Trump looks to carry debate momentum into a critical stretch before GOP convention
CNN
As nerves grew in the lead-up to the first general election debate of the cycle, some close to Donald Trump considered whether the former president might announce his running mate from the stage or shortly thereafter, should the evening take an unfavorable turn.
As nerves grew in the lead-up to the first general election debate of the cycle, some close to Donald Trump considered whether the former president might announce his running mate from the stage or shortly thereafter, should the evening take an unfavorable turn. The wild-card scenario was one of several ideas for post-debate distractions batted around by Trump allies still rattled from the Republican’s uncontrolled first debate appearance in 2020. But that card would ultimately be left in the deck. Rather than managing fallout over Trump’s performance at Thursday’s event, the former president and his team now face an unexpected challenge: keeping the attention on President Joe Biden while navigating a busy sprint to next month’s Republican National Convention, a time during which Trump will be sentenced for his felony convictions and must pick a running mate. The confidence-shattering struggles of the 81-year-old incumbent have swallowed up the post-debate discourse, and the Democratic hand-wringing over the presumptive nominee’s capacity to fight on threatens to overshadow Biden’s campaign for the foreseeable future. Taking a victory lap from a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, on Friday, Trump called Biden “grossly incompetent” while poking fun at the president’s weeklong debate prep at Camp David. “He studied so hard that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. Behind the scenes, Trump’s advisers are plotting how best to wield Biden’s underwhelming display to maximum effect in hopes of shifting momentum in a race unmoved for months by external forces. Asked whether clips of Biden from Thursday night would make their way into upcoming ads, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita told Fox News: “Duh.”
A California woman told police that Trump Cabinet pick Pete Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” a police report obtained by CNN shows.
For more than a decade, Chinese students have flocked to the United States, drawn by the prestige of an overseas education and the glamor of the American Dream. But that’s changing now – and recent statistics suggest the allure may be wearing off.
After rarely being seen in public in the two weeks since he delivered a brief, 46-second victory speech on election night, JD Vance reemerged this week to play one of the most important roles he will be expected to fill as Donald Trump’s No. 2: His point person on Capitol Hill.
A Florida man was arrested Wednesday and charged in a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange this week, according to the FBI.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.