Trump Caves to Harris Debate Terms After Being Called a Chicken

Donald Trump has finally given a clear “yes” on debating Vice President Kamala Harris on September 10 on ABC News, but made sure to first call the channel the “nastiest and most unfair” network toward him.

Posting on Truth Social Tuesday afternoon, Trump said he had “reached an agreement with the Radical Left Democrats for a Debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. It will be Broadcast Live on ABC FAKE NEWS, by far the nastiest and most unfair newscaster in the business, on Tuesday, September 10th, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

“The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump added.

The Republican presidential nominee has been whining about the upcoming debate for weeks, most recently complaining late Sunday night on Truth Social about why he would even participate. Earlier in August, he tried to cancel the debate, arguing that he had only agreed when “Sleepy Joe Biden” was the Democratic nominee, but was shamed into backtracking when #TrumpIsACoward” began trending on his Truth Social platform.

Later, he continued to make excuses and waffled on committing to any debates, and tried to force a debate on friendly Fox News on September 4, only to be rebuffed by the Harris campaign. On Monday, the Harris campaign posted a video of Trump complaining about the debate with chicken sounds playing in the background.

Despite his complaints, Trump has taken extra efforts to prepare for the debate, enlisting former Democratic representative Tulsi Gabbard to help him prepare, perhaps because the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate effectively attacked Harris in a July 2019 debate, going after the then-senator’s prosecutorial record in California.

But will that be enough to help him? Trump was aided by President Biden’s poor debate performance on CNN back in June, but now the convicted felon will be going up against a former prosecutor riding a wave of positive momentum from the Democratic National Convention and a surge in the polls. Trump’s campaign has yet to land any substantive attacks, or even nicknames, on Harris or her running mate Tim Walz. If he wants to win over voters, he’ll have to bring back his old magic on September 10, or he’ll be even further in the hole. 

Special counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment Tuesday in the election interference case against Donald Trump, which prosecutors claim respects the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

While the 36-page indictment doesn’t drop any of the four original charges against Trump, it does remove some of the specific allegations and emphasize how Trump’s actions fell outside of the bounds of “official conduct,” following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States, which found that the president could not be tried for most “official conduct.”

In the high court’s majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts had specifically mentioned the indictment’s allegation of “several conversations in which Trump pressured the Vice President to reject States’ legitimate electoral votes or send them back to state legislatures for review,” ruling that “whenever the President and Vice President discuss their official responsibilities, they engage in official conduct.”

The decision dealt a heavy blow to Smith’s case, which relied on such conversations to argue that Trump had unlawfully attempted to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.

In a government’s notice, prosecutors wrote that the new indictment “reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v. United States.”

Evidence for the indictment had been “presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case,” and that jury had separately charged Trump with the same crimes, according to Smith’s team.

In removing some of the evidence from the original indictment, Smith may be attempting to spare himself a lengthy evidentiary hearing, hoping to expedite the process.

Tuesday’s indictment, like the original, alleges that Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results” following the 2020 presidential election, by engaging in three separate conspiracies: a conspiracy to defraud the government, a conspiracy to obstruct and impede the counting of votes on January 6, and a conspiracy against the right to vote and have one’s vote counted.

The filing comes just before a deadline set by the Justice Department, which would forestall the filing of charges against the former president within 60 days of the upcoming presidential election.

The indictment sparked a major meltdown from Trump, who promptly published a 500-word diatribe across four lengthy posts on Truth Social.

“This travesty is now on Comrade Kamala Harris, who is actively pushing it, rather than immediately calling for its dismissal, as should be done,” Trump wrote in one post.

“For them to do this immediately after our Supreme Court Victory on Immunity and more, is shocking,” Trump wrote in another post. “I’ve also been informed by my attorneys, that you’re not even allowed to bring cases literally right before an Election—A direct assault on Democracy!”

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump has added two ex-presidential candidates to his transition team: former Representative Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The move comes after the two endorsed the former president and convicted felon’s 2024 campaign for president. Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, initially endorsed Trump in July and joined him on Monday at a National Guard Association event in Detroit. Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump last week.

As members of Trump’s team, the two will help the Republican nominee craft policy and choose staff members for his administration should he win in November. Both Gabbard and Kennedy have reputations as conspiracy theorists.

Gabbard has expressed skepticism about the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons during its civil war, putting her at odds with the U.S. government view, and even had two secret meetings with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. She has also defended Russia in its war against Ukraine, and tried to claim that press freedom in Russia is similar to the United States. Since leaving Congress, Gabbard has shifted heavily to the right, promoting transphobia, spreading Russian propaganda, and unsuccessfully endorsing Republicans. Trump even brought her aboard to help with debate preparations.

Kennedy meanwhile, is best known for anti-vaccine and public health skepticism. His quixotic presidential campaign revealed more bizarre stances, such as a pledge to not “take sides” on the 9/11 attacks. In the weeks leading up to his withdrawal from the presidential race, Kennedy was revealed to have once had a worm in his brain, and to have dumped a bear cub carcass in New York’s Central Park. In another resurfaced interview from 2012, his daughter Kick recounted an instance when Kennedy cut off a beached whale’s head with a chainsaw in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, tied it to the roof of his car, and proceeded to drive it and his family five hours home to New York.

Having Kennedy and Gabbard on his transition team doesn’t bode well for what a future Trump administration would look like. Right-wing foot soldiers are already devising plans of what they want to do, and these two ex–presidential candidates will likely revive the old Trump days of amplifying crackpot theories.

Donald Trump is leaning into his grifty crypto guy image with his latest announcement.

On Tuesday, Trump posted a video on Truth Social announcing he would be releasing another round of his “baseball card” NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. “By popular demand, I’m doing a new series of Trump digital trading cards,” Trump said. “You all know what they are, we’ve had a lot of fun with them.”

The trading cards include photos of a much younger and leaner Trump raising his hands in victory or dressed as a superhero. Written in small font below the link to purchase reads an explanation of the product: “Trump Digital Trading Cards (NFTs) are intended as collectible items for individual enjoyment only, not for investment vehicles.”

“These cards show me dancing and even holding some Bitcoins,” Trump explains in the video, while making it clear he might not know what exactly he’s selling. This will be the former president’s fourth NFT collection drop since December 2022, and a previous collection included his “Mugshot Edition NFTs.”

Like a late-night commercial, Trump also shills deals for the buyers which include a promise of a physical card if you purchase 15 NFTs, autographed cards, and a chance to win dinner with the former president in Jupiter, Florida (if you purchase 75 NFTs). Each card costs $99 apiece.

“You know they call me the crypto president,” Trump explained. “I don’t know if that’s true or not but a lot of people are saying that.”

Earlier this week Trump, who once called crypto a scam, teased a cryptocurrency platform. Recent election disclosures show that he previously made over $7 million through the NFT licensing deal.

Donald Trump seemed immensely pleased Tuesday after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote to Congress claiming that the Biden administration had pressured him to censor disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg wrote that the Biden administration had “repeatedly pressured” Meta to remove “certain Covid-19 content, including humor and satire.”

“I believe that the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. While Meta’s platform Facebook has been all but taken over by outlandish A.I. content and fake news, Zuckerberg lamented that he had not allowed misinformation endangering public health to run rampant, as well.

“I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction,” he said. “And we are ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

Zuckerberg also wrote that he regretted temporarily “demoting” the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop while waiting for fact-checkers to assess the validity of the story. He said the FBI had previously warned Meta about a potential Russian disinformation campaign against the Biden family involving Burisma, a Ukrainian oil company for which Hunter Biden worked.

“It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation and we should not have demoted the story,” Zuckerberg wrote. He noted that Meta had changed its protocols and would no longer demote content in the U.S. while waiting for it to be fact-checked—touting how easy he had made it for disinformation to propagate on his sites.

Zuckerberg also tried to distance himself from the $350 million in grants he and his wife had provided for election administrators struggling to adapt to pandemic-era election restrictions in 2020.

“I know that some believe this work benefited one party over the other,” Zuckerberg wrote, even though the FEC had ruled that it did not. “My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another—or even appear to be playing a role. So I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”

For someone whose stated goal is to be neutral, Zuckerberg’s letter sure made Trump happy.

“This is what everyone’s been waiting for—THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED!” Trump wrote in a jubilant post on Truth Social. Beneath his post, he reshared a post from his lawyer, Alina Habba, who claimed the Biden administration was “gagging our media and censoring America.”

In another post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!). IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED.”

Crucially, Zuckerberg did not claim that the Biden administration had forced him to remove, or even demote the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.