Melania joins her husband at Al Smith dinner where Trump takes jabs at Harris and his ‘persecution’: Live
Donald Trump spoke at Al Smith charity dinner with Melania making rare appearance by his side as Kamala Harris skipped the event in favor of the campaign trail
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Donald and Melania Trump made a rare public appearance together at Thursday night’s Al Smith charity dinner in New York City.
Trump gave the dinner’s keynote address, making jabs about his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, Melania’s latest memoir and even his own legal woes.
“But I must say, I was shocked when I heard that Kamala was skipping the Al Smith dinner,” Trump said. “I’d really hoped that she would come, because we can’t get enough of hearing her beautiful laugh. She laughs like crazy. We would recognize it any place in this room.”
He also addressed Mayor Eric Adams’s recent legal scandal.
“Mayor Adams, I like to poke some fun at Eric, but I’m going to be nice,” Trump said. “I just want to be nice because I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders.
“We were persecuted, Eric, I was persecuted, and so are you.”
While Harris did not attend — making her the first presidential candidate in decades to do so — she sent in a pre-recorded video featuring comedian Molly Shannon playing her iconic “Superstar” character, Mary Katherine Gallagher.
Melania and Donald are all smiles as they make rare public outing together at Al Smith dinner in NYC
JD Vance claims his mother obtained health insurance under Trump. She used Obamacare
Harris’s Fox interview starts off with fireworks as she gets into heated exchange over border security
Trump defends lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets claiming he was just ‘saying what was reported’
Trump has repeatedly demonized early voting. Republicans in Georgia are doing it anyway
Full story: Jimmy Carter casts his 2024 ballot by mail
Jimmy Carter cast his ballot in the 2024 election Wednesday.
The former president voted by mail, the Carter Center confirmed in a statement. It happened barely two weeks after Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on Oct. 1 at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he’s been living in hospice care.
His son Chip Carter said before the family gathering that his father had this election very much in mind.
“He’s plugged in,” Chip Carter told The Associated Press. “I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris.’”
The Carter Center’s brief statement said it had no more details to share.
Georgia’s registered voters have been turning out in record numbers since early voting began Monday. Nearly 460,000 had voted in-person or cast absentee ballots by Tuesday afternoon, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said.
Carter’s vote should count even if he’s no longer alive by Election Day on Nov. 5.
Robert Sinners, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, noted that Georgia election rules state that when an absentee ballot is received by local election officials “it shall be deemed to have been voted then and there.”
Full story: Trump-appointed judge blocks Alabama’s mass voter purge
A federal judge in Alabama has blocked the state from implementing a mass purge of voter registrations just weeks before Election Day, landing a major blow to Republican-led challenges to voter eligiblity.
A preliminary injunction — issued on Wednesday by Donald Trump-appointed Judge Anna Manasco — arrived days after the Department of Justice and civil rights groups filed lawsuits to stop the state from stripping voter registrations for more than 3,200 people.
Alabama’s Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen claimed that those voters were “issued noncitizen identification numbers,” and are therefore ineligible to cast a ballot.
But the lawsuits uncovered that voting-eligible citizens also ended up on that list...
Andrew Woodward explains how this fits in with wider attempts at voter suppression.
Trump-appointed judge blocks Alabama’s mass voter purge
Legal battles over threats to voter eligibility are playing out across the US as Trump baselessly alleges noncitizens are illegally voting
Fani Willis asks court to reinstate six charges against Trump in Fulton County case
Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis is asking a Georgia appeals court to reinstate six charges against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in the sprawling Georgia 2020 election interference case. This includes three charges against Trump himself.
Watch: Sen Markwayne Mullin pushed on Trump’s ‘enemy within’ comments
ICYMI: Trump says ‘only stupid people put old’ people in top federal roles — he’s 78
Donald Trump has said “only stupid people put old” people in positions on the Supreme Court – seemingly forgetting that he’s a 78-year-old man running for the top position in the executive branch.
Trump made the remarks during an interview with Bloomberg while in Chicago on Tuesday.
Alex Lang has the story.
Trump, 78, says ‘only stupid people put old’ people in top federal roles
Trump is currently the oldest nominee for president in US history and, if elected in November, will be 82 years old when he completes his term
Watch: Latino Republican asks Trump if he really believes that Haitian immigrants are eating pets
At the Univision town hall he taped in Florida this afternoon, Donald Trump was asked at whether he really believes Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
The former president refused to admit he falsely accused people of eating the dogs and cats of Ohio:
I was just saying what was reported, that’s been reported, and eating other things, too, that they’re not supposed to be. But this is— all I do is report. I have not— I was there, I’m going to be there, and we’re going to take a look, and I’ll give you a full report when I do, but that’s been in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.
Trump then said they were “eating other things too that they’re not supposed to be”.
‘Exhausted’ Trump is slurring his words and ‘becoming more erratic by the day’, warns 'Morning Joe’
While discussing former president Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania town hall on Tuesday, which consisted of him dancing on stage for 39 minutes instead of answering questions, panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe said the event was a sign of Trump’s advanced age.
Speaking with the show’s co-host Willie Geist, Joe Scarborough said Trump was “slurring so many words... Even in his speech last night, I think it was ‘insurrection,’ just slurring through words.
Michelle Del Rey and Greg Evans report.
‘Morning Joe’ warns that Trump is ‘becoming more erratic by the day’
‘I know people get exhausted in a long campaign and I think that we are really seeing signs of a 78-year-old man who obviously has been through a trial, been through an attempted assassination, going through the rigors of this campaign’
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