Georgia Republican Slams Elon Musk Over Wildly Fake Election Video

Elon Musk is now under fire in multiple swing states over his election interference.

Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has asked Elon Musk to take down an “obviously fake” video which appeared to show a Haitian immigrant who claimed to have voted multiple times in Georgia and encouraged others to do the same.

“This is false and is an example of targeted disinformation we’ve seen in this and other elections. It is likely foreign interference attempting to sow discord and chaos on the eve of the 2024 Presidential election,” Raffensperger wrote in a statement on Thursday night.

His office says that they are working to identify exactly where the video came from, and that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, is also investigating the matter. But Raffensperger and CISA have their suspicions about its origin.

“This is obviously fake and part of a disinformation effort. Likely it is a production of Russian troll farms,” wrote Raffensperger. “The likeliest suspect is a Russian troll farm,” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, agreed. “It’s isn’t even that good of a fake … but it is fake. It is a lie. Please let anyone you know that this is a steaming pile of Russian … well you get it.”

Former CISA Director Chris Krebs also called the video “more nonsense from Russian troll farms.”

Georgia was subjected to massive disinformation campaigns during Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and was subject to Russian interference campaigns that sowed conflict in the state in 2016.

But fomenting distrust in the election system is easier when it’s coming from Trump and Musk themselves. In recent days, both billionaires have peddled lies about mass voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump’s campaign may have been riding high in a garbage truck earlier this week, but the latest numbers out of Pennsylvania have them feeling pretty trashed.

In Pennsylvania, more than 100,000 new voters have already cast their ballots ahead of Election Day on November 5, dwarfing the 80,000 vote margin by which Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020, according to NBC News.

That means that if everyone who voted in 2020 cast their ballots the same way this year, this group of new voters would decide the race. Unfortunately for Trump, this group is dominated by female registered Democrats, who are likely to split for Kamala Harris.

Nearly 62 million early votes had already been cast nationwide as of Thursday evening, with 54 percent of ballots having been cast by women and 44 percent cast by men, according to Newsweek. Early voting in Pennsylvania mirrors that trend.*

While this data comes days ahead of Election Day, and women are more likely than men to vote early, the number of female voters has regularly exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1980. And this trend in early voting isn’t just contained to Pennsylvania. Across several battleground states, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far, according to Politico.

In an essential battleground state such as Pennsylvania, where polls have shown a particularly tight race, turnout and enthusiasm could be the key for Harris to claim victory in a state Trump plainly needs to win. And apparently, Trump’s team is panicking, according to Puck News.

“They’re going so crazy here,” one campaign source told Puck’s Tara Palmeri. “Anyone who hears how rabid they are about this issue can’t walk away from this and think they feel comfortable about where they’re at in PA.”

“They’re talking about criminal referrals,” the source continued. “They want to find poll watchers who they feel are engaged in voter suppression so that they can refer criminal prosecutions.”

The Trump campaign has already set to work making their desperate attempts to smear campaign officials in Pennsylvania. Earlier this week, the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee Co-Chair Michael Whatley accused election officials in Delaware County of “actively suppressing” voters after one woman, a Trump supporter, was arrested at a polling station, according to ABC News.

Delaware County officials said that the woman had been “disruptive, belligerent, and attempting to influence voters waiting in line.” Later, officials said that the woman “did not get in line for any service,” loitered in the lobby for nearly two hours, and “approached various individuals,” which prompted complaints.

In a video with Whatley, the woman claimed she had been arrested “for exercising my First Amendment right” as she “tried to get the vote out.”

The Trump campaign has continued to push narratives of alleged voter suppression by election officials. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Trump and Senate candidate David McCormick sued the county over long lines at polling stations as people tried to register for mail-in voting. A judge has since extended the deadline to sign up for mail-in voting in the county. Both Delaware County and Bucks County supported Biden over Trump in 2020.

* This article previously misstated the number of early votes cast in Pennsylvania.

Donald Trump made a dark and ominous threat against former Representative Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent critics.

At a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona, with Tucker Carlson Thursday night, Trump attacked Cheney’s record on war, calling her “a very dumb individual.” The former president also insulted her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and insinuated that she should be shot.

“She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said.

Trump’s threat evoked his earlier comments about using the military against “the enemy within,” which he said included the likes of Representatives Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi. Apparently, Cheney would also be on that list.

Trump’s gruesome attack was immediately met with backlash, including from Cheney herself.

With the election only days away, Trump has ramped up his violent rhetoric in a desperate attempt to scare up whatever votes he can, going after one of his most well-known critics in Cheney, who is campaigning with Kamala Harris. If he was trying to paint Cheney as a warmonger in comparison to himself, he failed heavily, as his choice of words is now what people are talking about.

Explosive new audio reveals that Donald Trump detailed how he really felt about his White House staff to Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein touted old photos of Trump with half-naked women taken at the site of the pedophile’s rampant sexual abuse of young girls.

On author Michael Wolff’s Thursday episode of his podcast Fire and Fury, Wolff shared a recording of a conversation with Epstein from 2017, in which the convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker recounted Trump’s true feelings about members of his administration, The Daily Beast reported.

“His people fight each other and then have outsiders—he sort of poisons the well outside,” Epstein told Wolff. Epstein went on to paraphrase Trump’s candid statements about his former strategist Steve Bannon, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, and counselor Kellyanne Conway.

“He will tell 10 people, ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kelly has a big mouth’—what do you think? ‘Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson,’” Epstein said.

“‘So Kelly[anne]—even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband—Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard.’ And then he tells Bannon, ‘You know I really want to keep you, but Kellyanne hates you,’” Epstein continued.

Wolff said that he had recordings of roughly “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his long standing, deep relationship with Donald Trump.”

Epstein also shared photos from the “late 90s” of Trump surrounded by “topless young women” at Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, where the disgraced financier victimized dozens of underage girls alongside his friend Ghislaine Maxwell.

“And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap,” Wolff said. “I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.”

Wolff claimed the FBI discovered the photos in Epstein’s safe when the agency raided his home in 2019, but never released the images to the public. Wolff described the photographs when discussing how he used Epstein as a main source for his book Fire and Fury, which focused on the Trump White House.

Wolff said that Epstein was afraid of Trump, believing that he was “capable of doing anything.”

The Trump campaign dismissed Wolff’s claims in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“He waited until days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention.”

Last week, a former model came forward with allegations that Trump had once groped her at a party, as part of a “twisted game” he was playing with Epstein. Trump recently praised Epstein, calling the sex offender, who died in prison before ever standing trial for sex trafficking charges, a “good salesman.”

“He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands,” Trump said in September, clarifying that he’d never been to Epstein’s infamous hub of sex trafficking. Trump waffled for years on the prospect of releasing files on Epstein’s known associates, and claimed that they likely contained “phony” stuff.

This story has been updated.

Someone on Deb Fischer’s team may want to ask her to identify Nebraska on a map.

The incumbent Republican senator, who’s facing a tough race this November, recently put out a campaign ad that described Nebraska as a “great place to raise families,” while showing beautiful, sprawling footage of anywhere but Nebraska.

Most of the footage comes from stock images titled “Patriot American Flag Flies over Anytown, USA,” sourced from various parts of the northeast. The New Republic’s Paige Oamek found one of the clips in the ad comes from a small town in Pennsylvania.

The mix-up comes at a dangerous time for Fischer in her race against independent challenger Dan Osborn. The Navy veteran and political outsider is reportedly within just two percentage points of Fischer. This is the closest Nebraska has come to being flipped away from red in years.

The Osborn campaign immediately seized on the gaffe.

“Maybe if Deb spent less time at fancy D.C. fund-raisers schmoozing her big corporate donors, she’d actually be able to recognize the state she’s running for Senate in,” Osborn said to The New York Times. “Since Deb so badly wants a New England vacation, Nebraskans will happily fire her on Nov. 5.”

The Osborn campaign also called back to Fischer’s prior uses of inaccurate stock footage to portray Nebraska, namely Ukraine and Romania.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Fischer faulted a “screw-up by a vendor” for the error.

JD Vance’s understanding of abortion rights in this country is so off-base that Joe Rogan had to correct him multiple times when he sat down for an interview for his podcast.

In a three-hour interview released Thursday, Rogan pressed the Republican vice presidential nominee on abortion, mentioning state laws prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, citing Texas as an example, and noted that women in such cases who travel out of state for an abortion could be subject to prosecution.

“That’s concerning to me, if there’s a place in the country where it’s legal to have a medical procedure and you live in a state where it’s not legal that your state can decide what you can and can’t do with your body, which is essentially based on a religious idea,” Rogan said.

Vance seemed unfamiliar with such laws.

“I don’t like the idea, to be clear. I’ve not heard of this, maybe as like a possibility, but not as something that actually exists in the law, but I’ve not heard of somebody being arrested, and I don’t like the idea of arresting people for moving about the country,” Vance said.

The reality is that around the country, many women have had to flee the state to get even a medically necessary abortion, as was the case for Kate Cox in Texas in December. In Texas, many cities and counties have passed ordinances banning people from traveling outside the state for an abortion—which seems to be the new front in the attack on reproductive rights.

Vance’s  interview continued on the topic, but things didn’t get better for him.

Rogan mentioned how Roe v. Wade was considered the law of the land, but that was quickly ended by the Supreme Court, and now “you have these religious men who are trying to dictate what women can or cannot do with their bodies.”

“I understand the pushback against that, but I think you can go, like with so many other issues, you can go way too far about it, and it becomes trying to celebrate” abortion, Vance responded. “At the very best, if you grant I think every argument of the pro-choice side, it is a neutral thing, not something to be celebrated.”

“I think there’s very few people who are celebrating, though,” Rogan replied. Vance suddenly agreed, claiming that echo chambers on social media were creating that impression.

Vance’s time with Rogan seemed to gloss over what he has actually said and proposed about abortion rights. Shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Vance seemed to celebrate its demise on a right-wing radio show, even comparing abortion to slavery. Earlier this month, he touted Donald Trump’s abortion policies, claiming that the former president would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood if he wins the election.

Vance tried to convey some kind of level-headed viewpoint on abortion, but seemed unable to address very real abortion scenarios that women face in many states. Will voters take this into account as they head to the polls?

JD Vance claimed that he and Donald Trump could likely win the votes of “normal” gay men because they “just want to be left the hell alone.”

Vance appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience for a three-hour interview released Thursday, discussing everything from Emily in Paris to him standing at his front door for an hour with a loaded gun after the first Trump assassination attempt.

But one of the wildest moments in the interview came when Vance told Rogan he believed he and Trump would win the “normal gay guy vote” due to the “extremist religion” of “wokeness.”

“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote, because again, they just want to be left the hell alone,” Vance said. “And now you have all this crazy stuff on top of it that they’re like ‘No, no … we didn’t want to give pharmaceutical products to 9-year-olds who are transitioning their genders.’”

Rogan then went on to discuss how it’s actually the transgender movement that’s homophobic, pushing some of his most outlandish anti-trans views yet.

Americans everywhere had the same question: What exactly is a “normal” gay man to Vance?

“If there’s one thing gays love, it’s being classified by straights as either ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal,’” YouTuber JJ McCollugh tweeted.

Former Republican turned liberal pundit Ron Fillipowski asked, “Vance says Trump is going to win ‘the normal gay guy vote.’ Like George Santos maybe? ... Or does he mean all the closeted Republicans who are married to women?” Reality TV host Andy Cohen simply tweeted “Sashay away.”

Vance’s comment, and the long-winded transphobic rant that followed, reveals the innate disdain he holds toward LGBTQ people. But Vance is likely to dismiss it as perfectly normal talk. Maybe he’ll remind us all not to get so offended again.

Are Wall Street traders planning for a Kamala Harris win?

Trump Media & Technology Group stock was halted twice Thursday morning as its value dropped nearly 14 percent. Just the day before, the stock plummeted more than 20 percent after a multiweek rise, decreasing Donald Trump’s net worth by $1 billion.

Trump has 114.5 million shares, or roughly 57 percent, of TMTG, the media group that operates Trump’s right-wing social media platform Truth Social. Prior to Wednesday’s plunge, Trump Media was valued higher than Elon Musk’s X, as investors flocked to the meme stock.

In the real world, the company has been bleeding out, struggling to raise revenue and losing money. But experts say the share value is less a reflection of the credibility of the business and more a measure of traders’ expectations about the upcoming election.

“There are no fundamentals behind this company. It doesn’t have a path to profitability. It’s just driven by commentary, and by hopes and dreams,” trader Dennis Dick told Reuters in September.

The stock “currently serves primarily as a proxy for the election,” the research group S3 Partners wrote on Tuesday. “Trump and Media Group (DJT) stock, closely tied to Trump’s election chances, faces high squeeze risk due to limited float and elevated short interest.”

There’s no company news that caused the drop in the share price. So if the stock really is a barometer for the election, it seems like traders might be feeling the vibe shift.

Notably, Trump can now choose to cut his losses and sell his shares at any time. But, predictably, it seems he’ll bet on himself.

Elon Musk has managed to delay a legal case against his $1 million daily lottery giveaway to registered voters thanks to a Pennsylvania state judge.

At a hearing in the Keystone State on Thursday, Judge Angelo Foglietta said that a lawsuit from Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner looking to stop the giveaway will be placed on hold until a federal court decides whether to hear the case. Musk’s legal team is arguing that the lawsuit raises questions about free speech and election interference more suited to federal law.

Musk was initially required to appear in court in Pennsylvania on Thursday but didn’t show up. Foglietta’s ruling not only overrules that requirement, but it allows the tech mogul’s America PAC to continue its giveaway to registered voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who sign a pledge supporting First and Second Amendment constitutional rights.

On his X platform Thursday, the tech mogul celebrated the ruling in a post reading “American Justice FTW,” as the ruling also pushes the lawsuit’s proceedings until after Election Day. Krasner was seeking to halt Musk’s scheme, calling it an “illegal lottery scheme to influence voters.”

In the lawsuit, Krasner argues that under Pennsylvania law, only the state can run a lottery for the benefit of the state’s seniors. Krasner also alleges that neither Musk nor the PAC has published clear rules for the giveaway or explained how they are protecting entrants’ personal information. The lawsuit questions whether the million-dollar winners are actually random, considering that two of them had attended Trump rallies.

Last week, after the Justice Department sent a warning letter to the PAC over concerns that the lottery violated federal laws against paying people to register to vote, it seemed as though the giveaway might stop. But after an apparent pause for one day, the PAC named two more winners, daring the government to take action. With Thursday’s court ruling, the Trump-supporting Musk appears to have gotten away with pushing the limits of election interference.

In an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday, Jared Kushner said there was “zero” chance he’d join his father-in-law Donald Trump on the last stretch of the campaign.

“We’re rooting for him—obviously, we’re proud of him. But, you know, either way, our life will just continue to move forward,” said Kushner.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Kushner is done with politics or wouldn’t join Trump’s team in the case of a win.

In early October, journalist Michael Tracey asked current Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick who was in charge of advising the transition team. Lutnick couldn’t name a soul—except for Kushner.

“Jared Kushner is a big help to me … he’s absolutely helping me,” said Lutnick.

While Kushner previously said he wasn’t looking to return to the White House, he was heavily involved in sabotaging the 2020 transition and played an integral role in the 2016 transition team, alongside Steve Bannon and Mike Pence.

As Rolling Stone explained, “Kushner may be trying to stay out of politics publicly, but he is one of the few remaining Trump loyalists with first-hand experience on a transition.”

In an administration obsessed with loyalty, blood (even through marriage) is thicker than water.