Joe biden

Does Joe Biden want Kamala Harris to lose?

On Friday, two minutes after Kamala Harris walked on stage at a campaign event in Detroit, Joe Biden decided to do something he has never done as president: he walked into the White House press briefing room. Cable news shifted immediately to the moment, with Biden chuckling as he introduced himself to the media, touted the jobs report and took questions. The moment was astonishing not just because Biden has operated at such a remove from the public eye since he was replaced as the Democratic nominee, but because it seemed intentionally designed to distract from his vice president and remind everyone that he’s still around, and yes, for all his struggles, still technically president.

Biden-Harris should help destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure

Iran on Tuesday launched 180 ballistic missiles against Israel, a democracy the size of New Jersey. It was the largest escalation to date in a year-long, seven-front war waged by the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism against Israel, the United States, and global maritime shipping. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris must come to terms with the fact that this attack resulted from their own foreign policy — subsidized by billions of dollars in US sanctions relief, legitimized by strategic accommodations to Tehran, encouraged by pressure on Israel and invited by the non-stop signaling of American fear of escalation.

A debate night for Vance to remember and for Walz to forget

It’s not always easy to tell who wins a political debate. Sometimes performances need time for people to process them and have key moments emerge that connect with American voters. And sometimes you witness a debate performance so dominant, so one-sided, that one party in the spin room is left arguing more out of hope than belief that debates just don’t matter.  Tonight was one of those nights for Democrats — and this one wasn’t even close. J.D. Vance was smooth, empathetic and emphasized his life experience with hardship and poverty. Tim Walz was nervous and unsteady from the opening question and didn’t seem to find his footing until more than an hour into the debate.

Biden admin upended by chaotic weekend

The Biden administration is struggling to find its footing amid a series of unfortunate events that are testing the oft-vacationing president and his vice president, who is currently auditioning for the top spot in American politics.Hurricane Helene decimated parts of North Carolina, leaving millions of Americans without power, at least thirty dead and many more missing. Entire towns are practically gone, and pictures of video of the storm’s aftermath show flooding enveloping homes and washing out highways. Local officials are begging for assistance and resources; state Representative Neal Collins, for example, tweeted, “I currently have two people on oxygen needing generators & 1 person on dialysis needing one.

The Basement Government

The last presidential election was one in which the term “popular front” took on new meaning owing to the Covid pandemic and a political contest that would have proved anomalous at any point — given the state of an opposition party badly compromised by the aging, uninspired, uninspiring and unpopular political hacks at the top of the party hierarchy and its radicalization over the previous four years by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Seeking a “moderate” Democrat with a better chance at defeating the incumbent Republican president, the Democratic Party settled finally and with loud cries of relief on the most confirmed hack in its roster of ranking hacks — one whom, moreover, even the rank and file understood to be mentally and physically infirm — as its safest bet.

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Kamala’s brand new, same old last-minute policy platform

After weeks of studious silence, Vice President Kamala Harris has been issuing a flurry of policy proposals that she’s touting as “A New Way Forward.” But is it really new? Or is it the old way forward? In the early hours of Monday morning, she unveiled a series of proposals for the first time on her website about the economy, immigration and foreign affairs. Harris is careful to contrast her proposals, again and again, with what she terms “Trump’s Project 2025 Agenda.” Poor Trump. He has repeatedly disavowed the Heritage Foundation tome calling for everything from banning IVF to purging the civil service. But it hasn’t helped as the Harris campaign presents it as his campaign platform.

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The Harris campaign’s ‘out of time’ ploy

The Harris-Walz campaign is depending on Americans feeling so rushed this election that they don’t pay attention to the vice president’s dramatic evolution. Last week, CNN’s Kasie Hunt interviewed Harris-Walz campaign senior spokesperson Ian Sams and discussed polling that shows Democrats are losing working-class voters. “What is it about what you guys have been doing for the last three-plus years that explains that?” Hunt asked. Sams’s attempt at a non-answer was actually quite revealing. “We’ve got sixty days until the election,” he replied, exasperated. “You know, we don’t have time to sit around and think about why, over the last few years, certain things may have happened or may not have happened.

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The Trump-Kamala showdown

The long-awaited debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is kicking off Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET on ABC News. This is a high-stakes moment, mostly for the Harris campaign: Kamala’s predecessor at the top of the ticket, President Joe Biden, was forced by his own party to drop out of the race after an abysmal performance against Trump in June, and Kamala has only done one unscripted event on camera since launching her own campaign. Unlike that CNN interview with Dana Bash, Kamala will be challenged and will not have her running mate, Tim Walz, sitting next to her for support.

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How to score the Trump-Harris debate

This Tuesday’s debate is the most consequential moment of the “second” campaign, just as Trump’s debate with Biden was the most consequential of the “first” campaign. Biden’s self-immolation ultimately forced his withdrawal. His withdrawal sets the stage for the current debate, and not just because it produced a new Democratic candidate. It produced her so quickly, with so little discussion or opposition, that Kamala Harris was not forced to persuade the party’s progressive voter base. A “primary” campaign would have damaged Harris, and the powers behind the Democratic throne, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, saved her from it. How would it have hurt her?

Hunter pleads guilty to tax charges

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to tax charges in a last-minute reversal of his previous not guilty plea. The younger Biden was accused of failing to pay taxes on his lucrative business — often foreign — ventures and accepted guilt on all nine charges. There was no deal with prosecutors; Biden will not receive a reduced fine or sentence for his change of hear, instead explaining that he merely wanted to avoid putting his family through additional scrutiny like that of his Delaware gun trial.  “I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” Biden said in a statement. Biden’s lawyers acknowledged that there was enough evidence to convict him in a trial.

Kamala’s history of backstabbing her bosses

Vice President Kamala Harris was pushed to the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket more than a month ago — and it’s still not entirely clear how much involvement she had with the effort to force President Joe Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign. It’s a question worth clearing up as it turns out she has a history of leapfrogging her bosses. During her first sit down interview with CNN on Thursday night, Harris said she stood by her assessment of Biden’s cognitive ability after his debate against former president Donald Trump. But she was not asked if she played a role in the palace coup. Reporting indicates that Barack Obama, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, among others, convinced Biden to step aside.

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The Harris-Walz CNN interview offered voters no clarity

I hate to use the Democratic Party’s favorite word against them, but the Harris-Walz tag-team interview on CNN was… well, weird. The two grinning progressives sat side by side and tried their best to handle Dana Bash’s steady stream of softballs. Unfortunately, the starlets' most recent experience answering questions is when they are asking them of each other for schmaltzy social media videos, so to say they were rusty is an understatement. Bash first asked Kamala what she would do on day one if elected. Harris, never one to divulge any concrete courses of action, instead waxed poetic about optimism, hope and a “new way forward.” Back it up. A new way forward?

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Kamala Harris’s Frankenstein campaign

Welcome to Thunderdome. When the decision was made to shift from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, the campaign staff was totally blindsided, with the entire Delaware operation shocked to learn about the president’s decision via social media — leading to the now infamous unnamed Democrat staffer’s line: “We’re all finding out by tweet.” It’s a sign of just how insular the Biden operation was, and how confined to the upper echelons of close, trusted staffers known for their tight lips and protective nature toward the old man. The Harris operation in 2020 was anything but that — leading to her epic collapse as a candidate and strewing numerous back-stabbing comments from staffers across the media on the way out the door.

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Trump honors fallen soldiers of Abbey Gate

Former president Donald Trump made a surprise appearance at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to lay a wreath and pay his respects to the thirteen American service members who were killed during a suicide bombing amid the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack, which was a tragic source of national embarrassment as America left the twenty-year long war and has been a continuous political thorn in the side of President Joe Biden. While Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both released statements recognizing the fallen service members, Biden is currently at the beach (in fact, he is on vacation all week long) and Harris has no public events on her schedule.

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Kamala wraps up her coronation

Chicago Pour one out for the Beyhive. For the bulk of the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the topic of conversation was: who is the mystery guest? The speculation ran rampant but was mostly focused on the myth of the goddess — Beyoncé herself was going to descend from the sky to affirm the ascendance of Kamala Harris. And then it turned out that the bright shiny mystery box contained... nothing at all. Too bad, so sad. But this itself seems in keeping with the 2024 cycle, where all promises decay into a great big pile of fail.For the delegates and consultants, this was a perfectly fine convention, logistical failures aside — a daily hammering of the impending evil and danger of a second Donald Trump term.

DNC attempts to sanitize Walz’s false statements

Chicago You get freedom, you get freedom, we all get freedom! At least that was the pitch from Oprah Winfrey who gave a surprise speech at the Democratic National Convention. The celebrity talk-show host and businesswoman received the most raucous applause of Wednesday night’s festivities and ignited the crowd like none other of the evening. But it’s still unclear exactly what “freedom” the Democrats are talking about besides the ability to terminate your pregnancy up until birth. Yet even Oprah couldn’t make us forget the enduring awkwardness of Joe Biden being forced out of his reelection campaign. Who could help but raise their eyebrows when President Bill Clinton claimed that Biden had “voluntarily” relinquished power?

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks on stage during the third day of the Democratic National Convention (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Trump misses Biden

From our UK edition

Chicago Everyone in the Democrats’ Convention centre – a bleakly corporate sports stadium on the edge of Chicago – is giggling. It’s an atmosphere properly described as bonkers. The Democrats have gone from wake to wedding party with no intervening period of sobriety. People whoop as they meet, knowing how miserable they were prepared to feel with Joe Biden still on the ticket, and how freed from misery they are now. I thought Chicago an oddly dangerous choice for the Democrats (1968 and all that) but I was wrong: I had forgotten what a great city it is. The centre is grand, the hotels capacious and snooty, one of them the actual place where the phrase ‘smoked-filled room’ was coined – by a wire reporter covering a party meeting.

DNC dazzled by the Obamas

Chicago We are back with another dispatch from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which is on its third day following Tuesday night remarks from Senator Bernie Sanders, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Michelle and President Barack Obama.The DNC crowd was thrilled to hear from the Obamas, but the reality of their speeches was much more grim. Michelle, despite being one of the most successful and beloved black women in America, is still peddling the trope that America is a hopelessly racist country.

‘Kind of funny’: former House staffer rejects Foreign Affairs Committee’s defense of Afghanistan investigation

A senior investigator who resigned from the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week is hitting back at the committee’s attempts to defend its investigation into the United States’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Jerry Dunleavy, a former Washington Examiner reporter who wrote a book about the fall of Kabul in the summer of 2021, joined the Foreign Affairs Committee at the behest of senior staff about a year ago. In his resignation letter that was made public last week, Dunleavy accused the committee and Chairman Michael McCaul of not running a serious investigation into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from the twenty-year war in Afghanistan.

Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) speaks during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
IVF

Tim Walz’s misleading IVF story could prove fatal

For years, Tim Walz has claimed that he and his wife Gwen used in-vitro fertilization to conceive their two children Hope, twenty-three, and Gus, seventeen. The Minnesota governor has weaponized his emotional journey to attack Republicans opposed to the procedure and used it to lockdown the VP slot on Kamala Harris’s protection of reproduction rights ticket.   But the New York Times reports — giving Walz the softest of soft landings — that in fact his wife had intrauterine insemination, or IUI, to conceive, not in vitro fertilization, or IVF.  There is a huge difference between the two procedures, as Walz knows. Principally that there are no moves by Republicans to use the overturning of Roe v. Wade to ban IUI.