Team Harris Kicks Off DNC With an Epic Trump Troll

The Democratic National Convention started off with a bang Sunday night, literally branding Trump Tower Chicago in lit-up phrases that Donald Trump isn’t likely to be too happy about.

Locals noticed projections on the side of the 96-floor glass scraper that included “Trump-Vance: Out For Themselves,” as well as “Trump-Vance: ‘Weird as Hell,’” “Harris-Walz: Fighting for You,” and “Project 2025 HQ.”

DNC leadership took responsibility for the troll, confirming to Rolling Stone that the group had rented a room across from the massive hotel and set up a high powered projector in order to accomplish the prank.

“He’s a grifter and nothing we said wasn’t the truth,” Abhi Rahman, deputy communications director for the Democratic National Committee, told the Daily Beast.

“Tonight, everyone is seeing a preview of the contrast that will take center stage this week throughout the Democratic National Convention,” Rahman said in a statement that heavily criticized Project 2025. “Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz have proven records of delivering for working families, and now, they’re running to lead our country into a brighter future.”

But Trump didn’t seem to notice the prank by Monday morning, instead continuing to harp on calling Democrats a lot of socialists and communists.

“The Radical Left protesters in Chicago are going after the Democrat Party because the know they are weak and ready to break into a full blown party of Socialism or, if they really do their job, and with a little bit of luck, the Communist Party of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They are already very close and, having a Marxist trained and believing President whose father is a Marxist professor, Comrade Kamala Harris, stranger things have happened! November 5th, 2024, will be the most important day in the history of our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The former chair of the Fulton County Board of Elections filed an ethics complaint Friday against three of the Georgia State Election Board’s members, accusing them of breaking the law in their efforts to help Donald Trump disrupt the presidential election. 

In the complaint addressed to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, former Chair Cathy Woolard alleged that board members Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston, and Janelle King had violated the ethics code by failing to follow state law and violating the public’s trust. Through their efforts to  make significant changes to the rules governing Georgia’s elections, they had “at minimum created the appearance that their actions are intended to further their own political preferences,” Woodlard wrote.

Woolard described an instance on July 12, when Jeffares, Johnston, and King had hurriedly organized a private meeting, away from the public and the two other board members, to pass two election rules pitched by Georgia Republican Party Chair Jeff Koons.The first rule required county election boards to post daily ballot counts online, and the second increased the number of partisan monitors during the vote-counting process. Woolard argued that their quorum-lacking rendezvous that day had violated the Open Meetings Act, which requires meetings to be open to the public and for all board members to be given due notice. 

Woolard noted that the same day, Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally and staunch election denier, posted on X saying, “There are now 3 great members of the GA State Election Board—support them. They are fighting hard for us!!! The Dems + Kemp + Raffensperger + Carr are fighting our great SEB Members. Fight back!” 

Last week, the Georgia State Election board voted 3-2 in favor of a new rule, which required a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, making it significantly easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results in November. 

“This type of regulation is unprecedented nationally, but it is consistent with a broader strategy among Trump allies to lay the groundwork for refusing to certify presidential election results if he loses in November,” wrote Woolard. 

The next day, Johnston moved to reopen a complaint into the administration of the 2020 election in Fulton County, which Woolard said had been closed in May, before Johnston had been appointed to the board. The state attorney general had advised them not to reopen the fully adjudicated case, but Johnston allegedly indicated she had received outside counsel on the legality of reopening the case. 

That day, Trump reposted a video of the board meeting on Truth Social and called for the attorney general to take action on the reopened complaint into Fulton County. Trump wrote, “We can’t let this happen again. WE MUST WIN GEORGIA IN 2024!!!”

Woolard noted that Trump named the three members specifically during his rally in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month. While speaking to the audience of thousands, Trump called the trio “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”

“The members have done nothing to dispel that appearance of impropriety, instead receiving a standing ovation at a Trump rally and openly discussing a position in the Trump administration,” Woolard wrote. “Taken together, these actions pose a serious risk of creating confusion about the rules governing the rapidly approaching election and undermining voter confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”

Woolard also alleged that Jeffares had stated that he was angling for a position in a potential Trump administration. Jeffares told The Guardian that, when speaking to a former Trump campaign adviser, he’d said, “[I]f y’all can’t figure out who you want to be the EPA director for the south-east, I’d like to have it.”

Woolard served as the election board chair from September 2021 to June 2023. When her replacement, Patrise Perkins-Hooker, resigned in April, Woolard stepped in as interim chair to assist with the Georgia primary elections. While some were hopeful she would hold the position until after the general election, Woolard submitted her own resignation on July 3, writing that “it is time for someone who can serve through the fall elections take the reins.”

Government ethics watchdog American Oversight filed a lawsuit against the board in July, similarly accusing the trio of violating Georgia’s Open Meetings Act. Since 2020, Georgia has had the highest number of certification refusals anywhere in the country—and remains the likely epicenter for Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2024. A report from American Doom found that Georgia had at least twenty-two people who’d pushed election denying conspiracy theorists employed as election officials—including two on its board of elections. 

Donald Trump announced Friday his transition team that will assist with staffing decisions and policy setup should he return to the White House—and two of his sons are on it.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. will be honorary chairs along with the vice presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance. The team’s other members are Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive and the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency; and Howard Lutnik, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm.

Both McMahon and Lutnick are major donors to the Trump campaign, with Lutnik recently hosting a New York fundraiser that raised $15 million for the convicted felon.

“The 2024 GOP Platform to Make America Great Again is a forward-looking agenda that will deliver safety, prosperity and freedom for the American people,” Trump said in a statement. “My administration will deliver on these bold promises.”

Trump Jr. has said he wants to be able to “veto” appointment candidates in Trump’s second administration should he be elected, wishing to ensure that his father has true believers.

“I don’t want to pick a single person for a position of power. All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster,” he told Axios in July. “I want to block the liars. I want to block the guys that are, you know, pretending they’re with you.”

Trump Jr.’s presence on the team is a sign of his growing influence with his father. While Trump primarily relied on his daughter Ivanka during his White House term, she has not been involved this time around. Trump Jr. was reportedly one of the driving forces behind Trump picking Vance as his running mate.

While naming a transition team before an election is normal for presidential campaigns, it’s taking place months later than in 2016, when Trump’s transition team was named by June. This could be due to reported bad blood between some Trump campaign staffers and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team over coveted White House staff positions if Trump wins in November. Trump has tried to distance himself from the conservative manifesto, only for more links to emerge each day.

Another reason it has taken so long could be that Trump’s campaign staff was just shaken up with the hiring of 2016 Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His hiring may have prompted the transition team to finally be selected.

Some Trump staffers are reportedly wondering if Trump wants Lewandowski to push out senior campaign officials such as co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. Maybe the former president envisions his staff fighting each other to prove themselves to him and get prized White House jobs.

In preparation for his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has sought out the help of right-wing convert Tulsi Gabbard, who was able to best Harris during a 2019 presidential debate. 

Trump’s method of preparing for a debate by only talking to people who agree with him has apparently continued, as he has added the former U.S. representative from Hawaii to his roster of friends for so-called “policy talks” in advance of his upcoming debate next month, according to The New York Times. Others he’s enlisted to help with debate prep in the past include MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz and his running mate J.D. Vance. 

Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed Gabbard’s involvement in an email to the Times. 

Since her failed presidential run in 2020, Gabbard has left the Democratic Party and become something of a conservative celebrity, elevating transphobia, spreading Russian propaganda, and unsuccessfully endorsing Republicans. 

But Trump may have tapped her for a very specific reason: she may know how to beat Harris in a debate. During the July 2019 presidential debate on CNN, Gabbard went out of her way to go after Harris’s prosecutorial record, issuing a devastating blow to the then-senator’s presidential run. 

Harris “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations, and then laughed about it, when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said at the time. “She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row, until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep cash bail system in place—that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

Harris responded saying that she was proud of her record, and “proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches, or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor, but actually doing the work.” Harris also said she’d hoped to legalize marijuana. 

Gabbard insisted that Harris had blocked evidence in a death row case. Gabbard was referring to the case of Kevin Cooper, a man who maintained his innocence on death row for 39 years before he was released. In 2016, while Harris was running for Senate, Cooper’s attorneys asked for new DNA testing, which they were confident would exonerate him. Harris’s office refused to allow the testing, and later said that she had not been involved in the decision.  

Onstage, Gabbard said that Harris owed an apology to those who suffered under her “reign” as California’s attorney general. Harris appeared incredulous over Gabbard’s line of attack, and said she had always opposed the death penalty. 

“My entire career, I have been opposed, personally opposed, to the death penalty, and that has never changed,” Harris said. “And I dare anybody who is in a position to make that decision to face the people I have faced and to say, ‘I will not seek the death penalty.’” 

Harris has already gotten some heat from conservatives for her opposition to the death penalty, specifically over her decision in 2019 not to recommend the death penalty for a man who killed a police officer, despite a pressure campaign from several California Democrats and the officer’s widow. As a freshly elected district attorney, Harris kept to her campaign promise that she would not seek the death penalty. 

While Trump’s team has made it clear he’s interested in going after her record as a district attorney and attorney general, it’s unlikely that Trump will reopen the death penalty issue with Harris the same way Gabbard did—especially considering the fact that Trump supports the death penalty, specifically for drug dealers. 

Meanwhile, Project 2025, which outlines the beginning of the Trump presidency, urges the next administration to “do everything possible to obtain finality” for every prisoner on federal death row, which currently includes 40 people—executing them en masse. 

Trump may hope that Gabbard can give him the edge to go face-to-face with Harris, something he has spent the better part of a month trying desperately to avoid. Amid the scheduling chaos and uncertainty, Trump’s team insisted Thursday that the former president had agreed to a whopping three debates, something no one asked for. Meanwhile, Harris’s team has agreed to the first on September 10 hosted by ABC, and if Trump appears, they will go from there. 

J.D. Vance is doubling down on his remarks on immigrants from a podcast in 2021. 

In a press conference on Friday, Vance defended his remarks in response to a question from The New York Times’ Chris Cameron, who asked the Republican vice presidential candidate about his comments on Jack Murphy Live about the problems from European immigration in early American history, and whether he would have recommended mass deportation back then. 

“Has anybody seen the movie Gangs of New York?” Vance asked the room filled with reporters, citing a 2002 film depicting the city in 1863. “That’s what I’m talking about. You know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves in our country, it can lead to higher crime rates.”

Citing a fictional movie is probably not the best way to defend controversial comments, especially since the major villain of the movie is an anti-immigrant nativist crime boss based on a real person, which people on X were happy to point out.  

Xenophobic undertones aside, Vance’s point loses more credibility in the face of the fact that immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, “ethnic enclaves” or not. And while Vance later segued into stating that immigration policy needs to encourage more assimilation, he also skirted around mentioning Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations. It seems clear that Vance’s words on immigration will probably help the Harris campaign further paint him as weird.