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Sen. Tom Cotton: Americans won’t want Harris to lead when they “get a better look at her and her radical positions”
Washington — Sen. Tom Cotton said on Sunday that Americans won’t want Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the nation after they learn more about her, urging more press scrutiny of the presumptive Democratic nominee who vaulted to the top of the ticket in recent weeks.
“When the American people get a better look at her and her radical positions, I think you’re gonna see that they don’t want her to continue the Biden-Harris legacy,” Cotton said on “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
The Arkansas Republican criticized Harris for being the presumptive nominee for two weeks without providing any opportunity for unscripted moments or questions from the press. He said when she does encounter the media, she’ll have to answer for her positions on issues like energy and gun policy.
“Kamala Harris has only been the nominee for two weeks and hasn’t answered a single question,” he said, adding that it’s “incumbent upon the media” to hold Harris to the same standard as nominees who win the nomination through the traditional primary process.
“Donald Trump in ’16, Barack Obama in ’08 — they all had to go through more than a year of testing at town halls and VFWs and debates because they earned the nomination,” Cotton told moderator Ed O’Keefe. “Kamala Harris had it given to her.”
Cotton claimed that Harris has “dodged the press” for the two weeks since she received President Biden’s endorsement.
“She can’t dodge the press for another 13 weeks,” he said.
His comments came amid new voter enthusiasm surrounding the Democratic ticket after Mr. Biden’s decision to step aside reset the presidential race. According to new CBS News polling, Harris has a 1-point edge on former President Donald Trump nationally, which Mr. Biden never saw. The survey found that Harris and Trump are tied across the nation’s battleground states.
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Sen. Mark Kelly says feds need to do a “better job” of letting Americans know “there’s a huge amount of misinformation” on election
Washington — Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday that the federal government needs to do its part to inform Americans of the vast swath of election misinformation that’s being consumed on social media platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
“It’s up to us, the people who serve in Congress and in the White House to get the information out there, that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation in this election, and it’s not going to stop on Nov. 5,” Kelly said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Kelly, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he’s seen these misinformation operations target not only his state of Arizona, but also other battleground states.
“There is a very reasonable chance I would put it in the 20 to 30% range, that the content you are seeing, the comments you are seeing, are coming from one of those three countries: Russia, Iran, China,” Kelly said.
In a committee hearing last month on foreign threats to the 2024 election, Kelly presented screenshots of Russian-made web pages showing fabricated headlines designed to look like Fox News and The Washington Post, targeted at voters in battleground states.
“So my constituents in Arizona and others — they seek to influence the outcome of these elections, and that is absolutely beyond the pale,” Kelly said at the Sept. 18 hearing. “We’ve got to do something about it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump each have the support of 49% of Arizona voters, according to CBS News’ battleground tracker as of Sept. 30.
In another battleground state, Pennsylvania, Trump returned Saturday to hold a rally in Butler three months after an attempted assassination on him. He was joined by members of his own party and billionaire Elon Musk, who said Trump was the only way to preserve democracy and warned of a last election if he does not win in November.
Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Kelly called the social media mogul a hypocrite.
“He’s standing next to the guy that tried to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, saying that this is somehow going to be the last election and they’re going to take away your vote,” Kelly said. “And you know, it just doesn’t pass the logic test.”
At the White House press briefing on Friday, President Biden – speaking from the podium for the first time since taking office – said he’s confident of a free and fair election but alluded to the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol in his concerns on whether it will be a peaceful transfer of power.
“The things that Trump has said and the things that he said last time out when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous,” Mr. Biden said. “If you notice, I noticed that the vice-presidential Republican candidate did not say he’d accept the outcome of the election, and they haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election.”
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Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie says Iran is the country that’s in a corner
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