US presidential election updates: Trump's insults draw laughs at Catholic charity dinner as Harris appears from afar | US elections 2024

Donald Trump placed in it Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and sometimes bitter speech as he chaired the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York. The Republican candidate repeatedly criticized her Democratic rival for her decision to skip the event – a break with presidential election tradition as she prioritized the campaign in the swing state of Wisconsin over New York, a safe Democratic state. Harris recorded a video that played instead.

Trump questioned the mental fitness of Harris and the president. Joe Bidencommented the second gentleman Doug EmhoffDuring his previous marriage, he had an extramarital affair and joked about being transgender. The dinner was hosted by comedian Jim Gaffigan, who portrays the Democratic vice presidential candidate. Tim Waltzon Saturday Night Live.

Harrisin her pre-recorded remarks – which featured comedian and actress Molly Shannon, reprising her longtime Saturday Night Live character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic student – scoffed Trump for lying, a sin, about the results of the 2020 election and comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video was “like criticizing Detroit in Detroit.”

This is what else happened on Thursday:

Kamala Harris election news

• A poll has found Harris continues to lead Trump among likely black voters in battleground states. The poll, conducted Oct. 2-8 by Howard University's Initiative on Public Opinion, surveyed 981 likely black voters in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The results show that 84% of respondents said they planned to vote for vice president, while just 8% said they would support Trump for president in November, and another 8% remained undecided.

• With three weeks left, Harris is spending most of his time trying to build support in the blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin as she tries to avoid a repeat of Hillary Clinton's collapse eight years ago. Her schedule reflects the Democratic nominee's focus on her most likely path to victory over Trump. Harris visited Milwaukee on Thursday and sought support from college-age voters. She took a business class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and held a student rally at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. She concluded the day with a rally in Green Bay.

• The Democratic governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin embarked on a hastily organized bus tour this week, She is rolling through the fall landscape to highlight the urgency of the case for Harris in must-win states where some Democrats fear she is struggling. Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro and Tony Evers arrived in Flint on Thursday afternoon along with National Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison.

• Harris and Walz will go to church on Sunday in the battleground states of Georgia and Michigan. Harris will also sit down for an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton that will air Sunday night on his MSNBC show, according to a Harris campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss schedule details that have not yet been officially announced .

News about the Donald Trump election

• Donald Trump's transition team is reportedly preparing a blacklist of potential officials to be excluded from a future administrationwith a particular focus on those with ties to the radical Project 2025 to transform the U.S. government. According to Politico, the former president's eldest son, Donald Jr., is leading the effort to create a list of banned employees, citing a former official in the first Trump administration.

• Trump was accompanied at the Al Smith event by his wife Melania, a rare presence on the campaign trail. The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic Charities and traditionally offers candidates from both parties a chance to exchange light-hearted remarks, poke fun at themselves and show they get along for an evening – or at least they do can do the final stage of the election.

• Gaffigan referred to allegations that the Trump Organization discriminated against black tenants in its buildings in the 1970s. “If Vice President Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, but a black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Of course you wouldn’t rent to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug signed it.”

• Elsewhere in the campaign, a Nevada man was arrested with weapons at a security checkpoint outside a Trump rally in the Southern California desert has filed a lawsuit accusing the sheriff of falsely characterizing his arrest as a foiled assassination attempt for the sheriff's personal gain.

• Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance falsely told a reporter on Wednesday that there were “serious problems” in the 2020 election and suggested that then-President Donald Trump didn't actually lose the race. “Did Donald Trump lose the election? Not in the words I would use,” Vance said in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “But look, I don’t give a damn whether you agree with me on this issue or not.”

More election news:

• Democratic US Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Republican challenger Sam Brown They described each other as extremists on Thursday evening in the contested presidential state, where the election could decide control of the White House and Senate. The election pits Rosen, a first-term senator who is seen as a political consensus builder, against Brown, a retired Army captain who bears scars from battlefield injuries and is supported by Trump.

• Senior Democrats in US cities are preparing to defend their communities in the event of Donald Trump's return to the White House after the former president repeatedly threatened that he would use presidential powers to seize control of major urban centers. Trump has proposed deploying the military in major cities largely run by Democrats to crack down on protesters or break up criminal gangs. He has threatened to send in large numbers of federal immigration agents to carry out mass deportations of undocumented people.

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