Trump 2024 national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told “Fox & Friends First” on Friday that billionaire Mark Cuban has “learned the hard way not to mess with strong and intelligent Republican women who support Donald Trump.
“There was an epic amount of backlash from so many amazing women who have worked with President Trump, who are voting for him, saying this is extremely insulting.”
“Just look at the women that President Trump surrounds himself with – first of all his beautiful wife Melania, which of the five languages that she speaks would Mark Cuban like to have a conversation about him with, on this?” Leavitt said. “Look at the woman who runs our campaign, Susie Wiles, the woman who is running the transition back to the White House, Linda McMahon, or the woman who President Trump tapped to run the RNC, Lara Trump.”
“This was a ridiculous insult not just to the women who work for President Trump but the tens of millions of them who are going to be voting for him,” she also said. “But this is what the Kamala Harris campaign has resulted in.”
With four days to go before Election Day, former President Donald Trump's campaign quickly took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris over the latest unemployment figures from the federal government, which indicated only 12,000 jobs were created in October.
The jobs created last month were far below estimates of up to 120,000 and were the lowest in four years.
Fueling the nosedive were disruptions from devastating Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the crippling Boeing strike and other labor disputes.
However, regardless of the contributing factors, the figures offered the Trump campaign instant ammunition to fire at Harris, as two major party presidential nominees remain locked in a margin-of-error race in both the national polls and surveys in the crucial seven battleground states that will likely determine the White House winner.
"BRUTAL," was the instant reaction from the Trump campaign on social media, as it promoted clips of coverage of the jobs report from the cable news and business networks' morning shows.
Minutes later, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt argued that "this jobs report is a catastrophe and definitively reveals how badly Kamala Harris broke our economy."
Jobs – up until now – have been a shining bright spot for the Biden-Harris administration, amid overall dismal public opinion ratings on the economy as the cumulative effort of inflation continues to weigh down on many Americans.
President Biden, whom Harris replaced in July atop the Democrats' 2024 national ticket, emphasized in a statement minutes after the Labor Department report on the jobs numbers that "unemployment was unchanged at 4.1%."
A Pennsylvania prosecutor is investigating roughly 30 voter registration applications and mail-in ballot applications that were identified as "fraudulent" – including several that officials linked to an Arizona-based group that is working in the county.
The registration forms were spotted by the county’s board of elections officials, who then separated the forms and referred the matter for further investigation, Monroe County District Attorney Mike Mancuso said in a statement.
At least some of the forms were submitted by "Field and Media Corps," an apparent subsidiary of Fieldcorp, an Arizona-based organization working in Lancaster County, according to Mancuso.
"The broader investigation continues with reference to Fieldcorp’s involvement," he said.
Mancuso urged residents to remain calm, noting that his office "is in regular contact and working with investigators from the Attorney General’s Office as well as others."
{{#rendered}}Ohio congressional candidate Derek Merrin told “Fox & Friends First” on Friday that he is “very confident” about flipping the 9th District seat held by Marcy Kaptur since 1983.
Merrin described the Democrat as “one of the most liberal, ineffective members of Congress in the last 40 years.”
“We have President Trump’s support and we are very confident we are going to flip this seat, help to expand the Republican majority in the U.S. house so we can deliver for the American people to lower the cost of living, to secure our borders and to take on the political class that has let down our country,” he added.
“If you look at the cost of groceries, energy, insurance, people want change,” Merrin also said.
Liberal media outlets have been accused of taking former President Trump out of context to claim he was calling for violence against former House Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., when he was actually mocking her as someone who pushes for war from the comforts of Washington, D.C.
Drudge Report’s frontpage headline on Friday morning declared in red font with all caps, "TRUMP CALLS FOR CHENEY’S EXECUTION," and linked to a social media post from far-left commentator Aaron Rupar that showed a partial clip from the former president’s Glendale, Arizona event on Thursday.
"I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual. Very dumb, she’s a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with 9 barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face," Trump is heard saying in the clip that set the tone for MSNBC and CNN’s Friday morning programming.
But many felt it was purposely cut off before Trump’s anti-war message and Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway quickly responded to Rupar’s clip.
"Wow, I’m so shocked that propagandist Rupar cut it off before this line: ‘They're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying ‘Oh gee, let's send 10,000 troops into the mouths of the enemies.' She always wanted to go to war with people,’" Hemingway wrote.
Indeed, Trump’s comments following the brief clip shared by Rupar was cut off before the former president finished his thought.
"She’s a radical war hawk. Let's put her with a rifle standing there with 9 barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face. They're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh gee, well let's send 10,000 troops into the mouths of the enemies,’ but she’s a stupid person and I used to have meetings with a lot of people and she always wanted to go to war with people," Trump said.
JD Vance declared Friday that “I am 100 percent sure we have the electorate we need to win” following the release of a series of polls showing Vice President Kamala Harris taking a narrow lead over former President Donald Trump in the "blue wall" states.
Marist polls of battlegrounds Michigan and Pennsylvania released on Friday have the Democratic vice president ahead of her Republican rival by two points in each state, 50% to 48%. A third poll of Wisconsin voters shows Harris with a three percentage point lead, 51-48%.
“In 2022, Marist had my Ohio Senate race tied. I won by more than 6,” Vance wrote on X.
“Stop worrying about polls and go get people to the polls. I am 100 percent sure we have the electorate we need to win. What we need is to work hard over the next 4 days,” he added.
Fox News' Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
{{#rendered}}U.S. job growth slowed down in October, coming in well short of economists' expectations, while the unemployment rate was unchanged.
The Labor Department on Friday reported that employers added 12,000 jobs in October, well below the 113,000 gain that was predicted by LSEG economists.
The unemployment rate was 4.1%, in line with expectations.
The number of jobs added in the prior two months were both revised downward, with job creation in August revised down by 81,000 from a gain of 159,000 to 78,000, while September was revised down by 31,000 from a gain of 254,000 to 223,000.
The manufacturing sector saw employment decline by 46,000 jobs in October, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) noted was largely due to strike activity in the transportation equipment manufacturing sector. About 33,000 unionized machinists at Boeing have been on strike since early September.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp told “Fox & Friends” on Friday that “I believe the enthusiasm and energy is more on our side than theirs right now, at least in Georgia.”
Georgia is one of several battleground states heading into Election Day. More than 3.6 million ballots have already been cast there.
“I’m going to work hard between now and Tuesday to get the vote out,” Kemp said. “We got to win, not only at the top of the ticket but all the way down. Our legislative majorities are at risk in the Georgia statehouse. We have got to help at-risk legislators, we got to have a big turnout.”
Energy advocates are knocking Vice President Kamala Harris for bringing on a top campaign adviser with ties to a controversial environmental group behind the effort to ban gas stoves.
O.H. Skinner, executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Consumers, told Fox News Digital that "this is sadly par for the course."
"For years the left has been focused on assaulting consumers and the things in their homes. That has included a litany of Biden-Harris regulations and mandates," he said. "From ‘green’ regulations on dishwashers and washing machines to EV mandates and bans on gas stoves, a Harris-Walz administration will no doubt continue to eviscerate consumer choice and force Americans to pay more for everyday products and household appliances that do a worse job."
However, conservatives are knocking her for hiring Camila Thorndike, who previously worked for the dark money climate activist group Rewiring America as the campaign’s "climate engagement director." Before joining the campaign in September, Updike worked in multiple positions at Rewiring America between late 2022 and last month, according to her Legistorm profile.
Rewiring America is an environmental advocacy group that made headlines in 2022 for its push to ban gas stoves.
The group does not file federal tax forms since it is sponsored by the Windward Fund, a nonprofit that is part of the billion-dollar dark money network managed by the Washington, D.C.-based Arabella Advisors.
{{#rendered}}A new poll released Friday shows Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are tied in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
The USA Today/Suffolk poll indicates that both candidates have 49% support among likely voters in the Keystone State.
The survey of 500 likely voters was conducted between Oct. 27-30, with a margin of error of 4.4%.
Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by 1.17% of the vote.
Trump won the state by an even smaller margin against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
With just four days to go until Election Day, Republican lawmakers are demanding answers from the Pentagon after receiving complaints about inadequate resources to help military service members vote.
Active duty service members claim the Pentagon has not allocated enough resources to let them cast their ballot on time and that the stockpile of write-in absentee ballots on at least one military base is depleted and has not been replenished, according to three GOP congressmen.
Rep. Brian Mast, R-Mich., Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich. and Mike Walz, R-Fla., penned a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Wednesday, writing "with grave concern" about "deficiencies in the Defense Department’s protocols," which also includes not making service members aware of their options on how to vote.
"Our nation’s brave men and women in uniform brought to our attention that there has been inadequate education at the administrative level on how to register to vote, request an absentee ballot, and fill in a federal write-in absentee ballot if their state-issued ballot does not arrive in time," the lawmakers write.
"Other service members also stated that when a request for a federal write-in absentee ballot was made, they were told the base’s stockpile of such ballots was depleted and had not been replenished."
The lawmakers say it is imperative that the Pentagon does everything in its power so the nation’s "elite warriors" have every opportunity to vote and that the Department of Defense (DOD) "mobilize all the necessary resources over the next seven days" so that military personnel are given that opportunity.
Fox News' Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
A slew of new polls show Vice President Kamala Harris taking a narrow lead over former President Trump in the “blue wall” states many forecasters say she needs to win to clinch the presidency.
Marist polls of battlegrounds Michigan and Pennsylvania released Friday have the Democratic vice president ahead of her Republican rival by two points in each state, 50 percent to 48 percent. A third poll of Wisconsin voters shows Harris with a three percentage point lead, 51-48 percent.
All these results are within the Marist polls' margins of error, plus or minus 3.4 points for the Michigan and Pennsylvania polls and plus or minus 3.5 points for the Wisconsin survey. The surveys were conducted between Oct. 27-30.
The numbers point towards another historically close election next Tuesday following the 2020 cycle, when just 44,000 votes spread across key battleground states handed President Biden the Electoral College votes he needed to unseat Trump. Similarly, in 2016, Trump captured the White House by just under 78,000 votes in the three “blue wall” states.
{{#rendered}}A Florida Trump supporter says he is being fined daily by local authorities for placing giant banners of Donald Trump outside his home in Walton County.
Marvin Peavy tells Fox News “they are going to stay up because I am fighting [for] my First Amendment right.”
“Walton County has tried to come in and say their rights are better than my First Amendment right and they cannot supersede my First Amendment right,” he added. “I’ve hung probably ten to twelve different signs.”
“It’s been an expensive fight, but I keep fighting and I’ve had people offering to pay but I tell them ‘I’ve got it,” Peavy also said.
If there’s one image that captures the craziness of this campaign, it’s got to be Donald Trump driving around in a garbage truck.
He put on the orange vest and talked to reporters after a Joe Biden blunder put Kamala Harris on the defensive.
And this was after a Trump rally filled with profane insults, including a comic who mocked Puerto Rico as an island of floating garbage.
In this supercharged environment, every mistake counts.
Trump, speaking about criminals who cross the border illegally, said "I told women I will be their protector. They [his advisers] said, ‘Sir, please don’t say that.’ Well, I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not."
That has an unfortunate ring to it, and Harris said yesterday it is "very offensive to women," including on controlling "their own bodies."
All of which brings us back to the last few days. When every hour counts, every distraction is costly. If you’re explaining, you’re losing. If you’re playing defense, you can’t put points on the board.
President Biden returns to the campaign trail this weekend with stops in the biggest of the battleground states, his native Pennsylvania.
The White House confirmed the president will campaign on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris and down-ballot Democrats when he makes stops Friday in Philadelphia and Saturday in Scranton, where the 81-year-old Biden was born and spent his early childhood years.
But Harris, who with four days until Election Day remains locked in a tight showdown with former President Trump in the race to succeed Biden in the White House, won't be joining her boss on the campaign trail.
The vice president has kept her distance from Biden, who, according to polls, remains deeply unpopular with Americans, and her campaign quietly views him as a liability. And that was before the president made two glaring remarks the past two weeks that quickly went viral.
While Harris has noted the policy successes of the Biden/Harris administration the past four years while campaigning, she's emphasized that she'll be an agent of change in the White House.
Giving her closing address Tuesday night at the Ellipse, just yards from the White House, where the president was huddled, Harris emphasized, "I have been honored to serve as Joe Biden’s vice president, but I will bring my own experiences and ideas to the Oval Office."
It's been nearly two months since the one-time running mates teamed up on the campaign trail. You have to go back to Labor Day, when they joined forces at a union event in Pittsburgh.
{{#rendered}}Former President Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally later this afternoon in Warren, Mich. -- a city outside of Detroit.
He then will head to Wisconsin to host a second event in Milwaukee.
Vice President Kamala Harris will also be in Wisconsin Friday holding a rally at a high school in Little Chute, which is located near the city of Appleton.
With less than a week until Election Day, the final Fox News Poll of Michigan likely voters found Harris up 2 points over Trump on the expanded ballot.
A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released Monday found Trump and Harris neck and neck in Wisconsin, 48% to 47%, respectively, from a statewide poll of 500 likely voters.
Fox News’ Victoria Balara and Stephen Sorace contributed to this report.
Billionaire Mark Cuban apologized on X early Friday morning if female Trump supporters felt "slighted or upset" when he claimed "you never see [Trump] around strong, intelligent women, ever" during an appearance on "The View."
"When I said this during the interview, I didn't get it out exactly the way I thought I did. So I apologize to anyone who felt slighted or upset by my response. As I said, it wasn't about Trump voters, supporters or employees. Current or former," Cuban wrote.
He said he set himself up "for the 6 sec soundbite," offered "no excuses" and said his "skin is thick enough."
Hours before issuing the flat-out apology, Cuban tried to "clarify" his comment that was seen widely as an insult to women who support and/or work with Trump.
"This is what I said during a conversation about why Nikki Haley was not active in his campaign. I know many strong, intelligent women voting for Trump, including in my extended family. I’m certainly not saying female voters are not smart, strong and intelligent. I know he has worked with strong, intelligent women, like Elaine Chao, Kelly Anne, Ivanka and many others," Cuban added. "I stand by my opinion that he does not like being challenged publicly."
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