Pinned
Michael Gold and Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Fine-tuning his attacks on Harris, Trump tries using her words against her.
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As former President Donald J. Trump continues to reach for attacks on his new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, that might halt her political momentum, he unveiled a new tactic at a rally in Bozeman, Mont., on Friday night, aiming to use Ms. Harris’s own words against her.
Interrupting his typical pattern of a digressive and lengthy speech, Mr. Trump played two video compilations of past remarks by Ms. Harris that his campaign hopes will portray her as overly liberal and inept.
The first video drew on statements that Ms. Harris made during the 2020 presidential campaign, when she tacked to the left and backed progressive ideas on criminal justice reform. The second was a montage of interviews and speeches that Mr. Trump’s campaign used to mock her speaking style and insult her intelligence.
The videos did little to alter the message that the Trump campaign has deployed against Ms. Harris for weeks and that Mr. Trump summed up during his speech on Friday.
“America cannot survive for four more years of this bumbling communist lunatic,” Mr. Trump told thousands gathered in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse at Montana State University. “We cannot let her win this election.”
Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly tried to portray Ms. Harris as more liberal than President Biden in the three weeks since he ended his campaign and cleared the way for her to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
The video compiling her past positions accused her of supporting a ban on fracking, mandatory gun buybacks and a single-payer health insurance system like “Medicare for all.”
Ms. Harris has backed away from those policy positions, which largely stem from her time in the 2020 presidential race. But Mr. Trump — who has been known to flip-flop or equivocate on hot-button issues like abortion — argued that her early statements were the only ones that mattered.
Mr. Trump’s rally on Friday was his first since Ms. Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, and he used the selection to bolster his portrait of the Democratic ticket as overly liberal. Effectively likening Mr. Walz to a socialist, he accused the governor of being too lax in his response to protests that turned to riots in Minneapolis after the police murder of George Floyd and for signing a law giving access to menstrual products to transgender children.
Referring to Mr. Walz as “Comrade Walz,” Mr. Trump argued that Ms. Harris tapped him for his progressive bona fides. “This is her ideology,” he said.
Mr. Trump also acknowledged that he has frequently mispronounced Ms. Harris’s given name in recent speeches, though he added that he “couldn’t care less” how it should be pronounced. He admitted that he has in the past “done a lot of bad name-calling” in which he has purposefully mispronounced a person’s name. “They say, ‘Sir, you made a mistake,’” Mr. Trump recounted. “I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’”
Still, Mr. Trump’s speech offered continued evidence of the growing pains he has faced as he tries to shift years of attacks against Mr. Biden toward Ms. Harris.
Even as he argued that Ms. Harris was more extreme than Mr. Biden, he tied her to the president’s policies on immigration and the economy.
At one point, he said she was the one running the country the past four years, even as he repeatedly argued that she was too unintelligent or incompetent to do so effectively. Mr. Trump has long made the same argument about Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump's rally is part of a western swing that includes fund-raisers in mountain resort towns favored by the wealthy. Before he took the stage in Bozeman, he attended an event in Big Sky, Mont., and on Saturday he will travel to fund-raisers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Aspen, Colo.
Montana is not an obvious site for a presidential campaign rally. Mr. Trump won the state handily in both 2016 and 2020, and he is expected to do so again in November. But with Republicans keen on flipping Democrats’ narrow edge in the Senate, Mr. Trump traveled to Montana to support his party’s Senate candidate there, Tim Sheehy, who is looking to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Senator Jon Tester.
At one point, Mr. Trump, whose flight to Bozeman was diverted to another city after his plane suffered a mechanical issue, reflected on how long it takes to travel to Montana.
“I’ve got to like Tim Sheehy a lot to be here,” he said.
Shawn HublerMaggie Haberman and Heather Knight
Yes, Trump was in a scary helicopter ride, but not with that politician.
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Donald J. Trump was doubling down on Friday about his story of nearly crashing during a helicopter ride once with Willie Brown, the notable Black California politician.
He was so adamant that it had happened that he threatened to sue The New York Times for reporting that the story was untrue, then posted on his social media site that there were “‘Logs,’ Maintenance Records, and Witnesses” to back up his account.
“It was Willie Brown,” Mr. Trump, who spent much of the last year hoping to make gains with Black voters, posted. “But now Willie doesn’t remember?”
Mr. Brown, 90, who was mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, gave several interviews on Thursday and Friday saying such a trip never occurred.
Turns out, however, that there was a Black politician from California who once made an emergency landing in a helicopter with Mr. Trump. It just wasn’t Mr. Brown.
Nate Holden, 95, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said in an interview with The Times that he had been on a helicopter ride with Mr. Trump around 1990 when the aircraft experienced mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing in New Jersey.
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Recounting an episode that he had described earlier on Friday to Politico, Mr. Holden said Mr. Trump had been seeking to develop the site of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when it was part of Mr. Holden’s district. Mr. Trump wanted him to see his Taj Mahal casino, Mr. Holden said, so on a visit to Manhattan, he rode with Mr. Trump from his Midtown skyscraper to a helipad, where the two took off for Atlantic City, accompanied by Mr. Trump’s brother Robert and by his executive vice president of construction and development, Barbara Res.
“He was trying to impress me,” Mr. Holden said. “We start flying to New Jersey. He said, ‘Look at the skyline! Look at how beautiful it is! And I’m part of it!’”
Mr. Holden said he wasn’t impressed. “I grew up in New Jersey,” he said. “It ain’t nothing new to me.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “we start flying to Atlantic City. He’s talking about how great things are. And about 15, 20 minutes in, the pilot yells, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’”
The hydraulic system had failed, he said. “Donald turned white as snow,” Mr. Holden recalled. “He was shaking.”
Mr. Holden said that as the helicopter’s crew worked frantically to set the aircraft down safely, his own thoughts ran to a helicopter crash in 1989 that had killed three senior executives of Mr. Trump’s casinos over Forked River, N.J.
“I just thought, how the hell do you let your staff not maintain your aircraft after you just had a crash that killed some of your staff? How could you let this happen again? I thought, if we go down, this is your fault.”
The helicopter ultimately landed safely in Linden, N.J., Mr. Holden said.
Ms. Res wrote about the episode in a memoir and corroborated Mr. Holden’s account in a brief interview late Friday. Ms. Res, who also spoke to Politico, recalled that Mr. Trump liked to say that Mr. Holden had “turned white” from fear, but that it was actually Mr. Trump whose face was ashen.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Mr. Holden said he was in his living room watching Mr. Trump’s news conference on TV on Thursday when the former president told of experiencing a brush with death on a helicopter ride with Mr. Brown.
“I said, ‘What the hell is this?’” Mr. Holden said. “‘Was he in two near-fatal helicopter crashes? He didn’t fix those damn helicopters yet?’”
Mr. Holden said that he called Mr. Brown to compare notes. Mr. Brown told him he had never been in a helicopter with Mr. Trump.
“I said, ‘Willie, you know what? That’s me!’” Mr. Holden said. “And I told him, ‘You’re a short Black guy and I’m a tall Black guy — but we all look alike, right?’”
Mr. Holden gave his own height as 6-foot-1. “Willie has to be about 5-foot-6. Maybe 5-foot-5. He comes up to about my shoulders. And he’s bald. And I’m not bald.”
Mr. Brown, he said, “just laughed and laughed.”
Mr. Holden, summing up his assessment of Mr. Trump’s recollection, said: “I just think he makes things up. That’s what I think. He never thought anybody’s going to check.”
Mr. Trump told the story about nearly dying in a helicopter crash with Mr. Brown after a reporter at Thursday’s news conference asked him a leading question about Vice President Kamala Harris’s long-ago relationship with Mr. Brown and whether it helped her career trajectory.
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The two dated in 1994 and 1995 when she was a prosecutor in Alameda County, which includes Oakland, and Mr. Brown was the Assembly speaker. Mr. Brown appointed Ms. Harris to two state boards before she ended their relationship.
“Well, I know Willie Brown very well,” Mr. Trump responded. “In fact, I went down in a helicopter with him.”
He recounted how the two had a close brush with death — “We thought maybe this was the end” — and that Mr. Brown used the frightening ride to tell him “terrible things” about Ms. Harris. “He was not fan of hers very much, at that point,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump had previously told the story, saying it was Mr. Brown on a helicopter with him, in his book, “Letters to Trump,” which was published in 2023.
Reached again Friday night, Mr. Brown reiterated that he had never flown in a helicopter with Mr. Trump and that he had not denigrated Ms. Harris to the former president because he admires and respects her.
“Those are the two things I am certain of,” he said. “All the rest of this is amusing.”
Asked if Mr. Trump might have confused the two California politicians because they are both Black, Mr. Brown said, “I wouldn’t want to conclude that he can’t tell Black people apart, because I’d hate for him to think that I’m Beyoncé.”
And then he burst out laughing.
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Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Montana
People are filing out of the stands at Trump’s rally in Bozeman. He took the stage about 90 minutes after he was originally scheduled to speak after his plane had to land in a different city, and he spoke for about 90 minutes.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Trump acknowledged that he came to Montana to help boost Republicans’ chances of ousting Senator Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent. After repeatedly mocking Tester’s weight, he complimented the Republican candidate, Tim Sheehy, over his military service and business acumen. Then, he briefly ceded the stage to Sheehy.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
As he continued to try to paint Harris as too liberal for America, Trump stopped his own speech about 40 minutes in to play a video of a number of Harris’s past remarks during her 2020 campaign, when she backed gun buybacks and banning fracking. Harris has moved away from some of the positions she took during her failed presidential bid as she runs now.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
And in another unusual interruption, Trump paused his speech with another video, this time a montage of clips from speeches and interviews by Harris that were meant to mock her intelligence and her ability to speak off the cuff.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Trump’s rally in Montana is his first since Kamala Harris chose Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate, and he’s now attacking Walz as overly liberal. He accused Walz of defending socialism, being too lax in his response when protests turned to riots in Minneapolis after the police murder of George Floyd and for being too liberal on issues pertaining to transgender children.
Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Montana
“He ordered tampons in boys’ bathrooms,” Trump said about Walz. “This is her ideology; that’s why she picked him.” While Walz was governor, Minnesota passed a law ordering free menstrual products to be available in public schools for grades 4 through 12. The law Walz signed did not specify putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms, just that schools make tampons available to those who need them.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Trump seemed to acknowledge that his own running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, had a rough start on the trail as old comments he made were unearthed. “He’s got his sea legs now,” Trump insisted at his rally in Bozeman. “He’s going to be great.”
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Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Montana
“We’re going back to Butler,” Trump said after talking about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pa., a story that he tells at nearly every rally now, despite saying somberly in his convention speech last month that he would only discuss it that once. He previously announced on his social media site that he would hold a second rally in Butler in part to honor Corey Comperatore, who attended the rally and was shot and killed. His campaign has not announced a date.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Trump just repeated at the Bozeman rally a claim he made on Truth Social previously that Biden would somehow “make a comeback” at the Democratic National Convention and try to take back the nomination. There’s no evidence to support this, and Kamala Harris has already secured the party’s presidential nomination in a virtual roll call of delegates.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Trump has mispronounced Kamala Harris’s name quite a bit in the last few weeks, and in Bozeman, he said he “couldn’t care less” how you say it. Then, he admitted that he has in the past “done a lot of bad name-calling” where he has purposefully mispronounced somebody’s name. “They say, ‘Sir, you made a mistake.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’”
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Donald Trump, perhaps flicking at his travel woes earlier after his plane suffered a mechanical issue and was diverted to another city, reflected on how long it takes to travel to Montana. “I’ve got to like Tim Sheehy a lot to be here,” he said. Then, he pledged that Republicans would defeat Senator Jon Tester, the Democratic incumbent, in November, as well as Kamala Harris.
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Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Montana
A large screen display at Trump’s rally in Bozeman features a news headline declaring Harris as the first Indian-American senator. This is true. But this display alludes to Trump’s comments last week at a conference for Black journalists when he said Harris “became a Black person” only recently for political advantage. Harris, whose mother was Indian American and whose father is Black, and who attended the historically Black Howard University, has always identified as a Black woman.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Tim Sheehy, the Republican candidate for Senate in Montana, opened his remarks at Trump’s rally in Bozeman by referring derisively to gender pronouns and to transgender athletes, a culture-war issue that fires up Republican voters. Then, Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, touted his record as a veteran, which drew cheers from a crowded arena.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
He then tried to tie his Democratic opponent, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, to Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing both of them of voting against America’s interests.
Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Montana
These opening lines from Sheehy have become tried and true with Republican audiences. He opened his speech at the national convention in Milwaukee last month with similar words.
Kellen Browning and Shane Goldmacher
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Harris rides momentum to Arizona, for what her campaign says is largest rally yet.
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Vice President Kamala Harris rolled into Arizona on Friday evening with the same political momentum that has infused her first swing across the country this week, drawing a crowd that her campaign estimated at more than 15,000 — her largest yet — in a Western state that not long ago appeared to be falling off the battleground map.
Along with her newly minted running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris delivered a stump speech that is barely a week old, and yet familiar enough to an impassioned new following that some shouted her lines before she did.
The rally was her fourth in four days with an arena-filling crowd that demonstrated the degree to which her candidacy replacing President Biden’s had remade the 2024 race.
Mr. Walz relished the crowd that filed into the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Ariz., in 100-degree heat as he poked fun at Mr. Trump’s obsession with rally crowds.
“It’s not as if anybody cares about crowd sizes or anything,” Mr. Walz said to knowing cheers.
Despite her momentum, Ms. Harris faces an uphill battle in Arizona, a longtime Republican stronghold that flipped to Mr. Biden in 2020 but, according to polling, had been drifting back to former President Donald J. Trump this year.
To win, she will need to reunite the diverse coalition of voters who delivered the state four years ago, and she made an explicit appeal to one part of that group on Friday: Native American voters.
“As president, I will tell you, I will always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination,” she said. The first speaker at the rally, notably, was Stephen Roe Lewis, the governor of the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix.
In her speech, Ms. Harris zeroed in on two issues that are especially pertinent to Arizonans: immigration and abortion.
Crossings from Mexico into Arizona have remained high this year even as they have dropped elsewhere, and Ms. Harris positioned herself as supporting both an “earned pathway to citizenship” and tougher border restrictions, pointing to her record as California’s attorney general.
“I went after the transnational gangs, the drug cartels and the human traffickers,” Ms. Harris said. “I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won. So I know what I’m talking about.”
By contrast, Ms. Harris said, Mr. Trump was playing politics with the issue. She highlighted his opposition to a bipartisan bill this year that would have beefed up border security.
“He talks a big game about border security,” she said, “but he does not walk the walk.”
The comments come as her campaign began to air a tough-on-immigration ad that labeled her a “border-state prosecutor.” Senior Trump campaign officials see the border and immigration as one of Ms. Harris’s deepest areas of vulnerability, and his campaign has repeatedly labeled her, inaccurately, as Mr. Biden’s failed “border czar.”
Ms. Harris did add a new riff to her speech, responding to Mr. Trump’s muddled comments on Thursday at a news conference in Florida, in which he did not rule out directing the Food and Drug Administration to revoke access to abortion pills.
Ms. Harris said Mr. Trump’s agenda “would ban medication abortion in every state,” adding, “But we are not going to let that happen — because we trust women.”
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Mr. Trump has previously supported the Supreme Court’s ruling on the abortion drug mifepristone. Karoline Leavitt, a Trump spokeswoman, said in a statement the former president’s position on mifepristone “remains the same — the Supreme Court unanimously decided on the issue and the matter is settled.”
The abortion rhetoric could prove especially potent in Arizona, where the State Supreme Court reinstated a near-total ban on the procedure this year. The State Legislature eventually repealed it, but abortion is still banned after 15 weeks, and voters will have a chance to enshrine the right to an abortion until fetal viability in the state’s Constitution through a ballot measure in November.
The speakers who preceded Ms. Harris on Friday made a number of appeals to independents and moderate Republicans, another segment she will need to win over.
“I do not recognize my party,” said John Giles, the mayor of Mesa, Ariz., who is a prominent Republican backing Ms. Harris. “We need to elect a ticket who will be the adults in the room.”
Senator Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who is also a Navy veteran and former astronaut, introduced Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz. It was the second time this week that a finalist in Ms. Harris’s running-mate sweepstakes introduced her at a rally. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania did the same in Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump had “zero respect for any of us who have worn the uniform.” Mr. Trump’s allies have raised questions about Mr. Walz’s decision to leave the National Guard in 2005 to run for Congress.
Attendees and speakers said the enormous crowd braving scorching desert temperatures on Friday was a sign that, after months of dreariness among Democrats, momentum in Arizona was finally on their side.
“It may be a little warm outside,” Kate Gallego, the mayor of Phoenix, said, “but based on the energy in this arena, I know it’s Donald Trump who’s feeling the heat.”
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Simon J. Levien
Reporting from Montana
Harris has been holding rallies with thousands of attendees this week. At Trump’s rally in Montana this evening — his first since the Democratic ticket was solidified — the venue, which can seat more than 8,000 people, is nearly full. Montana is friendly territory for the former president; it is a state he won in 2016 and 2020 and is not widely considered a battleground this year.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Even though this is a Trump campaign rally, several of the speakers who have taken the stage in the last hour have made it clear that their focus is as much on Montana’s Senate race as the presidential contest. “I want to welcome you to Jon Tester’s retirement party,” Steve Daines said to a cheering crowd, before pivoting to calling for Trump’s election in November.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Harris just wrapped up speaking here in Glendale, ending with what has become a classic call-and-response line. “When we fight,” she began, and the crowd roared back: “We win!”
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Shane Goldmacher
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
In Arizona, where immigration is a top issue and the border a daily reality, Harris is citing her work as California attorney general, saying she went after “transnational gangs” and “drug traffickers.” This is a history she did not emphasize in the 2020 Democratic primary. But, as a general election candidate, it is a point of emphasis, including in a new television ad.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Harris is taking the issue of immigration — seen as a political vulnerability for her — head on, saying she supports “strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship.” She accused Donald Trump of having “no interest or desire to actually fix this problem,” pointing to the fact that he tanked a bipartisan border security deal earlier this year.
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Erin Schaff
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her chief of staff, Sheila Nix, watching her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, warming up the Glendale, Ariz., crowd from backstage at their rally.
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Chris Cameron
Walz had said that tonight’s rally in Glendale “might be the largest political gathering in the history of Arizona.” That’s a broad claim to make, and it’s hard to exactly measure, but there have been political gatherings of a similar size in Arizona. Trump claimed in 2017 that 15,000 people turned out for a rally in Phoenix, and a city official said that about 10,000 people were inside the rally with another 4,500 to 5,000 turned away at the door. The Harris campaign estimated that more than 15,000 people are at this rally in Glendale.
Michael Gold
Reporting from Bozeman, Mont.
Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told reporters that he thought Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was the best choice Kamala Harris could have made for a running mate from the perspective of the battle to control the Senate. While he thought that Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania would have helped Democratic Senate candidates in those states, Walz, he said, would not provide such a boost anywhere on the map.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Harris makes an explicit appeal to a crucial part of the Democratic coalition in Arizona: Native American voters. “As president, I will tell you, I will always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination,” she said.
Reid J. Epstein
Harris, in a bit of local policy for Arizona’s large Native American population, said that as president she would respect tribal self-determination. “I know we have a number of Native leaders, and as president, I will tell you, I will always honor tribal sovereignty and respect tribal self-determination and fight for a future where every Native person can realize their aspirations,” she said.
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Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Harris, interrupted by pro-Palestinian and anti-Gaza war protesters, addresses them directly: “I have been clear, now is the time to get a cease-fire deal,” she says.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Vice President Kamala Harris, now onstage, is complimenting Senator Mark Kelly, who was a finalist that she passed over to be her running mate. “I am so grateful, Mark, for your friendship and your leadership,” she said.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Walz's defense of I.V.F. and of the freedom to make reproductive health care decisions, peppered throughout his speech, could hit particularly hard in Arizona, where the State Supreme Court reinstated an 1864 near-total ban on abortion this spring. It was eventually repealed by the State Legislature, but there is still a 15-week ban on the books.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
Walz called the prospect of electing Ruben Gallego to the Senate a “twofer,” because of who would not be elected instead: a reference to Gallego’s Republican opponent, Kari Lake. The lines criticizing Lake, a Republican who is enormously unpopular among Democrats — and some members of her own party — have gotten some of the biggest applause so far.
Kellen Browning
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
The crowd begins chanting “lock him up!” as Walz talks about Donald Trump, but he quickly counters: “Better yet, beat the hell out of him at the ballot box.”
Shane Goldmacher
Reporting from Glendale, Ariz.
The Harris-Walz ticket is less than a week old and already the crowd feels primed for some of the familiar lines from Walz’s speech. They were waiting for the word “joy” and exploded when it came.
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Maggie Haberman
Trump claims he has helicopter trip records and threatens to sue.
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Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday afternoon vehemently maintained that he had once been in a dangerous helicopter landing with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, and insisted he had records to prove it, despite Mr. Brown’s denial.
In an angry phone call to a New York Times reporter as he landed several hours away from his planned rally in Bozeman, Mont., because of a mechanical issue on his plane, Mr. Trump excoriated The Times for its coverage of his meandering news conference on Thursday at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home, during which he told of an emergency landing during a helicopter trip that he said both he and Mr. Brown had made together.
Mr. Trump was expected to keep his rally schedule on Friday as planned, boarding a smaller plane to complete the journey.
Mr. Brown denied on Thursday that he had ever flown in a helicopter with Mr. Trump.
It appeared Mr. Trump may have confused Willie Brown with Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, with whom Mr. Trump traveled by helicopter in 2018 while surveying wildfire damage in the state. But Jerry Brown, who left office in January 2019, said through a spokesman, “There was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.”
Willie Brown, who was a boyfriend of Vice President Kamala Harris during the 1990s, knew Mr. Trump as a potential business associate during those years, when Mr. Trump, then a New York developer, was working on new projects. A biography of Ms. Harris, “Kamala’s Way: An American Life,” reported that Mr. Trump had sent his private plane for Mr. Brown and Ms. Harris in 1994 to fly them from Boston to New York City.
“We have the flight records of the helicopter,” Mr. Trump insisted Friday, saying the helicopter had landed “in a field,” and indicating that he intended to release the flight records, before shouting that he was “probably going to sue” over the Times article.
When asked to produce the flight records, Mr. Trump responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice. As of early Friday evening, he had not provided them.
Mr. Trump has a history of claiming he will provide evidence to back up his claims but ultimately not doing so.
He has also told the helicopter story before, in his 2023 book, “Letters to Trump,” in which he published letters to him from a number of people, including Mr. Brown. In the book, Mr. Trump wrote, “We actually had an emergency landing in a helicopter together. It was a little scary for both of us, but thankfully we made it.”
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Neil Vigdor
Two rivals in Michigan’s crucial Senate contest say they were both swatted.
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The two leading contenders for Michigan’s open Senate seat disclosed that they had been targeted in separate “swatting” incidents in a span of less than 24 hours, just days after winning primaries in a crucial contest that could determine which party controls the chamber.
The first incident, involving Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, happened on Thursday night at her home in Oakland County, north of Detroit. The second one occurred on Friday at an address that had been listed on public records under the name of Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate and former House member, in neighboring Livingston County.
Politicians on both sides of the political aisle have increasingly been the target of swatting in recent years. The hoaxes — when false threats are deliberately made to law enforcement to draw a heavily armed response to a person’s home — have added to a climate of intimidation and the harassment of public officials.
Ms. Slotkin was not home at the time of the incident, according to a spokeswoman for her office, Lynsey Mukomel, who said in a statement that Michigan State Police troopers went to the residence after a false threat was emailed to a local official. She did not elaborate on the nature of the false threat. Michigan State Police confirmed they responded.
“Michigan State Police checked the property and confirmed no one was in danger,” Ms. Mukomel said, adding that U.S. Capitol Police would investigate the incident.
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Mr. Rogers, a former longtime House member who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, experienced a similar incident around 12:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, said Chris Gustafson, a spokesman for his campaign.
A person reported that a man was holding a woman at gunpoint at the property in Livingston County connected with Mr. Rogers, according to Mr. Gustafson, who said that Mr. Rogers currently does not live there but that other members of his family do. (Mr. Rogers now lives in Oakland County, Mich., according to his campaign.)
Shanon Banner, a Michigan State Police spokeswoman, said that a sergeant had responded to a report about a domestic situation at a residence in Livingston County on Friday and determined that it was false. She was not immediately able to confirm whether it was the same property.
Mr. Gustafson, in a statement, said that it was the second time that Mr. Rogers had been targeted in a swatting incident. The first was in 2013, when he was a member of Congress.
“This kind of violence cannot be tolerated, and it is our hope that those responsible will be quickly prosecuted and held accountable,” Mr. Gustafson said.
The rivals are running for a seat that is being vacated by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Michigan’s senior senator and a Democrat, who announced last year that she would not seek a fifth term. Democrats control the Senate by a thin 51-49 seat majority.
Ken Bensinger
Joe Rogan would like to clarify: He did not endorse Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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The world’s most popular podcaster has, sort of, but not really, thrown his support to one of the 2024 presidential race’s least popular candidates.
On Thursday, Joe Rogan said he preferred Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent, for president. “He’s the only one that makes sense to me,” Mr. Rogan said, as a guest on a podcast hosted by Lex Fridman, and called Mr. Kennedy a “legitimate guy.”
Mr. Rogan’s devoted following, one that leans young, male and numbers in the tens of millions, is highly coveted. His remarks about Mr. Kennedy, uttered on a show with a far smaller reach than his own, nonetheless set off a frenzied response.
Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, worried that Mr. Rogan’s stance could carve off voters and hurt his electoral chances come November, quickly turned on the podcaster, standup comic and U.F.C. announcer. They questioned his intelligence and even mocked his height, a spectacle that was greeted with something akin to joy — or, at least, schadenfreude — among Democrats who have long written off Mr. Rogan as helpful to their cause.
By Friday morning, Mr. Rogan was backpedaling. “This isn’t an endorsem*nt,” he posted on the social media platform X, and advised that he is “not the guy to get political information from.”
Mr. Trump himself weighed in on Friday afternoon, pondering “how loudly Joe Rogan gets BOOED the next time he enters the UFC ring” in a post on his social network that seemingly reflected his concerns that the influential podcaster could tip the scales against him.
“This takes straight from the Trump base,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant. A New York Times/Siena poll in battleground states in May found that 54 percent of respondents who said they planned to vote for the former president had a favorable opinion of Mr. Rogan.
Mr. Kennedy, long before Mr. Rogan’s unwinding act, had already taken credit for the perceived nod, posting on social media: “From one ‘legitimate’ guy to another, thank you.”
Even if it’s not a true endorsem*nt, Mr. Rogan’s praise could come as a huge shot in the arm for Mr. Kennedy, who has seen his polling average drop from as much as 15 percent in early June to somewhere around 6 percent as of late last month.
While Mr. Kennedy drew national attention this week after acknowledging that he dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park a decade ago, such headlines have not helped ease his struggles raising money. He’s also fighting to get his name on the ballots in critical states, or, in the case of New York, keep it there.
“He doesn’t attack people. He attacks actions and ideas, but he’s much more reasonable and intelligent,” Mr. Rogan said of Mr. Kennedy on the “Lex Fridman Podcast,” which has 4.1 million subscribers on YouTube.
Mr. Rogan’s fan base is much bigger. In March, Spotify said that “The Joe Rogan Experience” had 14.5 million followers, almost triple the platform’s second most popular program. He also has 19 million followers on Instagram and 17 million followers on YouTube.
A poll by YouGov last year found that 81 percent of his listeners are male and 56 percent are under 35 years old, feeding the perception that he has a direct line to a cohort that polling suggests tends to support Mr. Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is a group Trump needs strong performance with,” Mr. Madrid said.
During his interview with Mr. Fridman, he said that he was “not a Trump supporter in any way, shape or form” and adding that he turned down multiple offers to have him on his show. “I’ve said no every time,” Mr. Rogan said. “I’m not interested in helping him,”
Mr. Kennedy sat for an interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience” in June 2023.
Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.
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Jazmine Ulloa
Reporting from Washington
A Latino rights group breaks with its history to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket.
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The League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations, said on Friday that it supported Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the first formal endorsem*nt of a presidential ticket in the group’s 95-year history.
Leaders of the group, known as LULAC, acknowledged that it had previously refrained from endorsing political candidates but said that members were stirred to action by concerns over the potential negative impact on Latinos if former President Donald J. Trump were elected again.
The endorsem*nt was carried out through the group’s political action committee, the LULAC Adelante PAC, after internal conversations and a unanimous vote. Leaders said they decided to endorse Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz because they were better equipped to address the issues facing Latino communities.
“We can trust them to do what is right for our community and the country,” Domingo Garcia, the chairman of the PAC and a past LULAC president, said in a statement.
Latinos, a multiracial and multiethnic slice of the electorate that made up 10 percent of American voters in 2020, tend to vote Democratic.
But they have been at the center of a tug of war between Democrats and Republicans since Mr. Trump improved his standing with Latinos in 2020 compared with his 2016 campaign. As Mr. Trump and President Biden appeared to be headed for a rematch in the 2024 presidential election, a significant number of Latinos had been considering a third-party option.
Latino rights leaders and elected officials have quickly coalesced behind Ms. Harris since she replaced Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket. They said Mr. Trump’s pledges to cut low-income assistance programs and enact hard-line immigration policies would hurt Latino communities across the country.
Leaders of LULAC and similar groups said Ms. Harris’s candidacy had shot new energy into their outreach efforts. Some early polling has captured higher enthusiasm for her than Mr. Biden among Latino voters, but reliable data since the switch is limited.
LULAC, founded in South Texas by a group of mostly Mexican American veterans of World War I, has traditionally taken more conservative stances than other Latino rights groups. Its endorsem*nt will allow its councils, which function as local chapters, to register voters and knock on doors in battleground states, particularly Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The organization has 535 councils nationwide and 140,000 members, 86 percent of whom are registered to vote and more than 75 percent of whom voted in the 2020 election, its officials said.
In a statement, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Ms. Harris’s campaign manager, called the endorsem*nt an honor. “The stakes of this election require Latinos to unify and organize together like our lives depend on it,” she said.
The Trump campaign said that the LULAC endorsem*nt came as no surprise. In a statement, Jaime Florez, the campaign’s Latino media director, argued such groups were out of touch with Latino voters, saying their lack of interest in what matters to Latinos had caused many to leave the party behind.
Until now, the closest LULAC had come to endorsing a presidential candidate was in 1956, when Felix Tijerina, then the group’s president, personally backed the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. He wore an Ike pin on his lapel, according to news coverage from that time. Some members of the group were also active in clubs boosting John F. Kennedy in 1960, and others have supported local candidates, including Raymond Telles, the former mayor of El Paso.
Mr. Trump now points to the Eisenhower administration’s mass deportations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans as a model that his own administration would follow as he promises to undertake the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
In an interview, Juan Proaño, LULAC’s chief executive, said the group’s values had evolved since the 1960s, when fierce wage competition and divisions between Mexican and Mexican American laborers initially put the Latino rights group in favor of Eisenhower’s mass deportations. The organization reversed its stance when it was no longer possible to ignore the devastation that the deportations inflicted on Mexican American neighborhoods and border regions.
Ahead of its endorsem*nt, LULAC released an analysis of Mr. Trump’s promises. It cited a range of his proposals that would hurt Latinos, including cuts to education budgets and social safety net programs, and policies that would shut down the border, undo birthright citizenship and roll back protections for young people brought into the country illegally as children.
“We can’t risk mass deportations, we can’t risk family separations,” Mr. Proaño said.
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Neil Vigdor
Tim Walz’s class project on the Holocaust is drawing new attention online.
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The prediction was spot on: Rwanda was barreling toward a devastating genocide.
It did not emanate from a think tank, but from a high school geography class in western Nebraska. The year was 1993. The teacher? Tim Walz, now the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor.
Thirty-one years later, the class project is drawing new attention. Mr. Walz, a geography teacher at the time, had asked his students to take what they had learned about the Holocaust to predict which nation was most at risk for genocide.
“They came up with Rwanda,” Mr. Walz said, talking about the project at a conference last month. “Twelve months later, the world witnessed the horrific genocide in Rwanda.”
The project was reported on in a 2008 On Education column for The New York Times that has been widely shared in recent days. Mr. Walz had drawn the attention of the reporter, Samuel G. Freedman, for an earlier column because Mr. Walz was the only K-12 teacher serving in Congress at the time, Mr. Freedman said.
“While I was interviewing Walz for the initial column, he told me how the genocide project was one of his proudest moments as an educator,” said Mr. Freedman, who is now a journalism professor at Columbia University. That sparked Mr. Freedman to revisit the story later.
Mr. Walz, when he delivered the lesson plan, had been teaching global geography in Alliance, Neb., and had been chosen for a Belfer fellowship to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that was opening. Speaking at the conference last month, held by Esri, a company that makes G.I.S. software widely used in mapping, he said the project had a profound effect on his students and bred some cynicism.
“How could a bunch of students in western Nebraska, in Alliance, use a computer program and some past historical knowledge to come up with this?” he said. “Why was nobody doing anything about that?”
Several years later, when he was studying for his master’s degree in experiential education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mr. Walz wrote his thesis on Holocaust education, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
As governor, Mr. Walz signed a bill last year that requires high schools and middle schools to teach about the Holocaust, along with other genocides.
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