Welcome to the online version of From the policy deskevening bulletin that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill from the NBC News Politics team.
In today’s edition, campaign anchor Katherine Koretski examines how Tim Walz began to come out of his shell on the campaign trail. Plus, White House correspondent Monica Alba reports that Kamala Harris has put some distance between herself and Joe Biden. And senior national political correspondent Jonathan Allen breaks down Donald Trump’s comment calling the January 6th rioters “we.”
Sign up here to receive this newsletter in your inbox every weekday.
Tim Walz breaks free from his bubble
By Katherine Koretsky
In the weeks since the vice presidential debate, Tim Waltz is sounding like an aggressive campaigner who has taken on more of a role than the buttoned-up figure he cut after joining Kamala Harris in the Democratic party.
Walz looked more natural in his recent appearances on the trail. After ditching the blue sport coat and white collar shirt he’s favored for the past few months, he donned his signature flannel khakis and a navy Harris-Walz sweater on Monday in Green Bay, Wis., and on Tuesday in rural Pennsylvania.
After going viral with the GOP tag before Walz was named Harris’ running mate, he is returning to the television circuit with appearances on “The View” and “The Daily Show,” a campaign official said. ticket as “weird” in a cable news interview.
“I got an interview or two from being a regular on Fox News,” Walz said Tuesday at a campaign stop in Valencia, Pennsylvania. The Democrat appeared on “Fox News Sunday” two weekends in a row, and he said he’s back to speak directly to undecided voters watching the channel at a campaign stop.
It’s part of what the Harris-Walz campaign says will be a “more aggressive” approach to campaigning for Minnesota governor after facing off against JD Vance. Before that, he was almost entirely absent from television after becoming the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and avoiding answering questions from the media.
Walz is attacking swing states, appearing on multiple media platforms and sharpening his attacks on Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump was talking over the weekend about using the US military against people who disagree with him,” Walz said. “He called it the enemy within, and according to Donald Trump, anyone who disagrees with him is the enemy. I’m not telling you this to scare you or anything. I say this because we need to whip his ass and put this man behind us. It must be done.”
Harris’ team and the White House discussed plans to distance him from Biden
By Monica Alba
The White House and Kamala Harris’ team have been in frequent communication about how she plans to distance herself from President Joe Biden while maintaining her overall loyalty to him, according to three people familiar with the dynamic.
That’s why Biden’s comments Tuesday night that Harris would “cut his own way” set the stage for his declaration that his presidency would not “continue” if elected. During an interview with Fox News these people said on Wednesday.
One of the sources said no one in the White House was surprised by the comments because the conversations took place privately before Fox’s interview.
Biden stressed that Harris must do “whatever it takes” to win, and that he represents a new generation of leadership.
The Harris campaign, for its part, was aware of the need to clean up Harris’ answers last week when asked what he would do differently from Biden and what changes he would make to his administration if elected.
During the Fox interview, he discussed how his leadership style may differ from Biden’s decades of Washington experience.
“Like every incoming president, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” Harris told Bret Baier. “I, for one, have not spent most of my career in Washington.”
📺 On air: Monica also states that the Harris campaign presents a new TV commercial In battleground states, it paints Trump as “erratic” and “erratic.”
Trump’s reference to the January 6 rioters as “we” explained why
By Jonathan Allen
If it were up to Donald Trump, it would be a proxy election — and that’s starting to be a double-edged sword for the former president.
Trump’s two most prominent ads The election cycle has boosted Kamala Harris’s support for the state, which provides sex-reassignment surgeries for prisoners, including undocumented immigrants. Spots says it’s for “them/them” and Trump says it’s for “you”.
But it was the first person plural that raised eyebrows when Trump used it during a Univision town hall this week.
Asked about the mob of supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a deadly and failed attempt to stop his 2020 defeat from being officially confirmed, Trump placed himself — at least figuratively — among the crowd.
“There were no weapons there. We had no weapons,” he said. “Others had guns.”
The “others” were, of course, the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol and the lawmakers within it. Hundreds of “we” were convicted of various crimes related to the riot.
If it wasn’t clear from the first part of his response that Trump — nearly four years later — wanted everyone to know he stood with the rioters, he quickly brushed aside any question.
“And when I say ‘we’, these are the people who went down, it was a small percentage of the total that nobody saw and nobody showed. But it was a day of love,” he said.
Trump did not descend on the Capitol as he suggested. He returned to the White House and watched the violence unfold.
There are partisan differences over the significance of January 6, however surveys showed Most Americans disapproved of the riots. The former president and his running mate, JD Vance, continue to deny that Trump lost the 2020 election.
With the election less than three weeks away, pronouns are one way Trump is trying to cast Harris as ideologically out of the mainstream. His use of the term “we” speaks to an area in which he is not only extreme, but also a major proponent.
While it’s unclear whether voters will pay as much attention to pronouns as Trump has, he’s taking a risk by siding with the perpetrators of what his critics say is an attack on democracy itself.
🗞️ The best stories of the day
- 😬 Damaged nerves: Democrats are worried about the election once again – and Harris agrees that members of his own party feel the same way. More →
- 📕 Book report: Mitch McConnell supported Trump for the presidency this year. But in a new book, the Republican leader of the Senate is quoted after the 2020 election, describing Trump as a “despicable person”, “stupid” and “bad-tempered”. More →
- 🗣️ Notable quote: Trump announced during a Fox News town hall that he was an “IVF dad” while also saying he only recently discovered what the decades-old procedure actually is. More →
- 📈 Survey position: A new Howard University poll shows that Harris maintains a strong lead with black voters in key states. More →
- 🧾 The result of the assassination attempt: An independent, bipartisan investigation into the assassination attempt targeting Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania in July found that the Secret Service made “numerous errors” and had “specific failures and failures.” More →
- 🌀 Consequences of the hurricane: Early in-person voting continues in North Carolina, where damage from Hurricane Helene is still making it difficult for voters to travel to the polls and halting candidates’ final campaigning before Election Day. More →
- ☀️ Florida, Florida, Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are ramping up efforts to defeat a November ballot measure that would have enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. More →
- 🌏 Balloon Run: Biden is visiting Germany for one of the last opportunities of his presidency to articulate his foreign policy vision. More →
- 🔑 Main Race in Keystone State: Democrats are optimistic that Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a Trump ally and former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, will finally win. More →
- 🗳️ Honor Roll: In Minnesota, St. Olaf College boasts an 87.6% voter turnout in 2020 and is looking to break its record this year. More →
- Watch live from the campaign trail →
That’s all for the Policy Desk for now. If you have feedback – like it or not – send us an email politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
If you are a fan, please share with anyone and everyone. They can register here.