#Kamala Harris Press Conference

[relaxedstyles]

[simply-ivanka]

By the Numbers:

Number of official interviews and press conferences Harris has done since becoming putative nominee. This compares with roughly 240 she did between taking office and Biden’s exit. The 2024 version of the “basement” campaign?

[mythica-ithaca]

She does not support an arms embargo on Israel.

She supports the Palestinian Genocide 100% and any of you trying to convince yourselves and others otherwise are delusional. She deserves to be protested at every single event she holds. Use your voices and your votes to demand that she end aid to Israel.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Igor Bobic and Liz Skalka at HuffPost:

Former President Donald Trump spoke for over an hour in a rambling press conference on Thursday, making dozens of false and outrageous claims in an effort to wrest the spotlight away from Vice President Kamala Harris’ surging 2024 presidential campaign. Addressing reporters at his ritzy Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the GOP presidential nominee insisted his campaign was the one drawing large, enthusiastic crowds on the campaign trail — even though Harris’ rallies attracted tens of thousands this week — and claimed that the vice president wasn’t “smart enough” to take questions from the media as he was doing. “She’s not smart enough to do a news conference,” Trump said.

Trump also claimed he was willing to do three debates with Harris: Sept. 4 with Fox News, Sept. 10 with ABC News, and Sept. 25 with NBC News (the announcement required a clarification from Trump’s campaign regarding the host networks). Both campaigns had agreed to the Sept. 10 debate when President Joe Biden was still the presumptive nominee, but Trump canceled when Harris replaced Biden. Harris’ campaign hasn’t said whether it’s agreed to all three dates.

Harris, meanwhile, hasn’t done a sit-down with reporters since Biden exited the race and endorsed her for the nomination. But she’s marginally improved on Biden’s position in the polls, and Democrats, at least, appear enthused to have a candidate besides the president. “The honeymoon period is gonna end,” Trump said of Harris’ standing in the race. “She’s got a little period, the convention is coming up [...] Everything she’s touched has turned bad.” It was the first time Trump took questions from reporters since Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday. Trump called both Harris and Walz too liberal and dangerous to run the country.

“She picked a radical left man,” Trump said. “He’s got things done that he’s … he has positions that are just not, it’s not even possible to believe that they exist. He’s going for things that nobody’s ever even heard of, heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety. He doesn’t want to have borders. He doesn’t want to have walls. He doesn’t want to have any form of safety for our country.” Trump said he wouldn’t change anything about his campaign or attacks now that he’s running against Harris. “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all. It’s the same policies — open borders and crime. I think she’s worse than Biden,” he said.

During his press conference, which ran just short of 90 minutes, Trump compared the crowd size at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, to the audience for Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech on the National Mall, where about 260,000 people showed up. “Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” he said. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not, we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had 25,000 people.” Trump also falsely claimed that “nobody died” during the attack on the Capitol by hundreds of his supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 election he had lost. At least seven people died in connection to the riot, including several Trump supporters.

[...] Trump gave a head-scratcher of an answer to a question about whether he believed the Federal Drug Administration should restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which survived a right-wing attack before the Supreme Court earlier this year. Some conservatives want the FDA to regulate the pill out of circulation in a future GOP presidential administration. “You could do things that would supplement. Absolutely,” Trump said. “And those things are pretty open and humane.” He added: “But you have to have a vote. The people are going to decide.” Harris’ campaign responded to Trump’s press conference with sarcasm, calling it “very good” and “very normal.” “He hasn’t campaigned all week. He isn’t going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds,” the campaign said in a press release. “The facts were hard to track and harder to find in Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago meltdown this afternoon.”

DonOld Trump’s chaotic and unhinged presser at Mar-A-Lago yesterday was the same old bullcrap of greatest hits mixed with new lies and delusions, such as falsely stating that he had more crowds than Martin Luther King Jr., baselessly stated that “no one died” on Janauary 6th, 2021, and hinted that he could regulate mifepristone out of existence.

4 more years of DonOld would be embarrassing.

[calicojack1718]

The Harris-Walz Campaign social medias good. They hit all the high marks of social media requirements: snark, timeliness, short snappy statements, good use of layout, readability, and understandable pop cultural references.

The sick burns: "Whatever the hell that was" "Took a break from taking a break" "Put on some pants" "Press conference" struck out and replaced by "public meltdown"

[filosofablogger]

Terminal Stupidity!

I don’t really want to write about Trump’s “press conference” yesterday, but a few things stuck in my craw and I feel compelled to share them.  Frankly, I’d be over-the-moon happy if I never had to hear or write about Donald Trump again, but as long as he is a threat to our very lives, I cannot simply close my eyes and ears and go ‘round singing ♫ La la la la la la ♫. The ’event’ was supposed to…

[captainjonnitkessler]

Hear me out: the best strategy for Democrats right now is to fake an assassination.

Picture it: the President has been assassinated, the nation is reeling. Kamala Harris steps up and talks the biggest game she possibly can about unity and how we as Americans must come together and how we'll never let these domestic terrorists threaten our democracy. She spends the next four months in the public eye, presenting a strong and united front in the midst of this terrible tragedy.

Come November she's had four months of experience in the job, retaining the incumbent advantage and quelling fears about her competency, she's been front and center in the news for four straight months, giving her name recognition advantage, democrats who weren't enthused by Biden turn out in droves to prove that we won't let the "terrorists" win, democrats who were enthused by Biden can't complain about the DNC not running the person who won the primaries, and the "civility is the most important thing in politics" swing voters are horrified by the assassination and are inclined to vote Democrat to punish this breach of political etiquette. Meanwhile, Biden retires to a farm upstate and is no longer tortured by press conferences.

@ the FBI agent who's list I just landed on: hmu, the Democrats need me

[nyancrimew]

okay i love your posts and work and understand why you hate the US and both parties (reasonably) but can we please stop with like. just the biden slander. like haha biden old and dumb bothers me because it equates 81 year old continuing like 80 years of US foreign policy and 78 year old who openly paraphrases NAZI rhetoric in one of the worlds superpowers. like i fucking hate biden and am vocal about this but equating status quo old guy and fascist old guy is such a false comparison

you (plural, i have multiple of these asks rn) gotta reflect a bit on what you're using your political campaigning energy on if your biggest issue of the day is me making a shitpost. my post i made last night literally just comments directly on the two biden press conferences that day where he first referred to ukrainian president zelensky as "president putin" and then later referred to his vice president kamala harris as "vice president trump".

i am making fun of the CURRENTLY SITTING president of """""the free world""""" who's very clearly not in any position anymore to be doing this job. none of what i said in any way even pits him against trump, but im not making fun of trump because right now he's fucking irrelevant as he's not currently in control of the most powerful country in the world. i sure hope he still won't be after november, but you're not going to win this election by getting mad at some european tumblr user who made an observational joke.

there is so much more i could say about this and especially how meaningless this election really is when it's suddenly taboo to at all criticize the lesser of the two evil, who as a reminder, has been actively aiding the genocide in gaza and has now thrown trans kids under the bus for some minor campaign points. i somehow remember there being this thing about how biden was the compromise candidate but surely we could push him to the left, but hey, what do i know about politics.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Pope Francis on Friday described the choice US voters must make in the presidential election as one between the “lesser of two evils,” deeming former President Donald Trump’s anti-migrant policies and Vice President Kamala Harris’ support of abortion rights as both being “against life.”

“One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” Francis said during a press conference on the papal plane, referring to Harris and Trump. “Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”

Net zero endorsement [13 Sep 14]

[relaxedstyles]

CNN did what???

[wilwheaton]

Meanwhile, journalists treated with respect are increasingly pumping out Trump-scripted propaganda. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have been releasing increasingly supine coverage for months. They falsely reported that a platform that enshrines fetal personhood presented a “softened” GOP face on abortion. After a year of reporting on policies that directly parallel those in Project 2025, Maggie floated Trump’s complaints that Democrats were calling him on it. When that team reported on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago “press conference,” the only lies they called out were Trump’s claim to have left office peacefully — but not his lies about the Biden-Harris hand-off, Kamala’s record, Biden and Pelosi’s demeanor, prosecutions of him, Willie Brown and a near-crash in a helicopter, the price of bacon, polling, or even crowd size.

As Maggie Haberman Unabashedly Joins the Kayfabe, Tim Walz Sings the Menards Jingle - emptywheel

[busterballsblog]

[qqueenofhades]

can you assuage my creeping fear about the debate between harris and trump? my brain is like. the media will be salivating over any chance to get the story HARRIS FLUBS THE DEBATE MORE AT 6 unless she's 100% perfect for it. i keep telling myself that she's an incredibly seasoned prosecutor who knows exactly what to do to unravel these sorts of people, she has plenty of time to prepare, he's completely gone over the edge into incoherence most of the time, but i also keep thinking of how, after weeks of her absolutely pile-driving the republican party, the media will be circling for any mistake, mis-step, or imperfection to blow out of proportion to make it seem like she's failing. i guess what i'm afraid of is the other shoe dropping? or the bubble bursting? i'm afraid of this hope?

i was barely aware of obama in 2008, too young to vote and not paying attention, so i don't know how this kind of momentum turned into the juggernaut that got him elected. i know you believe that the same can happen here, how did he take on the predatory press?

Well, first, we need to recognize that the media treatment of the debate WILL be wildly unfair, full stop. If Trump shows up and puts on pants, he will be applauded by the media, because they have the lowest imaginable bar where he is concerned and everything that would have been multiply-disqualifying for any other candidate makes them just shrug and find a way to make excuses for him. So yes, he will literally be congratulated if he shows up on September 10, because that is how the media works. See: three relentless weeks of bullying Biden out of the race after the bad debate, barely mentioning Trump's equally insane diatribes at the same debate, and now, when he's gone full-on demented and is raving about AI-generated crowds at Kamala's events? Nary a peep. Lol.

However, the main narrative that's emerging from the Harris takeover is that voters and the media are miles apart on where they actually see this race going, and without the media's favorite chew toy of Biden's shortcomings, it has become increasingly difficult to avoid focusing on Trump's flaws, even tangentially. See the mainstream media reporters whining constantly that Harris hasn't given them a press conference and congratulating Trump for lying to them nonstop for an hour; they simply have no frame of reference that's remotely useful, because they are so beholden to making Trump look like a normal candidate and focusing on Harris's "flaws" as if they are remotely comparable to his. But at the same time, there has been a far heightened level of pushback on this BS manipulation, and everybody can see through it, precisely because the media and/or the right-wing smear machine has tried this so many times before and their tactics are now completely transparent. Ordinary voters don't give a shit whether Harris WiLl tAkE qUesTioNs fRoM tHe mEdiA; they're too busy flooding her campaign with donations, attending her rallies, signing up for volunteer shifts, and so forth. In fact, the reason the media is trying SO HARD to kill her momentum is because they, like Trump, rely on doing so. The more they try and don't succeed, the more panicked they'll get. We have to prepare for that, and we have to have her back.

That said, we should recall that Harris easily crushed Pence in their debate in 2020, and Pence was actually halfway presentable at it compared to Trump (which is a low bar, but still). The way Trump "wins" is that he just repeats a lot of lies forcefully and over and over, which Biden was ill-prepared to counter because he has a far more deliberate and decisive speaking style (related to stutter/speech difficulties, temperament as a politician, etc). Everything that I have seen from the Harris campaign in terms of communication so far, however, has been the exact kind of clapback that makes Trump look stupid and which shows that they are very attuned to the kind of strategies that work against that nonsensical bullying Gish gallop. Therefore, I have to trust that they have INTENSIVELY studied what went wrong with Biden/Trump in June, and also empowered Kamala to do what she does in her fashion and which has been extremely successful thus far at knocking down Trump's BS. Also, she's just a better and more fluent communicator than Biden, she looks and sounds more energetic, and those stupid aesthetic Vibes are half of the battle when it comes to convincing the public.

Also, we should recognize that Trump looked deeply creepy on stage at the debates with HRC in 2016, and that was when he was downright sane compared to now. He stalked her, he stood behind her, he rolled his eyes, he bullied her, and people noticed that (he subsequently won the election, yes, but if nothing else, 2024 feels nothing like 2016). If he has to stand on stage with a black woman kicking his ass, after his appearance at the NABJ event in Chicago quickly became a touchstone for how badly he fucked it up, he is going to just look BAD, and when that's the case, people will immediately fit it into the existing narrative (that he's scared of Harris and deeply racist and unglued). You can also play your part in making sure it does. At least half of the Bidengate furor came from Democrats melting down and yelling about it afterward, and that led into the knives-out media coverage that spiraled for 3.5 weeks until Biden withdrew. We can, yknow, NOT DO THAT this time!

So: yeah. We have to be aware that yes, the media coverage of the debate will find absolutely every excuse to praise Trump and bash Harris, because that's just baked in. However, we can also understand that there's a wide-and-getting-wider CHASM between how ordinary voters see things right now and how the media is desperate to play it, and the more transparent they get, the more easily we are able to call it out. (See Lawrence O'Donnell's rant the other night.) We are going to have to keep doing that and not let up, but it's not going to go well for Trump either way and it's still an open question as to whether he even shows up after trying SO hard to dodge. It's not out of the question that he'll announce on September 4 that by Harris not showing up to the Fox debate she never agreed to and which exists only in his deluded mind, he doesn't have to do the same on September 10. He is a scared fucking orange chickenshit who KNOWS he's badly outmatched against Harris and whose entire campaign strategy at this point relies on lying low and trying not to make voters remember again how much they hate him, which is already backfiring. And with your help, we can make him MORE scared all the way to prison. Let's do it.