Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, campaign embed Katherine Koretski explores how Tim Walz has started to emerge from his shell on the campaign trail. Plus, White House correspondent Monica Alba reports on Kamala Harris’ move to out some distance between herself and Joe Biden. And senior national political reporter Jonathan Allen breaks down Donald Trump’s comment referring to Jan. 6 rioters as “we.”
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Tim Walz breaks free from his bubble
By Katherine Koretski
In the weeks following the vice presidential debate, Tim Walz has been sounding more like the aggressive campaigner who got the role than the buttoned-up figure he’s cut since joining Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket.
Walz has appeared more natural in his latest appearances on the trail. He sported khakis and a navy Harris-Walz sweatshirt during a stop in Green Bay, Wis., on Monday and his signature flannel in rural Pennsylvania on Tuesday, after shedding the blue sport coat and white collared shirt he’s favored for the last few months.
He’s also getting back on the TV circuit, with appearances coming up on “The View” and “The Daily Show,” according to a campaign official, after Walz went viral prior to his selection as Harris’ running mate with his labeling of the GOP ticket as “weird” in a cable news interview.
“I’m one or two interviews from being a regular on Fox News,” Walz said at a campaign stop in Valencia, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. The Democrat appeared on “Fox News Sunday” two weekends in a row, and he said at the campaign stop that he returned to speak directly to undecided voters watching the channel.
It’s all part of what the Harris-Walz campaign said would be a “more aggressive” approach to campaigning for the Minnesota governor following his face-off with JD Vance. Before then, he had been almost completely missing on TV since becoming the Democratic vice presidential nominee and avoiding answering questions from the media.
Walz has been barnstorming swing states, appearing on multiple media platforms, and sharpening his attacks against Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump, over the weekend, was talking about using the U.S. Army against people who disagree with him,” Walz said. “He called it the enemy within, and to Donald Trump, anybody who doesn’t agree with him is the enemy. I tell you that, not to make you fearful or anything. I tell you that because we need to whip his butt and put this guy behind us. That’s what you need to do.”
Harris team and White House discussed plans for her to create distance from Biden
By Monica Alba
The White House and Kamala Harris’ team have been in frequent contact 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 her own path” set the stage for her to declare that, if elected, her presidency would not be a “continuation” of his during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, these people said.
No one in the White House was surprised by those comments, one of the sources said, since conversations had happened privately before the Fox interview.
Biden has been emphatic that Harris should do “whatever it takes” to win and that he understands she represents a new generation of leadership, this person said.
The Harris campaign, for its part, has been aware of the need to clean up Harris’ answers last week when she was asked what she would do differently than Biden, if elected, and what kind of changes she would make to her administration.
During the Fox interview, she discussed how her leadership style might differ from Biden’s decades of Washington experience.
“Like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” Harris said to Bret Baier. “I, for example, am someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington.”
📺 On air: Monica also reports that the Harris campaign is launching a new TV ad in battleground states painting Trump as “unhinged” and “unstable.”
Why Trump referring to Jan. 6 rioters as ‘we’ was so telling
By Jonathan Allen
If it were up to Donald Trump, this would be the pronoun election — and that’s starting to be a double-edged sword for the former president.
Two of Trump’s most prominent ads of the election cycle raise Kamala Harris’ support for the state underwriting gender-reassignment surgeries for inmates, including undocumented immigrants. The spots say she is for “they/them,” while Trump is for “you.”
But it was a first-person plural that raised eyebrows when Trump used it during a Univision town hall this week.
Asked about the mob of his supporters that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a fatal and ill-fated attempt to stop the official certification of his 2020 defeat, Trump placed himself — at least figuratively — in the crowd.
“There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns,” he said. “The others had guns.”
The “others,” of course, were law enforcement officers defending the Capitol and the lawmakers inside it. Hundreds of the “we” have been convicted of various offenses related to the riot.
In case it was unclear from the first part of his answer that Trump — nearly four years later — wants everyone to know that he stands with the rioters, he quickly dispelled any question.
“And when I say ‘we,’ these are people that walked down, this was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody shows. But that was a day of love,” he said.
Trump did not walk down to the Capitol as he suggested he would. He went back to the White House and watched the violence unfold.
There are partisan divides over the significance of Jan. 6, but polls have shown most Americans disapproved of the riot. The former president and his running mate, JD Vance, continue to deny that Trump lost the 2020 election.
With less than three weeks left before this election wraps, pronouns are one way in which Trump has tried to portray Harris as outside of the mainstream ideologically. His use of “we” is a tell about an area where he not only holds an extreme view, but is the chief proponent of it.
While it’s not clear that voters will focus on pronouns the way Trump has, he is taking a risk by siding so closely with the perpetrators of what his critics say was an assault on democracy itself.
🗞️ Today’s top stories
- 😬 Frayed nerves: Democrats are once again fretting that the election is slipping away — and Harris appears to be OK that members of her party feel that way. Read more →
- 📕 Book report: Mitch McConnell has endorsed Trump for president this year. But in a new book, the Senate Republican leader is quoted after the 2020 election disparaging Trump as a “despicable human being,” “stupid” and “ill-tempered.” Read more →
- 🗣️ Notable quotable: Trump declared he was “the father of IVF” during a Fox News town hall, while also saying he just recently discovered what the decades-old procedure actually is. Read more →
- 📈 Poll position: A new Howard University poll shows Harris maintaining a strong lead with Black voters in key swing states. Read more →
- 🧾 Assassination attempt fallout: An independent, bipartisan review of the assassination attempt targeting Trump at a July rally in Pennsylvania found that the Secret Service made “numerous mistakes” and that there were “specific failures and breakdowns.” Read more →
- 🌀 Hurricane fallout: Early in-person voting is underway in North Carolina, where damage from Hurricane Helene is still complicating voters’ trips to the polls and candidates’ final campaign stops before Election Day. Read more →
- ☀️ Florida, Florida, Florida: Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies are ramping up their efforts to defeat a ballot measure in November that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. Read more →
- 🌏 Globe-trotting: Biden is making a trip to Germany for one of the last opportunities of his presidency to outline his foreign policy vision. Read more →
- 🔑 Key race in the Keystone State: Democrats are optimistic they can finally take down Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a Trump ally and former Freedom Caucus chairman. Read more →
- 🗳️ Honor roll: In Minnesota, St. Olaf College boasted an 87.6% voter turnout rate in 2020 — and is looking to break its own record this year. Read more →
- Follow live coverage from the campaign trail →
That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
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