Biden’s garbage time

Here’s what was supposed to happen: Vice President Kamala Harris would speak at the Ellipse, just as Donald Trump did on January 6, 2021, before his supporters entered the US Capitol in order to prevent the certification of the last presidential election. Harris would strike a stark contrast; she would deliver a disciplined address to all Americans, a week before polls close, and show that the Democrats were still in the fight, despite the recent “vibe shift” toward Trump. Tens of thousands would attend. The visuals would be striking.

Everything went to plan. Enter Joe Biden.

On a Zoom call for Voto Latino from the White House last night, right behind where Harris was addressing her supporters, President Biden decided he should weigh in on the recent imbroglio caused by Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico at Sunday’s Madison Square Garden rally.

That joke, for what it’s worth: “I don’t know if you guys know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico?”

Biden responded with his trademark surgical precision, by inadvertently insulting half of the voting public. While stumbling over his words, the president said, “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.” The Trump campaign has chosen, not unreasonably, to take his comments to mean that he thinks Trump supporters are garbage; the Biden clean-up attempt insists that he was referring to Hinchcliffe’s supporters — and that there was an apostrophe in “supporter’s,” which makes it better somehow?

“You are not garbage! I love you! You are the best our nation has to offer,” blared a Trump campaign fundraising email that went out within two hours of the conclusion of Harris’s remarks.

Instead of talking about her 75,000-person rally, therefore, Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz have spent the day mopping up after the sloppy senescent incumbent. “The president’s clarified his remarks,” Walz said on Good Morning America this morning. “The vice president and I have made it absolutely clear that we want everyone part of this.”

“Let me be clear: I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for,” Harris told reporters at Joint Base Andrews today.

At the rally, which I covered, attendees waved the Stars and Stripes, with backdrops reading “FREEDOM” and “USA” adorning the riders. The inference was clear: it was, in fact, the Democrats who are the party of patriotism, gathering to stand up for freedom, in contrast to the similarly dressed rabble who rolled down the Mall and through the US Capitol while the 2020 election results were being certified. A few feet away, Biden’s comment cut across the “pledge to be a president for all Americans” that his hopeful successor was making a few feet away.

-Matt McDonald

On our radar

VICE GOUGING Attorneys general from fifteen states signed a letter calling for a national ban on “price gouging,” supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposal to end the practice, which she claims is a major driver of inflation. The letter was led by New York attorney general Letitia James’s office. 

LOCKING THE LOADED A federal appeals court upheld DC’s ban on so-called high-capacity handgun magazines on Tuesday. The law prohibits citizens from owning magazines that carry more than ten rounds. 

MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he was offered control of multiple government agencies related to health and nutrition, including the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, if Trump wins a second term. 

Battle at the ballot box 

With a waning five days left until Election Day, the battle for ballots is heating up — literally — in Arizona, Oregon and Washington State, where ballot drop boxes and a US Postal Service mailbox were set on fire.

NPR reports that in Oregon, only three ballots were damaged thanks to “fire suppressant inside the ballot box,” but in Washington, hundreds of ballots were lost when fire suppressants failed to work. While the FBI investigates these fires, a thirty-five-year-old man in Arizona confessed to Phoenix police that he had set a mailbox on fire “because he wanted to be arrested and that his actions were not politically motivated and not related to anything involving the upcoming election.” What a coincidence.

Back east in the hotly (sorry) contested swing state of Pennsylvania, election officials are investigating “potential election-related fraud after authorities received large batches of voter registration materials from a ‘third-party organization,’” according to Fox News. Reacting to reports of possible voter fraud in the battleground Keystone State, former president Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social:

Wow! York County, Pennsylvania, received THOUSANDS of potentially FRAUDULENT Voter Registration Forms and Mail-In Ballot Applications from a third-party group. This is on top of Lancaster County being caught with 2600 Fake Ballots and Forms, all written by the same person. Really bad ‘stuff.’ WHAT IS GOING ON IN PENNSYLVANIA??? Law Enforcement must do their job, immediately!!! WOW!!!

Meanwhile, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s plea for the US Supreme Court to intervene and order the removal of self-identified non-citizens from voter rolls has been granted via an emergency stay. The Washington Postreports Virginia may move ahead with removing about 1,600 voters from state’s registration rolls, which Youngkin said offers “further comfort across the commonwealth that this election will be secure, it will be accurate, it will reflect the will of the voters.”

–Teresa Mull

Please delete that text…

Dan Osborn, a self-described independent candidate, is giving Nebraska Republican incumbent senator Deb Fischer the toughest race of her life, mostly because he’s tried to avoid being pinned down as a partisan Democrat. He claims to be an Independent despite his reliance on socialist operatives to launch his campaign and his close ties to the Democratic Party’s infrastructure. 

But a failed candidate halfway across the country in Maryland might have blown up his spot. A campaign text that went out from a group backed by Harry Dunn, the former January 6 Capitol Police officer who unsuccessfully ran in Maryland’s Democratic primary, gave up Osborn’s allegiance to the Democrats.  

“In Nebraska, Senator Deb Fischer is polling neck-and-neck with Dan Osborn, who is running as an Independent, but who is backed by the Democratic party’s biggest donors,” a text to donors said. “Dan is an Independent who will caucus with the Democrats. He is also a veteran and a union leader. The New York Times says he is ‘making the Republicans sweat.’”

Osborn has strenuously denied being a Democrat-in-sheep’s-clothing throughout his Senate campaign, despite Fischer’s protestations to the contrary. As Fischer pointed to the donor text as proof of her claims, the Dunn-backed group claimed it has had “no contact” with Osborn’s team and that it “sent an incorrect text message about what Osborn will do in the Senate.”

Despite this disavowal of the text message, the fundraising link attached to it — which uses the Democratic party’s fundraising platform ActBlue — is still active. Osborn’s campaign is itself running ads urging people to use ActBlue to donate to his campaign. 

The Spectator first broke that an X account and email belonging to Osborn liked graphic porn and appeared in the Ashley Madison hack database, respectively. His campaign waved away the report by claiming that many people had access to those accounts.  

–Matthew Foldi