This live coverage is ending now. Thank you for following along. Here is our feature on Biden and Harris’s deal to lower medication prices:
Here is the clip of Trump saying that he is entitled to personal attacks on Harris because of the multiple legal cases against him:
Former President Trump on Vice President Harris: "I'm very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system against me...I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her." pic.twitter.com/lxMi7deXw7
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 15, 2024
A statement from the Trump-Vance campaign says simply “ICYMI: President Trump Takes Questions As Kamala Hides”, and has screenshots of Fox and CNN with chyrons saying, respectively, the same as above, and, on CNN, “Trump taking questions from reporters”.
Journalists have been asking when Harris, whose campaign is less than a month old, will hold a press conference or agree to a sit-down interview. She has promised to do so by the end of the month.
Hello, this is Helen Sullivan taking over our live US politics coverage. If you’re just joining us, Trump said Thursday he thinks he’s “entitled to personal attacks” on his Democratic rival, saying he’s “very angry” at Vice President Kamala Harris because of the criminal charges he faces.
Trump was responding to a question about whether his campaign needs more discipline during a news conference at his New Jersey golf club, where he looked to saddle Harris with the unpopular economic record of President Joe Biden.
“As far as the personal attacks, I’m very angry at her because of what she’s done to the country. I’m very angry at her that she would weaponize the justice system against me and other people, very angry at her. I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump said.
“I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence and I think she’ll be a terrible president,” he added.
Trump stuck close to his scripted economic message for more than half an hour, reading from a binder in front of him in a news conference at his New Jersey golf club. Later, he veered into familiar stories he enjoys telling at his rallies. A day earlier, he had struggled to make a sustained case for his economic policies during a meandering speech that his campaign had billed as a major policy address.
Summary: Trump's press conference
Donald Trump spoke for nearly an hour and a half, during which he repeated his usual attacks on Kamala Harris and claimed the Democratic vice-president “broke the world”.
Here is a recap of what he said:
Trump spoke for about 45 minutes before taking questions during what his campaign billed as a news conference, from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
Trump said it was a “miracle” that he wasn’t more seriously harmed during his assassination attempt last month. Asked why he thought he had survived the shooting, he said:“God has something to do with it ... maybe it’s, we want to save the world.”
Trump repeated false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, that Harris was a failed “border czar”, and that she wanted to “defund the police” and make the US into a “communist-type country”.
Trump said he was “entitled to personal attacks” on Harris because “I don’t have a lot of respect for her”.
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Trump’s news conference more closely resembled one of his rally speeches
Donald Trump spoke for more than 45 minutes – repeating many of the signature lies and falsehoods that draw cheers at his rallies – before taking any questions from the press.
This is a well-worn tactic for Trump – a way to entice news networks to turn their cameras toward him for what is essentially free press. His press conference earlier this month – his first since Kamala Harris had entered the presidential race – ran on for about an hour and a half, during which Trump rambled about the crowd size at his January 6, 2021, rally and falsely claimed that no one died during the Capitol riot that day. When he finally took questions, he gave confusing and at times incoherent answers.
Trump used the same approach to a press conference back when he was president as well. In an April 2020 news analysis by the Guardian’s David Smith – Briefing or rally? Trump shifts to campaign mode as he rails against the media – my colleague details the surreal experience of attending one of Trump’s coronavirus press briefings.
I was among an unlucky 13 reporters sitting in that room on Saturday, along with one standing at the back from Trump’s beloved One America News Network which, having flouted reporters’ agreed physical distancing guidelines, is there at the invitation of the White House.
Laptops on knees, with several seats between us to maintain physical distancing, we were hardly a typical Make America Great Again crowd. But tellingly, while there was no sign of Dr Anthony Fauci’s reassuring presence, the seats to Trump’s right included Mark Meadows, a vocal ally in Congress recently appointed White House chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump 2020 campaign national spokesperson turned White House press secretary.
Both gazed up at their boss reverently and smiled at his jokes. Meanwhile Dr Deborah Birx, response coordinator on the coronavirus taskforce, stood on the podium and spent long periods staring expressionless into the middle distance as Trump reeled off some golden oldies.
“We had the best economy in the history of the world, better than China, better than any country in the world, better than any country’s ever had,” he said, waving his hand at what was ostensibly a coronavirus taskforce briefing. “We had the highest stock market in history by far, and I’m honoured by the fact it’s started to go up very substantially.”
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Donald Trump is asked whether he agrees with the argument that his current strategy of personal attacks against Kamala Harris isn’t working. He is also asked about his hiring of five new operatives.
Trump denies that this is a sign of a shifting strategy, and says Corey Lewandowski is coming in as a “personal envoy”.
He says he believes he is “entitled to personal attacks” because he is “very angry” at “what [Harris] has done to the country”. He adds:
I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I thinks she’ll be a terrible president.
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Donald Trump is asked whether he has put much thought into “why God saved your life” during the assassination attempt last month, and “for what purpose”.
Trump, who once promised that he would only talk about the shooting once “because it’s actually too painful to tell”, says it was a “miracle”. He says:
It’s a miracle, and God had something – maybe it’s [because] we want to save the world.
reporter asks Trump if he's reflected on why god saved his life. Trump says maybe god wants him to save the world. pic.twitter.com/VhDuqSq5eR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2024
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Donald Trump is asked when he last spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, following reports that the pair spoke on Wednesday about ongoing Gaza ceasefire and hostage release talks.
Trump says the last time he saw Netanyahu was at Mar-a-Lago last month. He says that he has a “very good relationship” with Israel and claims that the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October “would have never happened” if he had been in the White House at the time.
Trump says that his meeting with Netanyahu at the time was about two-and-a-half hours long, and that he hasn’t spoken to him since then.
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Donald Trump sold this as a news conference, but he has only just started taking questions from reporters – more than 45 minutes into his speech.
Trump is employing the trick of "calling a news conference" as a way to get cable news to give camera time as he reads from a teleprompter.
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) August 15, 2024
Donald Trump claims that Kamala Harris wants to “defund the police”, despite the fact that the vice-president has distanced herself from previous remarks praising the movement following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Harris has not advocated abolishing police forces, and her spokesperson has said that “she wants to fund the police, but she wants to do the other things as well”.
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Donald Trump says Kamala Harris is “far more radical than Bernie Sanders”, and says she has picked herself a running mate, Tim Walz, who is also “far more radical” than Sanders.
Harris “wants to change a free-enterprise-type country into a communist-type country”, Trump says.
He claims that as attorney general of California, Harris “destroyed” the state and that if elected, that she will do the same to the country.
Trump claims that in California “you’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950”. This is not true.
California’s Proposition 47 reclassified some felony crimes so that individuals who commit certain nonviolent drug and property crimes, including shoplifting merchandise under $950, would be sentenced on misdemeanor charges instead of felony charges.
A misdemeanor sentence would still lead to a person serving up to a year in county jail, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Trump claims there's a law in California that says you can rob stores as long as you don't rob more than $950 worth of stuff. Don't try that home! pic.twitter.com/sI5GPwQAap
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 15, 2024
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Donald Trump, speaking at a news conference from his New Jersey golf club, is sticking to a very similar script as when he addressed supporters at a rally yesterday in North Carolina.
Wednesday’s rally was billed as a major address on the economy, an issue that is taking center stage in this presidential contest. Despite this, Trump said yesterday he was “not sure the economy is the most important topic” of the election.
Trump claims Kamala Harris wants “communist price controls”, calling them “the Maduro plan” in reference to Venezuela’s authoritarian socialist leader. He quotes various inflation statistics for various staples of US household diets, as well as higher car insurance premiums and fuel costs.
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Donald Trump has begun speaking at his news conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he says he has “a lot of interesting” and “some very specific things” to talk about.
Trump repeats his claim that the US is a “failing nation” with a “failing economy”, and says Kamala Harris has “broke the world” and that she “destroys everything she touches”.
He goes on to accuse Harris of being Biden’s “border czar”, despite the fact that the vice-president was never made Biden’s “border czar”. The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, is the official in charge of border security.
Trump claims that Harris is going to be easier to beat than Biden, and claims that he is leading in “most of the polls”. In reality, polls are showing that Harris is ahead of Trump or at least tied with him in most of the battleground states.
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The Ohio senator and the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he hoped that Robert F Kennedy Jr will drop out as an independent presidential candidate and endorse Donald Trump.
Vance, speaking to reporters on his campaign plane today, said there were “a lot of people” in Trumpworld who think Kennedy is “fundamentally running a campaign that’s helping Kamala Harris”. He added:
At this point, I certainly hope that he drops out and endorses, you know, endorses President Trump.
Kennedy is “much closer on the issues” to Trump than to Harris,” Vance argued.
From ABC News’s Hannah Demissie:
Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance came to the back of his plane with donuts to talk to reporters. In the gaggle, he said he hopes RFK Jr. drops out of the race and endorses Trump, adding that the two are more aligned on the issues. pic.twitter.com/EAEkKUmXud
— Hannah Demissie (@hannahdemissie) August 15, 2024
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Kamala Harris’s campaign has released a new video in which she and her running mate, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, describe their ticket as joyful underdogs on the path to victory.
“Our campaign is the underdog campaign,” Harris says to Walz in the 10-minute video.
And with our joy, we also have to understand that we’re still up against some forces that are trying to divide our country.
Walz compares the election to a football game, saying it’s “half-time in America”, to which Harris responds: “I’m looking at Coach Walz right now.”
The video recalls a similar one between Joe Biden and Barack Obama during the 2020 campaign, AP reported.
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Secret Service approves new plan to better protect Trump outdoors – report
The Secret Service has approved a new security plan to better protect Donald Trump at outdoor events, the Washington Post is reporting.
The security plan includes the use of bulletproof glass to shield him on stage, the Post writes, citing a Secret Service official.
The effort comes after the Secret Service urged the Trump campaign to temporarily pause having him appear at outdoor rallies, after the assassination attempt on the former president at an open-air campaign rally last month.
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The film-maker Michael Moore was one of the few well-known voices on the left who predicted Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, but he’s feeling better about the chances for Kamala Harris and the Democrats this year. In an interview with the Guardian’s Edward Helmore, he explained his reasoning:
With Joe Biden looking for re-election Democrats feared they were looking at an electoral catastrophe. Now, with Biden dropping out and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, at the top of the ticket, it suddenly feels like it is Donald Trump who is staring at possible defeat.
The liberal film-maker and Democratic whisperer Michael Moore says he’s more optimistic than he has ever been since Trump stepped on to the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his first run for the presidency eight years ago.
“This isn’t just a sugar-high or what [recovering] heroin addicts call a pink cloud,” Moore says. “It was so depressing for so many weeks and then it was instantly not depressing. I am hopeful now but it’s ours to blow – and we have a history of blowing it.”
Moore, 70, has in recent years become something of an electoral sage. He predicted Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, in part because of the sense of political-cultural superiority Democrats emanated and because he had noticed that the campaign was fearful of inspiring Maga supporters. He predicted, too, that Democrats would buck the trend and be fine in the 2022 midterms.
In this election cycle he is in some ways in line with the pollster Nate Silver, who recently said: “The strategy of the Harris campaign should be to triangulate the strategy of Hillary 2016, the Harris 2020 primary campaign, and Biden 2024, and do the exact opposite.”
But Moore says he understands why Democrats are nervous that the Harris-Walz ticket could come apart, though it shows no current signs of doing so, particularly if Harris gets tarred with Biden’s unpopular “Bidenomics” or responsibility for his full-throated support of Israel’s war in Gaza.
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Speaking of press conferences, Donald Trump has one planned for 4.30pm, and the Harris campaign is trying to make the most of it.
They’ve sent out a sarcastic advisory to reporters, which you can read below, letting them know that the former president is primed to “ramble incoherently” in a location that is “not a battleground state”. Indeed, the venue is to be Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Here’s more:
NEW from @KamalaHQ we are helping out the Trump campaign and advising Trump's presser today pic.twitter.com/EIoUd7iKRE
— James Singer (@Jemsinger) August 15, 2024
“Tune in for the same old thing,” the campaign of Trump’s Democratic rival advises.
This will be the second time the former president has taken questions from reporters in as many weeks. The last time he did so, Trump said all sorts of things, including that he has spoken to crowds bigger than those attracted by Martin Luther King Jr:
Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, seems eager to debate Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Tim Walz.
Earlier today, the Ohio senator accepted Walz’s offer of a debate on 1 October, while also proposing a matchup on 18 September. The Harris campaign indicated hours later that Walz will only do the debate scheduled for October.
At a campaign event in Pennsylvania this morning, Vance discussed why he was so interested in debating the Minnesota governor:
Sen. @JDVance on vice presidential debate against Governor Tim Walz on October 1st: "It's not really what I hope to get out of of these additional debates, it's what American people deserve to get out of seeing the people who want to be their Vice President actually debate..." pic.twitter.com/ADjyy1Y4lQ
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 15, 2024
This is also the second day in a row that Vance has ended a speech by taking questions from reporters in attendance, which a little unorthodox and also an attempt to contrast himself from Harris, who has not done interviews or press conferences since launching her presidential bid.
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House Republicans accuse Biden of 'price fixing' with law to lower prescription drug costs
Joe Biden didn’t have much nice to say about the GOP as he cheered Medicare’s negotiation of lower prices for 10 popular prescription drugs, which was made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act he signed in 2022.
As the president was speaking, the top Republicans in the House of Representatives made clear that they still do not like the law, which they said enabled “price fixing”.
From the joint statement issued by the House speaker, Mike Johnson, the majority leader, Steve Scalise, the whip, Tom Emmer, and the conference chair, Elise Stefanik:
Two years after the passage of Congressional Democrats’ failed Inflation Expansion Act, Americans continue to feel the disastrous effects the law has had across our economy.
Among the most egregious provisions of the law is the mandate from bureaucrats to artificially set prescription drug prices, which is already doing untold damage to the American health care system. Patients are seeing fewer choices, higher prices, and fewer cures, while the American pharmaceutical industry – which currently leads the world in the development of new medicines – is now in jeopardy of losing its competitive advantage on the rest of the world.
Make no mistake, price fixing has failed in every sector and in every country where it has ever been tried. The Biden-Harris Administration says it wants to lower prices for families, but their prescription drug price fixing scheme has accomplished just two things: driving up health care costs and crushing American innovation in medicine.
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The White House estimated that 2,300 people attended Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s speech in the Washington DC suburb of Largo, Maryland.
Among the introductory speakers was the state’s governor, Wes Moore, who is seen as an up-and-coming Democrat. The crowd seemed to be aware of that, chanting “48” when he was onstage.
Biden is the 46th president, and Harris is the Democratic nominee to become the 47th president, but the race for the 48th president is, at this most early stage, wide open.
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Joe Biden wrapped up his remarks with a nod to the fact that his 52-year career in politics will soon come to an end.
“I thank God that in the last three months I’m president of the United States, I was able to finally get done what I tried to get done when I was a young senator,” Biden said.
Before he left the stage, Kamala Harris came back out. The two clasped hands and held them up, then walked off.
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Biden seems to be in a feisty mood today.
He continued to savage Republicans, bringing up Project 2025, the rightwing plan to remake the US government that many former Trump officials are involved in.
“We’re not backing down and get this, you may have heard about the Maga Republican Project 2025,” Biden said.
“They want to repeal Medicare’s power to negotiate drug prices … let me tell you what our Project 2025 is: beat the hell out of them.”
Biden calls Republican nominee 'Donald Dump'
Joe Biden turned his remarks to the GOP, noting the party did not support the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized Medicare to negotiate prescription drug costs, leading to the price reductions announced today.
Then he lobbed what appears to be a new insult at Donald Trump, whose name he feigned forgetting.
“We finally beat big pharma, and, I might add, with no help from Republicans. Not a single Republican vote for this bill, period, not one in the entire Congress,” the president said.
He then implied that the reason no GOP lawmakers voted for the bill was because of “the guy we’re running against”.
“What’s his name?” Biden asked “Donald Dump?”
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Biden says Harris will 'make one hell of a president'
Joe Biden took the stage and began by paying tribute to Kamala Harris, who is running to succeed him in the White House.
“I have an incredible partner in the progress we made. She going to make one hell of a president,” the president said.
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Harris then made way for Biden to take the stage, saying that the president would talk about the results of the Medicare price negotiations.
“In the two years since, we’ve been using this new power to lower the price of life-saving medications. And, now, to announce the result of those negotiations. It is my eternal and great, great, great honor, I have to tell you, to serve with this most extraordinary human being and American and leader, our president, Joe Biden,” Harris said.
The pair hugged, and then Biden began his speech.
The vice-president then went on to describe why prescription drugs cost to much in the United States, and what the Biden administration did about it.
“Big pharma has often inflated the price of life-saving medications, often charging many times what it would cost to make just to increase their profits, and millions of Americans have suffered as a result,” Harris said.
“As vice-president, together with Joe Biden, our president, we finally addressed the longstanding issue that for years was one of the biggest challenges on this subject, which was that Medicare was prohibited by law from negotiating lower drug prices, and those costs then got passed on to our seniors, but not anymore.”
After waiting for another round of applause to ebb, she continued:
Two years ago, we gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices for the first time in history, and here is why that matters. It is nearly impossible for a patient to negotiate lower prices by themselves. Just think about that – somebody who needs the medication, who may be suffering from a serious illness that they would buy themselves, be able to negotiate against a big drug company to lower that prices – it’s virtually impossible.
It’s one person against a huge corporation, but Medicare represents more than 65 million people, and so Medicare has collective bargaining power, and now Medicare can use that power to go toe to toe with big pharma and negotiate lower drug prices. Thank you, Joe!
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Harris began her speech by thanking the Maryland Democrats who introduced her and Joe Biden – then got the room fired up by paying homage to the departing president.
“And, of course, I could speak all afternoon about the person that I am standing on this stage with,” she said, triggering a lengthy applause.
She called him “our extraordinary president, Joe Biden”. Not long after, the crowd started chanting, “thank you Joe!”
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Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now walking on stage together.
It looks like Harris will speak first.
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This is not your typical White House policy event.
Hundreds of Maryland residents have waited in the sweltering heat to see Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – their first joint event together since the president stepped aside.
Speakers introducing the duo made several references to Harris’s candidacy, which have thrilled the crowd. Ben Cardin, the retiring Democratic senator of Maryland, recalled that the vice-president cast the tie-breaking vote in her capacity as president of the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which authorized the drug negotiation process. “President’s a good title for her,” he said.
Biden and Harris were introduced by the Maryland governor, Wes Moore, who referred to them as the 46th and 47th president of the United States, prompting the crowd here in Prince George’s county to chant: “48” – perhaps a sign of the Democratic rising star’s bright future.
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Biden and Harris to hold joint event promoting reduced prescription drug costs
In a few minutes, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will make their first joint appearance since the president ended his bid for a second term, at an event to celebrate the news that Medicare had succeeded in dramatically lowering prices for 10 popular prescription drugs used by their enrollers.
The speeches will take place at Prince George’s County Community College in Largo, Maryland, just outside Washington DC. Earlier today, Harris tweeted this infographic explaining the cost reductions of the drugs under Medicare, which is a major government health insurance program covering Americans older than 65, and those with certain disabilities:
President Biden and I are proud to announce that Medicare has reached agreements with the manufacturers of all 10 drugs selected for price negotiation.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) August 15, 2024
This means lower health care costs for millions of Americans — and we aren't stopping here. pic.twitter.com/hZLWRei5qs
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Harris campaign says Trump has accepted offer for second presidential debate
Kamala Harris’s campaign said in a statement that the Democratic presidential nominee will participate in two debates with Donald Trump, while her running mate, Tim Walz, will have only one against the Republican vice-presidential pick, JD Vance.
Harris and Trump had previously agreed on only one debate, to be hosted on 10 September by ABC News, and the statement did not say when the second debate will happen, or which organization will moderate it. The Harris campaign statement also appears to rule out Vance’s proposal for a debate against Walz hosted by CNN on 18 September, by saying that they have only agreed to a debate on 1 October.
Here’s the full statement, from communications director Michael Tyler:
The debate about debates is over. Donald Trump’s campaign accepted our proposal for three debates – two presidential and a vice presidential debate. Assuming Donald Trump actually shows up on September 10 to debate Vice President Harris, then Governor Walz will see JD Vance on October 1 and the American people will have another opportunity to see the vice president and Donald Trump on the debate stage in October.
Voters deserve to see the candidates for the highest office in the land share their competing visions for our future. The more they play games, the more insecure and unserious Trump and Vance reveal themselves to be to the American people. Those games end now.
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The vice-presidential debate is on for 1 October, and the Guardian’s Robert Tait reports that we’ll be hearing plenty from Democratic nominee Tim Walz about whether Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, supports the far-right policies detailed in Project 2025:
In a possible early preview of their debate in October, Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has pushed back against an attempt by his Republican rival, JD Vance, to imply that abortion is not a “normal” concern for women voters.
Vance was asked by Laura Ingraham on Fox News how he would respond to suburban women who feared a national abortion ban. “First of all, I don’t buy that Laura,” he replied. “I think most suburban women care about the normal things most Americans care about right now.”
Walz posted the segment on the social media site X and wrote: “It’s pretty normal to respect a woman’s right to make her own damn health care decisions.”
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Vance, a senator from Ohio, have both accepted an invitation by CBS to take part in a one on one televised debate on 1 October.
Walz has vowed to use the debate to push Vance on his links to Project 2025, the controversial rightwing blueprint to overhaul the US government.
“See you on October 1, JD,” Walz wrote on a bullish post on X after the network issued the invitations.
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The evidence mounts that independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr is willing to settle for a lesser job. First, it was reported that he asked Donald Trump about a job in his administration in exchange for his endorsement, and now, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt reports that he made the same proposal to Kamala Harris:
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the beleaguered independent presidential candidate, reached out to the Kamala Harris campaign last week to discuss dropping out of the race and endorsing the Democrat, according to multiple reports.
Kennedy attempted to set up a meeting with Harris to propose him serving in her administration, possibly as a cabinet secretary, in exchange for his endorsement, the Washington Post reported.
Several outlets said that the Harris team did not respond to the approach from Kennedy, whose long-shot campaign is floundering following a series of controversies.
In the past six weeks, Kennedy has apologized for an alleged sexual assault, has been forced to explain why he staged the death of a bear cub in New York City’s Central Park, and has had to deny eating a dog.
Kennedy’s attempt to meet with Harris comes after he met with Donald Trump during the Republican national convention, reportedly to discuss a similar proposal. A video posted online on 16 July showed a phone call between Trump and Kennedy in which the former president appeared to offer an opportunity for the pair to work together in the future.
Kennedy addressed the comments in a post on X on Thursday.
“VP Harris’s Democratic Party would be unrecognizable to my father [Robert F Kennedy, the New York senator who was assassinated in 1968] and uncle and I cannot reconcile it with my values,” Kennedy wrote.
“I have no plans to endorse Kamala Harris for president. I do have a plan to defeat her.”
The day so far
We’re getting ready to see both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden appear at an event outside Washington DC, where they will talk about their just-announced success at getting Medicare recipients lower prices for 10 prescription drugs. The Democratic duo is scheduled to take the stage at 1.30pm, and later today, Donald Trump will give a press conference in New Jersey at 4.30pm. His campaign just brought on board a slew of new hires as it looks for an edge over Harris, including Corey Lewandowski, a former campaign manager who appeared to have been banished from Trump World, but is back nonetheless. Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate JD Vance and Harris’s sidekick Tim Walz have agreed to debate on 1 October, though Vance also wants to meet on 18 September, the date Trump is being sentenced in New York City. The Harris campaign has not said if Walz will attend.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Biden did not end his re-election bid because he thought he would not win, but rather because he feared vulnerable Democrats would lose if he pressed on, the New York Times reported.
Trump continues to tweet following his Monday evening interview with X’s owner Elon Musk.
Expect to hear from Harris on Friday about her economic policies, which are said to include calling for a federal ban on price gouging.
It will be Corey Lewandowski’s return that will raise the most eyebrows.
Three years ago, Politico reported that Donald Trump’s spokeperson Taylor Budowich, who is among the new campaign hires, had said that Lewandowski “will no longer be associated with Trump World” after allegations emerged that he made unwelcome sexual advances towards a Trump donor.
Lewandowski has also publicly said that Trump lost the 2020 election, something the former president continues to baselessly insist did not happen:
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Trump campaign brings former manager Corey Lewandowski on to leadership team
Donald Trump’s campaign has made a slew of new hires as he looks to get his footing against Democrat Kamala Harris, including bringing Corey Lewandowski, who managed part of his 2016 run, on to its leadership team.
Other hires on the team include Washington Times columnist and communications strategist Tim Murtaugh, political consultant Alex Bruesewitz and Taylor Budowich and Alex Pfeiffer, both of whom are associated with the Make America Great Again Super Pac.
The hires come at a vulnerable moment for the Trump campaign, which has struggled to regain the advantages against Harris that it appeared to have when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee. Here’s more about that:
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Donald Trump has continued to make use of his account on X, albeit sparingly, following his interview with the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, on Monday.
Trump was a prolific tweeter until early 2021, when the platform banned him in response to the January 6 insurrection. Musk reinstated the ex-president after buying the company, then known as Twitter, the following year, but Trump hasn’t tweeted much since, though did start using his account a bit more ahead of his lengthy talk with Musk.
Earlier today, Trump posted this video of his and Musk’s faces attached to the bodies of what look to be professional dancers:
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2024
Similar videos of Trump dancing aired repeatedly at last month’s Republican national convention.
The former president is more loquacious on Truth Social, the platform he owns. Apparently aware of the reports of tensions between Joe Biden and Democrats like the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was behind the push to get him to step aside, Trump wrote:
Kamala Harris wants NOTHING TO DO WITH CROOKED JOE BIDEN. They are throwing him out on the Monday Night Stage, known as Death Valley. He now HATES Obama and Crazy Nancy more than he hates me! He is an angry man, as he should be. They stole the Presidency from him – “It was a Coup!”
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Even before his debate disaster, it was not clear that Joe Biden had the edge over Donald Trump. Polls often showed the president, at best, neck and neck with his Republican predecessor, while some gave Trump the advantage in the swing states that will probably decide the race. That dynamic has shifted with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate, and polls now show her leading Trump. As the Guardian’s Maanvi Singh reports, the vice-president is also racking up endorsements, including from a group that has not backed a candidate before:
The immigrant rights group Make the Road Action is backing Kamala Harris in its first-ever general election presidential endorsement.
The 15-year-old organisation dedicated to Latino voter engagement in key swing states including Nevada and Pennsylvania, had previously supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primaries but has otherwise avoided endorsing any presidential candidates. The voter mobilization group’s endorsement on Thursday, provided first to the Guardian, comes amid a rush of enthusiasm for Harris’s nascent campaign.
“Harris taking on the nomination has added a new kind of energy,” said Theo Oshiro, co-executive director at Make the Road New York. “Our members are excited. Harris is a woman of colour, and a person who comes from an immigrant family. So they see their children or themselves in this candidate. They feel that she is someone who at least understands where we are coming from.”
The decision to make this first-ever general election endorsement came after two meetings with more than 250 members, who debated the stakes of the election before ultimately agreeing to publicly support Harris.
The group is concerned about issues including housing affordability, the climate crisis and the US government’s role in Israel’s war on Gaza. But immigration rights were the main focus of deliberations.
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Biden quit re-election campaign over fears of harming vulnerable Democrats, undermining political philosophy – report
The New York Times this morning published a lengthy article exploring how Joe Biden made his pivotal decision to end his re-election campaign.
The president withdrew his bid for a second term after performing poorly in his debate with Donald Trump, which caused his poll numbers to slump significantly and a steady stream of Democratic lawmakers to publicly call for him to bow out. It has also been reported that influential party kingmakers like the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi worked quietly behind closed doors to encourage Biden to exit the race.
The Times reports that Biden met with his top advisers over a weekend in late July, as he recovered from Covid-19 at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. With his cat, Willow, in attendance, the advisers told the president that he could still win, but it would require embarking on a campaign in which he would be at odds with much of the Democratic party, the Times reports:
Those inside the small circle of family members and advisers who were with the president at the very end insist that the story of how Mr Biden went from defiance to acquiescence was not about convincing him that he was destined to lose. That never happened, according to people close enough to Mr Biden to know his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s decision-making in the final hours.
Instead, it was concerns about the impacts of his campaign on vulnerable House and Senate Democrats that ultimately swayed him to drop out, and perhaps the belief that staying in the race would clash with his stated political philosophy:
The depth of the fractures in his party seem to have come into focus for Mr Biden that weekend, as he would explain in the days that followed.
“Well, look,” Mr Biden told Robert Costa of CBS News in an interview on Sunday. “The polls we had showed that it was a neck-and-neck race, would have been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic.”
“I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he said.
But that is only part of the story.
For as long as anyone could remember, Mr Biden had ended speeches with the same optimistic line about the country he had served for so long: “There is nothing America can’t do – when we do it together.”
It was the essence of his political identity.
In the Oval Office remarks that the president delivered a few days after he dropped out, he hinted at the argument that had been persuasive to him, saying he could no longer see a way to run for re-election while staying true to that belief.
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Kamala Harris’s arrival on the presidential stage, and her subsequent surge in popularity, has upended Donald Trump’s campaign, the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports. However, the former president does not yet appear ready to swap out his campaign managers, as he had at this point in previous years:
Donald Trump has privately expressed faith in his campaign leadership and no personnel changes are currently expected, but senior advisers find themselves in the most vulnerable moment as they struggle to frame effective attacks against Kamala Harris, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
The past month, starting with Joe Biden’s withdrawal and his endorsement of Harris to succeed him, which propelled her to draw roughly even in key swing state polls, has easily been the most unstable moment for the Trump campaign since its formal launch in late 2022.
In that period, Trump has often committed one unforced error after another as he tries to frame arguments against Harris, struggled to break through the news cycle hyping Democrats’ enthusiasm, and suddenly found himself on the defensive with a narrow window left until November.
The sudden difficulty for the Trump campaign to lay a glove on Harris has led to Trump’s allies seeing an opening for the first time to openly challenge decision-making by senior aides and privately challenge whether some advisers should remain in their positions or be sidelined.
And the past month has been bad enough for the Trump campaign that advisers have taken those challenges – whether from enemies real or perceived – as serious threats or slights that necessitate devoting time and effort to slap down.
There may be more than meets the eye to JD Vance’s proposal to debate Tim Walz on 18 September.
That’s the same day Donald Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York City after being found guilty of felony business fraud charges. But while Walz has agreed to debate Vance on 1 October, he has not said anything about a debate in September that we can find, and a spokesman for the Harris-Walz campaign has not yet responded to an email from the Guardian asking about it.
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Vance and Walz set for 1 October debate
It’s on: the vice-presidential candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz are set to debate on the first day of October.
Vance, the Ohio senator who is Donald Trump’s running mate, confirmed this morning that he will attend the debate moderated by CBS News on 1 October:
The American people deserve as many debates as possible, which is why President Trump has challenged Kamala to three of them already. Not only do I accept the CBS debate on October 1st, I accept the CNN debate on September 18th as well. I look forward to seeing you at both! https://t.co/63FyI99dKU
— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 15, 2024
Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick, Walz, accepted the invitation yesterday:
See you on October 1, JD. https://t.co/ssi0FdseN9
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 14, 2024
Vance also mentioned he would attend a debate proposed by CNN on 18 September. It’s not clear if Walz will participate in that one.
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Meanwhile, Joe Biden announced a breakthrough in his promise to lower prescription drug prices for older Americans. People enrolled in Medicare, the government health insurance program for Americans over 65 or with disabilities, will pay less for 10 common prescription drugs, thanks to legislation Biden signed two years ago. Here’s more on that:
Joe Biden’s administration announced a landmark healthcare negotiation on Thursday in which 10 popular medications will now be available at lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries.
The discounts on the 2023 prices ranged from 38% to 79%, according to the figures released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS).
The 10 drugs are Januvia (diabetes), Fiasp (diabetes), Farxiga (diabetes, heart failure, kidney disease), Enbrel (arthritis and psoriasis), Jardiance (diabetes, heart and kidney disease), Stelara (arthritis, psoriasis and colitis), Xarelto (blood clots), Eliquis (blood clots), Entresto (heart failure) and Imbruvica (blood cancers).
The new policy, which is the first of its kind in the US, was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats passed in 2022. It gives people on Medicare, a government insurance plan for seniors above 65, financial relief amid increasing health costs.
“For years, millions of Americans were forced to choose between paying for medications or putting food on the table, while Big Pharma blocked Medicare from being able to negotiate prices on behalf of seniors and people with disabilities,” Biden said in a statement. “But we fought back – and won.”
Harris to outline economic plan, including support for ban on price gouging, in Friday speech
The economy had to be one of the most frustrating issues on Joe Biden’s plate during his presidency. While he loved to talk about the labor market’s recovery from the mass layoffs caused by Covid-19 and the better-than-expected economic growth, polls showed that Americans were far more concerned by inflation, which during his presidency hit levels not seen since the 1980s, and brought his approval ratings down with it.
But Kamala Harris is the Democratic nominee now, and will take a shot at resetting the narrative with voters. The Guardian’s Helen Sullivan reports that the vice-president will detail her economic plan on Friday with a speech in North Carolina, where she’ll announce her support for a federal ban on price gouging – which Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly blamed for the uptick in prices.
Here’s more on that:
Harris set for first joint event with Biden as she seeks to turn the heat up on Trump
Kamala Harris will hold her first joint appearance with Joe Biden today since the president ended his bid for a second term and allowed her to take his place at the top of the Democratic ticket. The duo will appear at a community college in Washington DC’s Maryland suburbs, and the event will be focused on their efforts to lower prices after years of politically perilous inflation. You can expect to hear plenty about yesterday’s encouraging inflation data, and this morning’s news that the Biden administration had negotiated discounts of up to 79% for 10 popular medications for people receiving Medicare, thanks to the president’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act signed two years ago.
And don’t be surprised if the president and vice-president lay into Donald Trump as they seek to make the most of the momentum that Harris appears to have since entering the race. Polls continue to show her leading him both nationally and in the handful of swing states expected to determine the result, a turnaround from when Biden was the nominee and struggling to overtake him anywhere. The event begins at 1.30pm ET, and we’ll be covering it live.
There is plenty more happening today:
Trump will hold his second press conference in as many weeks today at 4.30pm. More and more Republicans are calling on him to reset his campaign as Harris surges in popularity, but he definitely did not do that in his last encounter with the press.
JD Vance, the Ohio senator who is Trump’s running mate, speaks in swing state Pennsylvania at 10am. After a speech in Michigan yesterday, he surprised reporters by inviting them to ask him questions in front of the crowd. We’ll see if he plans to make that a habit.
Speaking of polls, the Cook Political Report shifted its rating for Nevada’s crucial Senate race from “toss-up” to “leans Democrat” in good news for the incumbent Democrat Jacky Rosen.
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