Donald Trump says Liz Cheney might not be such a ‘war hawk’ if she had guns pointed at her, prompting response by ex-Republican lawmaker.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has attacked Liz Cheney, suggesting the former lawmaker who has endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris in the race to the White House should face combat with guns trained on her for her policy stance.
“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump said on Thursday at a campaign event with ex-Fox News television host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, also calling Cheney “a deranged person” and “a very dumb individual”.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained to her face,” he added, noting that she and her father, former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, refused to back his third presidential run.
Trump has repeatedly promised to investigate or prosecute his political rivals, including Cheney, as well as election workers, journalists and left-wing Americans, among others. The former president has also said the military could be used against what he calls “radical left lunatics” if there is unrest on Election Day.
In response, Cheney on Friday called Trump a “vindictive, cruel” dictator.
“This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” Cheney responded in a post on X on Friday, adding “#Womenwillnotbesilenced.”
Later on Friday, Harris described Cheney as a “a true patriot” and said Trump’s increasing “violent rhetoric” should disqualify him from becoming president again.
“His enemies list has grown longer. His rhetoric has grown more extreme,” Harris told reporters after arriving in Madison, Wisconsin, one of her campaign stops on Friday. “And he is even less focused than before on the needs and the concerns and the challenges facing the American people.”
One of the most high-profile Republicans to turn against Trump, Cheney has endorsed Harris in the November 5 election, saying she crossed party lines to put the country before politics and calling Trump a “danger”.
Once one of the party’s top leaders in the US House of Representatives, Cheney lost her seat in Congress after backing Trump’s second impeachment for his role in his supporters’ January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol and then helping to lead the investigation into the attack.
In recent weeks, Cheney has campaigned with Harris, including in Michigan, a crucial battleground state with large Arab and Muslim populations who the Democrats are trying to win over.
Her father has long been pilloried by Democrats for his central role in pushing for – and executing – the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 on grounds that turned out to be fake. Cheney has embraced her father’s neoconservative legacy throughout her career, leading to questions where Cheney’s support could help Harris win votes in the knife-edge race or end up hurting her prospects.
“When you have surrogates like Liz Cheney campaigning across the state of Michigan, talking about how even Dick Cheney – the war criminal – is supporting Vice President Harris, is that supposed to be a welcoming message to this community?” Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, home to the largest per capita Muslim population in the US, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey voters are deciding between Democratic U.S. Rep. Andy Kim and hotel developer Curtis Bashaw, a Republican, in the race to fill the Senate seat occupied until recently by Democrat Bob Menendez, who resigned following afederal bribery conviction.
The Senate race has attracted attention because of Democrats’ razor-thin majority. There’s little margin of error for the party in a state like New Jersey, which hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate in more than 50 years.
“I very much feel the pressure to make sure that we’re delivering not just for New Jersey, but delivering a majority for this country so I can get the important things done,” Kim said recently.
The contest pits Kim, a three-term House member from New Jersey’s 3rd District, against Bashaw, a first-time candidate and businessman from Cape May. Four others including Green, Libertarian and Socialist party candidates are on the ballot.
There’s little suspense surrounding New Jersey’s electoral votes in the contest between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former president Donald Trump, who has golf courses across the state and once operated a casino empire in Atlantic City. New Jersey hasn’t gone with a Republican for president since 1988.
Kim, 42, was first elected to Congress in 2018, defeating Republican Tom MacArthur, a Trump ally. He’s since been re-elected twice. During the campaign, Kim said he would oppose tax breaks for the wealthy and support abortion rights.
A former Obama administration national security aide, Kim was a Rhodes Scholar and has a Ph.D. from Oxford. He’s presented himself as an unassuming, hard-working official and gained national attention in 2021 when he was spotted cleaning up the U.S. Capitol after the Jan. 6 insurrection, bagging trash.
Kim was the first Asian-American from New Jersey elected to the House and would become the first Korean-American in the Senate if elected.
Bashaw has personally financed his campaign with at least $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission records. He gained the GOP nomination in June when he defeated a Trump-backed rival. A first-time candidate, he’s served on several boards including for Stockton University and a state tourism panel.
Bashaw, 64, has said he considers himself a moderate, noting he supports abortion rights and is a married gay man.
“When my party’s right, I will support it. But when my party’s not right, I’ll stand up against it,” he said recently.
Bashaw has said he supports Trump, who’s been a lightning rod in the state. Democrats flipped four congressional seats in the 2018 midterm while Trump was president.
Kim seized on that in a recent debate.
“The one endorsement that he has made is for Donald Trump to be president of the United States. And I guess we get a sense of his judgment from that. And it’s something I deeply disagree with,” Kim said.
The Senate race began chaotically for Democrats. The party, which controls the Legislature and the governorship, found itself with an incumbent senator facing a second federal corruption trial. Menendez was convicted on bribery charges that he traded his office for cash, gold cars and a luxury car, and has resigned. But he’s denied the charges — as he did in the earlier trial, which ended in a hung jury.
This time, Democrats abandoned him. Kim launched his own race in defiance of Menendez the day after his indictment last fall.
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But it wasn’t an easy path to the nomination. First lady Tammy Murphy launched a campaign that was well-funded and widely backed by insiders. Kim upended politics in New Jersey when he sued in federal court to stop a practice whereby party leaders were allowed to influence how ballots are drawn up, widely seen as helping preferred candidates. The judge, in an initial ruling, sided with Kim. Murphy dropped out and Kim won easily in June.
The winner of the Senate race is expected to get an early shot at the job. After Menendez resigned, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy appointed George Helmy as interim senator. The two have said that once the election results are certified in November, Helmy will step down and the governor will appoint the winner to serve the remainder of Menendez’s term, which ends in January.
Also up for grabs are all of New Jersey’s 12 U.S. House seats. Among them, the 7th District, which stretches from the Delaware River and the Pennsylvania line to the central part of the state, with a slice of the New York suburbs, is perhaps the most closely watched. There, Republican Tom Kean Jr. is running for reelection against former Working Families alliance official Sue Altman, a Democrat. New Jersey’s House delegation has 10 Democrats and three Republicans.
Votes have poured in for weeks through mail-in ballots and early in-person voting, but results don’t come out until after polls close at 8 p.m. On the ballot as well are all 12 of the state’s House seats.
For Joy Metzler, a second lieutenant in the US air force, joining the military had felt like answering a calling. An adoptee from China who was raised in a conservative Christian family, she believed she owed a debt to the United States.
But the Hamas attacks in Israel last year, and Israel’s war that followed, rocked Metzler’s convictions. Within months, she filed for conscientious objector status, one of a small number of US military personnel seeking to end their service because of their moral opposition to US support for Israel.
“I didn’t know Palestine was a place before October 7,” Metzler told the Guardian.
“All of a sudden it felt like a light clicking on for me.”
As the war in Gaza enters a second year, some disillusioned members of the US military have turned to the Vietnam war-era conscientious objector policy to terminate their military service because of religious or moral convictions.
There are few avenues to express dissent in the army. Earlier this year, Harrison Mann, an army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of US support for Israel. In a far more extreme gesture, 25-year-old US airman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in February.
The conscientious objector route is a seldom-invoked alternative that few service members are aware of – though some advocates say there has been an uptick in interest in the last year.
The defense department referred questions about the number of conscientious objectors to each branch of the military. A spokesperson for the air force said that it has received 42 applications since 2021 and granted 36. Applications since 7 October “are on trend with pre-conflict averages”, the spokesperson added. (The army, navy, and Marine Corps did not respond to requests for comment.)
But while the numbers remain relatively low, the war in Gaza is top of mind for those service members who have considered conscientious objector status this year, said Bill Galvin, a Vietnam-era objector and director of counseling at the Center on Conscience and War, one of a handful of groups that helps military members navigate the complex bureaucratic process.
Galvin said his group helps roughly 50 to 70 applicants a year, across military branches, and that there’s been more interest than usual this year.
The US has subsidized Israel’s war in Gaza to the tune of nearly $18bn over the last year, and is growing more deeply entangled as the conflict spills into the broader region. The Biden administration recently announced the deployment of 100 troops to Israel to man a missile defense system in anticipation of an escalation against Iran.
“Almost everyone that I’ve talked to has at least cited what’s happening in Gaza as a factor in causing them to rethink what they’re doing,” Galvin said. “Some have actually said: ‘I know that the airplane that I’m doing maintenance on is delivering weaponry to Israel and so I feel complicit.’”
Metzler said she was raised to believe that Israel is “the nation of God’s chosen people” and “terrorists were morally bankrupt people, who hate us because of who we are”.
When the war in Gaza started, the images of Palestinian civilians’ suffering disturbed her, but it wasn’t until Bushnell’s self-immolation that she started reading about the history of the conflict and the role of the US government in it. “A lot of the things I had been told about the US’s role in the world were wrong”, she said.
The war pushed Metzler to re-evaluate her time in the air force academy. She recalled laughing with her classmates as they watched footage of people running from a drone – she wasn’t sure in which country. She felt ashamed.
“I had come out of the academy glorifying the act of warfare,” she said. “There’s a certain disregard for human life that you just have to have to be a member of the military.”
Metzler learned about the conscientious objector option when she met a group of veterans at a pro-Palestine protest at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s completing a master’s in aerospatial engineering.
The defense department first introduced the objector application process in 1962. Tens of thousands obtained the status over the following decade, as the Vietnam war, and a mandatory draft, sparked a mass antiwar movement. But since then, the number of applicants has fallen drastically, with many members of the military unaware that the option even exists.
“It’s not common knowledge,” said Metzler. “You don’t want to advertise to the people that are working for you that there’s a legal way for you to break your contract if you start to feel weird feelings.”
For the few who embark on it, the process is rigorous and lengthy – Metzler’s application filled 19 pages and she is still waiting for final word after filing it in July. Applicants must demonstrate that they are opposed to all wars and that their beliefs about military service changed after they enlisted. They have to interview with a chaplain and with a mental health professional before an investigating officer reviews their case and makes a recommendation to a committee that decides whether to grant the status. In the past, the military has approved about half the conscientious objector applications it received.
Larry Hebert, another US senior airman, said the process was “excruciatingly long”.
A six-year veteran, Hebert reached what he called “a moral break” as horrific images of Palestinian children resembling his own filled his TikTok.
During a leave from his service in Spain in March, he traveled to Washington and staged a hunger strike in front of the White House to highlight the plight of starving children in Gaza. He later applied for conscientious objector status, but as the wait became unbearable, he filed for voluntary separation, another avenue to legally end one’s service. When that was rejected, he took off his uniform and refused to obey orders. He was disciplined and is currently waiting to be released on administrative grounds
“I had to get out,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a part of any of it.”
Juan Bettancourt, a US airman who also filed for conscientious objector status earlier this year, told the Guardian that many of the service members he has spoken with have fear of speaking out but are privately appalled by US support for Israel. “There’s a lot of deep-seated criticism and moral disgust at the complicity of our government in the genocide in Gaza,” he said.
Because dissenting voices are so rare, the military just tries to “brush them under the rug”, Bettancourt added, noting that Bushnell’s self-immolation was portrayed by the air force exclusively as a matter of “mental health,” Bettancourt said.
Juan Bettancourt, left, and Larry Hebert.
The air force spokesperson wrote in a statement that the force is committed to ensuring its members “never feel compelled to resort to self-harm as a means of protest”. She added that policies like the conscientious objector process “provide a safe avenue for individuals to voice their concerns”.
But service members say voicing dissent is not easy, with a number of them incorrectly believing it’s illegal for them to do so or fearing they may get into trouble for raising questions. (Metzler, Bettancourt and Hebert all stressed they are speaking for themselves, and not on behalf of the military.)
To address that, a coalition of military personnel and veterans groups have launched an “appeal to redress” campaign, modeled after an earlier one during the Iraq war, as a way for service members to register their opposition with legislators to the US’s Israel policy.
Metzler, Bettancourt and Hebert have also launched Servicemembers for Ceasefire, offering resources for fellow members who are opposed to the war, including an explanation of the conscientious objector process.
Metzler stresses that they are not encouraging people to leave the military – they just want those with doubts to know that they have options.
“I’m not saying you have to jump ship or refuse orders,” she said. “But at the very least, pick up a book, figure out what’s going on in the world, and understand the context of what you’re doing.”
سمح قاض في ولاية بنسلفانيا الأميركية أمس الاثنين لرائد الأعمال إيلون ماسك بالمضي قدما في التبرع بمليون دولار يوميا للناخبين في الولايات المتأرجحة، بعد شهادة مساعد لماسك اعترف بأن المجموعة السياسية التابعة للملياردير الأميركي اختارت الفائزين في المسابقة.
ومع تبقي يوم واحد على الانتخابات الرئاسية الأميركية التي تشهد منافسة متقاربة للغاية بين نائبة الرئيس الديمقراطية كامالا هاريس والجمهوري دونالد ترمب، سعى محامو مجموعة “أميركا-لجنة العمل السياسي” المؤيدة لترمب والتابعة لماسك إلى إقناع القاضي أنجيلو فوجليتا بأن المسابقة لم تكن “يانصيب غير قانوني”، كما زعم المدعي العام في فيلادلفيا.
وقال محامو المجموعة ومديرها، كريس يونغ، إنها وزعت الأموال بناء على من سيكون أفضل المتحدثين باسم أجندتها المؤيدة لترمب، وذلك على الرغم من تأكيد ماسك أنه سيتم اختيار الفائزين بشكل عشوائي. وأصبح ماسك مؤيدا صريحا لترمب هذا العام وقام بالترويج للرئيس السابق على منصة التواصل الاجتماعي إكس التي يملكها. وقد قدم حتى الآن ما يقرب من 120 مليون دولار إلى مجموعة “أميركا-لجنة العمل السياسي” المؤيدة لترمب لتعزيز جهود حشد الناخبين وتسجيلهم، وفقا لما أظهرته إفصاحات اتحادية.
Tennessee holds its primary Thursday, giving us a second primary day this week. The Arizona primary was Tuesday; two of the more interesting contests there remain uncalled as of the publication time of this article.
The remaining 16 states will hold their contests between next Tuesday and September 10.1
Tennessee Primary
Polls close at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. The state is divided between the Eastern and Central Time Zones. As all polling places close simultaneously, locations observing Central Time close at 7:00 PM local time.
The most interesting contests look to be the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, and the GOP nomination fight in the 5th congressional district. All Tennessee Primary Results >>
U.S. Senate
Republican Primary
Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn is seeking a second term. She has a nominal primary challenge.
Democratic Primary
Winning a second term in 1990, former Vice President Al Gore was the last Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee. Despite long odds for that to change this year, a field of four Democrats is vying to challenge Blackburn.
Also on the ballot is Marquita Bradshaw, who was the party’s nominee in 2020, losing to Republican Bill Hagerty.
U.S. House
District 5 (Republican)
Republicans flipped this district in 2022 after it was moved significantly to the right in post-Census redistricting. Andy Ogles emerged from a nine-candidate primary, and won the general election by a 14% margin.
Ogles largest hurdle to reelection may well be this primary. He has drawn an unexpectedly strong challenger in Nashville Metro Council member Courtney Johnston. She has outraised Ogles, who, for his part, has come under scrutiny for his campaign finances.
Upcoming Elections and Events
Down-ballot primaries will continue through early September. The remaining ones are listed below, along with other contests we’ll be tracking during that period.
August 6
Kansas Primary
Michigan Primary
Missouri Primary
Washington Top-Two Primary
August 10
Hawaii Primary
Hawaii State Senate District 5 (Special Primary)
Honolulu Mayor (Primary)
August 13
Connecticut Primary
Minnesota Primary
Vermont Primary
Wisconsin Primary
Wisconsin U.S. House District 8 Special Primary
Minnesota State Senate District 45 Special Primary
نظم القانون رقم 208 لسنة 2020 بإصدار قانون تنظيم الإعلانات على الطرق العامة، كيفية تنظيم الإعلانات على الطرق العامة ووضع عدد من الشروط والعقوبات لم يخالف أحكام القانون.
ونصت المادة 2 من القانون علي يُنشأ جهاز يسمي “الجهاز القومي لتنظيم الإعلانات على الطرق العامة”، تكون له الشخصية الاعتبارية، يتبع رئيس مجلس الوزراء، ويختص دون غيره بتحديد الأسس والمعايير والقواعد المنظمة للإعلانات واللافتات على الطرق العامة بما فيها استخدام الطاقة المتجددة وكاميرات المراقبة مع مراعاة النظام العام والآداب.
ويكون للجهاز مجلس إدارة برئاسة رئيس مجلس الوزراء أو من ينيبه، وعضوية الوزراء المختصين بشئون الإسكان والتنمية المحلية والدفاع والداخلية والنقل والكهرباء والطاقة المتجددة والمـالية والثقافة والبيئة.
ويصدر بتنظيم الجهاز قرار من رئيس مجلس الوزراء بناءً علي عرض الوزير المختص بشئون الإسكان، على أن يتضمن القرار بيان أهداف الجهاز وتحديد موارده المـالية ومصروفاته والمختص بتمثيله أمام الغير.
ونصت المادة 3 على انه لا يجوز وضع إعلان أو لافتة إلا بعد الحصول علي ترخيص بذلك من الجهة المختصة.
ويصدر الترخيص بناءً علي طلب من المعلن ، وعلي الجهة المختصة البت في الطلب خلال ستين يومًا من تاريخ تقديمه ، ويعد مضي المدة المشار إليها دون بت بمثابة موافقة ضمنية بشرط استيفاء الطلب للمستندات المطلوبة وذلك بعد إعلان الجهة المختصة طبقًا للقواعد التي تحددها اللائحة التنفيذية لهذا القانون.
ويصدر الترخيص لمدة لا تجاوز ثلاث سنوات بعد مراعاة مقتضيات التنظيم والتخطيط ومظهر المنطقة ومراعاة حركة المرور فيها.
ويجوز تجديد مدة الترخيص لمدة أو لمدد أخري مماثلة بناءً علي طلب المرخص له وموافقة الجهة المختصة.
وللجهة المختصة أن تصدر قرارًا بإلغاء الترخيص وفقًا لمـا يستجد من مقتضيات التنظيم أو التخطيط أو اعتبارات تتعلق بمظهر المنطقــة أو بتنظيــم حركة المرور فيها ، وذلك دون الإخلال بحق المرخص له في الحصول علي تعويض إن كان لذلك مقتض.
كما حيث نصت المادة 9 من القانون أن كل من وضع إعلانا أو لافتة أو تسبب في وضعه بالمخالفة لهذا القانون والقرارات المنفذة له يعاقب بغرامة لا تقل عن مثلي قيمة تكلفة الأعمال ولا تزيد على ثلاثة أمثال تلك القيمة، وتتعدد العقوبات بتعدد المخالفات.
وفي جميع الأحوال، يقضي بإزالة الإعلان أو اللافتة وبإلزام المخالف برد الشيء إلى أصله وبأداء ضعف الرسوم المقررة على الترخيص، فإذا لم يقم المخالف بالإزالة والرد في المدة التي يحددها الحكم جاز للجهة المختصة القيام بذلك على نفقته، ولا يجوز مطالبتها بأي تعويض عن أي تلف يلحق الإعلان أو اللافتة أو الأجهزة أو غيرها.
ولصاحب الشأن خلال شهر من تاريخ إخطاره بحصول الإزالة أن يسترد الإعلان ومشتملاته بعد أدائه قيمة نفقات الإزالة وضعف الرسوم المقررة على الترخيص، فإذا انقضي هذا الميعاد جاز للجهة المختصة بيع الإعلان أو اللافتة ومشتملات أي منهما بالطريق الإداري وتحصيل المبالغ المستحقة لها.
ويكون للجهة الإدارية إزالة الإعلان أو اللافتة على نفقة المخالف وتحصيل نفقات الإزالة بطريق الحجز الإداري إذا كان من شأن بقاء الإعلان أو اللافتة تعريض سلامة المنتفعين بالطرق أو السكان أو الممتلكات للخطر أو إعاقة حركة المرور.
Nearly two-and-a-half years after its launch, Truth Social is struggling to hang onto its small U.S. user base, according to new data on the microblogging platform launched by former President Donald Trump‘s media company.
So far in May, U.S. daily visits to Truth Social have dropped more than 21% from April, and more than 35% compared to March, according to digital intelligence platform Similarweb.
The site’s average number of monthly visits over the past year — just over 4 million from May 2023 to April 2024 — plummeted more than 39% from the prior 12-month period, from May 2022 to April 2023, Similarweb reported.
The traffic has declined even as Trump — the most prominent Truth Social user and the majority shareholder of its parent company, Trump Media — has saturated the national news with coverage of his criminal trial and White House bid.
And while the app saw a surge in visitors in the lead-up to Trump Media’s public trading debut in March, Similarweb’s most recent data show that those gains have already been erased.
The user and engagement data from Similarweb and two other data firms, collected and analyzed exclusively for CNBC, offers a glimpse into how Trump Media’s flagship product is developing — one that the company itself has yet to provide.
The company claims it does not track key indicators that social media platforms traditionally use to monitor their performance. Those include metrics like a site’s active user accounts and its daily and monthly visitor numbers, as well as its revenue per user and ad impressions.
Trump Media says it believes tracking those stats “might not align with the best interests” of the company or its stockholders, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company also said it “may never collect, monitor, or report any or certain key operating metrics.”
CNBC reached out to Trump Media for comment on the firms’ findings, and asked if it could provide any data of its own.
“Why would we comment on a fake news network reporting on fake analyses?” the company said through a spokesperson.
But the new analyses could be warning signs for Trump Media, whose business depends in large part on growing its user base.
“If you can’t demonstrate that you have a sizeable, active, engaged, growing audience, I don’t understand how you create a successful ad-supported social media business,” said David Carr, Similarweb’s editor of insights, news and research, in an interview.
Trump Media relies entirely on ad sales for its revenue, and discloses in its SEC filings that a decline in user engagement could hurt its business by making Truth Social less attractive to advertisers.
The data firms’ findings could also harden Wall Street analysts’ view of the company as a “meme stock” whose sky-high market capitalization is untethered to its business fundamentals.
“We basically don’t see anything in these digital indicators that would explain why the valuation is as high as it is,” Carr said.
Trump Media on Tuesday reported a first-quarter net loss of nearly $328 million on revenues of about $771,000, most of which came from advertising.
Nonetheless, as of Friday, the company had a market cap of slightly more than $8 billion.
The stock closed on Friday at $45.81 per share, which is roughly in the middle of the wide range of share prices, from a low of around $22 per share to a high of around $70, that TMTG shares have traded at since the company went public in March.
A single surge
Truth Social’s monthly active user numbers declined significantly in the U.S. in the final months of 2023, three different data firms told CNBC.
But the platform’s traffic rebounded in the first quarter of this year, as Trump Media closed in on a deal allowing it to start trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker DJT.
Similarweb tallied 781,954 active iOS and Android users on Truth Social in the U.S. that month, a more than 58% surge from February. GWS Magnify offered an even rosier analysis, calculating that Truth Social’s monthly user numbers hit a new peak of 1.4 million in March, which carried over into April.
News of Trump Media & Technology Group public trading is seen on television screens at the Nasdaq Marketplace in New York City on March 26, 2024.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Data firm Sensor Tower, meanwhile, calculated that the social media platform’s U.S. monthly active user level in the first quarter of 2024 rose 10% year over year.
But all three analysts linked that rise to the heavy press coverage surrounding Trump Media’s public merger and its highly volatile trading kickoff, when the stock rocketed up as much as 50%.
That meme-fueled frenzy seems unlikely to establish a long-term gain in traffic: In the four-week period ending May 19, for instance, daily active U.S. Truth Social users were down 19.7% year over year, according to Similarweb.
Truth Social’s headwinds
Truth Social also faces two major obstacles to building an engaged user base, according to GWS Magnify.
The first is a retention problem. Truth Social users on average check the site fewer than two days a week — falling behind apps like Facebook, X, TikTok, Reddit and Pinterest.
Truth Social users also clock fewer minutes of engagement on the platform that do the users of other social media networks. The vast majority of Truth Social users, 87%, also use Facebook. Another 51% are also on X, GWS Magnify reported.
“Compared to other social media platforms, Truth Social users are accessing the app much less frequently and are spending much less time on it per session,” the firm’s CEO, Dr. Paul Carter, told CNBC in an email.
“That will have a bigger impact on the prospects for Truth than any media limelight,” Carter said.
Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in the South Bronx in New York City on May 23, 2024.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
He added that a future decline in Truth Social’s numbers “will be because the platform has failed to engage users in the way that the most successful social media companies – TikTok most prominently – have mastered.”
The second problem is that Truth Social doesn’t offer anything to set it apart from bigger microblogging sites, especially X, which it closely resembles.
Trump Media says it is focused on adding new features to Truth Social, including live TV streaming, according to its latest earnings report.
For now, the most unique feature of Truth Social is Trump himself, who uses the app regularly and occasionally makes news in his posts.
Yet Trump’s presence on Truth Social alone has not been enough to draw users away from its competitors, nor has the wall-to-wall national press coverage of Trump’s criminal trial and his campaign to defeat President Joe Biden.
“It just hasn’t happened,” Carr said.
— NBC News’ Rob Wile and CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are targeting key swing states in a final push to win over undecided voters as they continue to crisscross the United States before Tuesday’s election.
The two contenders, who are locked in a tight race for the White House, will host duelling rallies on Friday night about 10km (6 miles) from one another in Milwaukee, the largest city in the battleground state of Wisconsin.
Milwaukee is home to the most Democratic votes in the state, but its conservative suburbs are where most Republicans live and are a critical area for Trump as he tries to reclaim the state he narrowly won in 2016 and lost in 2020.
Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than 1 percentage point, or fewer than 23,000 votes, and the race is just as tight this time around.
After appearing with music star Jennifer Lopez at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Thursday, Harris will tap musicians such as GloRilla, the Isley Brothers and Flo Milli in Milwaukee. Grammy award-winning rapper Cardi B, who has more than 200 million followers on social media platforms, was also due to speak at the campaign event.
Trump, meanwhile, will return to the Fiserv Forum, the venue where in July he formally accepted his party’s presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention.
Earlier, he made a campaign stop in Michigan, in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, home to a large Arab American community.
Asked why Dearborn was important to him, the former president said: “We have a great feeling for Lebanon, and I know so many people from Lebanon, Lebanese people and the Muslim population [like] Trump, and I’ve a good relationship with them.”
He said: “We want their votes. We’re looking for their votes, and I think we’ll get their votes.”
Trump also disparaged Harris and claimed if elected to the White House again, “we’re going to have peace in the Middle East”.
In comments that echoed claims he has made about ending the conflict in Ukraine, he said bringing peace to the Middle East was possible “but not with the clowns you have running the US right now”.
Opinion polls, both nationally and in the seven closely divided battleground states, suggest the two candidates are virtually tied with four days to go before election day. More than 66 million people have already cast early ballots.
Trump has focused his campaign on stirring fears about violence he blames on immigrants and pessimism over the economy. The former president continues to falsely claim his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud in multiple states, and he and his supporters have spread baseless claims about this election in the key state of Pennsylvania.
On Thursday, Trump stepped up his unfounded allegations that probes into suspect voter registration forms are proof of voter fraud. Some of his supporters also alleged voter suppression when long lines formed this week to receive mail-in ballots.
“This is sowing the seeds for attempts to overturn an election,” said Kyle Miller, a strategist with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “We saw it in 2020, and I think the lesson Trump and his allies have learned since is that they have to sow these ideas early.”
State officials and democracy advocates said the incidents show a system working as intended. A judge extended the mail-in ballot deadline by three days in Bucks County, north of Philadelphia, after the Trump campaign sued over claims that some voters were turned away before a Tuesday deadline.
Election officials discovered potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster and neighbouring York counties, prompting investigations by local law enforcement. There is no evidence the applications have resulted in illegal votes.
“This is a sign that the built-in safeguards in our voter registration process are working,” Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s top election official, told reporters this week.
Harris, meanwhile, is running on warnings about an authoritarian takeover, pledging to help the middle class and pushing back against Republican abortion bans and restrictions.
An issue top of mind for voters is the economy, with many complaining about inflation and wages that do not keep up with rising prices.
Economists said the US economy is actually in robust shape, shrugging off the remaining impact of the coronavirus pandemic with low unemployment and strong growth. New figures on Friday, however, showed drastically lower job growth last month with only 12,000 new jobs created.
Analysts largely attributed this to knock-on effects from hurricanes and a strike at the aerospace giant Boeing.
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Two days out from Election Day, Kamala Harris dashed through four stops across battleground Michigan on Sunday without uttering Donald Trump’s name, while urging voters not to fooled by the GOP nominee’s disparagement of the electoral system that he falsely claims is rigged against him.
The vice president said she trusts the upcoming vote tally and urged voters, “in particular people who have not yet voted to not fall for this tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won’t matter.”
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Jenison Field House on the campus of Michigan State University, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in East Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally at Jenison Field House on the campus of Michigan State University, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, in East Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
At a Michigan State University rally, Harris got a rousing response when she asked who had already voted and then gave students another job – to encourage their friends to cast ballots in a state that allows Election Day voter registration.
And instead of her usual speech riffs about Trump being unstable, unhinged and out for unchecked power, Harris sought to contrast her optimistic tone with the darker message of the Republican opponent she did not name.
It was all in service of trying to boost her standing in one of the Democratic “blue wall” states in the Midwest considered her smoothest potential path to an Electoral College majority.
“We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division,” she said in a oblique reference to Trump. “We are done with that. We are exhausted with that. America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward where we see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor.”
Harris also avoided direct mention of Trump during her 11-minute morning talk at Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ. But her comments nonetheless served as a clear juxtaposition with the Republican nominee.
“There are those who seek to deepen division, sow hate, spread fear and cause chaos,” she said. She spoke at the same time Trump was in Pennsylvania declaring the U.S. a “failed nation” and saying that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after the 2020 election, which he denies losing to Democrat Joe Biden.
As Trump referred to Harris’ party as “demonic,” Harris quoted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah and told her friendly audience she saw ready to “chart a new way forward.”
Addressing what was a largely student crowd in East Lansing, Harris promised to seek consensus.
“I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy,” she said. “In fact, I’ll give them a seat at the table because that’s what strong leaders do.””
That was enough for Alexis Plonka, a Michigan State junior who will be voting in her first presidential election. Plonka, who said she has family members who support Trump, applauded the vice president for not referencing the former president directly.
“I think one of the things that turns people off from Trump a lot is the fact that he is so against people that don’t agree with him and that he’s not willing to work with them,” she said.
What to know about the 2024 Election
The approach reflects the wide net Harris has cast since taking the Democratic Party mantle in July after 81-year-old President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid. Casting Trump as erratic and unfit for office, she has attracted supporters ranging from progressive champion Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York to Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Still, Harris is looking to capitalize on core Democratic constituencies — including young voters like those she addressed at Michigan State — in part by emphasizing her support for abortion rights and Trump’s role in ending a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy. One of the loudest cheers she received in East Lansing on Sunday evening came when she declared that government should not tell women what to do with their bodies.
Speaking to reporters Sunday afternoon, Harris pushed back at Trump’s characterizations of U.S. elections, charges that the former president elevated again as he campaigned in Pennsylvania. Harris said his latest comments were “meant to distract from the fact that we have and support free and fair elections in our country.” Those “good systems” were in place in 2020, Harris said, and “he lost.”
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris boards Air Force Two as she departs Oakland County International Airport in Waterford Township, Mich., Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, en route to Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
Harris used her last Michigan swing to acknowledge progressives and members of the state’s significant population of Arab Americans who are angry at the Biden administration for its continuation of the U.S. alliance with Israel as the Netanyahu government presses its war against Hamas in Gaza.
“I have been very clear that the level of death of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” Harris told reporters.
In East Lansing, she addressed the issue soon after beginning her remarks: “As president I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination.”
Some students in East Lansing voiced their opposition Sunday with audible calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. At least one attendee was escorted out after those cease-fire calls.
After attending church in Detroit, Harris greeted customers and picked up lunch at Kuzzo’s Chicken and Waffles, where she had collard greens at the Detroit restaurant owned by former Detroit Lions player Ron Bartell, a Detroit native. Later, Harris stopped by Elam Barber Shop, a Black-owned business in Pontiac, where she took part in a moderated conversation with local leaders and Black men.
As she returned to Detroit at the end of the day, Harris hopped on a Zoom call from the airport tarmac with “Win With Black Women,” the group that jumped into action for her on the night she first joined the race. Harris thanked the women for their organizing work and urged them to make one final push to “mobilize our Facebook groups, our family group chats and everyone we know” to turn out the vote.
Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, is critical to Harris’ fortunes. Barack Obama swept the region in 2008 and 2012. But Trump flipped Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016, prompting considerable criticism from Democrats who said nominee Hillary Clinton took the states for granted. Biden returned the three to the Democrats’ column in 2020.
Losing any of the three would put pressure on Harris to notch victories among the four Sun Belt battleground states: North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.
The influential podcast host Joe Rogan has endorsed Donald Trump for president, writing on social media that his choice had been influenced by “the great and powerful Elon Musk”.
Musk “makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way”, Rogan wrote on X. “For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump.”
Rogan shared his endorsement along with a link to a nearly three-hour-long interview with Musk, posted on Monday.
The great and powerful @elonmusk. If it wasn’t for him we’d be fucked. He makes what I think is the most compelling case for Trump you’ll hear, and I agree with him every step of the way. For the record, yes, that’s an endorsement of Trump. Enjoy the podcast pic.twitter.com/LdBxZFVsLN
Rogan is a former mixed martial arts commentator, comedian, and gameshow host whose show, The Joe Rogan Experience, is Spotify’s No 1 podcast offering.
In an era of distrust in traditional media outlets, Rogan’s outsider persona, and long conversations with famous and infamous guests, from Kanye West to Edward Snowden to Alex Jones, has won him a massive audience.
But Rogan’s views and interviews have also sparked condemnation, and even a boycott of Spotify, which reportedly signed a $100m deal in 2020 to host his podcast, and finalized a new multiyear deal, reportedly for $250m, earlier this year.
In January 2022, a group of 270 US doctors, scientists, professors, and other healthcare professionals wrote an open letter to Spotify, raising concerns about Rogan’s podcast and what they called its “concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the Covid-19 pandemic”.
“Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine. He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are “gene therapy,” promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19,” the letter said.
Rogan’s night-before-the-election Trump endorsement is not the first time one of his shows with Musk has made news headlines. Tesla shares suffered and some Tesla executives resigned in 2018 after Musk infamously smoked a joint on the live webcast of Rogan’s show in 2018.
