Tensions rise after apparent Trump assassination attempt
Another major event has shaken up the presidential race – the second apparent attempt on former President Trump’s life. With 49 days until Election Day, the neck-and-neck race remains unpredictable.
The already-erratic 2024 presidential campaign took another dramatic turn over the weekend, when authorities thwarted an apparent assassination attempt against Trump for the second time in as many months.
Lawmakers continue to scrutinize security measures and voice concerns about Trump and other candidates’ safety in the final stretch to Nov. 5.
But it remains to be seen whether the ordeal will mark another shift in a race that already has been marked by upheaval that has made it nearly impossible to plot out the impact from individual events.
In The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s polling tracker, Vice President Harris holds an average 3.7 percentage point lead over Trump: 49.7 percent to 46 percent. The race remains a toss-up as neither candidate has a firm hold on the 270 electoral votes needed to win the race.
Trump’s polling saw a short-lived uptick after the first attempt on his life in Butler, Pa., during a July rally that injured the former president and left another rallygoer dead.
Days later and still wearing a large gauze bandage over his ear, Trump took the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to roaring cheers and initially called for unity and calmer emotions.
Since then, President Biden ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Vice President Harris, throwing another curveball to the race.
Polling over that period has shown a neck-and-neck race, with little movement even after Harris and Trump faced off in their first, and likely only, presidential debate.
Trump had seen a leap in the polls after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in June.
Trump and his running mate JD Vance have spent days since the Sunday arrest of Ryan Routh, who authorities said hid for 12 hours in an alleged plot to assassinate Trump at his golf course in Florida, pointing to Democrats and their rhetoric calling Trump a “threat to democracy” that should be “eliminated.”
“The big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple months, and two people now have now tried to kill Donald Trump in the last couple of months,” Vance said Monday. “I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric and needs to cut this crap out.”
Meanwhile, areas that Trump and Vance have targeted overimmigration, including Springfield, Ohio, have faced bomb threats after they spread conspiracy theories about Haitians eating people’s pets.
Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, I’m Liz Crisp. Each week we track the key stories you need to know to stay ahead of the 2024 election and who will set the agenda in Washington.
The head of the Secret Service told former President Trump in the wake of a second potential assassination attempt that the agency would need to bolster security for his future golf outings, an official familiar with the matter confirmed to The Hill. Trump met with Ronald Rowe, the acting Secret Service director, on Monday at his Mar-a-Lago estate one day after an agent engaged an alleged would-be-assassin along the perimeter of …
Vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) will appear Tuesday afternoon in Wisconsin, the second of two back-to-back stops in Midwestern swing states within just a few hours. Polling over the last few weeks has shown little movement in Wisconsin, with Vice President Harris maintaining a very slight lead over Trump, essentially reversing the advantage the 45th president had held over candidate Biden earlier …
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, says former President Trump is counting on Americans to become “desensitized” to his “outrageous” falsehoods. In an interview on Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Clinton urged the public to take her 2016 opponent both “seriously” and “literally.” “Part of what Trump is counting on is for people to get desensitized… it’s just, …
A progressive PAC, Chicago-based Progressive Turnout Project (PTP), is expanding its turnout operation, investing more funds into its door-knocking operation and increasing budgets for the group’s 2024 election programs.
PTP will be pouring an additional $5.8 million into its door-knocking program, on top of the original $10 million investment, allowing the group to better turnout rural and exurban voters in the 2024 election, according to a memo the PAC shared with The Hill.
With added funds, the group is looking to recruit 11,386 people to knock on 3,267,160 rural and exurban doors between now and Nov. 5. So far, the group’s members have knocked on 867,897 doors, according to the memo. The group is running an organizing program in six likely battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Although Democratic campaigns focus on urban areas, PTP estimated that just in Pennsylvania, there are 407,274 knockable doors outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metro areas, totaling around 43 percent of “inconsistent” Democratic voters in the state.
The group is increasing its total investment in 2024, going from the $33 million it planned earlier this year to $40 million, the PAC’s President Alex Morgan told The Hill. The PAC credited the “enthusiasm” around Vice President Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket as part of the reason why the group’s numbers have gone up in recent months.
PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Harris called the “hateful rhetoric” around Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, “a crying shame” and said Tuesday that her “heart aches” over the threats of violence in the city. “It’s a crying shame, literally, what’s happening to those families, those children in that community,” Harris said in an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia. …
Former President Trump sounded an about-face Tuesday on the controversial tax policy known as the SALT deduction cap, breaking from a major provision in his signature piece of domestic policy. “I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more. I’ll work with the Democrat Governor and Mayor, and make sure the funding is there,” he wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Tuesday afternoon. …
Hillary Clinton says Melania Trump reminded her of “a little kid” when she came face-to-face with the fellow former first lady for the first time after losing the 2016 White House race. The encounter, Clinton recalled in her latest book, “Something Lost, Something Gained,” came last year at a memorial service for … Read more
The escalating feud between former President Trump and Taylor Swift could impact November’s election as Democrats seek to use Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Harris as a turnout mechanism. Trump made headlines Sunday when he posted “I hate Taylor Swift” on Truth Social, creating waves on both sides of the political spectrum. … Read more
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