Welcome to October Surprise, the Daily Beast’s daily countdown to the biggest election of our lifetime. It’s only seven days until Election Day and here’s what’s happening in the race to the White House between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
THE DOWNLOAD
Donald Trump closed a rambling, lie-filled “press conference” on Tuesday by taking no questions and raving about his so-called “lovefest” of a political rally at Madison Square Garden.
The hour-long press event, held at Mar-a-Lago, was an opportunity for Trump to disavow racist jokes made at Sunday’s rally by Tony Hinchcliffe, which included the right-wing comedian referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
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Trump made no mention of the ill-advised joke that has peeved Puerto Ricans and their millions of loved ones in places like Philadelphia, New York and Florida, the very state where Trump was speaking on Tuesday. Instead, the GOP presidential candidate decided to gush over the “breathtaking” amount of love that he claims to have felt in MSG.
“There’s never been an event so beautiful,” Trump said. “Was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest, and it was my honor to be involved.” Read the story here.
Rapper Bad Bunny posted a video celebrating Puerto Rican culture on Tuesday after a comedian at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
Bad Bunny’s video was captioned “garbage,” a reference to Tony Hinchcliffe’s racist comments at the rally, featuring multiple clips of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking about supporting Puerto Ricans following the rally.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” Harris says in the clip, referencing the damage the island suffered following Hurricane Maria. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.” Thousands of Puerto Ricans died during the 2017 hurricane. Read the story here.
POLLS OBSESSED
Just when you thought the race couldn’t be any tighter, along comes a new poll. Harris’ lead over Trump has dwindled in the final week of the presidential contest, with the Democratic nominee leading her GOP opponent by a single percentage point, 44 percent to 43 percent. according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll out Tuesday.
The poll reflects a dead heat between the two candidates as Harris’ lead has steadily shrunk over the past month. The Reuters survey has a margin of error of 3 percentage points. FiveThirtyEight, meanwhile, also shows Harris and Trump have about an even chance of winning.
ON THE MOVE
Vice President Harris is making her “Closing Argument” speech tonight at the Ellipse, the same spot where Trump addressed his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, before the Capitol riots. Trump is holding a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, after giving a speech earlier in the day at Mar-a-Lago.
THROWBACK TUESDAY
Oct. 29 was a watershed day in 2016: the day that then-FBI director James Comey revealed that his agency had effectively reopened the probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails after her aide Huma Abedin’s husband Anthony Weiner was arrested for sexting an underage girl. It was all too much for Bill Maher that night. “This is the world we live in now: Hillary Clinton’s aide’s estranged husband is a freak, so we get to read Hillary Clinton’s emails.” And presaging years of anger from Clinton and others at the move, he told Comey, “Well take your time, man! There’s nothing riding on it!” Read more.
BEAST OF THE DAY
By now, it’s abundantly clear that Jeff Bezos’ decision to cancel The Washington Post’s presidential endorsement may have been the greatest self-own in newspaper history. As reported by NPR late Monday, more than 200,000 readers have canceled their subscriptions since Friday, when the Post announced that it wouldn’t offer an opinion about who should be the next president.
In a column published by the Post a few hours after NPR’s report, Bezos seemed only dimly aware of the subscriber exodus, never mentioning it. Instead, he leaned on principle: “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias,” he wrote. “A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
A few hundred thousand former subscribers apparently disagreed with him. So, too, did veteran Post contributor Robert Kagan and columnist Michele Norris, who resigned over the weekend, blasting the decision not to endorse on their way out. Three members of the Post’s editorial board, which devises the paper’s unsigned opinions, resigned from the panel, but remained on staff. More resignations could be forthcoming, a prominent Post columnist told me. Read the story here.
SHAMELESS PLUG
What’s the pressure like on Seth Meyers to be funny at the height of an election? How does he keep sane? He will be confiding in our own Matt Wilstein for the latest edition of The Last Laugh podcast which drops tonight.
Listen to the episode and follow The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to hear new episodes.
