Election 2024 live: Trump insists he’s not a Nazi; Harris praises Gen-Z as being ‘rightly impatient for change’

Here’s my full story on Donald Trump’s comments about Michelle Obama earlier today at his rally in Atlanta, Georgia.

Anglo-American commentator Mehdi Hasan got into a fierce exchange with Republican former governor of Alaska Sarah Palin on Piers Morgan’s talk show tonight.

During a discussion about energy production and energy independence under Joe Biden vs Donald Trump, Palin claimed that “on day one” Biden had stopped building new oil pipelines and banned drilling on federal land.

Hasan muttered “that’s not true”, prompting Palin to lambast him as a liar.

There then followed several minutes of people talking over each other at high volume, culminating in Palin declaring “you’re an obnoxious ass!”

Hasan responded by calling Palin a “racist”, citing her history of controversial comments about Barack Obama – such as reportedly claiming that he was “not one of us” at a 2008 rally or lauding Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth certificate.

Two incidents of ballot boxes being set on fire early Monday morning in Portland, Oregon, and nearby Vancouver, Washington, appear to be linked, my colleague Josh Marcus reports.

An identical black Volvo sedan was spotted at both crime scenes, and an “incendiary device” used in Portland was “similar in nature” to what happened in Vancouver, police said.

They added that the circumstances matched an October 8 attempt to set fire to another ballot box in Vancouver.

“We don’t know the motive behind these acts,” Portland Police Bureau Assistant Chief Amanda McMillan said in a statement on Monday.

“We do know acts like this are targeted and they’re intentional and we’re concerned about that intentional act trying to impact the election process. We’re dedicated to stopping this kind of behavior.”

Read Josh’s full story here.

With perfect timing, Donald Trump will be holding a rally tomorrow in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which has a large Hispanic community largely comprising Puerto Ricans.

That’s after a comedian at Trump’s big rally in Madison Square Garden on Sunday night called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”.

The fallout from those remarks, Pennsylvania Democrats tell Politico, is “spreading like wildfire through the community”, with Puerto Rican WhatsApp groups “lighting up” with activity.

In an op-ed for – who’d have guessed it – The Washington Post, Bezos argues that endorsements undermine journalists’ neutrality and that stopping them helps to mitigate the ongoing and long-term decline of trust in American media.

He said that “neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision”, and that he has never once pressured any Post journalists to the benefit of his other business interests.

“By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction,” Bezos said.

“I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”

The Washington Post originally did not make official endorsements, but began doing so in 1976, and has not previouly failed to endorse a candidate since 1988.

“I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” he told the crowd.

Here’s some lines from Trump’s rally in Atlanta, courtesy of my colleague Phil Thomas:

• Trump claimed that he “[doesn’t] even know what it’s all about” as he addressed the Atlanta criminal charges against him for allegedly trying to bully state officials into “finding” him an extra 11,870 votes.

• He also fantasized about Al Capone having people whacked after taking them out for dinner?

• “I’m rich as hell, I don’t give a damn”

• One of his first topics was the alleged threat of transgender rights: “We don’t want transgender operations all over the place… we don’t want men playing in women’s sports… nobody’s ever come up to me and said, ‘sir, it’s really important to me – would you do me a favour – would you let men play in women’s sports?”

Meanwhile, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kamala Harris is giving a shout out to Generation Z, according to my colleague Josh Marcus.

“I love your generation. I really do. You are rightly impatient for change,” she says. “I love that about you.”

“You have only known the climate crisis are leading the charge to protect our planet and our future. You young leaders who grew up with active shooter drills and are fighting then to keep our schools safe. You who know fewer rights than your mothers and grandmothers are standing up for reproductive freedom.

“I know for you then, these issues are not theoretical.”

She also argued that the overturning of Roe v Wade by Trump-appointed judges was unpopular with men as well as women, saying: “The men of America are seeing their daughters and wives and sisters and mothers put at risk because their rights have been taken from them. The men of America don’t want this.”

Barack Obama has mocked Donald Trump for selling Bibles made in China as he speaks at the Harris rally in Philadelphia.

“You’re Mr Tough Guy on China, except when you can make a few bucks,” the former president said, according to my colleague Josh Marcus.

“You cannot make this stuff up. If it was on Saturday Night Live, everybody would just say that’s exaggerated. It’s not, he’s doing it. The reason he’s doing it is because that’s what he cares about: his ego, his money, his status.”

He also sharply criticised the racist rhetoric on display at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally last night, saying: “Here’s a good rule. If somebody does not respect you, if somebody does not see you as fellow citizens with equal claims to opportunity, to the pursuit of happiness, to the American dream – you should not vote for them.

“We have to reject the kind of politics of division and hatred that we saw represented. America is ready to turn the page.”