Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump are veering sharply in how they gear up for Tuesday’s (September 10, 2024) presidential debate, setting up a showdown that reflects not just two separate visions for the country but two politicians who approach big moments very differently.

The Vice President is cloistered in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh where she can focus on honing crisp two-minute answers, per the debate’s rules. She’s been working with aides since Thursday and chose a venue that allows the Democratic nominee the option of mingling with swing-state voters.

Mr. Trump publicly dismisses the value of studying for the debate. The former President is choosing instead to fill his days with campaign-related events on the premise that he’ll know what he needs to do once he steps on the debate stage at the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia.

“You can go in with all the strategy you want but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place,” he said during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Mr. Trump then quoted former boxing great Mike Tyson, who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Ms. Harris has said she is prepared for Mr. Trump to rattle off insults and misrepresent facts, even as her campaign has seen value in focusing on the middle class and the prospects of a better future for the country.

“We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth,” Harris said in a radio interview for the Rickey Smiley Morning Show. “He tends to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that’s going to come out during the course of the debate.” In her own preparation, Ms.Harris has the Democratic consultant Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, portraying Trump. She likes to describe Trump as having a “playbook” of falsehoods to go after Democrats such as Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

Ms. Harris has said she understands Trump on a deeper psychological level. She has tried in speeches like her remarks at the Democratic National Convention to show that she would be a stronger leader than him — an argument that gets at Trump’s own desire to project and show strength.

Mr. Trump’s June 27 debate against President Joe Biden shook up the election, with Mr. Biden’s disastrous performance ultimately leading to him stepping aside as the Democratic nominee and endorsing Harris. Both campaigns know the first in-person meeting between Harris and Trump could be a decisive event in a tight race.

Mr. Trump is preemptively criticising the ABC News debate moderators, claiming he will not be treated fairly. But he said he plans to let Ms.Harris speak, just as he did during his debate with Mr. Biden.

“I let him talk. I’m gonna let her talk,” he said during the Hannity town hall.

Mr. Trump aides said that this time would be no different than the previous debate and that the former president would not be doing any more traditional prep. There are no stand-ins, no sets, no play-acting.

Instead, they point to Trump’s frequent interviews, including taking questions at lengthy press conferences, sitting for hourlong podcasts, and participating in town halls with friendly hosts like Hannity.

Mr. Trump also meets regularly with policy advisers who are experts on issues that may come up during the debate. During these informal sessions, they talk about the issues, Mr. Trump’s policies while he was in office, and the plans he’s put forth for a second term.

“I have meetings on it. We talk about it. But there’s not a lot you can do. You either know your subject or not. You either have good policy or not,” he said in a New Hampshire radio interview.

Before the last debate Mr. Trump held sessions with notable Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who at the time was under consideration to be Mr. Trump’s vice presidential pick. This time he has held sessions with Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate who is now backing Trump.

Gabbard, who is also now a member of Mr. Trump’s transition team, was brought in specifically to help Trump this time around because she knows Harris, having debated her when the two were running for the Democratic nomination in 2020. She also hosted a recent town hall with Trump in Wisconsin.

Mr. Trump, aides insist, intends to put Harris on the defensive. He wants to portray her as too liberal as he tries to tie her to Biden’s economic record and points out her reversals on issues such as a fracking ban that she no longer supports.

“We look forward for the opportunity for Americans to see her on stage, incapable of defending her policies and flip-flops,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt. “The President’s proven he has a command of the issues, she does not.” Ms. Harris’ team is banking that Trump will come off as extreme and that they can use the debate as a springboard to further build on the momentum that her short campaign has generated. The campaign plans to use the pre-debate weekend to hold 2,000 events with volunteers and reach more than one million voters.

“With hundreds of offices and thousands of staff across the battlegrounds, we are able to harness all the buzz around the debate and break through to hard-to-reach voters,” said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground states director, in a statement.

Russian lawmaker Maria Butina said on Wednesday that reported US claims that Russia was trying to influence the 2024 election were nonsense and that Moscow felt that the only winner of the election would be the US military-industrial complex.

Butina was responding after CNN reported that the United States plans to accuse Russia later on Wednesday of a campaign to influence the presidential election using online platforms to target American voters with disinformation.

“The US claims were and are pure rubbish and a witch hunt,” Butina, who spent 15 months in US prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent and is now a lawmaker for the ruling United Russia party, told Reuters when asked about the CNN report.

“Russia thinks it does not matter who wins the US elections – the only winner is the US private military-industrial complex. That is what matters – and nothing else,” Butina said.

The Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry have repeatedly said that Moscow has not meddled in the US election, but is watching it closely.

The Kremlin in June dismissed as absurd US intelligence assertions that Russia was seeking to meddle in the presidential election and has said that US spies were intent on casting Russia as an enemy.

President Vladimir Putin had suggested in the past that, for Russia, Joe Biden would have been preferable to Donald Trump, though he spoke with irony about Biden.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that Russia saw US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a more predictable opponent than Trump, but said there was no prospect of an improvement in relations with Washington anyway.

Previous US intelligence assessments have found that Moscow tried to meddle in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Russian officials have suggested that the United States has also meddled in its domestic affairs.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Vice-President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are co-headlining a campaign event on Monday (September 2, 2024) in the marquee battleground state of Pennsylvania as Ms. Harris balances presenting herself as “a new way forward” while remaining intensely loyal to Mr. Biden and the policies he has pushed.

The pair will attend Pittsburgh’s Labour Day parade and offer some remarks, the first time the two have shared a speaking slot on the political stage together since the surprising election shakeup that provided a fresh jolt of Democratic enthusiasm to the 2024 election.

Harris’ campaign has said Pennsylvania voters are newly energised since Ms. Harris moved to the top of the ticket six weeks ago, with tens of thousands of new volunteers signed up to canvass for her and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. Ms. Harris’ and Mr. Biden’s appearance at the parade, one of the largest such gatherings in the country, is part of a battleground state blitz with just over two months until Election Day.

Ms. Harris, 59, has sought to appeal to voters by positioning herself as a break from poisonous politics, rejecting the acerbic rhetoric of her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, while looking to move beyond the Mr. Biden era as well. Yet while her delivery may be very different from Mr. Biden’s, Ms. Harris’ agenda is chock-full of the same issues he has championed: capping the cost of prescription drugs, the Affordable Care Act, the economy and helping families afford child care.

“We fight for a future where we build what I call an opportunity economy, so that every American has the opportunity to own a home, start a business and to build wealth and intergenerational wealth. And a future where we lower the cost of living for America,” she said at a recent rally, echoing Mr. Biden’s calls to grow the economy “from the bottom out and the middle up”. Ms. Harris briefly appeared on stage with Mr. Biden after the President delivered his remarks on the opening night of last month’s Democratic National Convention, but the two haven’t shared a microphone at a political event since Mr. Biden himself was running for office. At that time, the campaign was using Ms. Harris mostly as its chief spokeswoman for abortion rights, an issue they believe can help them win in November as restrictions grow and health care worsens for women following the fall of Roe v. Wade.

The pair have appeared at official events and met together at the White House since the ticket—swap.

For more than 3 1/2 years, Ms. Harris has been one of Mr. Biden’s chief validators. Now the tables are turned, as Ms. Harris looks to lean on Mr. Biden — a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania — to help win the potentially decisive state. Mr. Biden, for his part, has laid low since ending his re-election bid. He was last at the White House on Aug. 19 and has since been vacationing in Southern California and Delaware.

But even as she’s taken on the mantle of leading the Democratic Party, Ms. Harris has stood steadfastly at Mr. Biden’s side. In her first sit-down interview of her candidacy, Ms. Harris delivered an impassioned defence of Mr. Biden’s record and ability to do the job, even despite the events of the past two months that ended with her running for the Oval Office and Mr. Biden a lame duck.

The 81-year-old President stepped aside in July following a disastrous debate performance with Trump and a growing chorus within his own party for him to make room for a new generation. Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump will debate on Sept. 10.

“He cares so deeply about the American people. He is so smart and — and loyal to the American people. And I have spent hours upon hours with him, be it in the Oval Office or the Situation Room. He has the intelligence, the commitment, and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president,” she said in last week’s interview.

She added of Mr. Trump: “By contrast, the former president has none of that.” Ms. Harris said during the CNN interview that serving with Mr. Biden was “one of the greatest honours of my career”, and she recounted the moment he called to tell her he was stepping down.

“He told me what he had decided to do and… I asked him, ‘Are you sure?’ and he said, ‘Yes’, and that’s how I learned about it.” The Vice-President said she didn’t need to ask Mr. Biden for his support because “he was very clear that he was going to endorse me”. Ms. Harris has also defended the administration’s record on the southern border and immigration, one of the administration’s most persistent and vexing problems. She notes that she was tasked with trying to address the “root causes” in other countries that were driving the border crossings, though Republicans have tagged her as the “border czar”. “We have laws that have to be followed and enforced, that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally, and there should be consequences,” Ms. Harris said.

Although Ms. Harris has appeared more forceful in speaking about the plight of civilians in Gaza, as Israel’s war against Hamas there nears the 11th month mark, the Vice-President has also endorsed Mr. Biden’s efforts to arm Israel and bring about a hostage deal and ceasefire.

Israel said early on Sunday (September 1, 2024) that it had recovered the bodies of six hostages captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that ignited the Gaza war, including Israeli—American Hersh Goldberg—Polin. The revelation prompted tens of thousands of Israelis to demonstrate in the streets demanding a ceasefire deal.

Ms. Harris will join Mr. Biden on Monday (September 2, 2024) in the Situation Room to meet with the U.S. hostage deal negotiating team to discuss their continuing efforts on a deal that would secure the release of the remaining hostages.

Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as she holds a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris said former President Donald Trump “disrespected sacred ground” in his recent appearance at Arlington National Cemetery, where the Republican nominee took and distributed images despite a federal prohibition on campaign activity on the grounds.

Ms. Harris, in a statement posted Saturday on the social media platform X, cited reports that Mr. Trump’s campaign aides created an altercation with a cemetery staffer and proceeded to take photographs and film the former President, including at the graves of Afghanistan war veterans, after being warned about rules at the site.

“Let me be clear: the former President disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt,” Ms. Harris said, calling Arlington a “solemn place where we come together to honor American heroes … not a place for politics.”

The original incident stemmed from Mr. Trump’s and Republicans’ continued criticism of President Joe Biden and now Ms. Harris for the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the invitation of some family members of service members killed during the withdrawal, Mr. Trump laid wreaths last Monday in honor of Sgt. Nicole Gee, Staff Sgt. Darin Hoover and Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss. They were among 13 U.S. service members and more than 100 Afghans who died in an Aug. 26, 2021, bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Mr. Trump’s campaign was warned about not taking photographs before an altercation at the cemetery, according to defense officials. Officials have said since that an Arlington employee whom two Trump campaign staff members allegedly “verbally abused and pushed” aside has declined to press charges. The Trump campaign has since lashed out at Pentagon officials, with a top campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, referring to military spokespersons as “hacks.” Trump campaign officials say it had permission to bring someone to take video.

Since Mr. Biden ended his reelection bid, Mr. Trump has been zeroing in on Ms. Harris and her roles in foreign policy decisions. He has specifically highlighted the Vice President’s statements that she was the last person in the room before Mr. Biden made the decision on Afghanistan.

Biden’s administration was following a withdrawal commitment and timeline that the Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban in 2020. A 2022 review by a government-appointed special investigator concluded decisions made by both Trump and Biden were the key factors leading to the rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the Taliban takeover.

Ms. Harris on Saturday alluded to Mr. Trump’s history of picking fights with veterans and repeated allegations that he has “called our fallen service members ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’ and disparaged Medal of Honor recipients.”

“This is a man who is unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself,” Ms. Harris said. “I will always honor the service and sacrifice of all of America’s fallen heroes. … And I will never politicize them.”

Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, may not in his wildest dreams have imagined that one day he would be picked as a running mate alongside a U.S. presidential candidate, yet that was indeed how the plot twist on the Democratic side played out at this tail end of the 2024 election season.

Mr. Walz, a man whose demeanour has been described as “folksy” and who has said on the record that Republican challenger and former President Donald Trump’s policy priorities were “weird”, may in fact turn out to be the perfect foil to Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for the race to the White House in November. Not only do the two Democratic leaders’ profiles offer a balance of gender and racial parity for their campaign, but their track records suggest that their popular appeal among the electorate may be as broad as the party could hope.

Ms. Harris is seen as a tough former prosecutor who speaks out strongly on core Democratic issues such as reproductive rights, and Mr. Walz has a reputation for flipping Republican districts in favour of Democrats by reaching out to independent and undecided voters.

In a sense, Ms. Harris’ pick was a close call, and many had assumed that the frontrunner in that race was Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania, a critical swing State whose votes the Democrats will certainly need if they’re to win the presidency. In this context, her selecting Mr. Walz says more about his personality and antecedents than it does about the calculus of regional politics for the election.

So, what does Mr. Walz bring to the table?

Small-town childhood

Born to a middle-class family — his father was a school teacher — in West Point, Nebraska, a small town, and graduating from high school from an even smaller town called Butte, Mr. Walz has said his values were shaped by such a rural upbringing: “A town that small had services like that and had a public school with a government teacher that inspired me to be sitting where I’m at today.”

He went on to graduate with a degree in social science education from Chadron State College in Nebraska and an MSc in educational leadership from Minnesota State University in 2001. Following the footsteps of his father, an Army veteran who served in the Korean War, Mr. Walz served in the Army National Guard after high school. He ended up serving in the Army for a total of 24 years, during which time he rose to the rank of command sergeant major and then retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005.

After completing his university education, he spent a year teaching in China as part of one of the first cohorts of American educators authorised by the U.S. government to teach in Chinese high schools — clearly an experience that had a lasting influence on him, as he is said to still speak Mandarin.

Democratic representation

It would have been expected that with this diverse and rich experience under his belt Mr. Walz would plunge deeper into the education sector and the teaching profession, yet that was not to be. The story goes that during the 2004 presidential election, Mr. Walz was teaching and took his class to a George W. Bush campaign event to give his students a sense of what democratic politics looked like. When the Secret Service at the event saw that some of his students were sporting clothing indicating that they were supporters of Bush’s Democratic opponent, John Kerry, they ejected the students from the rally, an act that angered Mr. Walz and propelled him towards joining politics as a local campaign manager for Mr. Kerry.

From that point on, there was no turning back for him. In 2006, Mr. Walz stood for Congress in Minnesota’s first district, “a heavily rural area covering the south of Minnesota where only one other Democrat had won in the preceding century”. Despite poor odds, Mr. Walz ended up winning with 53% of the vote. With a firm grip on this tough district, Mr. Walz was re-elected every two years there until 2018, when he retired to run for Governor of Minnesota. His consistent record of popularity with his constituents was reflected in the gubernatorial capacity as well, and his State voted for him not only in 2018 but also in 2022, making him the present incumbent.

Mr. Walz’s active career in the House of Representatives clearly underscores his credentials as a reliable progressive within the firmament of Democratic Party leaders. Not only did his former career choices of school teacher and army vet consistently win him respect among his peers and constituents over the years, but his voting record shows that he ranks among the Democratic Party mainstream — for example multiple votes over the years in favour of raising the minimum wage, supporting stem cell research, giving Medicare greater leeway to negotiate for affordable medicines, lowering tuition costs for university students and in backing reproductive rights.

He is not, however, entirely unfamiliar to controversies, personal and political, including, in the former category, an arrest, charge and related conviction in 1995, when he was still a teacher, for driving under the influence. He has since become a teetotaller. On the political front, as soon as his pick for Ms. Harris’ running mate was announced, Mr. Walz was targeted by the Republican campaign with comments such as “No one is more pro-China than Marxist Walz.”

Yet, the truth is that Mr. Walz, while no doubt cherishing his time teaching in China and even setting up a business with his wife that organised annual summer educational trips to that country, is fairly hard-nosed on his view about violations of human rights in the region.

He is known, for example, to have met with both the Dalai Lama and high-profile Hong Kong democracy activist, Joshua Wong prior, to the latter’s arrest, when Mr. Walz was a Congressman. Reports note that during his time in Congress, Mr. Walz spent more than a decade serving on the Executive Commission on China, described as “a body focused on scrutinising the Chinese government’s human rights abuses”.

Safe pick

While it is expected that the Harris-Walz duo will deliver, in what remains of this election season, a policy agenda and campaign effort that truly reflects the full power and value set of the Democratic Party as it stands today — and that matters for complex issues such as immigration reform and job creation — it remains to be seen whether either of them commands a sufficiently broad recognition among voters that could rival the reputation of Mr. Trump. The voters’ choice will, however, set the tenor for the brand of politics that Americans want to see for the next four years — continuing polarisation across issues, or genuine attempts to build unity across the partisan divide.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on the phone with former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as the Obamas endorse Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate in this still image taken from a video released on July 26, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama have endorsed Kamala Harris in her White House bid, giving the vice president the expected but still crucial backing of the nation’s two most popular Democrats.

The endorsement, announced Friday morning in a video showing Harris accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple, comes as Harris continues to build momentum as the party’s likely nominee after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection bid and endorse his second-in-command against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump.

It also highlights the friendship and potentially historic link between the nation’s first Black president and the first woman, first Black woman and first person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, who is now vying to break those same barriers at the presidential rank.

“We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former President told Harris, who is shown taking the call as she walks backstage at an event, trailed by a Secret Service agent.

Said Michelle Obama, “I can’t have this phone call without saying to my girl, Kamala, I am proud of you.

“This is going to be historic,” she added.

Ms. Harris, who has known the Obamas since before his election in 2008, thanked them for their friendship and said she looks forward to “getting there, being on the road” with them in the three-month blitz before Election Day on Nov. 5.

“We’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” Harris said.

The Obamas are perhaps the last major party figures to endorse Ms. Harris formally — a reflection of the former president’s desire to remain, at least publicly, a party elder operating above the fray. The Obamas remain prodigious fundraising draws and popular surrogates at large campaign events for Democratic candidates.

According to an Associated Press survey, Ms. Harris already has secured the public support of a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, which begins Aug. 19 in Chicago. The Democratic National Committee expects to hold a virtual nominating vote that would, by Aug. 7, make Harris and a yet-to-be-named running mate the official Democratic ticket.

Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris within an hour of announcing his decision last Sunday to end his campaign amid widespread concern about the 81-year-old president’s ability to defeat Trump. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed in the days after.

The Obamas, however, trod carefully as Ms. Harris secured the delegate commitments, made the rounds among core Democratic constituencies and raised more than $120 million. The public caution tracks how the former president handled the weeks between Mr. Biden’s debate debacle against Trump and the President’s eventual decision to end his campaign: Obama was a certain presence in the party’s maneuvers but he operated quietly.

Barack Obama’s initial statement after Mr. Biden’s announcement did not mention Ms. Harris. Instead, he spoke generically about coming up with a nominee to succeed Biden: “I have extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges,” the former president wrote.

Both Obamas campaigned separately for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, including large rallies on the closing weekends before Election Day. They delivered key speeches at the Democrats’ convention in 2020, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic. The former president’s speech was especially notable because he unveiled a full-throated attack on Trump as a threat to democracy, an argument that endures as part of Ms. Harris’ campaign.

US Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday hailed her boss’s legacy as “unmatched in modern history,” in her first remarks since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed her candidacy.

Biden’s record is “unmatched in modern history,” Harris said at an event at the White House. “In one term, he has already surpassed the legacy of most presidents who have served two terms in office.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

U.S. President Joe Biden during a stop in Las Vegas on July 17, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

President Joe Biden has tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a speaker at the UnidosUS annual conference broadcast on the White House’s YouTube channel.

Mr. Biden was slated to speak at the event in Las Vegas Wednesday afternoon as part of an effort to rally Hispanic voters ahead of the November election. Unidos U.S. President and CEO Janet Murguía told the guests that the president had sent his regrets and could not appear because he tested positive for the virus.

The president had previously been at the Original Lindo Michoacan restaurant in Las Vegas, where he was greeting diners and was scheduled to have an interview with Univision.

U.S. former President and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks on at the conclusion of the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

As questions swirl over how a would-be assassin managed to get anywhere near Donald Trump, some conservatives are blaming the Secret Service for hiring the women agents who threw themselves into the line of fire to protect the former president.

Women are too short, too weak — and in some cases, too overweight — to protect someone like Trump, according to people on the U.S. political right who accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices they say nearly got the former president killed.

Several women can be seen among the black-suited, sunglass-clad agents racing to shield Trump with their bodies as the gunman opened fire at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, before hustling him from the stage and into a waiting car and safety.

But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second-ever woman director of the federal agency tasked with protecting presidents current, former and would-be — are now caught in the intense scrutiny over the nearly catastrophic attack.

“There should not be any women in the Secret Service. These are supposed to be the very best, and none of the very best at this job are women,” right-wing activist Matt Walsh wrote on X, in one typical post.

“I can’t imagine that a DEI hire from @pepsi would be a bad choice as the head of the Secret Service. #sarcasm,” tweeted Republican congressman Tim Burchett.

Also Read | Secret Service agrees to independent probe over Trump shooting

Mr. Burchett was referring to Ms. Cheatle’s previous job as director of global security for Pepsi — a post she held for several years before returning to the Secret Service, where she had previously spent nearly three decades.

With the phrase DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — he was invoking one of the most popular conservative fronts in the culture wars: the so-called “wokeification” of the workplace as employers strive to diversify their hiring practices beyond white men.

The first women were sworn in as Secret Service agents in 1971. CBS News reported last year that the agency aims to have 30% women recruits by 2030.

“I’m very conscious … of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce, and particularly women,” Ms. Cheatle told CBS at the time.

The wildly popular conservative Libs of TikTok account cited that interview in a post also blaming hiring practices for the Trump shooting that has received more than 10 million views on X.

“The results of DEI. DEI got someone killed,” it read.

‘Secret Service A-team’

Diverse hiring practices accelerated in 2020 after the George Floyd killing forced America into a new reckoning over racism and inclusivity.

But they have seen a growing backlash from conservatives in recent months who complain they unfairly disadvantage white workers in general, and white men in particular.

None other than Ohio Senator J.D. Vance — Trump’s newly-announced running mate — has spearheaded a recent bill to do away with such efforts.

Also Read | Who is Usha Chilukuri Vance, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance’s Indian-origin wife

“DEI is racism, plain and simple. It’s time to outlaw it nationwide, starting with the federal government,” he tweeted last month as the bill was introduced.

Such practices at the Secret Service faced scrutiny as recently as May, when Congress launched an investigation after a female agent in Vice President Kamala Harris’s detail reportedly got into an altercation with colleagues.

The incident raised concerns about this agent’s hiring, Kentucky Republican James Comer said in a letter to Ms. Cheatle — specifically, whether staff shortages “had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as a part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort.”

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to questions from AFP.

But in response to the Comer letter, spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told U.S. media that Secret Service employees “are held to the highest professional standards… at no time has the agency lowered these standards.”

Ms. Cheatle has shrugged off calls for her resignation since the shooting, and the agency has agreed to cooperate with an independent review ordered by President Joe Biden.

Mr. Comer has also announced that Ms. Cheatle will appear before a congressional panel on July 22 for a hearing on the assassination attempt.

Mr. Biden — in whose detail Ms. Cheatle served when he was vice president — told NBC News on Monday that he feels “safe with the Secret Service,” though he agreed it was an “open question” whether they should have anticipated the shooting.

When Trump made his first public appearance after the shooting, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, he appeared to be surrounded by an all-male Secret Service detail.

“Now THIS is how you protect a President,” posted conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley on X.

“Trump gets the Secret Service A-team now.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is rushed offstage during a rally after an assisation attempt on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images via AFP

As he survived an assassination attempt by a whisker in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, Republican Donald J. Trump’s image underwent an abrupt makeover. From defending charges of being an instigator and an authoritarian-in-waiting, he will now be seen as a target of political violence.

Mr. Trump’s defiant response in the face of death with his fist raised against the backdrop of an American flag could blunt his Democrat rival Joe Biden’s strategy of a counter polarisation, and reinforce his messianic claims. The bid on Mr. Trump’s life could derail the wobbly script that Mr. Biden struggled to put together after his meltdown in the presidential debate on June 27.

Also Read : Trump rally shooting LIVE

Mr. Trump is seen as a divisive figure of U.S. politics, but Mr. Biden’s re-election bid is also premised on polarisation. With the Democrat base itself conflicted over his politics, Mr. Biden has raised the decibel on rhetoric on domestic and international questions to unify his party. All that adds up to a very elementary claim that Mr. Trump would be worse.

On two polarising domestic questions that can unite the progressives, Mr. Biden has raised the stakes since the debate — gun control and abortion decontrol. The Biden campaign has sought to corner Mr. Trump on both questions. The battleground States that turned by narrow margins in 2016, and 2020, are being addressed on these two questions which would not only charge up the Democrat base but also potentially swing women voters from the Republican side too. Against the backdrop of his accelerating gaffe train, Mr. Biden amplified his messaging on these two questions, contrasting himself with Mr. Trump in stark terms.

‘Washington Playbook’

But this has not stopped the chatter about his fitness to run for another term. In fact, it is growing into a clamour, being repeated by Democrat seniors and American strategists across the political divide. Mr. Biden has sought to talk up the Russia-China axis in recent weeks — though he mistook Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for ‘President Putin’.

Mr. Trump’s first term had significantly disrupted what former President Barack Obama had described as ‘Washington Playbook,’ — the standard, usually militarised response to most global events. By confronting China and appearing friendly to Russia, Mr. Trump’s first term had disrupted this playbook.

Mr. Trump’s first term institutionalised rivalry with China in U.S. strategy, and Mr. Biden turned it into a new cold war by talking up the danger of an axis between Russia and China. This focus on Russia and China also helped Mr. Biden skirt two foreign policy setbacks under his watch — the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan without achieving the stated strategic goals and Israel’s war on Gaza that has scattered the Democrats.

On all these points, Mr. Biden’s claim of legitimacy has been that he is the most effective counter to Mr. Trump and his instincts. The stark scenarios that Mr. Biden portrays involve a double barrel polarisation — a U.S.-led world order threatened by an authoritarian Russia-China axis and the U.S. democracy threatened by fascism fuelled by MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans.

Mr. Trump is a common factor in Mr. Biden’s campaign narrative, which shows the former President as a stooge of Mr. Putin. The gunman in Pennsylvania has not merely dismantled this grand narrative of Mr. Biden’s claim of his own inevitability despite his infirmities but also reinforced the talking points of Mr. Trump.

Trump’s narrative

Mr. Trump has always claimed that he is a victim of a deep state conspiracy that undermined his first presidency, and thwarted his re-election in 2020. He has also, repeatedly, alluded to “a divine plan” in his politics — a theme that got an instant boost in social media chatter after his miraculous escape from the bullet on Saturday. Mr. Trump’s other talking points — American weakness, leftist conspiracies, and his claims of being a fighter and a true patriot, all fall in place for a perfect storm of a campaign for him on the eve of the Republican National Convention that begins on Monday in Milwaukee.

Mr. Trump presents himself as a strong leader and accuses Mr. Biden of being weak. By appearing unruffled and combative with blood dripping from his bullet injury, Trump can claim to have lived up to his boast. In the coming weeks, he is sure to use this to amplify his politics.