Harris and Walz to address United Auto Workers union in Detroit
As Donald Trump continues delivering remarks at his press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are gearing up to address the United Auto Workers union in Detroit, Michigan.
Harris and Walz’s address will mark their second campaign event in Detroit in two days.
Last week, the UAW issued its endorsement of Harris, with its president Shawn Fain saying that she has a “proven track record of delivering for the working class.”
Key events
Kamala Harris has taken the stage.
“I understand the concept and the noble concept behind collective bargaining. And here it is…fairness. It’s about saying, ‘Hey, in a negotiation, don’t we all believe the outcome should be fair?’ I mean, who could disagree with that?” Harris said.
The outcome should be fair. It should be fair, right? But when you’re talking about the individual and a big company, and you’re applying that one individual to negotiate against a big company, how’s that outcome going to be fair?,” she added.
“You know, things work really well in life and really well with your neighbors and really well in communities when you mind your own damn business, things work better. Stay out of our business. Stay out of our business,” said Tim Walz.
“He’s not fighting for you. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care about your family. And his running mate is just as dangerous and backward as he is,” he added.
“So this is very simple, you know it, and it’s going to take a heck of a lot of hard work, but this election is a simple choice, what direction and what’s our country going to look like? What direction are we going?” said Tim Walz.
“You know what we’ve said, If Donald Trump’s going to take it backwards, he’s going to, we aren’t going back. We’re not going back,” he added.
Tim Walz has now taken the stage.
“I couldn’t be prouder to be on this ticket and couldn’t be prouder to stand with UAW,” said Walz.
“You got two people up here that were on the picket line of striking UAW members, that’s a place Donald Trump will never be,” said Shawn Fain.
“You know, anyone can be your friend when the sun’s shining, things are going great, but you find out who your friends are when things get tough. And you know…when we look at tough times, we’ve been at tough times, we see who chose to stand with us and who chose to sit on the sideline to do nothing,” he added.
“This is not a time to sit back and hope for the best. This is our generation-defining moment. Everything is at stake,” Fain continued.
“You know, Donald Trump calls me stupid and you know why? Because he thinks auto workers are stupid, but we’re not stupid. We don’t fall for Trump’s alternative facts, or what we all call lies,” said Shawn Fain.
“This isn’t about opinions. This election is not about party politics. All we have to do is look at these candidates in their own words and actions. That’s all the facts we need, and that paints a very clear picture of which side the candidates are on,” he added.
He went on to note Trump’s absence during UAW’s strikes in recent years, saying Trump was “missing in action.”
“The man’s a con-man,” Fain added.
UAW president: Harris and Walz are ‘one of us’
UAW president Shawn Fain is currently addressing the room.
“I think you already know this, but what’s at stake in this election? It’s very simple, everything is at stake. It’s about a choice of whether we continue forward or whether we go backwards,” he said.
“Kamala Harris is one of us. Governor Tim Walz is one of us. You know, they’re working class people. They have working class roots. They know struggle They know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck,” he added.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have just taken the stage in Detroit, Michigan where they are set to deliver remarks to the United Auto Workers union.
Harris and Walz entered the union hall to a crowd of cheering supporters.
ABC News confirms Harris and Trump debate on Sept 10
ABC News has confirmed that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will debate each other on September 10.
Both Harris and Trump have confirmed they will attend the debate.
During his news conference in Mar-a-Lago a few minutes ago, Donald Trump, who in recent weeks has refused to debate Harris on the originally scheduled network, said that he has agreed to ABC News’ offer to debate the vice president.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said:
“We have spoken to the heads of the network and it’s all been confirmed other than some fairly minor details – audience, some location, which city would we put it into but all things that would be settled very easily.”
Harris and Walz to address United Auto Workers union in Detroit
As Donald Trump continues delivering remarks at his press conference in Mar-a-Lago, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are gearing up to address the United Auto Workers union in Detroit, Michigan.
Harris and Walz’s address will mark their second campaign event in Detroit in two days.
Last week, the UAW issued its endorsement of Harris, with its president Shawn Fain saying that she has a “proven track record of delivering for the working class.”
In a bizzare tangent, Donald Trump said he was “very protective of” Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.
Trump, who has accused Clinton of being “unbalanced,” “unstable,” “dangerous,” as well as a “pathological” liar and the “devil,” in addition to having routinely threatened to jail her, said:
“You know, with Hillary Clinton, I could have done things to her that would have made your head spin. I thought it was a very bad thing, take the wife of a president of the United States and put her in jail, and then I see the way they treat me. That’s the way it goes. But I was very protective of her.
Nobody would understand that, but I was, I think my people understand it. They used to say, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’ and I’d say, ‘Just relax, please. We won the election.’”
Trump calls Harris “barely competent”
Donald Trump says he is “very happy” to run the election against Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden.
“We call her the first loser,” Trump said because Harris dropped out of her first presidential campaign early in the cycle, in 2019 before the 2020 primary season began. “She never made it to Iowa,” he said, adding that her campaign was “nasty” because of the way she debated against Biden and criticized him for not supporting busing to implement school desegregation.
Trump then said Biden regrets picking Harris as his vice president. There is no evidence to suggest either that this is true or that Trump knows Biden’s mind on this.
He said Harris “has not done an interview.” It is true that Harris has not done a media interview since being endorsed by Joe Biden to take over the top of the Democratic ticket and then becoming the presumptive nominee. He added: “She cannot do an interview. She is barely competent.”
“She could not pass a bar exam,” Trump said of Harris, who was the attorney general for California before becoming a US Senator and then vice president. If she becomes president he said: “It’s going to be a great failure, it’s going to be a failure the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Trump added, of Harris: “She is not smart enough to do a news conference.”
Joanna Walters
Donald Trump is talking very aggressively at a press conference he called at his Mar-a-Lago home and resort in Florida, which got underway a few moments ago.
The former president and Republican nominee for president this November began with a monologue warning of apocalyptic type prospects for America under Joe Biden now and a prospective presidency for Kamala Harris.
Right now he is speaking at length about the size of his crowds at rallies in relation to rallies for Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.
Earlier he said the US is on the brink of a 1929 style economic depression.
“Not a recession, a depression,” he said.
He said the US is in “the most dangerous” situation in its history, with the threat of World War III looming. There is no evidence of this. “We are in great danger of World War III,” he just said.
And he said of migration that in countries “all over the world prisons are being emptied out into our country.” He said migrants are coming to the US “from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions and insane institutions, which are mental institutions on steroids.” This is not true.
He has been greeting some press queries with, simply: “What a stupid question.”
Trump touts debate dates, says ‘other side’ has yet to agree
Joanna Walters
Donald Trump is holding a press conference and, prior to taking questions from reporters, the former president and current Republican nominee for the White House this November has been giving a dystopian-style mini speech.
During it, he said he has agreements from TV networks for three debates against Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee – on Fox on September 4, on NBC on September 10 and on ABC on September 25.
Trump said details about audience and locations have to be agreed – as do the Harris campaign.
“I hope she agrees,” he said.
Harris and Trump previously had a disagreement about debating, with Harris saying he should honor for September 10 on ABC that had been scheduled before Joe Biden passed the torch to her at the top of the Democratic party ticket for the election. Trump had said he would debate her on Fox.
Joanna Walters
Nancy Pelosi was reluctant to tell reporters details of the role she played in the drama that led to Joe Biden stepping aside from his re-election campaign in favor of Kamala Harris, after his dire performance in the first presidential debate of the election against Donald Trump last month.
But she did not deny she had a role. She had also advised him not to stoop to debating Trump, the Associated Press reports.
It was Pelosi who publicly encouraged Biden to make a decision about his reelection campaign when he had already insisted he had no plans to step aside. Once he exited and endorsed Kamala Harris atop the ticket, it was Pelosi who was a big fan of her future running mate, Tim Walz, AP writes.
Over and again, Pelosi declined to detail her conversations with Biden during this tumultuous period, or if the conversations happened at all. The two have not spoken since he bowed out of the race.
At some point, I will come to terms with my, to peace, with my own role in this. I think that part of all of our goals in this was to preserve his legacy, a fabulous legacy, that would go right down the drain if Bozo got elected to the White House,” she said.
Pelosi said it was not her intention to put Biden on the spot when she showed up on his favorite morning news program in early July, after his dismal debate with Trump, and suggested he make a decision about his reelection bid.
Biden had just written a letter to Congress, insisting he was pressing on after a number of rank-and-file Democrats started saying publicly he should bow out of the race. It was not well received, she said.
I was really asking for a better campaign,” she said, fearing Democrats could lose the Senate as well as the White House, and fail to regain the House.
Of trying to dissuade Biden from debating Trump, after he wouldn’t even debate his own Republican primary challengers, she said:
I just thought it’d be like doggy-doo and you’re going to get it on your shoe and you’re all going to smell like him.”
Pelosi says life “goal” is to prevent Trump regaining White House
Joanna Walters
Nancy Pelosi has said she will need to come to terms with the role she played in Joe Biden dropping out of his re-election campaign – while also saying it was all in service of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House, her new “life goal”.
The former Speaker of the House, sitting California congresswoman and almost immortally powerful Democratic party grandee talked to reporters a little earlier.
She said that having a part in the change at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket for 2024 was chiefly about ensuring the best prospects that Trump and the Republicans won’t win this November.
She said about Trump:
How can I say this in the nicest possible way: My goal in life was that man would never step in the White House again,” the Associated Press reports.
Pelosi refers to Trump, variously, as Bozo, a snake-oil salesman, whatisname and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the news agency noted. She was talking about her new book The Art of Power, My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House, which the Guardian scooped last week. Read on….
Interim summary
Hello, US politics blog readers, it’s a lively day for news and there is more to come, so stay with us and we’ll bring you the developments as they happen. Donald Trump is due to hold a press conference at 2pm ET.
Here’s where things stand:
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Hillary Clinton is all over X today in support of the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Democratic ticket for the White House, defending Walz’s military record. She mocked Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance for posing with Air Force Two as if he’ll one day fly in it as the veep, with Clinton reminding people of his anti-choice stance on reproductive rights.
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Donald Trump praised Walz’s handling of the mass protests and some riots that followed the murder of George Floyd by police in his state in 2020, while the-then president was on a phone call with state governors, according to a resurfaced audio clip. This contradicts Trump now slamming Walz for a weak response.
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Kamala Harris is leading Donald Trump by six points, 53% to 47%, among likely voters, according to a new poll by Marquette Law School. Among registered voters, 52% said Harris is the choice for president while Trump is the choice of 48%.
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Harris and Walz’s campaign has released a new Latino-focused ad in English and Spanish called “Determination.” The one-minute ad, which aims to target Latino voters, centers on Harris’s track record as a prosecutor, state attorney general, senator and vice president.
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The Democratic duo are continuing their campaign blitz today with a scheduled address at an United Auto Workers event in Detroit, following an energized rally in the city last night. Harris’s scheduled address before the UAW comes amid the union’s endorsement of her and Walz.
Hillary Clinton is speaking out in defense of Tim Walz who has come under fire from Republicans over his 24-year military record in the army national guard.
Writing on Thursday in response to Republican accusations that Walz retired in 2005 to avoid being deployed to Iraq, Clinton said:
Republicans are re-running an old tactic and trying to smear a veteran who’s also a Democrat.
Please pass this on to counter their lies:
Tim Walz submitted his retirement request to the U.S. Army National Guard months prior to notification of his unit’s deployment.
Republicans are re-running an old tactic and trying to smear a veteran who’s also a Democrat.
Please pass this on to counter their lies:
Tim Walz submitted his retirement request to the U.S. Army National Guard months prior to notification of his unit’s deployment. https://t.co/IdZmwES6hG
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 8, 2024
In response to the Republicans for Harris coalition launched across the country this week, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s campaign released the following statement on Thursday:
“As part of the launch, dozens of Republican leaders – including former elected officials and members of Donald Trump’s own administration – held events across the battlegrounds to endorse Vice President Harris and rally fellow Republicans to defeat Trump.
While Trump and Vance continue to turn off independent and Republican voters, Team Harris-Walz has made clear that there’s a home in our campaign for Republican voters who care deeply about the future of our democracy, standing strong with our allies against foreign adversaries, and working across the aisle to get things done for the American people.”