Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both pushed Tuesday to energize key constituencies that their allies fear could be slipping away, with the vice president trying to reach black men and the former president focusing on women.
Harris will appear at a town hall-style event in Detroit hosted by the morning radio show “The Breakfast Club” with Charlamagne Tha God, particularly popular among black men. Trump, meanwhile, will tape a townhouse on Fox News Channel with an all-female audience and moderated by host Harris Faulkner.
The vice president was also scheduled to stop by a Black-owned business in Detroit. A day earlier, she visited LegendErie, a coffee shop and record store in Erie, Pennsylvania, where she met with the couple who owned it, a local pastor and other community leaders.
Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, unveils his candidate’s plan to improve the lives of rural Americans. It’s another sign that in a closely contested race, each side is trying to utilize different voting blocs to eat into the other’s margin of support while bolstering established areas of strength.
The vice president’s appearance on “Breakfast Club” comes a day after she announced a series of fresh proposals called the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men.” The ideas aim to provide more economic benefits to the population, including providing discounted business loans of up to $20,000 to entrepreneurs and creating more apprenticeships. The plan would also support research into sickle cell anemia and other diseases that are more common in black men.
Meanwhile, since Trump’s tenure in the White House, he has seen his support among women wane, particularly in the suburbs of many key swing states. An AP-NORC poll in September found that more than half of registered voters have a somewhat or very favorable opinion of Harris, while only about a third have a favorable opinion of Trump.
To reverse the trend, Trump has sought to portray himself as someone who can personally protect women from various threats, as he suggested at a rally in Pennsylvania last month that women in America “will no longer be abandoned, lonely or afraid.” You will no longer be in danger.”
Elsewhere on Tuesday, Trump gives an economic speech in Chicago and a rally in Atlanta.
Follow AP’s coverage of the 2024 election at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
Here’s the latest:
Trump says a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin would be good for the country
Donald Trump will not say whether he has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin since leaving office.
But he says this would be good for the country.
“I’m not commenting on that,” he said at an event at the Chicago Economic Club. “But I tell you that it would be a wise thing if I had done it. If I am kind to people, if I can have a relationship with people, that is a good thing and not a bad thing in terms of a country.”
Journalist Bob Woodward reports in his fresh book “War” that Trump has had up to seven private phone conversations with Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 testing equipment at the height of the pandemic.”
Trump spokesman Steve Cheung called the reporting false. Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Woodward was “a storyteller.” A bad thing. And he lost his mind.”
Trump defends his support for high tariffs
Donald Trump defends his support for high tariffs as an economic panacea while speaking to members of the Economic Club of Chicago.
“For me, the nicest word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,'” Trump tells Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, who is interviewing him at the event. Micklethwait has repeatedly pressured Trump because economists warned that the costs of high tariffs would be passed on to American consumers and prices would rise.
But Trump won’t budge.
“It must be hard for you to talk about tariffs as a negative thing for 25 years and then have someone tell you that you’re completely wrong,” he says with a laugh.
The Economic Club of Chicago describes its members as “a curated composition of business and civic leaders.”
Walz unveils Harris’ plan for rural voters as campaign aims to rein in Trump
Minnesota Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz will unveil his plans to improve the lives of rural voters on Tuesday as Vice President Kamala Harris seeks to cut support for former President Donald Trump.
The Harris-Walz plan includes a focus on improving rural health care, such as plans to recruit 10,000 fresh health workers in rural and tribal areas through scholarships, loan forgiveness and fresh grant programs, as well as economic and agricultural policy priorities. The plan was explained to The Associated Press by a senior campaign official on condition of anonymity ahead of its official release Tuesday.
It’s a concerted effort by the Democratic campaign to make a dent in the historically Trump-leaning voter base in the final three weeks before Election Day. Trump had a nearly two-to-one lead among rural voters in 2020, according to AP VoteCast. In the hotly contested race, both Democrats and Republicans are reaching beyond their historical foundations in hopes of winning over a segment of the electorate that could ultimately prove decisive.
Walz will announce the plan during a stop in rural Lawrence County in western Pennsylvania, one of the key battlegrounds of the 2024 contest. He also stars in a fresh radio ad for the campaign, in which he traces his roots in a miniature town of 400 people and highlighting his time as a football coach while attacking Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is suing CNN over a report about posts on a porn site
North Carolina Gov. Mark Robinson has sued CNN over a recent report that he posted explicitly racist and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board. He made the announcement on Tuesday, calling the reporting reckless and defamatory.
The lawsuit comes less than four weeks after a report that caused many of his colleagues and GOP candidates to distance themselves from Robinson’s gubernatorial campaign. This also includes Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
CNN declined to comment on the lawsuit. Robinson is also suing a man who claims Robinson visited a porn store decades ago.
Georgia judge rules county election officials must certify election results
A judge in Georgia has ruled that county election officials must certify election results within the statutory deadline and cannot exclude any group of votes from certification, even if they suspect error or fraud.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that “no election official (or member of an election and registration board) may refuse to certify or, under any circumstances, refrain from certifying election results,” even though they have the right to conduct an election to review and view related documents, he wrote: “Any delay in receiving such information is not a reason to refuse to certify or refrain from certifying the election results.”
Georgia law requires county election commissioners, which in most counties are multi-member boards, to “certify” election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election – or on Tuesday if Monday like this year is a holiday.
The ruling came as early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday.
Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County Board of Elections, had asked the judge to explain that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she was entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”
