Former President Donald Trump will be holding rallies in Tempe, Arizona, and Las Vegas on Thursday. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris will be holding a rally Thursday night in the Atlanta suburbs with former President Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen.
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One of the nation’s most competitive gubernatorial races has also become intensely personal.
None of the nation’s 12 female governors are up for reelection, but five women are running as major party gubernatorial nominees in four states. Two of them are in New Hampshire, where Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig are competing to succeed Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who’s not seeking a fifth two-year term.
While voters and the candidates themselves say their gender is a nonissue in a state with a history of electing women to top offices, it has influenced their approaches to the topic of abortion and reproductive health care. Both candidates have produced television ads in which they describe having miscarriages after medical appointments during which no fetal heartbeats were detected.
▶ Read more about the New Hampshire governor’s race
The comment during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt came after Hewitt gave the Republican former president a chance to claim the moderate mantle in the closing days of the 2024 campaign, an opening Trump swiftly closed.
“You’re not a particularly conservative. You’re not as conservative as Ronald Reagan. And you’ve tried to make that point. You’re kind of a moderate Republican, aren’t you?” Hewitt asked.
“I’m very, very conservative,” Trump said. “Maybe more conservative than any human being that’s ever lived.”
One of the primary criticisms of Trump when he entered political life in 2015, especially from conservative Republicans, was that he wasn’t a true conservative. Trump had been a registered Democrat during portions of his business career in New York and received considerable coverage at the outset of his successful 2016 campaign for being a moderate Republican, something his primary opponents like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio used against him.
Speaking during a Thursday morning interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump called the vice president’s performance “an embarrassment.”
“I watched her charade story last night on CNN,” Trump said during the friendly interview. “It was an embarrassment that she was running for president, representing a major party.”
The town hall with CNN was meant to replace a second debate between Trump and Harris. After one debate with Harris, the former president declined to participate in another debate and did not accept CNN’s invitation for a town hall.
Harris used the forum to lambast Trump before an audience of undecided voters in Pennsylvania. She agreed — twice — that Trump was a fascist, echoing the criticism of Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, and said if Trump is elected again, he would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
Trump returned to the town hall later in the interview, saying Harris was “like a child almost.”
The last time Donald Trump ran for president, the lawyers most directly involved in his efforts to overturn the election wound up sanctioned, criminally prosecuted or even sued for millions of dollars.
This time around, Republican party leaders are working to present a more organized, skilled legal operation even as Trump continues to deny he lost the 2020 election and sows doubt about the integrity of the upcoming one.
“It has been very important to make sure that in every aspect, we are going to have a fully professional operation,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley told The Associated Press.
As Republicans and Democrats fight in court over election rules, the Trump team finds itself under a particularly intense microscope given the aftermath of the 2020 race when meritless legal efforts challenging the results were repeatedly rejected by judges appointed by presidents of both political parties.
▶ Read more about the Republican legal operation
His endorsement on Thursday marks another cross-party backing for the Democratic presidential nominee, who’s campaigned this week with Liz Cheney, the GOP former Wyoming congresswoman.
Both Upton and Cheney were among the House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Upton, who represented West Michigan and served in Congress for 36 years, said in a statement that Trump is “unfit to serve as commander in chief again.” Upton said he has already cast his ballot for Harris.
“Time and time again respected senior national Republicans have urged our former president to focus on governing rather than personal attacks, mistruths, and continued false 2020 election claims,” said Upton. “Instead of heeding that advice, we see unhinged behavior not acceptable in most forums almost daily.”