Trump Makes Chilling Promise in Pre-Debate Phone Call

Donald Trump made an alarming promise to his conservative Christian supporters ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate. 

During a pre-debate prayer call hosted by the National Faith Advisory Board on Monday evening, Trump whined that Kamala Harris wanted to naturalize undocumented immigrants, and claimed that it would come at a steep cost to one group in particular. 

“Every day she is flooding our country with millions and millions of illegal aliens. She wants to make them citizens, she wants to have them vote,” Trump said.* “Which will destroy the voting powers of Christian conservatives forever.”

“There is no more, and there should be no more important voice than the voice of Christians,” Trump said. 

Trump is attempting to set up a false exchange: that the power of one group would diminish the power of another. And in the fascist tradition, he is using immigrants as a scapegoat. 

While Trump would like Christian conservatives to feel that their voices are the most important to him, the Republican nominee has repeatedly sidestepped some of the policies they’ve advocated, in an attempt to widen his appeal ahead of the election. 

With Trump’s pushing, the Republican Party completely abandoned its commitment to a federal abortion ban, a longtime project of the Christian right. While Trump’s current abortion policy stance still allows for the passage of the highly restrictive laws, his blatantly opportunistic shilling should not go unnoticed. To Trump, there is no voice more important than his own.

This isn’t the first time that Trump has made an unsettling comment directed at his Christian conservative base. The former president previously promised his Christian supporters that after voting for him in November, they would never need to vote again.

“You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” Trump said at Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit in July. 

When asked to explain the statement, he claimed that he was trying to motivate Christians, who rarely participate in elections—which is completely untrue.  

* This story originally misquoted the number Trump says.

The Trump campaign just lost yet another song from their shrinking catalog.

On Monday, musician Jack White announced that he was suing Donald Trump, his campaign, and Trump’s deputy director of communications, Margo Martin, for the unlicensed use of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” on a social media post of Trump boarding aircraft.

“This machine sues fascists,” White captioned an Instagram post of the legal complaint, a reference to Woody Guthrie.

The lawsuit, filed in New York, does not specify a specific amount of damages but does note that Jack and Meg White, who collectively comprise the band the White Stripes, “vehemently oppose the policies adopted and actions taken by Defendant Trump.”

Jack White promised the lawsuit last month, sharing Trump’s campaign video to his Instagram account with the text, “Don’t even think about using my music.” The original video, shared by Martin, was taken down by the time of publication.

Use of music in videos requires a separate and specific license from the one required for use at public, live events.

“If you want to use music in a video, you need a synchronization license,” U.S. intellectual property lawyer Jason Rosenblum told The Washington Post, referring to a type of license that requires direct negotiation with the publisher or musician. “If Trump’s campaign or whoever posted the video didn’t get those rights, the White Stripes should have a strong case against them.”

The roster of artists who have outright banned Trump from using their music is long and wide. Last month, Trump ticked off Swedish pop supergroup ABBA by using their music to advance his campaign without their permission. He also drew fury from the Isaac Hayes estate, Celine Dion, and Beyoncé for the unauthorized use of their music during campaign events and advertisements.

Other artists who have condemned the MAGA leader’s unauthorized use of their art for his political gain include Sinéad O’Connor, The Beatles, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Guns N’ Roses, Leonard Cohen, Queen, Prince, Pharrell, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Rihanna, Neil Young, Linkin Park, the late Tom Petty, the Village People, and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler.

J.D. Vance amplified a false and racist rumor that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Ohio—without seeing any evidence himself. 

The Republican vice presidential nominee shared the conspiracy theory on X Monday, accusing the immigrants of being in the U.S. illegally, “draining social services” and “generally causing chaos.” In addition, the Trump-Vance campaign sent out a news release repeating the false claims, saying, “It’s coming to your city next.” 

When The New York Times contacted the campaign, they did not provide any evidence and only said Vance was responding to large numbers of calls and emails from Springfield, Ohio, residents, who have also repeated the claims in town meetings. But according to the local newspaper, the Springfield News-Sun, there have been no police reports of any pets being killed and eaten and the conspiracy seems to have originated from a Facebook post that didn’t contain any evidence.  

The rumor was also given life after a report from Canton, Ohio, of a woman who was arrested for allegedly killing and eating a cat. The woman, however, is a U.S. citizen, and there is no indication she is a Haitian immigrant.

Conservative politicians, pundits, and influencers have all amplified the rumor, which furthers the right-wing narrative that immigrants are invading the country, breaking laws, and bringing their savage cultural practices with them. In 2018, Donald Trump reportedly claimed that all Haitian immigrants have AIDS and referred to the country as a “shithole.” 

With a presidential debate approaching Tuesday night between Trump and Kamala Harris, Republicans will likely repeat such claims in an attempt to frame Democrats as being soft on immigration, and conflate this false rumor with the perpetual “border crisis.” Will Democrats have an effective response and call out these claims for how weird they are, or will they adopt Republican fearmongering?

A survey published Monday found that voters in three swing states are supportive of an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and limiting military aid to Israel.  

A Cato Institute survey of 1,500 Americans conducted by YouGov found that a majority of likely voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin favored an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel’s 11-month military onslaught has killed nearly 41,000 people, displaced nearly two million, and resulted in a catastrophic famine and health crisis. 

Eight in 10 swing-state voters, regardless of political affiliation, supported an immediate cease-fire, according to the new poll. In Wisconsin, 80 percent of respondents favored a cease-fire, while in Pennsylvania and Michigan, the numbers were 75 percent and 74 percent, respectively.

Across all three swing states, more than 88 percent of Democrats supported an immediate cease-fire, while more than 78 percent of independents supported one.

A majority of voters also supported making military aid to Israel conditional or not supplying it at all: 61 percent in Wisconsin, 51 percent in Pennsylvania, and 56 percent in Michigan. Limiting aid to Israel’s cause was supported by 74 percent of Democrats in Wisconsin, and 64 in Pennsylvania and Michigan. 

Kamala Harris’s campaign published its first official “Issues” page on Monday, debuting its milquetoast platform about Gaza. The position stood in sharp relief to advocates’ pleas that, as president, she might limit or end military aid to Israel, based on any one of the state’s array of violations of international law: its indiscriminate killing of civilians and aid workers, illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, alleged sexual torture of prisoners, and reported murder of a U.S. citizen in the West Bank. 

“Vice President Harris will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,” the site read, stomping out hopes of even a conditional aid agreement. “She and President Biden are working to end the war in Gaza, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination. She and President Biden are working around the clock to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done.”

With the clock counting down to the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee seems to prefer living in a fantasy land.

On Monday, Trump was practically writing fanfiction about the possibility of still facing off against his last opponent, President Joe Biden, despite the reality of the coming hours.

“Comrade Kamala Harris goes to an ultra Left Wing, Trump Hating, spice shop, which I hear has terrible, overpriced product, and calls for ‘unity,’” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, referring to Harris’s weekend stop at a Pittsburgh spice market called Penzey Spices. Penzeys is openly anti-Trump and anti-Republican in all its PR materials.

“As people begin to realize that she is a Marxist, FAR MORE LIBERAL than Crazy Bernie Sanders, or even Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, her poll numbers are beginning to crash. Who are they going to put in next? How about a Biden comeback?” Trump continued.

With less than 60 days until Election Day, Harris and Trump will face off for the first time Tuesday on ABC at 9:00 p.m. ET.

A HarrisX/Harris poll (no relation to the vice president) sponsored by the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies conducted last week saw Trump and Harris neck and neck among registered voters, though other polls have predicted Harris to have a slight advantage, particularly in key battleground states. Last week, the Trump campaign attempted to brush off New Hampshire entirely after spending considerable resources to win there, when a top volunteer leaked that it was clear the Granite State would vote for the Democrat.

“This election is going to be won in those seven swing states” and not in New Hampshire, the Trump campaign’s New Hampshire co-chair Lou Gargiulo told Politico at the time, referring to Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. “That’s where the effort’s got to be put.”