Latest news with #FIGHT:
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Top Kamala Harris campaign advisor admits she was floored by Democrat's major flub on 'View'
A former top advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris' failed presidential campaign was shocked when Harris told "The View" that she wouldn't have done anything different from President Biden, according to a new book by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. With roughly one month to go until the November election, Harris famously told the liberal hosts that nothing "comes to mind" after they asked her to name something she would've done differently than Biden over the past four years. Harris senior campaign advisor Stephanie Cutter was floored at Harris' response, according to Allen and Parnes' new book released this month entitled, "FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House." "What the hell was that?" Cutter recalled thinking to herself. "That's not what we practiced." Kamala Harris Was 'Very Annoyed' With Obama As She Sought His Endorsement, Book Reveals The gaffe became a moment that defined Harris' campaign and provided ammunition for her opponent. Read On The Fox News App The Trump campaign immediately seized on the gaffe and started sharing the clip to voters via social media and text message that afternoon. "It provided the money shot" for Trump's ad makers," the book quotes a Harris ally as saying. "And it was her own bad moment." "When she gave us the gift of the View interview, we were able to anchor her to the Biden administration in her own words, which is something we were trying to do anyway," one Trump advisor says in the book. Biden Repeatedly Told Harris There Could Be 'No Daylight' Between Them On Policies: Report The Democratic candidate faced scrutiny throughout her campaign for not breaking with Biden on more issues after she took his spot at the top of the ticket. Harris' answer had "done little to erase the impression that her reason for running was one of circumstance," the book's authors noted. The vice president was facing pressure from Biden to remain loyal to him and put "no "daylight" between them during her campaign, the book said. Ahead of her first interview as the Democratic candidate, Harris was prepped by aides with a list of items she could name that made her "proud of her work with Biden," the book also said. Harris' office did not immediately return a request for comment. Fox News' Hanna Panreck contributed to this article source: Top Kamala Harris campaign advisor admits she was floored by Democrat's major flub on 'View'
Fox News
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Democrats fretted behind the scenes about Biden's decline despite public confidence, new book claims
Democrats had major concerns about former President Joe Biden's decline and cognitive abilities ahead of his June debate against President Donald Trump, despite publicly maintaining that the former president was fit to serve another four years, according to a new book by reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. "Publicly, Democrats scoffed at Republican claims that Biden wasn't up to the job," Allen and Parnes wrote. "But privately, some of them worried all along that they were putting too much stock in an old man who, at best, had long since lost his fastball." Allen, a senior politics reporter at NBC News, and Parnes, a senior political correspondent for The Hill, wrote a book set to be published in April titled, "FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," about the 2024 election. The Hill published a report on Monday based on excerpts from the new book. The reporters revealed that the former president's team had put extensive precautions in place to hide Biden's decline and had several plans in place if the president died while in office or if he chose to step aside, according to The Hill. Allen and Parnes reported in their book that Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., was worried about Biden's decline in June 2023, after speaking to the president at a White House event. The authors revealed that Biden did not immediately recognize Swalwell, according to the report, and that the California Democrat needed to remind the former president of who he was with personal details. Allen and Parnes also reported that the president met with a makeup artist every morning, prior to travel and before calls with his aides, to cover up visible signs of aging. The president also occasionally canceled the briefings that followed his makeup appointments, according to the book. Another excerpt of the book published by The Hill revealed that Biden had repeatedly urged former Vice President Kamala Harris not to break with him on certain policies. "He would say publicly that Harris should do what she must to win. But privately, including in conversations with her, he repeated an admonition: let there be no daylight between us," the authors wrote. "But the day of the debate Biden called to give Harris an unusual kind of pep talk — and another reminder about the loyalty he demanded. No longer able to defend his own record, he expected Harris to protect his legacy," Allen and Parnes continued. "Whether she won or lost the election, he thought, she would only harm him by publicly distancing herself from him — especially during a debate that would be watched by millions of Americans. To the extent that she wanted to forge her own path, Biden had no interest in giving her room to do so," they wrote. Rep. Swalwell's office and Biden's team did not immediately return a request for comment.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Harris team planned Houston rally with Joe Rogan in mind
Former Vice President Harris made a substantial effort to get on Joe Rogan's popular podcast amid concerns about her traction with male voters — going so far as to plan a Houston rally to justify a stop at Rogan's Austin studio, according to a forthcoming book. In the final weeks of the election, the Harris team was in talks to sit down with the media personality, whose reps insisted that the interview take place at his home base in Austin, as reported in an excerpt from NBC News's Jonathan Allen and The Hill's Amie Parnes in 'FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House.' For Harris, stopping in the solidly red Lone Star State in the waning days of her campaign threatened to draw scrutiny and waste resources. But as her campaign weathered accusations that she was dodging tough interviews and woes about her shaky support from young men, a showing on Rogan's popular program was seen as a big potential boost worth working for. 'Harris had less than zero reason to be in Texas. It was not a swing state. Her campaign was flush with cash—so it made no sense to take her off the trail to raise money. She was in battleground-or-bust mode. Plus, a detour to Texas might smell like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors,' reads an excerpt from 'FIGHT.' So the Harris team planned to fly Harris to Houston for an Oct. 25, 2024, rally, Allen and Parnes reported, 'under the cover of visiting a state with one of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws — to put her in proximity to Austin.' The announcement struck some observers as a surprise break in the Democratic nominee's criss-cross of swing states ahead of Election Day, even as her team said the stop would spotlight the impacts of anti-abortion policies. But then, on the same day the campaign announced the Houston rally, news broke that now-President Trump would sit down with Rogan on Oct. 25. Rogan, one of the most popular and controversial media personalities in the country, had previously said he wasn't a Trump supporter. But his three-hour interview with the Republican 2024 frontrunner went quickly viral, and Rogan eventually endorsed his return to the Oval Office. The failure to find agreement on a potential sit-down for Harris may have blunted efforts by the former vice president to reach young men, who make up the bulk of Rogan's massive fan base. Young voters have historically swung for Democrats and helped push former President Biden to victory in 2020, but the Trump campaign's pointed focus on young men appeared to capitalize on a growing gender divide, with young male voters moving away from the Democratic Party. With the accelerated timeline of her fast-tracked campaign, Harris appeared to use targeted appearances to reach key demographics, like sitting down for Alex Cooper's 'Call Her Daddy' podcast, widely popular among women. Gov Tim Walz (D-Minn.) played video games on Twitch with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), which the Harris-Walz campaign pointed to as evidence of their efforts to 'meet young men where they are.' But the campaign still struggled to reach young men, whom experts have said were catered to by the Trump campaign with its appeals to hypermasculinity. A Harvard University poll just ahead of the election found Harris led Trump among both young men and women, but while she led by 30 points among young women, she was just 10 points ahead with young men. It was the latest in a string of signs across the last several cycles that younger men were moving away from Democrats, while women of all age groups have appeared to grow more likely to identify as liberal. Parnes and Allen further reported that there was one 'final stab' from Harris aides to offer Rogan another meeting, this time in Washington after Harris made an Oct. 29 closing argument speech. 'For the record the Harris campaign has not passed on doing the podcast,' Rogan wrote on the social platform X on Oct. 29. 'They offered a date for Tuesday, but I would have had to travel to her, and they only wanted to do an hour.' In the end, the Harris-Rogan sit-down never materialized. Harris went through with her Oct. 25 Houston rally, and was endorsed on-stage by music superstar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, whose song 'Freedom' was used as the Harris campaign anthem. There had been buzz that the 'Texas Hold Em' singer might appear at the Democratic National Convention, though a performance didn't materialize. But 'FIGHT' reports that there were plans for Beyoncé to sing at the Houston event, citing a source that said the team planned for 'her singing 'Freedom' a capella before Harris walked on stage.' In the end, however, Beyoncé would only speak, not sing. Harris-Walz raked in A-list backers for their fast-tracked campaign, including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey and James Taylor. But in post-mortems of the election, Democrats have questioned whether celebrity endorsements helped or hindered Harris, as her party was pelted with accusations that it was out-of-touch with the working class. Based on an excerpt from FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, to be published April 1 by William Morrow. Copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
