Trump appeals to women in return to North Carolina WILMINGTON, N.C. – Donald Trump returned to North Carolina on Saturday, stumping in the southern battleground state with direct appeals to women, claiming he would be a better champion for them than Vice President Kamala Harris, who is vying to become the first female president.
Trump campaigned in Wilmington, along the state’s southern coast, without Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial nominee and one of the former president’s top surrogates in the state, following a CNN report about his alleged posts on a pornography website’s message board.
He did not mention Robinson during a speech that lasted just over an hour. Robinson has denied writing the posts, which include lewd and racist comments, saying Thursday that he wouldn’t be forced out of the race by “salacious tabloid lies.” Trump’s campaign has appeared to distance itself from Robinson in the wake of the CNN reporting, which the AP has not independently verified, saying in a statement that Trump “is focused on winning the White House and saving this country” and calling North Carolina “a vital part of that plan,” without mentioning Robinson.
Democrats have seized on the opportunity to highlight Trump’s ties to Robinson, with billboards showing the two together, as well as a new ad from Harris’ campaign highlighting the Republican candidates’ ties as well as Robinson’s support for a statewide abortion ban without exceptions. According to Harris’ campaign, it’s their first ad effort related to tying Trump to a down-ballot race. Both abortion rights and Robinson are electoral liabilities for Trump in a state he previously won twice.
Already before CNN’s report, Robinson was trailing in several recent polls to Democratic nominee Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general. Polls show Trump and Harris locked in a close race here and nationally. In his first outdoor rally since the second apparent attempt to assassinate him, Trump argued women would be safer and more prosperous with him as president and would “no longer be thinking about abortion.
” “I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure,” Trump said. “Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and their lives will be great again.
So women, we love you. We’re going to take care of you.” Vance, Walz make stops on trail in Pennsylvania LEESPORT, Pa.
– The aspiring vice presidential nominees visited Pennsylvania Saturday in a pair of campaign events within an hour’s distance of each other with messages miles apart. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz stepped onstage at a high school aptly named Freedom and touted his party’s inclusivity, and Republican Sen.
JD Vance stumped in a fairgrounds farm stand draped in American flags, promising mass deportations to approving cheers. Walz, at an event to mark the start of Hispanic American Heritage month in Bethlehem, urged collective action to safeguard Democracy, protect women’s reproductive rights, and build an economy for the middle class, a fight he argued can be done with hope and joy. “You chose to come here, and the reason is simple.
You love this country,” Walz said. “Hard work can be good work. Democracy is .
.. a precious privilege and gift that we need to protect.
And you can do it with joy, optimism, grace and happiness.” Vance, in Leesport, Berks County, gave a speech almost entirely dedicated to the threat of illegal immigration, which he argued has strained the economy and driven up costs, particularly in Pennsylvania. He promised to continue pressing the issue despite criticisms that many of the claims are inflammatory and untrue.
“What really bothers me about it is, it’s not just that they’ve made people’s lives worse with this terrible open border, it’s that they’re gonna call you bad names if you dare complain about it,” the Ohio senator said. “We are not bad people for thinking that you should not flood millions of illegal aliens into this country. .
.. Kamala Harris is a bad person for letting this happen to our country, in the first place.
” The battle for the state’s critical 19 electoral votes is in super-drive with 44 days to go until the election. Both regions of the state could be key to the 2024 election. Bethlehem straddles both Lehigh and Northampton Counties, and Northampton is one of just two Pennsylvania counties to vote for Barack Obama, and then Trump, and then swing back to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Harris launches ad criticizing Trump’s Robinson support The Kamala Harris campaign has launched an ad attacking former President Donald Trump for his political relationship with Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, following a CNN report about messages Robinson posted on a porn site surfaced earlier this week.
The messages were antisemitic, racist and sexual in nature. They glorified Hitler and supported slavery. Robinson denies the allegations.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said in a news briefing Thursday, “anti-Semitism is never acceptable, it is wrong.” She added that elected leaders need to be really clear in calling that out. The Harris campaign would not say how much it was spending on the ad.
It is part of $370 million in television and digital ad buys the campaign has made between Labor Day and Election Day, the campaign said. In the new ad, the campaign will show Trump praising Robinson for being “an unbelievable lieutenant governor” and better than “Martin Luther King.” “I’ve been with him a lot, I’ve gotten to know him and he’s outstanding,” the commercial quotes Trump saying.
For each sentence from Trump, the ad interrupts with a statement from Robinson on abortion: “For me, there’s no compromise on abortion. We could pass a bill saying you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason. Abortion in this country, it’s about killing a child because you aren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.
” When McClatchy interviewed voters, including Robinson supporters, earlier this year, many took issue with Robinson’s latter comment. “The split screen today for voters in this election could not be more stark: In Georgia, Vice President Harris will make a forceful and powerful case for reproductive freedom in the light of two women’s preventable deaths under the state’s Trump abortion ban,” Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a news release to McClatchy. “In North Carolina, Donald Trump proudly embraces Mark Robinson, and his extremist views on what women can and cannot do with their bodies.
Together they would make the harsh reality women face in states like Georgia and North Carolina a nationwide nightmare,” O’Malley Dillon adds. North Carolina Republicans and the Trump campaign have been grappling over how to deal with Robinson as a candidate for governor. The lieutenant governor is already trailing behind his opponent, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, by double digits in recent polls.
And that was before CNN published its report on comments that Robinson made on “Nude Africa,” an online porn site. The NCGOP stood by Robinson’s denial of posting on the porn forum and doubled down calling it a smear campaign from the left. “Trump can’t run away from the truth: He stands shoulder to shoulder with Robinson and for the extreme abortion bans that are putting women’s lives at risk across the country – and if they have the chance, they will go further and ban abortion across the country,” O’Malley Dillon stated.
“From now until Election Day, we will make sure voters don’t forget that.”.
