Tag Archive for: Kamala Harris

‘Criminally Liable’: Springfield Residents Know Exactly Who To Blame For Migrant Crisis Hitting Their Town

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SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Residents of a southwestern, suburban Ohio town did not hesitate to blame the Biden-Harris administration and officials all the way down to City Hall for their community’s ongoing migrant crisis.

The people living in Springfield, Ohio, have been subject to extensive national media attention after salacious allegations of Haitian migrants eating pet animals went viral. While locals who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation in Springfield this week say they have not witnessed such acts taking place, they do say there is a serious migrant crisis in their community, and they are faulting a slate of political leaders for their woes.

The enormous wave of media attention on Springfield began several days ago when a local social media post claimed a pet cat was found hanging on a tree branch near a Haitian immigrant’s house, and being butchered for consumption. Allegations of Haitians eating pet animals was further amplified when President Donald Trump mentioned the situation during the presidential debate on Tuesday.

While a recording of a phone call to police about Haitians in the town allegedly carrying dead geese has surfaced, Springfield police did issue a statement that they have received no reports of pet animals being eaten. Locals who spoke with the DCNF said they have not witnessed anyone eating pet dogs or cats, but they were quick to say that the arrival of roughly 20,000 Haitian nationals in a few short years has created logistical nightmares for a town of just under 60,000 residents.

‘No Rhyme Or Reason’

“They opened up our borders and are flying them here,” Daryl Summers, a local of Springfield, said of the Biden-Harris administration and his belief that the White House is largely to blame for the crisis his town is experiencing.

Summers noted media reports of around 20,000 Haitians in the town, but he says he personally believes the real number to be substantially higher. He also said he is working on forming a group with other locals to help make sure vulnerable individuals feel more safe when they are out in public.

A local woman who spoke to the DCNF said she now, as a matter of policy, never goes out into the local grocery store without her husband, and she wished not to be identified for fear of any retribution for speaking out about Springfield’s problems.

“What’s going on in our town is being allowed and I think it’s from the governor on down, and I think there’s money involved,” the woman stated. “There’s no rhyme or reason for all this to be happening and for all these people to be brought here without any infrastructure put in place to help them.”

“I believe the [Haitian migrants] are being used just like the citizens are being used,” she continued.

Another resident was more direct in naming who in the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for Springfield’s woes.

“Obviously Biden, Mayorkas and Harris,” Mark Sanders told the DCNF, referring to President Joe Biden, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The border is wide open,” Sanders continued. “Many of the executive orders that were in place when [Biden] took his oath he undid within hours, so he swung the doors open. He created the pathway.”

City Stonewalling

The DCNF first reached out to Springfield’s city manager and the city commissioners on Tuesday via email in order to get answers on the town’s current crisis, but none of them have personally responded, nor have any other public representatives followed up, despite pledges to do so.

“I am responding on behalf of Commissioner Estrop,” Regina Jeffers, the clerk of the city commission, wrote in response to a DCNF media inquiry for City Commissioner David Estrop. “All media requests are being funneled through our Strategic Engagement Manager Karen Graves. I have copied her in this email to provide the statement being issued.”

When asked when exactly Graves would have an opportunity to get in touch, Jeffers said she would “respond as she is able.” However, after several days, there has yet to be a response.

A similar situation occurred when the DCNF attempted to speak to a public representative for the Springfield Police Department. When asked over the phone if the police could confirm whether there has been an uptick in car crashes, an employee again directed the DCNF to Karen Graves.

A follow-up email to Graves about car wreck statistics in the city also went unanswered.

The DCNF visited City Hall in an attempt to find answers in person on Wednesday. However, no elected officials appeared to be present in the building, except for one city employee who wished not to be identified. That individual took the DCNF’s contact information and promised someone would be getting in touch.

The DCNF has not heard back since that visit to City Hall.

“Because they’re guilty of things!” Barron Seelig, a local pastor and longtime community activist for the homeless, told the DCNF on Friday when asked about lack of communication from city leaders. “At this point, I think they are criminally liable.”

‘Taking The Jobs And The Houses’

Seelig and numerous other locals who spoke to the DCNF said transportation and economic issues have followed the steep rise in immigration, with housing growing scarce and claims of repeated wrecks — allegedly by Haitian drivers with no licenses.

The local pastor also said the migrant influx has also resulted in economic consequences, affecting him personally.

“I was let go from a company in October,” he said. “They eliminated my position and that company was actively hiring Haitians for temporary services.”

“Haitians are taking the jobs and the houses here,” Seelig continued.

Despite his situation, he says he has absolutely no ill will toward those trying to make a better life and wants to see them thrive — pointing to how he has dedicated his life to helping the homeless in Springfield and serving as a pastor. The argument he made is that a town of fewer than 60,000 simply can’t take in that many migrants in a short amount of time.

He says this outlook has caused racist actors who are not local to the town to call him a “race traitor.” Those individuals, known as Blood Tribe, have been used by others to claim that criticism of the migrant situation to be racist in nature.

After losing his job, Seelig now operates his own business, Mr. Barron’s Super Sandwich, which cooks gourmet soups and sandwiches, and caters big events. The pastor says the mobile food business is now his “sole source of income.”

Local Leaders Call For Aid

Before Springfield became nationally known, City Manager Bryan Heck had appealed to the federal government for help on the fledgling housing crisis. The city manager sent a letter to Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina, asking the lawmakers for assistance.

“The City of Springfield, Ohio is facing a significant housing crisis in our community,” Heck wrote. “Many factors have played in to where we are today, but without significant support at the Federal level, I believe, that the situation and the need for housing in our community will become much worse.”

The rise in rental prices appears to reflect a crunch in housing availability.

The median rental price in Springfield spiked by nearly 44% in September compared to 2023, according to the latest Zillow data. The town’s median rental price was $900 in September 2024, but has since skyrocketed to $1,295, marking a sharp increase as Haitian migrants have chosen to take residence there.

While local government leaders haven’t appeared to present a specific plan of action, Republican officials at the state level have pledged to assist.

Although he made clear that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) that’s given to Haitian nationals in the U.S., GOP Gov. DeWine announced that he would be supporting Springfield with $2.5 million to help alleviate financial pressures the town is facing. Additionally, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced that his office is investigating how to stop the Biden-Harris administration from continuing to settle the migrants into the state.

There have been local elected officials placing blame on the federal government.

During a Clark County Commissioners meeting in July, Commissioner Sasha L. Rittenhouse said that while the local government hears complaints of the Haitian migrant situation, these complaints need to also be directed at Washington, D.C. While everyone sees what’s going on, the “people allowing this to happen are in” the nation’s capital, Rittenhouse said according to county meeting minutes.

In the meantime, Springfield residents like Sanders say the only place where real change can happen is at the ballot box.

“Every town is a border town,” Sanders told the DCNF. “If that’s what you want, then that’s how you should vote in November.”

“The only way we can fix what’s obviously broken is to get the people out of office who’ve been there in the last three-and-a-half years who’ve turned this country upside down,” Sanders warned.

AUTHOR

Jason Hopkins

Immigration reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Send Help’: Ohio Town Grapples With Car Crashes, Housing Crisis And National Attention Amid Migrant Influx

Biden Admin Preparing Deportation Protection For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Haitians In The US

KJP Says Reports Of Haitians Eating Pets In Springfield Are Putting People’s ‘Lives In Danger’

Poorest Neighborhoods Forced to Bear the Brunt of Harris/Biden Migrant Crisis, Confidential Docs Reveal

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

EXCLUSIVE: Tim Walz Appointed Member Of Political Party ‘loyal’ To Chinese Communists To State Board

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, appointed a member of a political faction that has pledged loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to a state board that advises the government on Asian-American affairs, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.

Walz first appointed Chang Wang, a Minnesota-based attorney, to the Council On Asian Pacific Minnesotans in May 2020. Wang now serves as the “interim chair” of the Council On Asian Pacific Minnesotans, which advises the governor, legislature and other state agencies by promoting the “economic, social, legal and political equality of Asian Pacific Minnesotans,” according to its website. Wang’s term is up in January 2025.

The council spent more than half a million dollars of taxpayer funding in 2023, according to its annual report.

But for over a decade, Wang has also been affiliated with the China Association For Promoting Democracy (CAPD), the DCNF found through a review of Chinese government announcements, archived University of Minnesota records and Chinese-language publications written by Wang himself.

CAPD is one of the handful of alternative Chinese political parties allowed to operate in the communist nation. Like China’s other minor parties, CAPD is “loyal” to the CCP and continues “to function within the structure of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC),” which is the country’s top political advisory body, according to the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.

CAPD is allowed to operate in China based upon their organization’s stated promise to “rally closely around” the CCP’s Central Committee and play a role as advisors and assistants to the CCP, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

Since joining the Minnesota state council, records show that Wang has been recognized by the Chinese government on multiple occasions, including granting him a title and even accepting a policy research proposal he submitted.

“My elderly parents are my only ties to China,” Wang told the DCNF by email, when asked about his relationship with CAPD. Wang’s profile on the University of Minnesota’s website does not currently mention his CAPD affiliation, though an archived version does.

Wang previously told the outlet China Insight his parents were “senior scientists” at “Academia Sinica,” which is the historic name for the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). CAS reports directly to China’s State Council, with “much of its work contributing to products for military use,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense.

CAS is a “privileged institution” that’s “tightly monitored” by the CCP, said Steve Yates, China Policy Initiative chair at the America First Policy Institute and former Chinese language analyst for the National Security Agency.

“For someone to have two parents in that entity, it basically is the equivalent of being not just a made man, but a made family,” Yates told the DCNF.

Wang has also previously said he works as a senior associate professor of law at the Beijing-based China University of Political Science and Law, whose website still lists him as faculty.

Neither Walz’s office nor the Harris-Walz campaign responded to multiple requests for comment.

Walz’s close relationship with China and its political mechanisms have come under intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, like Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who recently sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting information pertaining to “any Chinese entity or individual with whom Mr. Walz may have engaged or partnered.”

Walz has traveled to China approximately 30 times and even worked for Macau Polytechnic University while serving in Congress, Comer’s letter says. Media reports have also dug up past comments from Walz where he appears to lavish praise on Chinese communism — for instance, Walz reportedly told high school students in 1991 that communism “means that everyone is the same and everyone shares.”

More recently, the DCNF reported that Walz has attended numerous events organized by members of a Minnesota nonprofit affiliated with a CCP influence and intelligence agency. Among other examples, members of the nonprofit and related organizations held a fundraiser for Walz’s gubernatorial reelection in 2022, the DCNF found.

“You would think that there would be some screening,” Yates said of Walz’s appointment of Wang.

“Of what possible value-add is someone with ties to that entity in China to the citizens of the United States or to Minnesota, and why would a governor with a generation of experience coming and going to the People’s Republic of China want someone from that world having privileged access to advise leaders in Minnesota on any issue?” Yates told the DCNF.

‘Not Really About Democracy’

While the word “democracy” appears in its name, CAPD describes itself as “a political party that accepts the leadership of the CCP and cooperates with the CCP as a participant in socialism with Chinese characteristics.” CAPD also says its members are mainly intellectuals working in academia, science, media and related fields.

“When you are engaging entities from communist countries that have the word ‘democracy’ in them, you have a near 100% chance that they’re not really about democracy,” Yates told the DCNF. “You’re talking about organizations that are meant to interact with people and groups in the Free World on behalf of the ultimate authority in the PRC: the CCP.”

John Dotson, deputy director of the Global Taiwan Institute, told the DCNF that CAPD is “one of what the CCP calls the ‘eight democratic parties’ that operate alongside the ruling CCP, in the effort to provide a veneer of pluralism to the [Chinese] system.”

“Anyone who is a member of one of the ‘eight democratic parties’ should be understood as a CCP member, subject to Party directives, etcetera,” said Dotson, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer.

The DCNF determined Wang’s CAPD membership through a review of multiple archived English and Chinese-language profiles.

For instance, an archived version of Wang’s 2022 bio on the University of Minnesota’s China Center website identified him as “one of the twenty-five members serving on the Central Civil and Judiciary Committee of China Association For Promoting Democracy, the third largest political party in mainland China.”

At some point between January and July 2023, Wang’s membership in the Chinese political party was removed from his China Center bio.

The China Center did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

CAPD’s Chinese-language website still names Wang as a member of its Central Civil and Judiciary Committee, and also identifies Wang as a professor of the Institute of Comparative Law at China University of Political Science and Law.

Wang is currently listed as faculty on the website of China University of Political Science and Law and his position at the school is noted in several online bios, including his Barnes & Noble author bio, as well as in a 2019 interview on his law firm’s website.

Wang also taught at São Paulo Law School in Brazil, where his online bio says “[s]ince 2007, he has been a member of Central Civil and Judiciary Committee of China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD), the fourth largest political party in China.” Wang’s affiliation with the Brazilian law school are noted in social media posts from China University of Political Science and Law.

Indeed, Wang’s current bio on the University of Minnesota’s website states he “holds adjunct and visiting professorships at law schools and business schools in the U.S., China, Austria, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, and Brazil.” The bio, however, does not specify any particular schools with which he is associated.

‘National Advanced Information Worker’

The Chinese government has recognized Wang’s contributions on at least two occasions, the DCNF found.

CAPD awarded Wang the title “National Advanced Information Worker For Reflecting Societal Sentiments And The People’s Opinion” in November 2021 — more than a year after Walz first appointed Wang to the state Asian American affairs council in May 2020.

The list of award recipients appears to have been drafted in December 2020, but officially announced in 2021, according to a review of CAPD’s website.

CAPD created the award in order to commend “outstanding achievements and contributions” related to a 2021 CCP Central Committee memo directing China’s eight “democratic parties” to expand their implementation of “Xi Jinping Thought On Socialism With Chinese Characteristics For A New Era.”

The U.S. Department of Defense describes “Xi Jinping Thought” as the Chinese dictator’s “namesake ideology.”

In July 2021, the Chinese government’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced the selection of Wang’s legal research proposal on international cybercrime as a research project to underwrite. The announcement lists Wang by his CAPD membership and his faculty position at China University Of Political Science And Law.

The Supreme People’s Procuratorate offers selected research projects an approximately $7,000 Chinese government subsidy, the department’s website states.

The Procuratorate is responsible for legal supervision and prosecution in China, according to the Chinese government.

“What this entity in China does has some functions that touch upon the prosecution of people inside the Chinese system, and oversight of what would be rule-of-law type issues generally,” Yates told the DCNF.

Wang did not respond to the DCNF’s questions about the Procuratorate accepting his research proposal or the apparent award that went along with it.

‘Adjuncts Of The CCP’

In addition to cooperating with the CCP, CAPD also has several other Chinese government affiliations, such as serving as a “member of the patriotic United Front,” according to its website.

The United Front is a “unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations” that the CCP uses to “shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward [China] and to gain access to advanced foreign technology,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

CAPD members also serve as delegates to another Chinese government United Front agency called the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), according to the CPPCC’s website. The CPPCC’s English-language charter states its delegates must “uphold the leadership” of the CCP “and the socialist cause,” “take advantage of the CPPCC as a United Front organization,” and “keep state secrets.”

“In reality, these eight nominal political parties are simply adjuncts of the CCP, and serve as window dressing in fora such as the CPPCC,” Dotson said.

China expert and author Gordon Chang told the DCNF that Walz’s travels through China and his history associating with CCP-tied individuals raises the question of why the governor appointed a member of a CCP-approved political party to serve in Minnesota’s executive branch.

“Walz appointing a Chinese Communist stooge doesn’t automatically make him a Chinese Communist supporter,” Chang said, “but who other than a Chinese Communist supporter would do that?”

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Dem Rep Once Praised High-Ranking Chinese Communist’s ‘Leadership,’ Unearthed Footage Shows

RELATED INFOGRAPHIC: Chinese-owned land near U.S. military bases in America.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘He Spoke Facts’: Some Key Swing-State Voters On Corporate Media Panels Praise Trump, Criticize Harris

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Some Pennsylvania voters on CNN and CBS News panels praised former President Donald Trump’s Tuesday debate performance while criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris and Trump went head-to-head in their first debate on ABC News, with the race still neck-and-neck. While most voters on the corporate media panels in the crucial commonwealth leaned toward Harris post-debate, two individuals from each segment explained their support for Trump.

WATCH: PENNSYLVANIA VOTERS: Praised Trump and Criticized Harris, ‘He Spoke Facts’

“He spoke facts. She just basically repeated everything that Biden has said in the past,” a female voter, who said Trump won the debate, asserted on CBS.

“Donald Trump made a strong closing statement by saying, ‘Why didn’t they do all of the things she’s proposing during the three-and-a-half years that they were in office?’ And Biden did this entire moderate stance back in 2020. And she’s trying to do it again in 2024,” said a male voter on the panel, who also asserted Trump won the debate. “But she didn’t talk about her policy changes between 2020 and 2024. Her whole centrist moderate stance is just a façade.”

WATCH: 

ABC News debate moderator Linsey Davis provided Harris an opportunity to address her numerous policy changes, but the vice president instead used her time to discuss her “values” rather than explaining her shifting stances.

The male voter later commended Trump for trying to discuss illegal immigration while alleging Harris “deflected” instead of  addressing the issue.

WATCH:

A female voter featured on the CNN panel who was undecided before the debate and now believes Trump won the face-off said she was unsure of whether she can trust Harris’ assertions that she can solve the issues that Americans have experienced during her administration.

“I think it’s important to remember that we are voting for the leader of our country and not who we like the most or who we want in our wedding party, but who is actually going to make our country better. And we’re in an incredibly unique situation where we’ve had both of the candidates in office before, and we’ve gotten to see what they would do and when facts come to facts, my life was better when Trump was in office,” she said. “The economy was higher, inflation was lower, things were better overall. And now with Kamala’s administration, things haven’t been so fantastic. And she’s saying she can fix the problems that her administration has caused, but I just don’t know if I can afford to take that risk.”

A male military veteran on the panel who is still undecided after the debate, but also asserted he thinks Trump came out on top explained why he appreciated the former president’s answer on the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.

“When I first heard that we were abandoning or we were withdrawing from Afghanistan and the way it was happening, I had my Kennedy moment. It was very similar to when we decided to invade Iraq back under President Bush,” he said. “And when I saw that we were leaving, that amount of high tech equipment in the hands of our enemy, and later that that day or later that week, I saw on the news where them celebrating with our guns in their hands. I realized what a travesty that was … in the loss of money in that we abandoned when we left. Plus the very bullets that we left there that they were shooting at us as we flew away in the plane.”

AUTHOR

Jason Cohen

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Kamala Harris Used To Think Border Wall Was ‘Un-American.’ Now She Supports It.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

EXCLUSIVE: Heritage Launches Personal Inflation Calculator Any American Can Use After Debate Night

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The Heritage Foundation launched an inflation calculator Monday to help Americans calculate how much prices have risen on their personal expenses, the Daily Caller learned first.

“Myinflation.com,” created by the Heritage Foundation, first asks Americans to pick which subregion of the country they live in before entering their monthly expenses, according to a preview of the website shared with the Daily Caller. Americans can then enter a variety of monthly expenses including their rent, mortgage, car payments and health costs, and the calculator will tell them how much more they are spending under the Biden-Harris administration compared to the Trump administration. 

“Why is the inflation calculator useful now? Because when you get this update from the government on the consumer price index, it’s an abstract number. Most people are seeing reports that inflation is coming down, and they’re not able to connect that to the cumulative change in prices that’s happened over the past four years,” Parker Sheppard, director of the center for data analysis at the Heritage Foundation, told the Caller.

“This is a tool that takes something that is in the abstract, it’s not as tangible when it’s in a percentage term, and it puts it in dollar figures, it lets people see something customized to exactly what they’re spending. It’s not the average bundle, which is what the CPI cost calculates. They can get something tailored specifically to their spending habits, instead of just how much extra it costs them to buy the same goods and services,” he added.

On the website, previewed by the Daily Caller, the Heritage Foundation explains that it created the tool to help Americans understand “just how much more the government has taken” from Americans through its reckless spending. The Heritage Foundation writes on its website that its users are seeing an increase in prices because “the government is spending and printing more money.”

The Heritage Foundation’s inflation calculator is going live the morning after the first presidential debate between Trump and Harris where economic policy — a top issue for voters — was touched on just once in the first 45 minutes of the debate.

More than a month into her presidential campaign, the vice president failed to unveil a full policy platform until Monday. Harris did discuss her economic platform ahead of the “issues” tab being added to her campaign website.

Harris touted her economic plan during her first and only sit-down interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

“Well, there are a number of things. I will tell you first and foremost one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class,” Harris began.

“Day one, it’s gonna be about one, implementing my plan for what I call an opportunity economy. I’ve already laid out a number of proposals in that regard, which include what we’re gonna do to bring down the cost of everyday goods, what we’re gonna do to invest in America’s small businesses, what we’re gonna do to invest in families,” the vice president continued after being further pushed by Bash.

Bash then followed up by asking Harris why she hadn’t implemented any of the economic policies she has introduced, despite being in office for the last three years.

“Well, first of all, we had to recover as an economy, and we have done that,” the vice president said.

“I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%, the work that we have done to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors. Donald Trump said he was going to do a number of things, including allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Never happened. We did it,” she continued.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

White House, Dems Abandon Promoting ‘Bidenomics’

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‘Squandered The Moment’: Washington Post Editorial Board Blasts Kamala Harris’s Economic Rollout As ‘Disappointment’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘Potential For Abuse’: Kamala’s Debate Prep With Lead Google Attorney Sets Off Alarm Bells With Gov’t Watchdogs

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The attorney helping Vice President Kamala Harris with debate preparation is also defending Google from the antitrust lawsuit brought by the Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ), which government transparency advocates say presents a conflict of interest.

Karen Dunn, who is helping Harris prepare for Tuesday’s debate against former President Donald Trump, gave the opening statement Monday during Google’s trial. While there is nothing explicitly preventing Dunn from taking on both roles, experts say the campaign’s decision to work with her should raise concern.

“Somebody in the Harris Campaign should google ‘conflict of interest,’” Protect the Public’s Trust Director Michael Chamberlain told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Imagine being a DOJ attorney, working on this case in good faith. Your potential future boss is entrusting her campaign to someone who is working for one of DOJ’s most formidable opponent litigants — against you. That’s disheartening.”

Chamberlain noted there is “tremendous potential for abuse with the overlap of the Vice President’s political world and an executive branch agency.”

“Relationships like these ignite howls of outrage when they involve other campaigns,” he said.

Dunn has helped Democratic candidates in every presidential election since 2008 prepare for debates, according to The New York Times.

Matt Stoller, director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, told the NYT that “you can’t serve both sides.”

“If these were legal cases, she would be ethically barred from doing what she’s doing,” Stoller said.

Stoller told the DCNF that there’s no formal ethics rule restricting Dunn because “the Harris campaign is a political campaign, not a lawsuit.”

While Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, told the DCNF he sees the “theoretical conflict,” he also explained that “helping with debate prep is a way of volunteering for a campaign.”

“Lots of people and organizations both volunteer for campaigns and provide financial backing to campaigns that have business before the federal government,” Painter said.

The Trump campaign called Harris out over the potential conflict in August.

“Kamala Harris will never stand up to Big Tech because she’s being coached on what to say in the debates by Google’s top lawyer,” Trump campaign senior adviser Tim Murtaugh told Fox News. “Think about how outrageous it is — their administration is suing Google, but Harris is taking political advice from the defendant’s lawyer.”

The debate between Harris and Trump, which will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday on ABC News.

The Harris campaign and Dunn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Harris Had Record Of Pushing Left-Wing Positions On Biggest Legal Issues As California AG

‘She’s On The Downswing’: Pollster Says Harris’s Effort To Rebrand Herself Has Failed To Gain Traction

‘Afraid To Have Her Speak’: Kellyanne Conway Claims Harris Squandered Her Chance To Change Her Image By ‘Hiding’

CNN Guest Says Harris Avoiding Interviews ‘Raised The Stakes’ For Debate

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Team Trump Turns To The Youngkin Playbook To Try And Flip Virginia Red

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President Joe Biden won Virginia by ten points in 2020, but the Trump campaign isn’t writing the state off in 2024.

In 2021, in a state that had decisively chosen a Democratic candidate for president, Glenn Youngkin ran a campaign that had even the White House concerned about former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s fate. While harping on education and culture issues, Youngkin ran an extensive get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort throughout the state of Virginia that stunned the nation.

At the end of August, polling from Roanoke College showed that Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have the big lead Biden captured in 2020 in Virginia. Instead, she’s holding just a three point lead, slightly better than Biden was doing earlier in the year.

With talk of the state being in play, the Trump campaign has plans to tap into Youngkin’s star power and his 2021 get-out-the-vote efforts to turn the state red, state officials told the Daily Caller. Trump himself said during an August press conference that “he’s leading our whole campaign in Virginia,” referring to Youngkin.

“As the campaign goes further on and we get into the early vote rallies and to get-out-the-vote events, the governor is going to be pivoting not just to making the case for us, but also bringing all those [get-out-the-vote] volunteers together in a coordinated effort in the different parts of the state,” Jeff Ryer, Virginia Trump campaign spokesperson, told the Caller. Ryer added that Youngkin is scheduled in the coming weeks to appear at at least a dozen rallies for Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort — Trump Force 47.

Trump Force 47 has been largely touted as the former president’s ground game. While a portion of the party’s get-out-the-vote efforts are outsourced to grassroots organizations, Trump Force 47 has found footing in several states such as Virginia.

In 2021, the governor’s campaign focused on the promotion of early voting through rallies and messaging. Youngkin held rallies across the street from early polling locations to encourage attendees to vote. The Youngkin campaign also poured $7.1 million into his early vote promotion which funded a door-knocking effort to help Virginians find a voting site or request a mail-in ballot.

Rich Anderson, chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, told the Caller that the GOP is working with the Trump campaign to replicate the ground game that won Youngkin the state in 2021. To do so, the GOP has established 15 regional campaign offices all around the state and Youngkin has even attended a few of the grand openings, Anderson told the Caller.

“The joint goal of the Trump 2024 campaign team and [Republican Party of Virginia] is to certify 5,000 Trump Force 47 volunteers for GOTV operations. With less than 70 days to election day, we’ve now certified 75% of our goal and therefore forecast that we will exceed our goal by the time early voting starts on Sep. 20th,” Anderson told the Caller.

“These 5,000+ GOTV volunteers will be augmented by 500 election attorneys at polling locations across Virginia,” Anderson said, adding that they party does not have an estimate for how many doors it will knock on.

The party chair added that in addition to its GOTV efforts, the GOP has a strong election integrity presence throughout the state. Alongside the campaign, the Virginia GOP is deploying 5,000 poll watchers 45 days before election day in addition to 500 election attorneys.

“I think that Trump Force 47 fits in very neatly to what the Youngkin campaign accomplished in the state in 2021,” Ryer told the Caller.

A Youngkin adviser told the Daily Caller that the governor plans to be very present on the campaign trail and will participate in early vote rallies in the coming weeks. The adviser added that the governor is focused on making the election fair, secure and something that Virginians can be confident in. In August, Youngkin issued Executive Orders 31 and 35 which addressed various election security precautions such as strengthening Virginia’s voter rolls and counting machine testing.

“The governor previously said this, you really got to turn out the rural parts of the southwest and south side, and you’ve got to do better than Republicans usually do in Northern Virginia. And then a lot of it comes down to Richmond and Hampton Roads,” a Youngkin adviser told the Caller. Anderson told the Caller that the party has set its targets on Culpeper, Farmville, Fairfax, Stafford, Gloucester, Manassas, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Richmond and Chesterfield.

Virginia voters have a 45-day window to vote early in person or by mail. In 2021, Youngkin brought in early vote numbers that exceeded expectations, which many attributed his success to. In that off election year, 1.2 million ballots were cast during the early voting period. Youngkin won 46% of early in-person votes and 24% of absentee ballots cast.

“The governor has been incredibly focused on keeping the party united. He didn’t endorse any primaries this year, and I think a big piece of it too, would be the election executive order that he issued. Which is part of making sure Republicans understand that in Virginia we have fair and secure elections and voters can be confident that their ballot is going to be counted,” the Youngkin adviser told the Caller.

Targeting specific voter demographics was a key part of the Youngkin ground game, former top Youngkin strategists Jeff Roe and Kristin Davison told Politico. The campaign went after the vote of “African-American Virginians, Asians, Hispanics [and] women,” Davison told the outlet.

Anderson explained that its operation was targeting different demographics ahead of the election, but stressed the importance of the veteran vote in the 2024 campaign.

“We have significant immersion in the Veterans Committee. I spent 30 years in the Air Force as a veteran so that’s especially important to me,” the state party chairman explained.

“In 2021, we stood up in Virginia an organization called AVV, which is the American Veterans Vote. And they have pivoted and are playing a prominent role in turning out the veterans vote here in Virginia. It’s great because a majority of veterans are conservative in their thinking and in their politics, not all of them, but a majority of them. And so we were able to leverage that in 2021 for Glenn Youngkin, such that it made a significant impact on his eventual election. He won by two points,” he added.

But the 2024 operation doesn’t just come down to its get-out-the-vote efforts — the party is focused on tactical messaging similar to what was deployed in 2021.

As Davison explained to Politico in 2021, Youngkin chose to focus his campaign messaging around “cost of living, education and safety.” By contrast, Davison added, Democrats on a national level were talking about defunding the police, higher taxes and eliminating parents’ oversight in the classroom. McAuliffe put himself in the middle of the education talk, and in direct contrast to Youngkin.

“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” McAuliffe said in 2021. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Youngkin capitalized on the message, and his focus on education and cultural issues such as abortion helped him defeat McAuliffe.

Trump and Vance stand in direct contrast to Harris and Walz on issues like education and parental rights within the classroom. Anderson told the Caller he expects Youngkin’s 2021 messaging to be embraced in 2024.

“In 2021, Gov. Youngkin spoke to the issue of up-to-the-moment-of-birth abortion in a way that aligned with the views of Virginia voters. He also gave voice to the role that parents feel they must play in the education of their children,” he said.

“Senior Republican officials and the Republican Party of Virginia will continue to remind voters of the extremist views held by Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz on life and education. Republicans will continue to represent the views broadly held by Virginia voters,” Anderson added.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Murdered Hostages and the Western Cheerleaders For Hamas

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As the six murdered hostages are being buried in Israel, Brendan O’Neill has some furious words for Western antisemites who have been cheerleading their murderers in Hamas. He rounds on them here: “The deaths of these hostages shame the Western conscience,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, September 1, 2024:

…Now this is resistance. Unprepared, unarmed, these six young people did what they could to resist the anti-Semitic savagery of the invading army from Gaza. They repelled its grenades, rescued some of its intended targets, tended to the victims of its racist sadism. They didn’t ask for war, they didn’t expect war, they didn’t deserve war. But when it came, brutishly intruding on their kibbutzim and parties, they took action that helped to minimize the Jewish people’s suffering. It is a testament to Western radicals’ swirling moral disarray and their detachment from civilisational values that they referred to the racist invaders of Israel as the ‘resistance’, and the Jewish heroes who fought back as ‘colonizers’.

But this goes beyond foolish ‘left’ apologism for Hamas. It goes beyond excuse-making for terror. There is a case to be made that the self-styled progressive conscience of the West has not been complacent in the face of Hamas’s barbarism, but complicit. Many in the West played an active role in justifying the kidnapping of people like Goldberg-Polin, Lobanov, Gat, Sarusi, Yerushalmi and Danino. They actively bolstered the kidnappers’ claims to be resistance fighters, and they actively prevented the raising of awareness of the kidnap victims, particularly through the destruction of posters featuring their faces. They were more than bystanders to a pogrom – they were unpaid PR men for the pogromists….
Kamala Harris has questions to answer here. She’s issued a welcome, angry statement on the slaughter of the six hostages, describing it as ‘an outrage’. And yet for months she sternly instructed Israel not to launch a ‘major military operation’ in Rafah. There will be ‘consequences’, she warned. It is now known that in Rafah, an American citizen was being held captive. Now killed. Is this the first time in history an American leader warned of ‘consequences’ over the rescue of an American rather than over the kidnap of an American? As National Review summarises it, ‘Kamala Harris warned Israel of “consequences” if it invaded Rafah, where Hamas just murdered an American hostage’.

Here’s the only question that matters right now: are Jewish lives worth fighting for? Some of us think they are. Others, from the top of politics to the frenzied anti-Semites on the streets, seem to think otherwise. It is tempting to see the West’s moral disorder over Israel-Hamas as a consequence of that old problem, ‘the sleep of reason’, the sleep of our conscience. But in truth, the West’s conscience has been wide awake, and excitable, and noisy, and it has sided not with kidnapped Jews, but with their kidnappers. Let us hope the memory of the six slain will be a blessing – and let us hope their deaths will be a lesson for a West that seems utterly morally lost.

Brendan O’Neill is enraged at the “morally lost” in the West who have chosen to sympathize not with the six murdered Israelis, but with the Hamas killers who murdered them, just as for the last eleven months of the war in Gaza, so many in the increasingly antisemitic West have expressed their support not for the embattled Jewish state, but for those who would, if they could, wipe that state off the face of the earth. His savage indignation is exactly what is called for.

AUTHOR

Hugh Fitzgerald

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EDIOTR NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Violent Crime Creating ‘Dystopian Hell’ Despite Biden’s Claim America Is Safer

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President Joe Biden’s policies have not contributed to a decrease in violent crime, multiple sources told the Daily Caller, despite the Biden-Harris administration seizing on a recent report that seemed to show major cities were safer in 2024.

One liberal-run city is a “dystopian hell,” remarked a police union representative to the Caller. Additionally, changes in reporting protocols create the “illusion” of safety, according to one law enforcement officer.

A report by the Major Cities Chiefs Association captured data on violent crime from 69 cities. New York City was not included because it did not submit violent crime numbers for the first half of this year. An Axios analysis of the data found a 6% overall decrease in violent crime in the first half of 2024 compared to the first six months of 2023. The data appeared to show steep drops in violent crime, including a 41% drop in Columbus, Ohio – the largest decline in the country.

Officers in the city, however, face a starkly different reality.

Lies, Damned Lies, And Crime Statistics

“Our officers and the citizens they serve are still battling violent crime daily,” Brian Steel, President of the Ninth Capital City Lodge Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in Ohio, told the Caller. “Recent changes in crime reporting have done little more than create the illusion that all is well.”

Steel provided the Caller with the Columbus Police Department’s Homicide Reporting protocol. Police Chief Elaine Bryant took office in 2021, and the protocol was subsequently updated in 2022.

The department’s “annual homicide clearance rate” is determined based on FBI standards, according to the protocol.

The clearance rate is derived from “the total number of new homicides in a calendar year” and “the total number of homicides that are cleared that calendar year, regardless of the year the homicide occurred,” the document reads.

Steel explained how this transition impacts homicide statistics.

If a detective solved a cold case in 2024, but the homicide was committed in 2020, then that case goes toward the clearance rate for 2024. The policy increases the clearance rate and “makes itself better,” Steel added, but it didn’t used to be that way.

The FBI switched from its century-old method of collecting crime data to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2021. The left-leaning Marshall Project reported that almost 40% of law enforcement agencies did not submit data in 2021 to NIBRS, including New York City and Los Angeles.

Nebraska’s FOP President Anthony Conner told the Caller about his experience with changes in how crime is reported, although he argued homicide numbers are the best metric “because you can’t hide a dead body.”

He explained how when he first started on the police force over 20 years ago, if there was a shooting at a house, every person inside was documented as a felony assault victim.

“Well, they decided to change that,” Conner told the Caller. He stated that now, if police cannot identify the intended target, the charge is downgraded from a felony assault to a misdemeanor property crime.

Paul Ware, a 30-year law enforcement veteran and retired Portland, Oregon, police officer of 21 years, told the Caller some cities are not reporting all their crimes.

“They’re reporting the lesser crimes,” Ware told the Caller. “And so decreasing crime is, quite frankly, not real, because all they’re doing is reclassifying the crimes that they have on the streets into something other than exactly what it was.”

There is an incentive for cities to report lower levels of crime, California FOP President Roger Hilton explained to the Caller. He pointed to a July investigation published by the San Francisco Chronicle that revealed Oakland “overstated” its drop in crime.

Hilton stated California adopted measures that enable crime, specifically Proposition 47.

“Cops have limited tools to arrest people, and if they do arrest them, they’re out faster, before we can even finish writing the report,” Hilton told the Caller.

Voters approved Proposition 47 in 2014, and it demoted the classification of most nonviolent drug and property felonies to misdemeanors, according to Ballotpedia. This includes theft and fraud amounting up to $950.

Hilton also noted how charges can be downgraded during the sentencing process.

“As it goes through the criminal justice system, sometimes a lot of charges get dropped along the way,” he said, noting how the FBI gets its information from other law enforcement agencies.

“It’s hard for me to say how all of those things are all reported, and I doubt that they’re very consistent,” Hilton told the Caller.

Where Violent Crime Has Decreased, It’s Not Because Of The Biden Administration

The Axios analysis of the MCCA report showed Omaha, Nebraska, experienced a 30% decrease in violent crime.

Conner told the Caller violent crime decreased in Omaha because the police department cracked down on gang violence.

“Omaha has a Republican mayor who has been very supportive of law enforcement,” Conner said. Omaha’s Police Chief was instrumental in restructuring the department to effectively tackle gang violence, he noted.

The County District Attorney actually prosecutes homicides, unlike a lot of DAs around the country who are letting criminals free, according to Conner. 

Conner said due to officer shortages, however, Omaha’s violent crime could start trending the other way. “We are down 126 officers, maybe even more than that now,” he told the Caller, noting the department is roughly 14% short of officers.

The Biden-Harris administration capitalized on the report and said violent crime hit a “record” 50-year low in the first part of 2024 in an August press release. The White House claimed its gun control polices and “American Rescue Plan” contributed to the decrease in violent crime.

Executive Director for Right On Crime and former U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman disagreed, stressing crime is primarily a local issue.

“The policies that he’s talking about, like the background check, expanded background checks and all those things, has had virtually zero to do with any of the rise or the fall in the dropping crime,” Tolman told the Caller. “And I’ve yet to hear them articulate a policy they implemented that would.”

He explained the main deterrent is predictability, or when individuals believe they are going to be caught and punished for violating the law.

“You can lengthen sentence. You can shorten the sentence. You can do things that have no impact on deterring crime, but the predictability is the only factor,” he said.

The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald told the Caller funding is essentially meaningless if people do not want to join the police force.

“There’re still departments that are completely unable to recruit and hold on to the officers that they’ve got,” she said. “Frankly, crime and policing are very local matters. There’s not a heck of a lot the federal government can do in terms of crime tactics and strategies.”

She emphasized the Biden admin should change its rhetoric if it actually wanted to help law enforcement.

“The one thing it should avoid doing is demoralizing the cops by calling them racist.”

The End Result Of Progressive Policies: ‘A Dystopian Hell’

One of the cities that reportedly experienced a drop in crime was Oakland, California – but locals tell a different story.

“If you walk around Oakland now, it is like a dystopian hell,” Sam Singer, who represents the Oakland Police Officers Association (OPOA), told the Caller. “And you know, small business are suffering.”

The OPOA sent a letter to the office of Mayor Sheng Tao calling for her to resign by Aug. 8, NBC Bay Area reported. They blamed Tao and the City Council majority for slashing the police force from 712 to 678 officers.

He said the OPOA is doubtful about the reported decrease in crime.

“Anyone who lives or works in Oakland, in the neighborhoods, small businesses, even major businesses, sees violent crime is out of control in the city, and the police force is essentially at half the strength it ought to be.”

Singer claimed “progressive leftists” in the city’s government defunded the police at a time when more police officers were needed.

Across the country, Americans are feeling the effects of rampant crime in major cities. In downtown Seattle, for example, a massive development project was stalled due in part to “open-air drug markets,” among other illegal activities.

EXCLUSIVE: Don Jr., Trump Campaign Thrilled With How Much Better They Think Vance Has Been Than Walz

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Former President Donald Trump’s campaign and his eldest son, Don Jr., say they are thrilled with Sen. J.D. Vance’s performance on the campaign trail in comparison to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in exclusive conversations with the Daily Caller.

Trump Jr., who was one of the main forces behind Vance becoming his father’s running mate, explained to the Caller that people were “wrong” about Vance and said that he “understood the guy.” Trump Jr. and other campaign officials highlighted Vance’s media appearances, saying he is not scared to go against the liberal mainstream media, whereas Walz has continued to dodge questions from reporters on the campaign trail and has yet to sit down for a one-on-one interview since becoming the Democratic VP nominee.

“I’ve known him well and for a long time. I understand his talents. And I think every Sunday when I watch the Sunday shows or frankly, any other media, I am continually reaffirmed that me going all in for J.D. was 100% the right move,” Trump Jr. told the Caller. “But what’s also interesting is there’s plenty of people that were sort of, let’s just say, J.D. Vance, not necessarily fans or perhaps indifferent, who have since reached out to me knowing my push, knowing that they were probably pushing different directions who are straight up saying, ‘Don you are 100% right on that one. I got it wrong.’ And he’s absolutely kicking ass out on the campaign trail right now.”

Regarding other possible picks, Trump Jr. said that he believes the media would have treated whoever his father picked with disdain.

“I think the media would have done the attacks on everyone and anyone that Trump ever picked. That’s their job, as sort of the lapdog propagandists of the Democrat machine. I think they went particularly hard on J.D. But those hits just don’t fall well, because his backstory, his life story, as articulate as he is, the way he prosecutes the case,” he said. “J.D. does better in a hostile media territory than the very vast majority of Republicans do on even Fox News. And so the way he’s able to prosecute that case against the Democrats, the Harris-Biden regime, their failures, it’s just been incredible to watch.”

One of the main reasons Trump Jr. said he pushed for Vance was due to his support for the America First movement, which he said he thinks Vance can “keep going in an age beyond Trump.”

“So I think he’s just shown a level of commitment to the movement that’s amazing. I think you combine that with his other talents, his youth,” Trump Jr. told the Caller. “And my dad will be a part of this thing for hopefully a very long time. But we don’t have much of a bench on the conservative side, certainly not on the America First side that can actually play the game the way it needs to be played against the Democrats, who have just been steamrolling us for years. I think he’s one of those rare talents, on our side. So, I think I recognized that earlier than most, I think others are starting to finally get it now, and that’s great.”

“You can’t put Tim Walz and JD Vance in the same category for comparison. I mean it’s not even close,” Trump Jr. added.

Meanwhile, sources on the Trump campaign and National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt all echoed their support for Vance as Trump’s running mate and heavily criticized Walz, who has come under fire for signing legislation in favor of putting tampons in boys bathrooms, accusations of stolen valor and his history and relationship with China.

“Senator JD Vance honorably served our country in the US Marines and has truly lived the American Dream. He has proven to be a great asset to President Trump and our campaign as he barnstorms the country meeting with voters and owning the fake news media. Senator Vance certainly serves as a strong and sharp contrast to Weirdo Tim Walz, who has been one of the most radical liberal governors in the country and supports insane policies, like putting tampons in men’s bathrooms,” Leavitt told the Caller.

A senior Trump campaign official added that they are surprised Democrats have not found a way to replace Walz on their ticket, saying he is only hurting Democrats’ chance of defeating Trump.

“It’s shocking that the Democrats haven’t already done the rumored switcharoo on VP. Walz is terrible for their ticket. He came to the dance with a record of lies about his military resume, he can’t face the press without a babysitter, and despite being Governor of Minnesota, their ticket has actually lost ground in polling there since he was selected,” the senior Trump campaign official told the Caller.

Another Trump campaign official said Vance is “killing it” and has done a good job on the campaign trail.

“Besides President Trump himself, he’s the strongest advocate there is for President Trump’s policies. And unlike Kamala Harris, he’s willing to go into the lion’s den. He’ll go on Meet the Press, CNN, wherever, he’ll go do an interview, and he’ll take tough questions and he’ll come back with great answers and I think he’s been executing the case. and he’s been aggressively on the campaign trail. And we’re happy. He’s killing it,” the Trump campaign official said.

Longtime Republican strategist John Ashbrook told the Caller that Vance is “absolutely crushing it” and called Walz a phony.

“He refuses to let opposition dictate the terms of any debate and clearly delivers a message about fixing our economy and securing our border. It was very smart of President Trump to elevate the voice of a poor kid from Middletown, Ohio, who echoes the sentiments of the overlooked millions he fights for every day,” Ashbrook said. “And he offers a stark authenticity contrast with Tim Walz who’s spent his lengthy political career pretending to be something he’s not.”

AUTHOR

Henry Rodgers

Chief national correspondent.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Harris Campaign Reportedly Said It Doesn’t Take Lobbyist Money — But Public Records Tell Different Story

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Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has reportedly said it rejects money from lobbyists, but a Daily Caller News Foundation review of campaign finance records casts doubt on this claim.

Dozens of lobbyists have contributed to Harris’ campaign since the vice president took over President Joe Biden’s reelection operation on July 21, an analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records shows. The deluge of lobbyist cash came after The New York Times and Politico reported that Harris was continuing Biden’s policy of not accepting direct contributions from individual lobbyists.

Lobbyists pouring money into Harris’ campaign work to influence policy on behalf of a wide range of industries, including everything from tech to marijuana, disclosures show. Organizations repped by Harris’ lobbyist donors include tobacco and vaping giant Altria, a marijuana interest group, Apple, the Dow Chemical Company and a bio-fuel trade group, among many others.

Harris has a history of pledging to forgo lobbyist cash but accepting it anyway, taking over $100,000 from lobbyists at firms such as DLA Piper, Venable, DCG and others during her 2020 presidential campaign, breaking her promise at the time, the Washington Examiner reported.

“Our campaign is not taking a dime from corporate PACs or lobbyists — and that was a very deliberate choice,” Harris promised in a February 2019 email to supporters, according to the Examiner. “Yes, it means we are leaving money on the table. But that’s ok with me.”

Harris, despite taking money from corporations and lobbyists during her time as a senator and presidential candidate, has long decried the influence of money on politics.

“I think that money has had such an outside influence on politics, and especially with the Supreme Court determining Citizens United, which basically means that big corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money influencing our campaigns, right?” Harris said in April 2018. “We’re all supposed to have an equal vote, but money has now really tipped the balance between an individual having equal power in an election to a corporation. So I’ve actually made a decision … that I’m not going to accept corporate PAC checks. I just, I’m not.”

Harris and her team have “a pretty open door” to lobbyists, according to Holland & Knight lobbyist, and former senior Harris advisor, Yasmin Nelson.

“On the issues that are important to her, she is definitely going to want to hear from people, and if they happen to be downtown, on K Street, and you’re best positioned to help her through that, then I think she will,” Nelson told the NYT. Nelson, who secured a meeting with Harris’ team in June, is also fundraising for her.

Harris has personal ties to the lobbying industry as second gentleman Doug Emhoff was previously a partner at DLA Piper, a law firm that does considerable lobbying work, according to disclosures. Andy Vargas, a former longtime aide to Harris, works as a senior vice president at Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying firm that has come under fire for lobbying on behalf of Turkey, Qatar and an organization reportedly linked to an Iranian-backed influence network.

Other groups represented by Harris’ lobbyist donors include the Motion Picture Association, the software company Adobe, the National Association of Realtors, the California Teachers Association and the Center for American Progress, according to FEC records.

The Harris campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s multiple requests for comment.

AUTHOR

Robert Schmad

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Witness Protection’: Media-Friendly Tim Walz Has Disappeared From Airwaves Since Joining Harris Ticket

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rose to prominence by making the rounds in mainstream media interviews, but since being named Kamala Harris’s running mate, the “folksy”, “midwestern dad” has been missing from the airwaves.

From July 22 to Aug. 6, about two weeks before he was added to the ticket, Walz appeared on MSNBC, PBS, CNN and Fox News a total of ten times, an analysis by Newsbusters’ Curtis Houck, shared with the Daily Caller, showed. Since Harris chose Walz as her running mate on Aug. 6, the governor has not appeared on the networks he flocked to during the vetting process, according to Houck’s analysis.

“It’s no surprise that Tim Walz has gone into the witness protection program first started by the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign after blanketing the liberal cable networks during the vetting process to show Kamala Harris his loyalty to her,” Houck told the Caller.

“Between July 23 and August 6, he appeared on CNN and MSNBC at least seven times, with an additional hit on taxpayer-funded PBS. Morning and evening, Walz made sure Harris and her team saw him at all hours of the day. Importantly, none came after July 30 as the vetting intensified and Harris conducted final round interviews,” he continued.

The shift is a jarring departure from Walz’s pre-nomination media blitz, which skyrocketed him into liberal stardom and separated him from the other contenders in the VP sweepstakes.

Walz has done one tv appearance since being named Harris’ running mate; his joint interview on CNN alongside the vice president. Over the first month of her presidential campaign, Harris faced scrutiny for a lack of unscripted moments. The pressure forced Harris to commit to setting up an interview by the end of August, though rather than doing a one-on-one sit-down, she brought Walz along.

Neither Harris nor Walz have held a press conference since beginning their run, only taking a few questions from reporters in gaggles when on the road.

While Harris and Walz have done one media appearance together, Senator J.D. Vance has done 94 interviews, press conferences and gaggles with the media since Trump named him his running mate on July 15, according to Axios. In the month of August, Vance did all five major Sunday shows, the outlet reported.

“Tim Walz is in hiding, just like Kamala Harris, because Harris is a San Francisco liberal desperately pretending not to be one, and no one trusts Walz to remember every part of the fictional record the campaign staff has created for both of them. They are both radical leftists, whose policies would only send the American economy into a deeper and faster spiral, and the last thing they want anyone to do is answer questions about anything,” Tim Murtaugh, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told the Caller.

“Walz has lied about so much that they have no idea what piece of his embellished life story he’ll roll out next. Next thing you know he’ll claim to have quarterbacked the Minnesota Vikings to the Super Bowl while simultaneously serving in Afghanistan,” he added.

Before Walz was shielded from mainstream media appearances, the governor was going viral for his line of attack on Republicans. During his July 23 hit with MSNBC, Walz deemed Vance, Trump and other Republicans “weird,” a message that would prove to be a bit troublesome for Vance as he started to hit the campaign trail.

“Walz sat with incredibly friendly liberal journalists who saw no problem in helping Walz advance his case, including his astroturfed insult against former President Trump, Senator Vance and the Republican ticket as being ‘weird.’ The moniker kept Walz in the minds of liberal journalists like star-crossed lovers being unable to think of anything else after laying eyes on each other. Why? He said exactly how they feel about conservatives,” Houck told the Caller.

Scott Jennings, a longtime GOP adviser in Kentucky and veteran of numerous campaigns, told the Caller that the Harris campaign must have judged Walz as a risk to the operation and chose to sideline him as a result.

“They’ve obviously judged him to be a huge risk. His limited engagement on the CNN sit-down was ridiculously bad,” Jennings told the Caller.

After Harris named Walz her running mate, the Minnesota governor has been caught in several lies, including some about his service record.

The Harris campaign unknowingly began the unraveling of Walz’s military story after unearthing a 2018 video of the governor pushing for gun control, saying that “those weapons of war, that I carried in war” should stay only in combat. Social media users were quick to point out despite Walz’s statement, he never saw war.

Veterans in Walz’s unit previously accused him during his run for office in 2018 of retiring from the National Guard to run for Congress once it was revealed that he would be deployed to Iraq. Vance has lobbed attacks at Walz on the campaign trail, questioning why Americans should trust a guy who lied about his military record.

Veteran who knew Walz unloads on him on the @MegynKellyShow: “He’s not brave, I call him a coward because he is” pic.twitter.com/efGKk1fHjm

The Minnesota Governor is also the subject of a congressional investigation relating to his ties to the Chinese government. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray to request all documents relating to any Chinese entities that the now-governor may have interacted with while on his dozens of trips to China.

Lies aside, Jennings told the Caller that another reason for sidelining Walz could be because he would be pressed about a policy platform Harris is yet to define. More than a month into her campaign, Harris has only unveiled her economic policy and has yet to put a platform on her website. The Trump campaign, by contrast, features the Republican National Committee’s platform as its own.

“In his defense, she has no idea what her positions are so how could he be expected to know anything?” Jennings said.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House reporter. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump Campaign Says It Raised Well Over $100 Million In August

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Former President Donald Trump raised about $130 million in August, his campaign announced Wednesday night.

Trump’s fundraising numbers are down slightly from the nearly $140 million the former president brought in during July, when his campaign initiated a fundraising push days after he was shot by a failed assassin on July 13. The Harris campaign has not released its August fundraising figures, however, it likely eclipsed Trump as Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon released a memo on August 25 where she claimed the vice president had raised $540 million since President Joe Biden dropped out on July 21, including $82 million during the week of the Democratic National Convention.

“With Republicans united and a growing number of Independents and disaffected Democrats crossing partisan lines, the Trump-Vance campaign has momentum for the final stretch of the race,” Trump Campaign senior advisor Brian Hughes said in the press release announcing the fundraising numbers. “These fundraising numbers from August are a reflection of that movement and will propel President Trump’s America First movement back to the White House so we can undo the terrible failures of Harris and Biden.”

Contrary to the Trump campaign’s enthusiasm, GOP leaders are raising the alarm behind closed doors and publicly about how a large financial disparity has emerged between the two parties. Liberals have commanding ad spending leads in almost all competitive Senate races and the Congressional Leadership Fund, the primary super PAC aimed at electing Republicans to the House, is $70 million behind its Democratic counterpart in ad spending, according to Politico.

“The only thing preventing us from having a great night in November is the massive financial disparity our party currently faces,” National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Jason Thielman previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We are on a trajectory to win the majority, but unless something changes drastically in the next six weeks, we will lose winnable seats.”

State-wide Republican parties in a number of states with close legislative elections in November, like Arizona and Wisconsin, have also been outraised and outspent by their Democratic counterparts.

Before Democrats swapped Biden for Harris, the Trump campaign had overcome his Democratic rival’s cash advantage, Politico reported. The Trump campaign claims to have had $295 million in cash on hand at the end of August.

The average donation to Trump was $56, with 98% of donations being under $200, according to the campaign.

Trump is no stranger to fighting campaigns at a financial disadvantage, defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016 despite only having half as much money, and narrowly losing to Biden in 2020 despite a 3 to 1 cash disadvantage heading into the final month of the election.

“Team Trump has the money, the message, the momentum and a candidate who works harder than anyone in politics,” Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the DCNF.

AUTHOR

Robert Schmad

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Biden Admin Revives Russian Election Interference Bogeyman Just In Time For November

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President Joe Biden’s administration launched new accusations of election interference at Russia nine weeks before the 2024 election.

The Department of Justice alleged Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered several Russian companies to target Americans through the use of influencers and social media pages to spread propaganda and interfere with the election in a campaign titled “Doppelganger.” As a result of the indictment, the DOJ is charging two Russian-based employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, with “conspiring to commit money laundering and to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” according to a press release.

Some internet domains discussed in the indictment, according to the DOJ, were used to try to influence American voters and push Russian propaganda to lower international support for Ukraine and sow discord.

It’s not clear that the operation made a dent in American political discourse. One account cited in the indictment, a Twitter profile named “CNN California,” had just 7 followers. The indictment laid out a scheme to hire American political commentators for a new YouTube Channel, which garnered only 16 million views in nearly 2,000 videos across 10 months, for an average of just 8,000 views per video.

In all, the scheme had a budget of around $10,000,000, according to the DOJ.

The accusations come just two months before the presidential election and days after Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he regretted censoring social media posts at the behest of the Biden administration around the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic.

The Wednesday news made its way to CNN before the indictment became public, which left social media users drawing parallels to the 2016 election. In 2016, CNN was among the outlets that extensively covered the conspiracy theory pushed by Democrats that Russia and the Trump campaign were colluding. (RELATED: ‘Uncorroborated Intelligence’: Durham Report Torches FBI, DOJ For Handling Of Trump-Russia Probe)

“This is deadly serious and we are going to treat it accordingly,” Garland said Wednesday of skepticism towards the claims following the 2016 conspiracy theory push.

This marks the third election cycle in a row that Democrats have made an issue out of foreign election interference.

After the 2016 election, Democrats pushed Big Tech to censor information pertaining to COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media platforms. In a series titled the “Twitter files,” Elon Musk released documents detailing how the social media platform suppressed a New York Post story regarding Biden’s laptop. The decision was influenced by former Democratic-appointed intelligence officials who falsely alleged that the laptop story had the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.

Many Democrats also claimed Trump had not legitimately won the 2016 election due to vague instances of “Russian interference.”

“Today’s announcement exposes the scope of the Russian government’s influence operations and their reliance on cutting-edge AI to sow disinformation,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a press release.

“Companies operating at the direction of the Russian government created websites to trick Americans into unwittingly consuming Russian propaganda. By seizing these websites, the FBI is making clear to the world what they are, Russian attempts to interfere in our elections and influence our society. The FBI will continue to work with our partners to expose and shutdown these covert influence campaigns,” he continued.

In August, it was revealed that the Iranian government had been behind a hack of the Trump campaign.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Totally Silent’: Donald Trump Jr. Says Media Won’t Give Walz Family The Mary Trump Treatment

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Donald Trump Jr. explained he does not believe the media will cover that several members of Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s family, including his own brother, are reportedly supporting his rival, former President Donald Trump, in an exclusive Wednesday interview with the Daily Caller.

A photo circulated the internet earlier in the day of eight people reportedly related to the Democratic Vice President nominee Walz, all wearing “Walz for Trump” shirts. They were all also standing in front of a “Trump 2024,  Take America Back” flag. The Caller asked Trump Jr. about the photo and if he thinks it will make a difference in the election, to which the former president’s eldest son said he believes the media will be “totally silent” on the issue. He compared it to his father’s niece, Mary Trump, who has been an outspoken critic of his father, but who Trump Jr. says he has seen once in 25 years for a brief period of time.

The photo was originally shared by a friend of the family, then posted by former Republican Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles W. Herbster, Newsweek reported.

“It’s interesting how the media is totally silent on that. They made Mary Trump into the biggest Trump family, like ‘knowledgeable person.’ This is someone I literally think I’ve seen her once in 25 years and that was at my aunt’s birthday party at the white House for like 90 minutes, maybe two hours. Somewhere in the middle of my father’s presidency. I hadn’t seen her since I was probably early teens prior to that. But they put her on TV as the most knowledgeable person on the Trump family. We’ve never even seen this person in years. It’s just part of the grift,” Trump Jr. told the Caller.

Mary Trump published a book about Trump calling him “the World’s Most Dangerous Man” and has continued to criticize him throughout his presidency. She has accused Trump of using racist slurs and more, something he has continued to deny. In September 2021, Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit against The New York Times and Mary Trump, alleging his confidential tax documents were shared improperly and that his niece was pressured into sharing the information.

Walz has come under fire for signing legislation in favor of putting tampons in boys bathrooms, accusations of stolen valor regarding him claiming to have served in combat and his history and relationship with China. These were just some of the issues Trump Jr. mentioned to the Caller regarding the VP nominee.

“So I hope the media gives them as much attention as they gave Trump family members that didn’t like my father or were willing to lie about him or whatever it may be. That won’t actually happen. But if by the media’s own rules, we should take everything that they say into great consideration,” he continued. “And frankly, based on the rest of Tim Walz’s policies, based on the way he let his home state burn to the ground, based on the prioritization of putting tampons in boys bathrooms, based on his stolen valor and continued lies about all of this, the guy doesn’t seem like a good guy.”

The former president’s son went after Walz and the coverage he and his campaign have been receiving.

“It doesn’t seem like someone you’d ever want in charge of anything, let alone potentially the presidency of the United States. But again, it’s easy to get away with being a liar and a scumbag if you’re a Democrat and you have the media propaganda machine doing all your boosting for you,” Trump Jr. added.

AUTHOR

Henry Rodgers

Chief national correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved

Harris Attempt To Attack Trump’s Arlington Visit Backfires Horribly When Gold Star Families Respond

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Gold Star families spoke out against Vice President Kamala Harris after she weighed in on the controversy surrounding former President Donald Trump’s visit to Arlington Cemetery to honor the 13 soldiers killed in the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal.

Harris posted a tweet Saturday slamming Trump for filming videos while honoring the fallen soldiers, adding that she, unlike the former president, “will always honor the service and sacrifice of all of America’s fallen heroes.” Eight Gold Star families took to Twitter to rebuke Harris’s comments, explaining that they invited Trump to the cemetery for the ceremony and have never heard from the vice president in the three years since they lost their children in the August 2021 terrorist attack in Kabul.

“This is Mark Schmitz, gold star father of Marine Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz. Here we are in a beautiful holiday weekend day, I got to stop what I’m doing, spending time with what’s left of my family, to address a heinous, vile and disgusting post put out by Kamala Harris trying to incite those that don’t follow the truth that President Trump was in Arlington as a political stunt – shows you how much you know about the 13 families, we invited him to be there,” Schmitz said in a video, posted by Trump on Twitter in a reply to Harris’ tweet.

“Groundwork was put into place by Congressman Issa’s office to make sure we followed protocol. Why did we want Trump there? It wasn’t to help his political campaign. We wanted a leader — that explains why you and Joe didn’t get a call. Imagine for a second that your kid is killed. There’s a president in the United States willing to take you under his wing and listen to you. That’s what we found in President Trump, certainly not you, and certainly not Joe Biden,” Schmitz continues in the nearly three minute video continues.

“You have 13 families who have been waiting over three years to so much as get a phone call, to so much as hear our kids names said aloud in the halls of Congress, the State of the Union, hell, anything. The irony behind your post, that you give a rat’s ass about our military or our veterans, Jared’s brothers and sisters in arms, the rest of the 12, their brothers and sisters in arms, is an outright lie. We’re living proof of that. You’re despicable. You have zero business running this country. And I pray to God Americans wake the hell up. and get your ass out of office. You have spit in our face for the last fucking time,” he finishes.

Trump’s trip to Arlington National Cemetery came under fire after NPR reported that there was a physical altercation between a campaign official and an Arlington National Cemetery staffer over photograph restrictions in Section 60, where fallen soldiers of recent American wars lay. The Trump team denied the story and a source familiar with the event conversations told the Daily Caller that the Gold Star families were okay with a campaign photographer taking photos of the ceremony.

Ahead of the ceremony, a Gold Star family told the Caller that Arlington National Cemetery was trying to put restrictions in place to block Trump’s visit — despite it being the families’ request. The situation escalated, causing Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to intervene to help Trump be able to participate in the ceremony, a Gold Star family told the Caller.

Neither Biden nor Harris participated in a public event to honor the 13 fallen soldiers killed during their administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal. Rather, they issued statements the morning of the anniversary while Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery.

“It is not a place for politics. And yet, as was reported this week, Donald Trump’s team chose to film a video there, resulting in an altercation with cemetery staff. Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt. This is nothing new from Donald Trump. This is a man who has called our fallen service members ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’ and disparaged Medal of Honor recipients,” Harris tweeted on Saturday about the NPR report.

Darin Hoover, the father of the late Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover, Coral Doolittle, the mother of the late Corporal Humberto A. Sanchez, Jaclyn Schmitz, the mother of the late Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, Steve Nikoui, the father of the late Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nikoui, Jim McCollum, the father of the late Lance Corporal Rylee McCollum, Herman Lopez, the father of the late Corporal Hunter Lopez, Christy Shamblin, the mother-in-law of the late Sergeant Nicole Gee and Schmitz all filmed videos in response to Harris, which were posted to Twitter by Trump.

“Vice President Harris, my name is Christy Shamblin. My daughter in law, Sergeant Nicole Leanne Gee, was killed in the Afghanistan exit at Abbey Gate on August 26, 2021. This year, for the third year anniversary of her murder, we welcomed President Donald J. Trump to Arlington to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with our family and to visit the cold graveside. President Trump and his team were respectful. They listened to our stories and didn’t talk much at all. We welcomed them that day, and they were a comfort to our family,” Shamblin said in the first video of the series posted to Twitter.

“Vice President Harris, I ask you, why won’t you return a call and explain to us how you call my daughter-in-law’s death a success? Vice President Harris, why will you not express your condolences yourself. Why have we never heard from you? And finally, why would you take a day where we celebrated the death of our loved one and use it to disparage not only them but us? President Trump has called. President Trump shows up. President Trump takes the time to hear our loved one’s stories. Why won’t you do the same, vice president?” she finished.

The Biden administration later reviewed its Afghanistan withdrawal in April 2023. The internal report wrote that Trump was to blame for the botched withdrawal because he had previously negotiated with the Taliban, agreed on a withdrawal date and failed to leave the Biden administration a comprehensive plan on how the operation should be carried out.

Harris has previously said she was the “last person in the room” with Biden when he decided to pull troops and American citizens out of the country. And amid all the backlash, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in April 2023 that the president was “proud” of its operation.

“Vice President Harris, my name is Jim McCollum. I am the Gold Star father of United States Marine Corps Lance Corporal Riley McCollum, killed in Afghanistan August 26, 2021. Your recent remarks related to Trump’s visit to Arlington are filled with nothing but lies and deceit. How do you sleep at night knowing it was you, this administration, you and Biden, you being the last one in the room are responsible for the death of our 13 kids. You failed for three years and eight months to acknowledge our kids, but to acknowledge me. You don’t know me. You’ve never spoken to me. You’ve never reached out to me,” McCollum said in a video.

“You have failed in your duties as vice president. You have been nothing but disrespectful to me and the families of the 13. Yet you’re claiming that you will always be respectful and show respect for our fallen, you’ve been absent for three years and eight months. You’ve proven that you’re not capable to do the job that you have, let alone the job that you seek,” he continued.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.