Biden news: Democrat campaign hit by 'Kremlin-backed' hackers as Harris heads to Florida touches down in Florida where race is neck and neck
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Your support makes all the difference.Joe Biden's campaign was reportedly hit by suspected Russian state-backed hackers after they unsuccessfully tried to breach SKDKnickerbocker, a Washington-based strategy and communications firm that has been working with the campaign.
The US Treasury also sanctioned Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach for election interference against Mr Biden, including promoting “false and unsubstantiated” allegations.
It came as Democratic vice presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, visited Florida in an effort to drum up more support from voters in the battleground state.
Mr Biden has faced struggles when attempting to garner support from Hispanic voters. Ms Harris in Miami could be the campaign’s latest effort to sway voters ahead of November.
She may be hoping Florida voters wear Converse sneakers because the Senator's sartorial choices were all the rage on the campaign trail.
All the rage in the Beltway, meanwhile, was "Rage" itself, Bob Woodward's upcoming book. Biden said Donald Trump had 'no conception' of national security after revelations the president boasted about classified nuclear weapons systems to veteran journalist Bob Woodward.
Biden, meanwhile, will have a chance to face Trump more directly, with his campaign announcing the pair would hold competing events in Minnesota next Friday.
Trump releases ad claiming Biden’s ‘America’ brings chaos to cities
Donald Trump has shared a contrasting campaign ad to Joe Biden’s on Thursday.
In the ad, it repeats Mr Biden saying “peacefully protest” as footage of violence from across the country goes across the screen. This seemed to insinuate that Mr Biden was calling those moments peaceful protests when he has actually condemned any instances of violence, looting, and anarchy.
The ad then ends with it stating that a vote for Mr Trump would be a vote for “law and order” in America.
The president has stuck with his law and order message in an effort to persuade voters to choose him over Mr Biden in November.
‘Contempt for the American people and science’: Pelosi rips Trump for downplaying coronavirus in Woodward interviews
Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped into Donald Trump after revelations this week from famed journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book that the president downplayed the threat of coronavirus publicly while privately expressing his concerns about its deadliness.
“In those comments, he showed his contempt — contempt for the American people and their health, contempt for science, contempt for any real effort to crush the virus,” Ms Pelosi told reporters on Thursday.
While Senate Republicans have largely defended the president, saying he was trying to prevent public “panic,” Ms Pelosi indicated that was no excuse for misinforming the American people about how seriously they ought to have been taking the threat of Covid-19.
Griffin Connolly reports:
‘Contempt for the American people and science’: Pelosi rips Trump for Woodward revelations he downplayed coronavirus
The latest breaking news, comment and features from The Independent.
Biden releases scathing ad against Trump for his coronavirus response
Joe Biden’s campaign team has already created an ad in regards to Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The ad uses audio from journalist Bob Woodward’s interviews with the president back in February and March. These recordings were then compared to what the president was saying in public at the same time about the coronavirus.
“How many more people have to suffer because of President Trump's lies?” Mr Biden wrote in a tweet.
The White House has denied that the president ever downplayed the pandemic or lied to the public about the seriousness of the novel virus.
Biden accuses the president of creating a ‘disaster’ during the pandemic
Joe Biden has held onto the latest reports from The Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s book Rage about Donald Trump’s knowledge of the coronavirus at the start of the pandemic.
Mr Trump, in a recorded interview, told the journalist that he wanted to “downplay” the virus in order to stop the public from panicking. But around that same time of the interview he was also misleading the public about how serious the virus was compared to the flu.
In his latest tweet, Mr Biden has accused the president of creating a “disaster” in the coronavirus pandemic response because of his effort to not create public panic.
Bob Woodward may have just handed Joe Biden the election — but at what cost?
Griffin Connolly with his latest analysis for The Independent:
Bob Woodward may have just handed Joe Biden the election — but at what cost?
Did the famed journalist ever consider how much of an impact his Trump tapes could have had during the pandemic’s early stages?
Hair salon at centre of Nancy Pelosi controversy shuts down after GoFundMe raises $300,000 for owner
A San Fransisco hair salon at the centre of a controversy involving house speaker Nancy Pelosi is closing down after the owner said she feels she can no longer safely operate the business.
“I am actually done in San Francisco and closing my doors, unfortunately,” Erica Kious, the salon’s owner, told Fox News on Wednesday night.
Esalon made headlines after it provided footage to Fox News showing Ms Pelosi not wearing a face mask as she walked through the property, despite San Francisco salons only being allowed to operate outdoors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Louise Hall reports:
Hair salon at centre of Nancy Pelosi controversy shuts down after $300,000 raised for owner
Business hit headlines after sharing footage of house speaker on premises without mask
Swing state voters say neither candidate mentally able
According to voters across six swing states that will largely decide the presidential election outcome, neither Donald Trump or Joe Biden were considered mentally fit to be president by a majority of voters polled by CNBC/Change Research.
Whilst voters in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin said the Democratic presidential nominee was more physically capable than the US president, an overall majority of 51 per cent said Mr Trump was mentally unfit, whilst 52 per cent said the same for Mr Biden.
Democrats to introduce bill in response to Russian bounties
Democratic lawmakers are set to introduce a bill on Thursday that would require Donald Trump to impose sanctions on any Russian involved in a reported program to pay bounties to militants for killing US and allied forces in Afghanistan.
The text of the bill, seen by Reuters, would among other things require the US president to say for certain whether the Russian government offered, ordered or was responsible for bounties for killing US and allied forces.
If his administration found that Moscow did so, the measure would require sanctions to be imposed on Russian president Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian government or military officials involved in the bounties.
The bill, although unlikely to pass the Republican-run Senate, adds to pressure on Mr Trump, who is already under fire for what critics say is a pattern of disrespect for the military after a media report that he denigrated fallen soldiers in France, by calling them “suckers” and “losers”.
Democrats accused the president in July of failing to act on intelligence regarding a bounty program placed against US troops.
Reuters
Obama says ‘vote like you mean it’, amid wildfires
Barack Obama has underlined the connection between the raging wildfires in America’s West and the climate crisis, noting that: “Protecting our planet is on the ballot”.
The former president tweeted the message and four photos of the eerie glowing orange sky over San Francisco on Wednesday night.
President Obama wrote: “The fires across the West Coast are just the latest examples of the very real ways our changing climate is changing our communities. Protecting our planet is on the ballot. Vote like your life depends on it—because it does.”
Multiple environmental studies have linked he climate crisis to increases in wildfires like the one engulfing the West Coast.
Louise Boyle reports:
Obama shares alarming pictures of West Coast fires in stark message about climate crisis
‘The fires across the West Coast are just the latest examples of the very real ways our changing climate is changing our communities,’ former president says
Biden campaign clarifies death toll mix-up
Joe Biden appeared to misspeak on Wednesday as he confused the coronavirus death toll in Michigan with that of the US military, saying more than 6,000 soldiers had died with the disease, when in fact only seven deaths have been confirmed.
In a statement to Fox News, the Biden campaign sought to clear the confusion, saying: “Vice President Biden has the utmost respect for the men and women of the armed services and believes it's the sacred duty of our country to properly equip them, look after their families when they're deployed, and care for them when they return”.
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