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Election 2024 live updates: Trump hits North Carolina; Harris stumps in Georgia.
Vice President Kamala Harris will also speak in North Carolina this evening.
What’s happening on the campaign trail today
- Former President Donald Trump is slated to campaign in North Carolina today, making stops in Gastonia and Greensboro. He’s also expected to deliver remarks in Salem, Virginia, a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee in decades.
- Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a campaign rally in Atlanta before traveling to North Carolina to address a crowd in Charlotte.
- The Harris campaign will continue to rely on star power today, with Michelle Obama slated to stump alongside singer Alicia Keys and Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, appearing in Las Vegas this afternoon at a lunch alongside actor Eva Longoria.
Swing state officials prepare for potential disruptions around December electors meetings.
The final votes of the presidential election have yet to be cast, but concern is already swirling among state election officials that a close outcome could fuel chaos during the routine events that follow a campaign.
In the weeks following Election Day, results will be certified by state officials, recounts may occur and electors will meet in each state to formally cast their Electoral College votes. Those votes later get sent to Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are scheduled to formally count those results during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2025.
These meetings in states, outlined by federal statute and specified by state laws, statutes or constitutions, will occur on Dec. 17. The violence of Jan. 6, 2021 — as well as the growing expectation that former President Donald Trump may not accept the election results if he loses to Vice President Kamala Harris — has prompted federal officials to beef up security in the nation’s capital for the same occasion this time around. Specifically, concerns abound that the possible submission of alternate slates of electors could manifest as unrest ahead of and during these meetings.
Officials in battleground states — whose Capitols will, in most cases, host the December meetings of electors — are beginning to plan for such contingencies as well, in preparation that these events could be disrupted.
Harris slams Speaker Mike Johnson for saying the GOP may repeal CHIPS Act.
Harris tore into Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Saturday for his comment that Republicans might seek to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act if they take control of Congress in the upcoming election.
“I also want to speak to the comments that have been recently made by the speaker of the House,” Harris told reporters in Milwaukee. “It is just further evidence of everything that I’ve actually been talking about for months now, about [former President Donald] Trump’s intention to implement Project 2025.”
“We have talked repeatedly — and the American people know what’s in it — we’ve talked repeatedly about their intention to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Now to get rid of the CHIPS Act,” Harris added.
Her remarks came a day after Johnson made the controversial comment at an event in New York with politically vulnerable Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y. When asked whether Republicans will seek to repeal the CHIPS Act if they win the election, Johnson replied, “I expect that we probably will,” according to a video posted by a local journalist.
Pam Bondi blasts Mark Cuban at Trump rally over remarks about women who support Trump.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi blasted Mark Cuban, who has been campaigning for Harris, about comments he made about the women who work for Trump.
“I think we have a message for Mark Cuban: underestimate us,” Bondi told attendees at a Trump campaign rally in North Carolina, adding: “This will be fun.”
Cuban has been attacked by Republicans in recent days for a comment he made, saying that strong women are “intimidating” to Trump.
Trump wanted to label Biden the r-word but campaign pushed back, new report says.
The Trump campaign is calling new reporting by The Atlantic that the former president wanted to call President Joe Biden “a retard” during campaign rallies “materially false,” saying it “was never discussed.”
“Joe Biden’s mental decline was clear for the world to see,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to NBC News. “All we had to do was play highlights of his cringe-worthy speeches and botched interviews.”
The Atlantic reported this morning, citing three people who had heard his remarks, that in June, Trump wanted to start calling the president, who was then still a candidate, “Retarded Joe Biden.” Trump’s campaign pushed back hard against the idea, however, out of fear it might alienate moderate voters and generate sympathy for the president, the magazine reported.
NBC News has not independently verified The Atlantic’s reporting.
It’s the final weekend for Harris and Trump to make their case to voters with Election Day just three days away. NBC’s Aaron Gilchrist reports for TODAY.
FBI denies involvement in two false videos related to election security
In a statement, the FBI said that they’re “aware of two videos falsely claiming to be from the FBI relating to election security.”
One video is “stating the FBI has apprehended three linked groups committing ballot fraud” while the second video is one “relating to the Second Gentleman,” the statement said.
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the video relating to second gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband.
“These videos are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false,” the statement added.
The FBI told NBC News they had no additional details to provide on the videos beyond their written statement.
Trump: ‘Kamala is slumping to the finish line’
Ahead of a rally in North Carolina on Saturday, Trump slammed Harris on TruthSocial, writing that she “is slumping to the finish line, yawning, shrieking, and cackling, while I am working 24/7 to win this Election, so we can save our Country and, Make America Great Again!”
He also called the vice president “a Low IQ individual, not equipped to be President,” an attack that he’s launched against Harris several times on the campaign trail.
Georgia says more than 4M people cast ballots during early voting.
More than 4 million Georgians voted during the state’s early and mail-in voting period, which ended yesterday, the Georgia secretary of state’s office said in a release Saturday morning.
That contrasts with 1.9 million ballots cast during the same period in 2018, nearly 2.7 million ballots cast in 2020, and almost 2.3 million cast in 2022, the office said. Further, turnout was high, with more than 90 of Georgia’s 159 counties exceeding 50% turnout in early voting, the office said, calling the numbers “unprecedented in Georgia history.”
“This was the most successful Early Voting period in Georgia history because voters trust the process,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement, adding that elections officials have become “battle-tested and ready” over the last four years.
“And we’re going to hold those who interfere in our elections accountable,” he said.
Marianne Williamson says she voted for Harris.
Author Marianne Williamson, who ran for the Democratic nomination earlier this cycle, said she voted for Harris in a post on Instagram.
“To me, this is not a happy election,” she added. “I have seen too much for that. But it is a critically important election nonetheless. Each of us needs to do our best, particularly in light of what state we’re in and what difference our vote can realistically make there.”
In her caption, Williamson addressed several reasons that she’d heard for why some people were choosing not to vote for Harris.
One reason, she wrote, was that Harris was not chosen in a Democratic primary.
What’s a ‘red’ and ‘blue mirage,’ and how election night vote counts make it hard to tell who will win.
Once the last voter casts their ballot in a state and the polls close, the process of revealing the winner begins. That’s when Election Day turns into election night, and each state starts reporting its vote totals.
Some states — like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — report their vote quickly, while others like Arizona, Nevada and California typically take longer, upward of a week or two to tabulate most of their ballots. Within many states, the patterns of how votes are reported can make it difficult to tell in the middle of election night who the winner is going to be in the end.
For example, vote returns can skew toward one party early in a night because only a certain type of vote is reported first — like when mail ballots are counted before any in-person Election Day votes. These patterns can create what are sometimes referred to as “vote mirages.”
A vote mirage is when the current vote count shows a candidate getting a higher percentage of the vote than they will ultimately end up with in the final count. Mirages can be “red” or “blue” depending on which party appears to be benefiting — but “appears” is the really important thing here, because like any other mirage, a vote mirage is fleeting and doesn’t reflect the final reality.
Trump addresses his violent remarks about Liz Cheney and rally comedian’s racist Puerto Rico comments.
Trump called into Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” this morning before his day of campaigning in North Carolina and again defended his violent comments about Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney earlier this week.
“All I said is, let’s see how she does,” Trump said. “I said, put a gun in her hand and let her go out and let her face the enemy with a gun in her hand.” Trump also called Cheney a “female bully.”
The former president suggested in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in Arizona on Thursday night that Cheney would not be such “a radical war hawk” if she were sent to fight “with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her.”
“Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump continued. “You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building.”
How Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election unfolded in the courtroom.
After Trump claimed victory in the early-morning hours after election night in 2020, his campaign and supporters turned to the courts to make that claim a reality. The Trump campaign and surrogates began filing lawsuits the very same day, challenging the results on a variety of grounds well before the final votes were counted.
The legal process and tactics may provide insight into how Trump or his allies could launch similar efforts should he lose again this time.
Over the remainder of November and into December, Trump and his Republican allies filed dozens of lawsuits in key swing states that, if successful, would have given Trump the Electoral College votes needed to remain in the White House. Their efforts stretched from local county courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and were supported by solo practitioners and state attorneys general alike.
Of the more than 60 lawsuits filed in the post-election period, Trump obtained a favorable ruling in only one case — the remainder were eventually either dismissed, settled or voluntarily withdrawn.
Harris to campaign in Georgia and North Carolina.
Harris will hit the trail today with campaign rallies in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina. The Biden-Harris ticket won Georgia narrowly in 2020, and Trump narrowly won North Carolina the same year.
Harris will also get help from high-profile surrogate Michelle Obama, who will campaign in Pennsylvania tonight.
Trump to campaign in North Carolina and Virginia.
Trump will start off at a rally in Gastonia, North Carolina, a battleground state that he narrowly won in 2020.
Later, he will head to a rally in Virginia, even though the state is not considered a swing state. In 2020, Biden won the state with about 54.1% of the vote.
Trump will close with his final campaign rally of the day, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
NBC News