BY THE NUMBERS: Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz sit down with CNN’s Dana Bash at 9 tonight for their first interview as candidates. The interview is considered to have greater significance because of Harris’s short candidacy. 

  Polling by Fox News has Harris leading by two points in Georgia where the Vice President and her running mate Tim Walz have been campaigning.

  Fox has the race in Georgia at 50 percent for Harris, 48 for Trump. Fox polling also shows Harris leading Trump by one point in Arizona and two points in Nevada, both within the polling margin for error, but Fox polls tend to skew in favor of Republicans.

   Polls are entertaining but often conflicting. The Hill/Emerson has Trump leading Harris by three points in Arizona, a four point difference from Fox.  Overall, though, six out of eight recent national polls have Harris in the lead.

ORANGE ALERT!: Donald Trump in an interview this week with formerly popular television host “Dr. Phil” amplified his claim that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet. 

  “You believe God’s hand was in this that day?” McGraw asked.

  “I believe so, yeah, I do,” Trump replied.

  “And you talk about the country; you believe you have more to do,” McGraw followed up. “You weren’t done. You were spared for a reason.”

  “Well,” Trump said, “God believes that.”

  Trump moments later said that God wants “to be involved in saving — and maybe it’s more than saving the nation — maybe it’s saving the world.”

  And in Trump’s mind, God would do that through him.

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: The FBI released photos of the assault rifle used by Thomas Crooks in his failed attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, revealing a rifle that could be easily knocked down into parts and carried through security in a backpack.

  The rifle included a red dot sight that tells the shooter where a bullet will hit. The gun was bought by Crooks’ father about ten years ago.

  Investigators told reporters that they have not found any ideological motive in the shooting. “We saw through our analysis of all his, but particularly his online searches, a sustained, detailed effort to plan an attack on some events, meaning he looked at any number of events or targets,” the FBI’s lead investigator Kevin Rojek told reporters. “Then when this event was announced, the Trump rally was announced early in July, he became hyper-focused on that specific event, and looked at it as a target of opportunity.”

THE DELI COUNTER: Nine people have died of listeria contracted from Boar’s Head deli meats, the Centers for Disease Control says. Boar’s head issued a recall back in July.

  At least 57 cases have been reported in 18 states including Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. The CDC says the true number of people made sick is likely to be larger.

  The prime suspect in the Boar’s head recall is ready-to-eat liverwurst made at a plant in Virginia. The recall has since expanded to include dozens of products, such as sliced ham varieties, sausages, and loaves all made at that same Virginia plant.

MUZZLED: Signaling that freedom of the press is dead in Hong Kong, a judge has convicted two former editors of the now-defunct liberal Stand News of conspiring to publish seditious materials. Both face potential prison sentences.

  As Chinese authorities cracked down on Hong Kong’s traditionally boisterous press, prosecutors charged that news articles and opinion pieces published by Stand News were biased against the government and a threat to national security.   

  Defendant Chung Pui-kuen said in his testimony that “We didn’t have a hidden agenda, or any other goals that you couldn’t see. We saw very important events with a lot of public interest; we only wanted to document them.”

HOOP DREAMS: Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark has broken the WNBA rookie record for three pointers in an 84-80 win over Connecticut. Clark hit her 86^th in her 31^st game. The previous record was set in 34 games.

THE SPIN RACK: Forty-seven year old Robert Telles, a former las Vegas politician, was convicted yesterday of murdering Jeff German, a longtime reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who was known for digging into the Mafia and public corruption. German was stabbed to death in 2022 outside his home by a man lying in wait, and the jury decided that man was Telles. — The Supreme Court maintained a temporary pause on a renewed effort by President Biden to forgive billions of dollars of student debt. The court previously blocked a wholesale plan to wipe out $400 billion in debt and Biden since then has been trying to do it in pieces. — Daniel Edwin Wilson, 48, of Louisville, Kentucky was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison for his part in the January 6^th insurrection. He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer, possession of an unregistered firearm, and possession of a firearm by a person prohibited from having one. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Chefs are beginning to explore the use of artificial intelligence to create new dishes. One creation that challenges the notion of how intelligent artificial intelligence really is … pizza with cheese, strawberries, blueberries, and multi-flavored Cheerios. 

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