Trump news: President says Bahamas full of 'bad gang members', as official threatens to fire NOAA employees over Hurricane Dorian claims
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Your support makes all the difference.Donald Trump is campaigning in North Carolina on Monday in support of Republican Mark Harris, who faces a strong challenge in a special election in a district that the president carried overwhelmingly in 2016.
During an impromptu press conference before boarding his plane to that state, Mr Trump shocked reports by telling them that he is hesitant to allow Bahamians to enter the US after Hurricane Dorian because the island is full of "bad gang members". Also during that press conference, the president repeatedly said that Barack Obama had given him a present by leaving judicial vacancies, and repeatedly insisted that pundits had misanalysed the 2018 election results — in which Republicans lost control of the House — because his party had retained control of the Senate in an election year that favoured the GOP.
Speaking of Hurricane Dorian, Mr Trump's use of a sharpie to modify a hurricane projection map has kept in the news, with reports indicating that employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been threatened by the Commerce Department if they contradicted the commander-in-chief when he claimed that the storm was set to smash into Alabama.
As Mr Trump returns to campaign mode once again, the president has also faced a burgeoning field of Republican challengers to him in 2020, prompting him to declare that he would not join a debate stage with any of them.
Mr Trump also engaged in a fight with Chrissy Teigen and her husband, John Legend, who called the president a "p**** a** b****".
And, Mr Trump has also been accused of treating foreign policy "like a gameshow", after talks with the Taliban broke down before they even started at Camp David.
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Speaking of the campaign trail, here's Joe Biden's latest Freudian slip.
Like that? How about 2020 universal basic income candidate Andrew Yang crowd-surfing?
Having less fun is California senator Kamala Harris, who finds herself under attack for laughing at a voter's suggestion during a campaign rally the president is "mentally retarded".
She has since apologised.
Greg Evans has more.
Trump is up early this morning and instantly going after newly-declared rival Mark Sanford in fairly brutal fashion.
Has he misspelt "Flamenco" there??
He is also touting his support for senator Dan Bishop in North Carolina, calling for longer terms for GOP committee chairs and inflating his own popularity yet again.
Sigh. It's going to be a long week.
Trump's reference to a "Flaming Dancer" back there - he appears to think Flamenco is called "Flamingo" AND spelt it wrong - is to Sanford's affair with one Maria Belen Chapur, an Argentine journalist.
The story goes that Sanford disappeared from the South Carolina governor's office between 18-24 June 2009 only for it to emerge that he had been in Buenos Aires with Chapur, with whom he had become romantically involved after first meeting in 2001 and since seperating from his wife earlier that summer.
Forced to explain those six days of absence, Sanford claimed he was "hiking the Appalachian Trail", which quickly became a tongue-in-cheek euphemism among followers of the national game.
For Trump to go after someone on marital infidelity grounds after the Stormy Daniels affair, not to mention his track-record of accumlating sexual harrassment allegations, is mighty rich indeed.
Tom Embury-Dennis has more.
Chinese national Yujing Zhang, who walked into Mar-a-Lago with "multiple electronic devices" unimpeded in April and created a major security scare for the Secret Service, is going on trial in Florida this week.
Here's a reminder of the case.
We've already seen some dirty tricks from Trump this morning in his attack on Sanford so here's Andrew Buncombe on a scurrilous American tradition.
Trump's rally in North Carolina this evening will serve as a measure of his clout in trying to elect a Republican to the House in a closely watched special election that's seen as a toss-up race.
It will be his first campaign rally since a tough end of summer that saw slipping poll numbers, warning signs of an economic slowdown and a running battle over hurricane forecasts.
Trump will visit the state on Monday night on the eve of the House election. He enjoys wide popularity within his own party, but a GOP defeat in a red-leaning state could, when combined with a wave of recent bad headlines, portend trouble for his reelection campaign.
The rally may also pose a different sort of test: It will be held just over a 100 miles from the site of a Trump rally in July where "send her back" chants aimed at Somalia-born American congresswoman Ilhan Omar rattled the Republican Party and seemed to presage an ugly reelection campaign.
Trump's appearance on Monday on behalf of Republican Dan Bishop is shaping up as a test of the president's pull with voters. The special election could offer clues about the mindset of Republicans in the suburbs, whose flight from the party fueled the GOP's 2018 House election losses.
The House district flows eastward from the prosperous Charlotte suburbs into rural areas hugging the South Carolina border. State officials invalidated last November's election following allegations of voter fraud by a GOP operative.
The district has been held by the GOP since 1963. In 2016, Trump won the district by 11 percentage points. Should Bishop defeat Democrat Dan McCready, it could let Trump assert that he pulled Bishop over the top. If McCready prevails or Bishop wins by a whisker, it will suggest GOP erosion and raise questions about Trump's and his party's viability for 2020.
"This will tell us if Trump can carry candidates through suburban districts or not," said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which represents moderate Republicans. If not, she said, the GOP must "work harder to address the concerns of suburban individuals, mainly women."
While the stakes for the House are high, Trump's trademark rallies inevitably become more about him than the local candidate, as he uses the stage to settle political scores, sharpen attacks and take on perceived foes. After a light rally schedule of late, the president will have plenty of new material to work with.
Chief among them are the White House's worries about the impact an economic downturn could have on a president who has made a strong economy his central argument for a second term. Trump advisers worry that moderate Republican and independent voters who have been willing to give him a pass on some his incendiary policies and rhetoric would blame him - and, in particular, his trade war with China - for slowing down the economy.
Trump has increasingly turned to culture-war issues to rev up his core supporters. He's leveled harsh criticism at majority African American cities, like Baltimore, and delivered repeated broadsides against four liberal Democratic congresswomen of colour.
Those attacks have been cheered by Trump's advisers, who are bullish on running a campaign critical of Democrats they cast as socialist and unpatriotic. But they went too far for many Republicans, who recoiled when the crowd at a Trump rally in Greenville, North Carolina, in July erupted into a "send her back" chant about Representative Omar of Minnesota.
In the hours before the rally, Trump is expected to visit coastal North Carolina to inspect the damage left by Hurricane Dorian. He considerable effort over the last defending his erroneous claim that Alabama was likely face significant impact from the storm.
McCready has not had any public events in the district with Democratic presidential hopefuls, appearances that might not help him in the moderate area as those candidates jostle to appeal to liberal voters. But former vice president Joe Biden and senator Elizabeth Warren, two rival candidates, have emailed fundraising solicitations on his behalf. Meanwhile, veep Mike Pence will also campaign in the district on Monday for the Republican.
Democrats captured 39 GOP-held House districts in the 2018 midterm elections, more than enough to give them majority control of the chamber. Much of that turnover occurred in suburbs, largely in Democratic strongholds like California and New Jersey but also in red-leaning communities near places like Dallas, Oklahoma City and Atlanta. GOP alarm bells have been ringing about the suburbs ever since.
AP
One of Trump's favourite Fox hosts, Lou Dobbs, is going after his campaign manager here in fairly abrupt style over his "political dynasty" comment.
The Trump campaign is reportedly working on a new social media app in a bid to keep supporters donating, volunteering and recruiting, Politico reports.
"Supporters who download the all-in-one app are expected to be able to sign up for a Make America Great Again rally, canvas a neighborhood or call voters, maybe even register to vote as the campaign looks to turn passive supporters into activists," writes Anita Kumar.
The app will report offer users prizes, including VIP rally tickets or the chance to get a photo with the president.
The campaign is understood to have already acquired 200m voter files from the Republican National Committee and is spending millions on digital adverts, texts and rally attendee RSVPs to collect data on potential supporters.
“This is how Donald Trump stays president for four more years,” the aforementioned Parscale told a rally last year, brandishing his iPhone. "Now this phone is how we connect with you. It’s how we turn you into the army of Trump.“
Both Trump and Hillary Clinton attempted to launch apps in 2016 but were widely thought to have been too slow on the mark to make it count. His America First app only attracted about 120,000 subscribers.
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