, and projecting an image of decency around the world. But if the party fully resists the push to have a Palestinian speak at the convention, the DNC is sending the message that what’s happening to Palestinians is an exception — not so much a grave injustice that ought to be addressed as much as it is an inconvenience that’s better left ignored. At least that’s what Palestinian American voters or their allies, who are all too familiar with the many efforts to keep their voices out of national conversations, might glean from this debacle.

“The message I’m personally getting, frankly, is that nothing we do is ever going to be good enough,” Romman told me. “So how do I go back [to Georgia] and make the argument to people that I know that this is a party worth vouching for and trusting?”


14. One way that Kamala Harris needs to be more like Joe Biden
Biden had a proven argument against Trump that Harris isn’t using enough.

by Zack Beauchamp

Aug 22, 2024, 6:00 PM GMT+8

President Joe Biden bet his reelection bid on the idea that American voters in November would care about the fate of American democracy. The conventional wisdom now is that Biden was wrong and that Vice President Kamala Harris is not only stepping away from his strategy but doing so for good reasons.

Many Democratic political types today believe that “democracy” is a message that’s both tired and abstract, something that preoccupies elites but not the key voting demographics. They cite data showing ”democracy” at the bottom of the list of voter concerns in the 2024 election, with issues like inflation, immigration, and abortion placing well ahead of what Joe Biden treated as issue number one.

It appears Harris has taken the conventional wisdom to heart. Reporting in Axios and the Washington Post shows that Harris uses the word “democracy” far less than Biden did in both advertising and stump speeches — mentioning it only 12 times in her first nine campaign rallies.

Rather than casting the Trump-Vance ticket as a threat to democracy, the Harris-Walz campaign prefers to describe them as “weird” men aiming to curtail Americans’ freedom. The language of freedom has suffused the Democratic National Convention so far, and will almost certainly be a centerpiece of Harris’s address on Thursday night.

Yet I think the conventional wisdom is wrong in nearly every respect. Harris should not abandon democracy as a campaign issue, but rather double down on it.

Democracy is a more powerful issue than polling might suggest: It likely swung the 2022 midterms Democrats’ way, and some research suggests it remains potent in 2024. Democracy messaging is especially persuasive with moderate Trump-skeptical Republicans, an important voting bloc in swing states around the country. Given its proven track record of success with a critical demographic, democracy ought to be a significant part of Harris’s message.

Integrating democracy doesn’t require ditching the clearly effective freedom messaging: Harris can quite easily spend more time highlighting attacks on democratic freedoms, talking about “the freedom to vote” as one of several essential liberties Trump and Project 2025 plan to attack. That’s what some of the Democratic pollsters who helped develop the party’s “freedom” message back in 2022 currently urge her to do.

“Saying ‘we’re trying to protect your freedom to vote’ and ‘we’re trying to protect your freedom to have a family when you want to’... those two things together frame that story in a way that makes people care about democracy,” Jen Fernandez Ancona, vice president of the progressive strategy group Way To Win, told Vox.

If Harris listens to the conventional wisdom instead, she’ll be leaving a powerful campaign issue — and potentially some crucial votes — on the table.

The case that democracy matters in American politics
Sarah Longwell is a longtime Republican strategist who, since 2016, has made it her life’s work to figure out how to get her fellow conservatives to ditch the Republican Party. As the head of a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, she has conducted “hundreds and hundreds” of focus groups with persuadable Republican moderates — a systematic attempt to figure out how they might be convinced to ditch the Trumpified GOP.

When she talks to former Trump voters, they say the same thing over and over again: that his assault on democracy pushed them out of the party.

“I listen to why voters who voted for Trump now refuse to do so, and the No. 1 reason is that January 6 was a red line for them. They were out after that,” Longwell says.

The 2022 midterms showed that these voters mattered — that these voters aren’t just important, but potentially decisive in critical states.

We remember 2022 as a Democratic victory because the party managed to make gains in the Senate while suffering minimal losses in the House — defying the historical rule that the party in charge of the White House loses in the midterms. But this wasn’t the result of a blue wave: Republicans got several million more votes in House races nationally than Democrats. What happened instead is that Democrats excelled in a handful of key races, making history as a result.

So what happened in those key races? The Dobbs ruling was a major part of the story. But so too was democracy.

Multiple separate data analyses, conducted by sources ranging from Stanford political scientists to the Democratic data firm Catalist, attempted to estimate a “MAGA penalty”: how much Republicans who parroted Trump’s “big lie” about 2020 suffered at the ballot box relative to other Republicans. On the whole, these estimates converge somewhere in the neighborhood of a two- to three-point penalty for MAGA candidates, with some estimates going as high as five or six.

Without this effect, Democrats likely wouldn’t control the Senate: Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock beat his opponent, Trump darling Herschel Walker, by 2.8 percentage points. Moreover, extremists would almost certainly hold key statewide positions: Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona who made the big lie central to her message, lost by less than a percentage point.

After the election, I interviewed several Democratic candidates and strategists who fought and won races against election deniers. They told me that putting democracy first was a major component of their victory.

“Voters are just tired of the bullshit. They know it’s nonsense, that there’s no evidence behind the big lie or any of that stuff, and they rejected it,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state who was first elected in 2022, told me at the time.

Democratic strategists are fully aware of what happened last election, but not all of them are convinced that it’ll work the same way in 2024.

“[Democracy messaging] worked extremely well with the folks we needed in the midterms, which was those suburban college-educated folks who voted every time and do not like the current direction of the Republican Party. [But] those folks are already with us,” says Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at the center-left Third Way think tank.

That might not be true. Anat Shenker-Osorio, the head of the progressive messaging outfit ASO Communications, recently conducted a randomized experiment testing the effect of ads featuring January 6. She found that the ads “did a decent job” swinging voters away from Trump and toward Harris, specifically by making voters in the study connect Trump to political violence.

This tactic is especially likely to work with moderate Republicans. Key races in 2022 were determined, in large part, by a small group of registered Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote against extremists. But these same voters were often perfectly happy to vote for a more normal Republican: In Georgia, for example, incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp handily defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams with support from anti-Herschel Walker Republicans.

It’s far from obvious that these voters are stable Democrats, and Harris will need them if she wants to rebuild the coalition that powered Joe Biden to victory in 2020. As such, it would be unwise to abandon the most proven line of argument for reaching them: that democracy is at stake and therefore partisan grievances need to take a back seat to saving the republic.

It’s perhaps understandable why Harris and her campaign seemingly chose to step away from the message, given Biden’s campaign struggles even before the disastrous June debate, but that skepticism would be wrong. While democracy was indeed at the center of his doomed campaign, it’s hard to blame the message for its failure. Everything we’ve seen since June suggests that concerns about Biden’s age made it impossible for any message, no matter how good, to break through with persuadable voters.

Recent evidence suggests that Harris can effectively make a democracy argument in a way Biden could not. A just-released academic study — the first to examine the effect of democracy rhetoric on support for Harris specifically — suggests that she could make inroads among persuadable Republicans by focusing on democracy.

The study’s authors showed Republican voters “democracy is on the ballot”-type messaging and asked them how it affected their political views. On the whole, the authors found, the effects were minimal and at times even counterproductive — causing Republicans to dig in harder on their partisan identity. This kind of rhetoric, they conclude, “does not change the attitudes that allowed Trump to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 election.”

But there was a notable exception to these dour findings: vote choice in the 2024 election.

After a Republican audience heard “democracy is on the ballot”-type rhetoric, Harris’s support in the group more than tripled — going from 2.3 percent to 7.3 percent. “The treatment induces a negative emotional response in Republicans and effectively shames them to report support for Harris,” the study’s authors write.

Unsurprisingly, the effect faded as time passed; it’s hard to change someone’s mind permanently after a single experiment. But perhaps repeating anti-authoritarian messaging through an entire campaign might have more durable effects.

For all their concerns about the limits of this approach, the authors concede that democracy messaging “has desirable effects in the short-term (a single election).”

How Harris can campaign on democracy — and win
Registered Republicans aren’t the only kind of persuadable voters who matter. There’s a much larger group of independents who don’t normally pay very much attention to politics or especially like either major party. These voters are much more likely to turn out in presidential elections than in midterms, and, per polling, are mostly unmoved by pro-democracy rhetoric.

“Our mantra has become ‘you defend democracy by practicing it.’ And you practice it by focusing on voters in the middle,” says Liam Kerr, co-founder of the Democratic WelcomePAC. “A lot of gettable voters — especially at this point, after eight years — don’t believe that stormtroopers are going to come into the streets the day after the election.”

But whatever message you think this group wants — be it tough-on-the-border centrism, a liberal focus on abortion bans, or middle-class economic populism — it’s not obvious that it trades off with pro-democracy messaging.

Any good campaign develops different messages for different groups: There’s little opportunity cost in focusing more on democracy when reaching out to moderate suburban Republicans than disaffected downscale Democrats. Even a high-profile address like her DNC speech can include a reasonably sized section on such a critical issue without dragging.

Moreover, it’s possible to tie multiple messages together, especially through overarching themes like “freedom.”

In my new book The Reactionary Spirit, I study how pro-democracy candidates — in the United States and around the world — beat authoritarian rivals in elections. One of the most consistent findings is that it’s possible, and quite effective, to campaign on democracy in conjunction with other issues: showing how anti-democratic politics affects voters’ lives in concrete ways.

In Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, the left-wing candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva connected democracy to his core message of advancing economic equality, describing it as a vehicle to build shared prosperity. In Budapest’s 2019 mayoral election, the opposition candidate Gergely Karácsony tied democracy to housing, arguing that the concentration of power in the hands of the ruling Fidesz party was responsible for the government’s failure to address high costs of living.

In the book, I call this strategy “linkage” and argue that Democrats used a version of it effectively in the midterms. In linking abortion restrictions and January 6 as shared assaults on American freedoms, they made a strong case that Republicans were an extremist party attacking cherished American values.

Harris’ “freedom” campaign makes a linkage strategy exceptionally easy to execute. She doesn’t need to radically change her campaign rhetoric or strategy, but rather spend more time and effort explaining why the right to choose your own leaders is one of several important freedoms imperiled by the Trump-Vance ticket.

Another effective avenue for making democracy feel real is by attacking Trump’s ideas, especially those contained in the Project 2025 planning document.

Just over a week before Joe Biden dropped out, I attended a strategy meeting at the Center for American Progress (CAP) — the Democratic establishment’s leading DC think tank — about the party’s Project 2025 messaging. The data showed that Democrats had done a remarkable job at both raising awareness of Project 2025 and convincing Americans that it was a bad thing.

CAP’s researchers wanted to understand why, and how Democrats could take advantage in November. So they conducted extensive interviews with voters, with a special focus on Black and Latino voters who some polls showed moving into the Trump column. As part of this research, they presented voters with a series of attack lines on Project 2025 and asked them to rate which were most and least concerning.

All four of the top-performing messages — the ones voters consistently ranked as most concerning — focused on the threat its proposals posed to democracy. The best was a so-called “strong man” message, arguing that “the restructuring of government that Project 2025 lays out is similar to the playbook dictators and authoritarian governments have used repeatedly over the last century.”

When I spoke with the researchers again after Biden dropped out, they argued that Harris needed to keep up this theme. It worked, they said, because it picked up on something important to many voters — their freedom to choose who governs them — and connected it to something new.

“There’s 800 pages of the same old conservative nonsense in here. But what’s so different is the method, the means to complete it — it’s the takeover. And people freak out about that,” says Joe Radosevich, CAP’s vice president for campaigns and outreach.

Campaigning on democracy, in other words, isn’t just about repeating the word “democracy” like a mantra. It’s about figuring out creative ways to make the defense of democracy feel vital and relevant. And there are plenty of ways for Harris to do just that.


14. Kamala Harris’s speech triggered a vintage Trump meltdown
The Republican presidential candidate seemed perplexed last night. Has Harris figured out how to stump Trump?
As Vice President Kamala Harris reintroduced herself to the nation and laid out her case against Donald Trump, her opponent was, essentially, live-tweeting a political freakout.

“IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” the former president and Republican presidential nominee posted on his platform Truth Social about 20 minutes into Harris’s acceptance speech. That was about the point when she turned away from giving her family history and tracing the biographical milestones that brought her into politics to go after Trump’s criminal convictions and civil liabilities and calling him “an unserious man.”

“Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails. How he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States — not to improve your life,” Harris said in her address. “But to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”

Trump’s response? To post a supercut of Harris interview and speech clips, captioned by the question “WONDER WHY [KAMALA HARRIS] WON’T DO INTERVIEWS?”

And so the non sequiturs and spontaneous bursts of anger continued to flow from the former president for the rest of the night. “WHERE’S HUNTER?” he asked, in reference to President Joe Biden’s convicted son, as Harris talked about her upbringing in Oakland, California. “Look, it’s Crazy Nancy Pelosi looking on, saying, ‘Where’s Crooked Joe?’” he narrated at the end of the speech, when former Speaker Nancy Pelosi was shown on screen clapping for Harris as the balloons dropped.

It didn’t end there. He’d proceed to call into Fox News and Newsmax telecasts to “discuss Marxism in America” — trying to zero in on one complaint (“why didn’t she do the things that she’s complaining about?”) before spinning out into a variety of grievances as he seemed to accidentally press a bunch of different buttons on his phone’s keypad as he talked.

In a way, Trump’s reactions last night are a throwback to some of the classic Trump traits that defined his 2016 campaign and presidency: the angry tweets, the rambling press conferences, the tiffs with journalists, and the attempts to throw anything at the wall and see what sticks. It can appear chaotic and messy from the outside, but then again, this all worked in 2016 and nearly worked in 2020. How this all plays out in 2024, against a fresh Democratic candidate who Trump has struggled to define, remains to be seen.

And that seems to be the biggest effect that Harris’s speech has had on Trump: to scramble Trump’s strategy, to put him on the defensive, and to bog him down with a litany of attacks that he can’t effectively rebut.

It’s clear there are some attacks that Trump is especially concerned about. On Newsmax, he embraced the overturning of Roe v. Wade, then tried to argue for exceptions to abortion bans as he admitted that the “issue is not one that leans toward us.” He then criticized Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation-backed blueprint of policy proposals for a second Trump term, as being the product of “far-right” thinkers who he wants nothing to do with — even though his own running mate J.D. Vance is intrinsically tied to the movement and the architects of this vision staffed his first administration or have deep ties to Trump’s team.

On Fox News, host Bret Baier gave Trump the opportunity to distance himself from the demise of the bipartisan border security bill Biden and Harris had worked to negotiate with Republican members of Congress. Trump’s lobbying against the bill has been a go-to cudgel for Harris and Democrats when rebutting accusations that they are weak on immigration policy and border security and criticizing Trump.

Instead, Trump embraced his responsibility. “The bill was horrible,” he said. “It was a joke. She doesn’t need a bill. I didn’t have a bill.” And he took a seemingly random dig at Joe Biden: “Now Joe is missing. He’s on a beach in California.” Then he rambled on about his visit earlier Thursday to the southern border in Cochise County, Arizona: “It’s a dangerous place. I was being told by Secret Service and a lot of other law enforcement, ‘Sir, it’s really dangerous here, I think it’s time to leave.’”

Trump’s lack of any coherent campaign message contrasted sharply with Harris’s speech and the DNC’s carefully choreographed convention. And while it’s hard to know how much that matters to voters, it certainly seemed evident to Trump’s interviewers.

Baier and co-host Martha MacCallum traded glances at each other as Trump shouted into the phone. As Trump tossed out his oft-repeated line about “many” of the “millions” of people “pouring into our country coming from mental institutions and insane asylums,” MacCallum interrupted him with another question. As Harris has worked to reconsolidate female, Hispanic, Black, and young voter support for her party, do he and his campaign have a strategy to recover his short-lived gains with these voters that polls had been showing before Biden dropped out?

“No, she’s not having success, I’m having success. I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters. I’m doing great with Black men,” he snapped back. “No, it’s only in your eyes that they have that, Martha. We’re doing very well in the polls.”

He’d then go on to praise the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, who had just appeared on Fox News. “He was very nice and he said he wants Trump to win. … I think we’re going to have a very good relationship with Brian Kemp.”

The praise was notable and a bit odd — Trump has long blamed Kemp for losing him the state in the 2020 election because the governor would not back Trump’s claims of voter fraud or attempts to overturn the election. Just a few weeks ago, during an August 3 visit to Georgia, Trump had launched into a 10-minute tirade against Kemp, calling him “a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor. ... Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”

But Thursday night on Fox News, as polls have shown a narrowing race in that state, Trump seemed to be walking back his personal insults of Kemp.

The hosts pivoted to one more topic — about the chances that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. drops out of the presidential contest and endorses him.

Trump wouldn’t say if he’d accept Kennedy’s endorsement, noting that they’ll be in different parts of Arizona on Friday. But he launched into a minute-long rant (the whole interview was about nine minutes long) about how he thinks both RFK Jr and Joe Biden were treated unfairly by the Democratic Party (“they threw Joe Biden out of the party.”). At that point, the Fox hosts seemed to have heard enough and cut Trump’s interview short.