Nikki Haley’s Old Warning Haunts Trump as Biden Bows Out (2024)

Following Kamala Harris’s announcement that she is running for president, users on Elon’s Musk X (formerly known as Twitter) found themselves banned from following the vice president’s political campaign account.

When users went to follow @KamalaHQ, the official rapid response page for Harris’s campaign, they were greeted with a message that said they had reached their “limit” and could not follow any more accounts at this time.

This message usually is deployed to prevent spam or “rate limiting,” for instance if one account is following hundreds of others. But it seems that the Harris account is the one being limited, rather than the users’.

An initial search for KamalaHQ on The New Republic’s X account also found that the campaign account is limited. The campaign account showed up in repeated subsequent searches, seeming to suggest the issue is being resolved.

This all may look a little suspicious considering Elon Musk’s growing relationship with Donald Trump. Just last week, Musk promised to donate $45 million a month to help Trump get reelected.

In the past several days, Musk has continued to post right-wing and pro-Trump memes. Following Joe Biden stepping down, Musk retweeted former Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy saying, “We’re not running against a candidate. We’re running against a system.”

Musk has also attacked Harris more directly. “Democrats destroy democracy in pursuit of power,” a QAnon-linked influencer wrote with Biden’s resignation letter attached. “The Democratic elite, corporate media, and billionaire donors successfully pressured the candidate chosen by Democratic primary voters to drop out because he’s down in the polls and losing.”

Musk reposted the statement, simply writing, “Exactly.”

Now that Joe Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Donald Trump wants to change the terms of the next debate.

The Trump and Biden campaigns had agreed to two presidential debates back in May: one on June 27 hosted by CNN and one on September 10 hosted by ABC News. Biden’s horrendous performance in the first debate created a groundswell of opposition that eventually led to his stepping down. But now, Trump is apparently worried enough about Harris to think things should change.

“My debate with Crooked Joe Biden, the Worst President in the history of the United States, was slated to be broadcast on Fake News ABC, the home of George Slopadopolus, sometime in September,” Trump ranted on Truth Social Sunday night. “Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, has quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC. Thank you! DJT”

Trump also complained about being “forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden.”

“Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?” Trump lamented.

It’s pretty clear that the former president and convicted felon is spooked by having to run against Harris, enough that he wants the next debate to be moved to his home turf, the conservative P.R. channelFox News. It’s no secret that Trump and his campaign preferred Biden as their opponent, even creating legal plans to prevent Democrats from replacing him on the ticket.

But Trump and the GOP don’t have the “dementia patient,” as Republican operatives have described Biden, to kick around anymore. They’re scared enough of Harris to try to give Trump the advantage of a friendlier debate venue. And perhaps they should be scared: Harris has already given the Democratic Party its biggest fundraising day in years.

In the less than 24 hours since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, Vice President Kamala Harris has already begun bringing in the big bucks for the Democratic Party.

Biden announced Sunday that he would be withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race, after weeks of mounting concerns over his age and mental acuity from his fellow Democrats. Moments after he withdrew, he endorsed Harris to be the new Democratic nominee. And it appears that the prospect of a new nominee may have led people to open their wallets.

By the end of the day Sunday, ActBlue, a popular fundraising site for Democratic candidates and causes, posted a surprising update.

“As of 9pm ET, grassroots supporters have raised $46.7 million through ActBlue following Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign launch,” the post read. “This has been the biggest fundraising day of the 2024 cycle. Small-dollar donors are fired up and ready to take on this election.”

By the end of the day, ActBlue had raised more than $50 million dollars, according to an estimate from The New York Times, the third-biggest day for online fundraising in the site’s history.

President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 race on Sunday, caving to increasing concerns over his age and ability to take on another four years in arguably the world’s most critical and tenuous position.

“Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation,” Biden wrote in a statement, citing victories in lowering prescription drug costs, expanding affordable health care, helping veterans, passing “the first gun safety law in 30 years,” and appointing the first African American woman to the Supreme Court.

“I know none of this could have been done without you, the American people,” the statement read. “It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

In a follow-up tweet, Biden announced he is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made,” he said. “Today I want to offer my full support and endorsem*nt for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats—it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”

The president has effectively opened up the Democratic Party’s nominating process to a near-total free for all, just four months out from the presidential election.

Top Democratic contenders for the final leg of the race include Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, all of whom outperformed Biden in polling match-ups against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Conversation around whether Biden would exit quickly overtook his campaign after a disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. During the match-up, the 81-year-old Biden shocked the nation by repeatedly losing his train of thought, forgetting the softball questions tossed to him, and utterly failing to challenge Trump by any measure of the word.

A Massachusetts congressman who describes President Joe Biden as a “mentor and friend” says that Biden should step down. In an op-ed in The Boston Globe Friday, Representative Seth Moulton recounted how Biden appeared to not recognize him at an event last month.

Moulton came clean about the troubling interaction after previously calling for Biden to step down July 4. “I saw him in a small group at Normandy for the eightieth anniversary of D-Day. For the first time, he didn’t seem to recognize me,” wrote Moulton. “It was a crushing realization, and not because a person I care about had a rough night but because everything is riding on Biden’s ability to beat Donald Trump in November.”

On Friday, nine more lawmakers publicly called on Biden to drop out, including, notably, the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Marc Veasey.

But Moulton isn’t just a random House Democrat. The politician from Massachusetts’ 6th congressional district said his previous relationship with Biden was warm, with breakfasts, phone calls, and smiles from across the hall. “I have treasured him as a mentor and friend,” wrote Moulton.

Moulton warned that the change he has seen both interpersonally with Biden and on the national debate stage calls for action from his fellow politicians. “The harsh reality is that all the characteristics that have made Biden an irrepressible force—the energy, the vitality, the sharp, scrappy wit—are flickering.”