Team Trump Is Begging Him to Take the Threat of Kamala Seriously

Donald Trump’s Republican allies are worried that he might be underestimating Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to a report from Rolling Stone, several Republicans, including two right-wing lawmakers, have reached out to the convicted felon and former president to warn him about internal GOP polls that show Harris could make key states that Trump needs a lot more difficult to win. They also told him that assurances from his team that Harris was a weak opponent were wrong and that racist and sexist attacks from the right wing could easily backfire.

The report cites three sources, one of whom told the magazine that “when Joe Biden was in the race, we were headed for a Trump landslide.”

“Now that it’s Kamala’s turn, there are some scenarios that make me nervous,” said the source, who has discussed the issue with Trump.

Before Biden withdrew from the 2024 election and endorsed Harris, Trump was ahead in national and battleground state polls, particularly after Biden’s poor debate performance. Since Biden’s announcement Sunday, though, Trump has raged on Truth Social and Harris has skyrocketed in popularity, raising record amounts of money. Trump’s supporters are openly panicking, making weak attempts at impeaching Harris in the House and resorting to racist attacks.

Will any of that work in the face of growing enthusiasm for Harris from young people? The boost to the Democrats’ flagging fortunes even has the Trump campaign wondering if J.D. Vance was the wrong choice to be Trump’s running mate. Harris already has hit Trump with some smart attacks in the last couple of days, and Trump seems to be scared of debating her. Harris’s next move would be to pick a good running mate of her own, preferably one who won’t alienate her base while still assuring swing voters.

Donald Trump once said that people with severe disabilities were better off dead, according to his nephew’s forthcoming memoir.

In an excerpt from All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way that was published in Time Wednesday, Fred C. Trump III detailed two disgraceful comments made by the former president, one of which was about Fred’s own son William, who was born with a KCNQ2 mutation. As a result, William suffered from infantile spasms, a seizure disorder that affected his physical and cognitive development.

In May 2020, Fred attended a meeting with Trump at the White House alongside several health advocates, as well as Trump’s former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Brett Giroir, the former assistant secretary for health. At first, things were going well.

“The meeting I had assumed would be a quick handshake hello with Donald had turned into a 45-minute discussion in the Oval Office,” Fred wrote. “Donald seemed engaged, especially when several people in our group spoke about the heart-wrenching and expensive efforts they’d made to care for their profoundly disabled family members, who were constantly in and out of the hospital and living with complex arrays of challenges.”

After the meeting concluded, however, Trump called his nephew back in to speak with him.

“I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members,” Fred wrote. “But I was wrong.”

He recalled his uncle’s words to him: “‘Those people …’ Donald said, trailing off. ‘The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.’” Fred wrote that he hadn’t known how to respond to the former president’s comment, so he quickly left.

But Trump’s callous, inhuman attitude toward Americans with disabilities did not end there. Fred recounted a later interaction with his uncle, where he had called the former president to ask for help buoying the fund that supported his son’s care.

Fred wrote that his uncle didn’t seem convinced. “‘I don’t know,’ he finally said, letting out a sigh. ‘He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’

“Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Donald say that. It wasn’t far off from what he’d said that day in the Oval Office after our meeting with the advocates. Only that time, it was other people’s children who should die. This time, it was my son,” Fred wrote.

This time, Fred hit back, he wrote. “‘No, Donald,’ I said. ‘He does recognize me.’”

Some online have compared Trump’s despicable comments to Hitler, who began systematically exterminating children with physical and mental disabilities.

In his new book, Fred also claimed that his uncle repeatedly used the n-word during a racist tirade over some damage to his Cadillac convertible.

On the eve of his address to Congress Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a rude experience during his stay at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Protesters left mealworms and maggots on banquet tables in the hotel, perhaps to bring awareness to maggot infestations afflicting wounded Palestinians in Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. They also set off fire alarms on multiple floors. Activists with the Palestinian Youth Movement and its Washington, D.C.-area chapter took credit for the disruption in a video posted to X and Instagram.

In a statement to The New Republic Wednesday afternoon, the hotel confirmed that an incident took place but refused to comment further because law enforcement is looking into the matter:

We are aware of the social media video circulating on multiple platforms involving The Watergate Hotel and the unfortunate incident that occurred at the property yesterday. Our top priority is the safety and well-being of our guests and staff. We took the necessary steps to ensure the property has been sanitized and is now operating as normal. We are cooperating fully with authorities, who are handling the situation. As this is an open case, we are unable to provide any further details at this time.

The effort was part of larger planned protests across the city against Netanyahu’s visit to Washington and address to Congress. On Tuesday, massive protests organized by Jewish Voice for Peace filled the Cannon House Office Building’s rotunda near the Capitol.

Netanyahu isn’t being given the red carpet treatment that he’s been used to on previous D.C. visits. President Joe Biden has pushed his meeting with the Israeli prime minister to Thursday after it was initially up in the air, and Vice President Kamala Harris skipped his congressional address, instead planning to meet with the Israeli prime minister privately. Netanayahu will be meeting with Trump on Friday at the convicted felon’s Mar-a-Lago estate, perhaps trading notes on their legal issues and attempts to control their countries’ judiciaries.

Israel’s brutal war has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 15,000 children. Netanyahu has ignored calls for a cease-fire, which contributed to Biden’s drop in popularity among young people and communities of color. On Tuesday, seven major labor unions joined forces to demand an end to weapons aid to Israel.

None of this affected Netanyahu’s address to Congress, or America’s policies toward his country and the atrocities it continues to wage as its leader is accused of war crimes. What ought to happen is not a protest of insects and maggots but lawmakers standing up to Israel and ending weapons shipments to the country.

Representative Rashida Tlaib attended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress Wednesday and protested from her seat, holding up a sign that read “war criminal” on one side and “guilty of genocide” on the other.

Speaker Mike Johnson warned against protests during Netanyahu’s speech, threatening arrests and claiming there would be an increased police presence. Tlaib was approached by a floor staffer at least twice during Netanyahu’s speech, and put the sign down each time. At one point, Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna came and spoke to her before returning to her seat.

While many seats were empty during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech Wednesday, as about half of congressional Democrats boycotted his address, tech billionaire Elon Musk was in attendance.

Musk attended Netanyahu’s address to Congress as his personal guest, he told reporters. The X (formerly Twitter) owner sat in the Senate gallery among rescued Israeli hostages and behind the prime minister’s wife, according to CNN.

Musk and Netanyahu have spoken several times over the past year, including before the war, discussing artificial intelligence and antisemitism. More recently, during a visit to Israel in November, Musk toured a kibbutz with Netanyahu.

This comes as Musk has continued to boost antisemitism on his platform, even explicitly agreeing with claims that Jewish people push “diabolical hatred against whites.”