Harris to Sit for Fox Interview
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
IT’S POLITICAL: Vice President Kamala Harris has agreed to an interview with the unfriendly-to-Democrats Fox News. The interview with Fox’s chief political anchor Bret Baier is set for recording near Philadelphia tomorrow to be aired at 6 pm Eastern time. Fox said Harris agreed to answer about 25 to 30 minutes of questions.
It would be Harris’s first interview with Fox “News” which unabashedly and uncritically supports Donald Trump for president. Not since Hillary Clinton in 2016 has a Democratic presidential candidate sat for an interview with Fox.
Harris evidently wants to change some minds among Fox viewers in an increasingly tight race for president. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has slipped a bit for Harris, now at a 1.7 percent advantage over Trump. The RCP average of seven battleground states has Trump leading by .4 percent and Harris up by only a hair in Wisconsin.
The vice president is having trouble keeping the support of Black and Hispanic voters, normally a sure thing for Democrats. Polls show Harris getting significantly lower support from Black men than President Biden did in 2020. In one interview Harris said, “Black men are no different from anybody else. They expect that you have to earn their vote.”
So with that in mind, Harris rolled out an “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” to help them start businesses and build wealth.” The plan calls for providing one million loans that would forgive up to $20,000 for Black entrepreneurs and people of other races to start a business.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: Donald Trump suspended taking questions at a town hall yesterday after a couple of people had medical issues and spent the next half hour dancing and listening to music.
In a weekend interview with Fox News Host Maria Bartiromo, Trump said the country’s biggest problem is not illegal immigrants, but “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” He said: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the—and it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Kamala Harris played that clip at a rally in Pennsylvania and called him unhinged.
OH CANADA!: The government of Canadian Prime Mister Justin Trudeau formally accused the Indian government of murder and extortion intended to silence critics of India living in Canada. They threw out India’s top diplomat and five others, saying they were part of a criminal network. India retaliated by expelling six Canadian diplomats.
The two countries have been at each other following the 2023 assassination in Canada of the prominent Sikh cleric, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, which Trudeau’s government said was orchestrated by the Indian government. Nijjar was ambushed and killed by three masked men outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia.
Canada has the largest Sikh community outside of India and India charges that it’s the hotbed of a secessionist movement to carve out a Sikh homeland. India denies involvement in the assassination but Canada has long considered the six diplomats they expelled to have been involved.
TikTok, TikTok: Girls as young as 15 were stripping on TikTok’s live feature with adults paying for the show, according to court-sealed documents obtained by NPR and Kentucky Public Radio. That’s just one of the revelations in the documents filed by 14 state attorneys general for lawsuits filed against TikTok accusing the app of being dangerous and intentionally addicting for young people.
The lawsuits charge that TikTok calculated that a user of the app can become “addicted” in under 35 minutes or having watched 260 videos.
The documents claim that TikTok engineered its algorithm to push more attractive people onto users’ screens and that the feature which allows parents to set time limits on use for their children had little effect.
The research cited in the lawsuits says 95% of smartphone users under 17 use TikTok at least once a month and that Tik Tok executives know that their program “interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.”
NPR reports that a TikTok spokesman criticized them for reporting on information that is now under a court seal, claiming the report “cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.”
THE SPIN RACK: The US announced that it is sending an advanced high altitude missile defense system to Israel and about 100 American troops to operate it. It is the first deployment of American forces to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks there on October 7th a year ago. — A 44-year-old North Carolina man was arrested over the weekend for threatening to harm FEMA employees responding to Hurricane Helene, according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office. — Two men who posed as utility workers to gain entry into a home in Detroit have been charged with killing a 72-year-old man and binding his wife with duct tape before taking her watch and phone. — The multi-generational Kennedy clan gathered on Cape Cod yesterday for the funeral of their matriarch, Ethel Kennedy, the widow of assassinated US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
BELOW THE FOLD: Awwwww …. Two three year old giant panda bears named Bao Li and Qing Bao are on their way from China to Washington’s National Zoo to put life back into one of the zoo’s most popular features.
They are the first pandas China has sent to Washington in 24 years. The previous pair returned to China with their cub last November. The latest pair was provided with corn buns, bamboo shoots, carrots, water, and medicine for the ride.
It was a big thaw in US-China relations dubbed “panda diplomacy” in 1972 under the Nixon administration when China sent the first pair of pandas to Washington. Everybody loves pandas.
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