Welcome to October Surprise, the Daily Beast’s daily countdown to the biggest election of our lifetime. It’s only 13 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
Kamala Harris rebuked Donald Trump on Wednesday over newly reported comments from his former chief of staff, John Kelly, suggesting that the former president wants a military like Adolf Hitler’s.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” the vice president said.
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Her comments follow reports from The Atlantic and The New York Times featuring Kelly calling Trump a “fascist” and recalling his admiration for Nazi generals. Kelly also raised concerns about Trump’s recent threats to use the military against “the enemy from within.”
The polls may be showing a dead heat, but one man says he’s “certain” of the 2024 election’s outcome: Kamala Harris will win, predicts James Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, the Ragin’ Cajun makes a bold prediction. “Today I am pulling my stool up to the political poker table to throw my chips all in: America, it will all be OK. Ms. Harris will be elected the next president of the United States.”
For one, he says, Harris has vastly outraised Trump, even with the $75 million donation the latter just received from his billionaire sidekick. Plus, Carville says Harris has aisle-bridging power that her opponent lacks: “If the Cheneys and AOC get that the Constitution and our democracy are on the ballot, every true conservative and every true progressive should get it too.”
POLLS OBSESSED
A new poll from Monmouth University shows that the election could break either way depending on “very small shifts in turnout.” The survey also finds that just under half of registered voters say they will either definitely (41 percent) or probably (7 percent) vote for Harris. Similarly, 39 percent of registered voters say they’ll definitely vote for Trump, while 6 percent say they’ll probably vote for the GOP candidate. The “definite” support numbers include voters who have already cast their ballots
ON THE MOVE
Harris has been gearing up for her CNN town hall at 9 p.m. ET in Chester Township, Pennsylvania. Trump has been stumping in battleground Georgia as his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, campaigns in Nevada, another key swing state. And former President Bill Clnton is back on the trail campaigning for Harris in Phoenix, Arizona.
WAYBACK WEDNESDAY
Borat had already entered the election chat before the release on Oct. 23, 2020, of his Subsequent Moviefilm. But creator Sacha Baron Cohen was stoking the hype with hours to go before it started streaming by releasing a statement from his Kazakh reporter creation in “defense” of Rudy Giuliani. “Jagshemash. I am here to defend America’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,” Borat said. “What was an innocent sexytime encounter between a consenting man and my 15-year-old daughter have been turned into something disgusting by fake news media.”
Of course, it was far from innocent, but did turn into a staging post in Giuliani’s long road to disgrace.
BEAST OF THE DAY
Jeffrey Goldberg has pushed back against the string of denials that poured in after he reported in The Atlantic that Donald Trump allegedly raged at a slain U.S. soldier’s funeral bill by saying, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f---ing Mexican.”
After Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Houston-born soldier was murdered at Fort Hood in 2020—Trump reportedly offered to pay for the funeral to Guillén’s family, but never did. Goldberg’s bombshell report has been called false by Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and by Kash Patel, the former Defense Department chief of staff. A lawyer for the Guillén family and the soldier’s sister, Mayra Guillén, have also spoken out to assert that Trump never made such a brash comment.
“I have sources who are sitting in that meeting,” Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic said on CNN. “I have contemporaneous notes taken by participants in that meeting that described exactly what I described in the story. We’ve seen this pattern again and again and again. They deny, deny, deny, and then it comes out as true.”
SHAMELESS PLUG
The biggest of election big beasts, James Carville, is speaking his mind unfiltered to Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee on the latest episode of The Daily Beast Podcast which drops at midnight. Follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app to hear his forensic take-down of Trump and his answers to some very revealing questions. And click here for email updates as each new episode drops.
