President Barack Obama will quickly be campaigning on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris in a number of states crucial to the presidential election.
In line with Eric Schultz, a senior adviser for the Harris marketing campaign, Obama shall be doing “everything he can to help elect Vice President Harris” and different Democrats on the poll within the month main as much as the Nov. 5 election.
Obama’s first occasion for Harris will happen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday. He gained the state in each of his presidential campaigns, as did President Joe Biden in 2020, however Donald Trump gained the Keystone State by a slim margin within the 2016 election.
The latest Democratic president to win back-to-back presidential phrases, Obama is enormously common nationally and throughout the Democratic Get together. His fundraising occasions backing Harris’ marketing campaign have raised at the very least $76 million thus far.
Obama was a featured speaker on the Democratic Nationwide Conference in August, the place he referred to Trump as “a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.”
The marketing campaign path appearances will imply two figures who’ve served within the presidency shall be engaged on behalf of Harris. Biden endorsed her marketing campaign after he left the race and has held marketing campaign occasions in assist of the Democratic nominee. Former President Jimmy Carter, who lately turned 100, can be backing Harris.
The one dwelling Republican ex-president, George W. Bush, has not endorsed any candidate (and didn’t endorse Trump in 2016 or 2020).
On the identical day Obama’s plans have been revealed, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk introduced that he’ll attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Musk is price an estimated $261 billion, and has a historical past of anti-union views.
In an August dialog with Trump, the 2 billionaires laughed collectively whereas discussing how straightforward it’s to fireside putting employees.
“I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ’That’s OK. You’re all gone,’” Trump mentioned.
The dialog prompted the United Auto Employees union to file a criticism with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board for “illegal attempts to threaten and intimidate workers who stand up for themselves by engaging in protected concerted activity, such as strikes.”
“Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns,” UAW President Shawn Fain mentioned in a press release.
Musk has additionally mentioned that permitting employees to unionize creates “lords and peasants” and is backing a conservative effort to intestine the NLRB’s enforcement powers.
Trump demonstrated hostility to labor rights whereas he served as president and regardless of labeling himself as pro-worker, did not aspect with putting employees on a number of events.
Musk is additionally bankrolling a political motion committee to assist elect Trump. Up to now, Musk donated hundreds of thousands to a conservative group referred to as Residents for Sanity, which was led by former staff of ex-Trump administration official Stephen Miller. Miller has lengthy been linked to white supremacist causes.
On social media, Musk has ceaselessly promoted conspiracy theories and racist memes in assist of Trump and different conservative causes. The social media platform X, previously Twitter, which Musk owns, has seen a resurgence of pro-Nazi accounts since Musk took over the enterprise.
