Trump to be interviewed at convention for Black journalists – live | US elections 2024

Upbeat, funk music is playing at the nearly packed ballroom where Donald Trump is expected to address a conference of Black journalists ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Trump’s panel at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is set to begin in approximately 10 minutes. The panel will be moderated by three Black journalists: Rachel Scott, a senior congressional correspondent for ABC News; Harris Faulkner, a newscaster and television host for Fox News; and Kadia Goba, a politics reporter for Semafor.

Some have questioned the inclusion of Faulkner as a moderator, accusing the Fox News journalist of being biased in favor of Trump.

Here’s one comment:

And another:

Journalists at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) began trickling in to the Hilton hotel in downtown Chicago this morning for a 12pm CT/1pm ET panel – featuring Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

He will be quizzed by the prominent political reporters Kadia Goba of Semafor, Rachel Scott of ABC News and Harris Faulkner of Fox News.

Press credentials for the much-discussed event have been tight, with several Secret Service agents monitoring the ballroom where the conversation with Trump will take place.

Others Secret Service agents have been spotted walking throughout the hotel.

Trump’s latest appearance comes only weeks after a 20-year-old gunman attempted to assassinate the former president at a Pennsylvania campaign rally. In the immediate aftermath, the Secret Service chief, Kimberly Cheatle, stepped down after calls from both parties to quit.

In a new poll out today, about eight in 10 Democrats say they would be very or somewhat satisfied if Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president.

The survey from the AP-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted after Joe Biden withdrew from the race, the Associated Press reports.

In a separate AP-Norc poll, taken before Biden dropped out but after his debate against the Republican former president Donald Trump, only about four in 10 Democrats said they were somewhat or very satisfied that Biden was the Democratic party’s likely nominee for president.

The rapidly changing views among Democrats in such a short timespan underscore how swiftly the party has coalesced behind Harris as its standard bearer.

Gary Hines, a Democratic voter from Philadelphia who wasn’t particularly impressed by Harris’s first presidential bid in 2019, told the Associated Press:

She’s up to the task, can do the work, has proven that she’s running a strong campaign so far and maybe on a bigger level, she’s somebody that can beat Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was on another very personal tear into Kamala Harris last night, as Fox News aired an interview with the former president and current Republican nominee for the White House.

On the segment on the rightwing cable channel’s The Ingraham Angle, with host Laura Ingraham, Trump said that if his Democratic rival beats him to the presidency in November’s election she will struggle to deal with foreign leaders on the world stage.

Trump said: “I think they would walk all over her. She will be so easy for them, she will be like a play toy.”

He added, of foreign leaders: “They look at her and they say, I would believe, ‘We got so lucky,’ and they are going to walk all over her. I don’t want to say as to why but a lot of people understand it.”

Fox reported it straight. But the Washington Post’s headline says: “Trump suggests Harris would struggle with world leaders based on her appearance”, adding that “a campaign spokeswoman denied he was talking about her race or gender”.

Here’s a reminder of Donald Trump with world leaders in 2018. He threw candies in the direction of then German leader Angela Merkel.

There are mixed opinions on whether Kamala Harris picking Pennsylvania to introduce her choice of running mate means that the governor of that state, Josh Shapiro, is the frontrunner in the veep stakes.

Politico points out that “a Harris campaign aide cautioned against reading too much into the first city chosen for the tour”. The outlet also linked to a post on X that details what they described as “a long history of running mate rollouts not matching up to the states where they hail from”.

But that list doesn’t include a situation in which a presidential nominee presents their new running mate in a state led by someone who’s just been passed over for the job, as would be the case if Shapiro’s not chosen and then has to watch Harris introduce a rival in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press says “the location of the first stop suggests … Shapiro has moved to the top of a short list of running mates, and that the Harris campaign had decided the state that Democrats won back from Republicans in 2020 is a must-win once again”.

It then adds that the Harris campaign last night issued a “strong reminder” that she has “made no decision on a running mate” at this point.

The Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated early this morning in Iran, the Palestinian militant group and Tehran said, drawing threats of revenge on Israel in a region already shaken by the war in Gaza and a deepening conflict in Lebanon.

The Guardian’s team in London is live-blogging all the news surrounding this event and you can follow the developments as they happen, here.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed the death of Haniyeh, hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for the country’s new president, and said it was investigating. He had been taking part in internationally brokered indirect talks on reaching a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, Reuters reports.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said Israel had provided the grounds for “harsh punishment for itself” and it was Tehran’s duty to avenge the Hamas leader’s death as it had occurred in the Iranian capital. Iranian forces had already made strikes directly on Israel earlier in the Gaza war.

There was no comment nor claim of responsibility from Israel.

The Guardian’s global affairs live blog will have the news on this topic all day. Our full report is here.

Kamala Harris is going to appear at a campaign event in Philadelphia next Tuesday with her choice of running mate for the Democratic ticket to fight the presidential election campaign this November.

Harris has not yet named her vice-presidential choice and it’s not yet been made clear exactly when she will, but her campaign, Harris for President, has confirmed that she and the relevant person will stump together in the Pennsylvania city on 6 August.

She has not yet been confirmed as the presidential nominee for the Democrats, that formal step requires a vote at the party’s national convention next month, but her position is presumed.

Good morning, US politics blog readers, the US presidential race has moved into another gear since Joe Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.

There’s big buzz today and a lot more excitement to come in the next few days and before the Democratic national convention in Chicago next month, with the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, throwing his weight around as well. You can follow developments here, as they happen.

Here’s what’s afoot:

• The Harris for President campaign has announced that Kamala Harris and her running mate – who has yet to be confirmed – will appear together in their first joint event next Tuesday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of the seven crucial swing states. This follows news yesterday when various sources were saying she’d announce her VP pick in the next six or seven days. That firmed up overnight.

• The pair will follow the event in Philly with a whizz through six more swing states within four days, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

• Pundits are opining that the announcement about Pennsylvania doesn’t necessarily point to that state’s governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, as the shoo-in for the ticket, so that leaves “the veep stakes” still a live action sport.

• Kamala Harris spoke at the best-attended and most enthusiastic Democratic campaign rally of the race so far, last night in Atlanta, Georgia. Donald Trump will speak in the same arena this weekend. She taunted him about his apparent cold feet over debating her, with the line: “If you got something to say, say it to my face.”

• Donald Trump said in a Fox interview that aired last night that a President Harris would struggle on the world stage and that she would “be like a play toy” for foreign leaders.

• About eight out of 10 Democrats say they would be very or somewhat satisfied if Harris is confirmed as the Democratic nominee for president. The survey from the AP-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted after Biden withdrew from the race. After his dire debate performance against Trump last month, a poll from the same firm asking the same about him returned the result that only four in 10 Democrats were would be happy with him as the party’s nominee.

• Trump is due to appear on a panel in an unexpected venue today – the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), which is being held in Chicago. We have one of our staffers there, Gloria Oladipo, and will bring you blog updates and a news report. Kamala Harris was not scheduled to attend and has not changed her plans since Trump popped up.