Sophia Cai
@SophiaCai99
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POLITICO West Wing Playbook author and White House Reporter, covering DOGE. Defender of New Jersey. [email protected]
Joined December 2017
Today is my first day @politico where I’ll be writing West Wing Playbook with @iriesentner and covering the White House. Send tips: scai@politico.com .Text/Signal: 609-651-0139 . And subscribe! You won’t want to miss our first edition on Jan. 20.
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SCOOP: Trump didn’t want to be fact-checked live at NABJ, refusing to go onstage, a stalemate so prolonged NABJ leaders were prepping a statement to say why Trump wouldn't show. As Ken Lemon was preparing it, Trump walked onstage, Lemon told @DelanoMassey .
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NEW: President Biden is enlisting hundreds of TikTok stars and social media influencers to promote his political messaging to young voters — and may give them their own briefing room at the White House.
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The Olivia Nuzzi news cycle is a slap in the face to the young women covering Washington who scrap their way into this industry and plug away story after story to build their credibility. (That’s most of us.).
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Eight hours before Trump speaks in Michigan, the line to get in wraps around two sides of the arena.
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NEW: Trump’s political director just tweeted out a map that shows Trump flipping Georgia, Arizona, Nevada AND Pennsylvania —and holding North Carolina.
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NEW: Trump’s potential AG pick Mike Davis told Axios he wants state attorneys general in Georgia and Florida to open criminal probes into Democrats for conspiring to interfere in the election by indicting Trump. w/ @zacharybasu .
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Immediately after shots were fired, the crowd turned on media, channeling their anger toward reporters standing inside the press pen. “Fake news. This is your fault!”.“You’re next! Your time is coming. ”. A few tried to break into the press pen, but were stopped by security.
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NEW: The Trump administration has just placed the entire AmeriCorps agency on administrative leave
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Angie Gialloreto, 95, the oldest delegate attending the convention — second oldest to Jimmy Carter. She is wearing a giant Carter for President button from 1976.
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Trump agreed to sit for an hourlong interview…his team cut it off at 34 minutes, an indication of how much of a train wreck it was for him — and also how good the questioning was.
This is a @rachelvscott and @kadiagoba appreciation tweet.
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NEW: Friction between Elon Musk & longtime Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn led to a “massive blowup” at dinner at Mar-a-lago last week. It was no surprise to senior staffers who've seen tension between the two bubble up during transition meetings.
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At 9 a.m. Thursday, Biden will meet virtually with other G7 leaders on Russia & Ukraine, the White House says.
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Pretty wild that Harris’s campaign *alone* raised more in August ($190M) than Trump + RNC’s coordinated effort ($130M) did.
Friday news dump from the Trump campaign: . Trump campaign raised $44.5 million in August, with ~$135 million cash on hand. (FEC reports are due today and the campaign waited until the very last moment to file.).
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New: Matt Gaetz’s conversation with Trump on Trump Force One this morning had a major role in getting him named for AG this afternoon, ppl inside Trump’s operation tell me. Transition team started vetting AG candidates way before the election and Gaetz “came out of left field”.
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ABC: The Springfield city manager told us there have been no credible reports of pets being harmed by immigrants . Trump: “But I saw on TV…”.
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NEW: Biden is creating an inter-agency group on antisemitism & Islamophobia after more than 125 members of Congress called for it last week. Will be led by NSC and domestic policy council staff.
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“There were audio problems,” NABJ prez Lemon told Axios “but they were resolved very quickly.". "The bigger problem was his threat not to take the stage when he had agreed to go on. He did not want to be fact-checked, but we could not let him on the stage without fact-checking.”.
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Scoop: J. Michael Luttig—who advised Pence to defy Trump ahead of Jan. 6—is expected to testify in the Jan. 6 select committee's public hearings this month.
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Hello from Montgomery County, PA where 2,000+ people are filing in for a Fetterman rally on abortion rights.
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New: Jay Bratt—the DOJ prosecutor leading the Mar-a-Lago case against Trump—has built a career going after:.- Blackwater contractors.- Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.- and at least 4 Espionage Act cases .
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NEW: Ketanji Brown Jackson is endorsed by a retired Bush-appointed D.C. circuit judge, Thomas R. Griffith, in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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The Harris campaign has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads that make it appear as if the Guardian, Reuters, CBS News and other major publishers are on her side, @sarafischer writes.
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White House negotiators Brian Deese and Susan Rice leave Pelosi’s office ignoring all questions.
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Hearing from swing state Rs that GOP groupchats this morning are blowing up as Republicans come to terms with the reality that Trump essentially received no fundraising boost after the debate.
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New: Trump’s making the unusual move of including Doug Burgum (Interior Sec) in the National Security Council because Trump likes him and believes Burgum’s portfolio (energy, critical minerals mining and powering AI) are crucial to national security.
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Scoop: Gov. Kristi Noem pitched herself for a top NRA job as early as last fall, two sources told Axios. Noem called LaPierre to advocate to be the next executive vice president or CEO. She even offered to resign early as governor. w/ @juliegraceb .
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New: Vivek Ramaswamy staffers have begun looking for work elsewhere. He won't be on the ballot for the Illinois GOP primary. And he didn't qualify for tomorrow's final televised debate before the Iowa caucuses.
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Correction: ABC’s Rachel Scott DID discuss the fact-checking on stage and NABJ publicized ahead of the event that there would be fact-checking.
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“This is a pretty pro-Wawa team, right?” Fetterman says, while greeting overflow rallygoers waiting outside.
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New: Source tells me now the Taliban are reverting to strict Sharia — threatening on WhatsApp groups to “chop into pieces” and “throw away” female students who turn up to classes wearing lipstick and nail polish.
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Flag at Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie flying at half-mast in honor of McCain, after WH flags raised last night
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SCOOP: The Trump admin sold oil to China’s largest oil producer from the U.S. strategic reserves in 2017, according to government data reviewed by @axios. The Biden admin recently did the same (as required by law)—a move criticized by the GOP.
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Months of the RNC’s early voting/“Bank your vote” campaign down the drain.
Trump: If you have mail-in voting you automatically have fraud. Ingraham: There’s mail-in voting in Florida and you won huge
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Massive lineup of speakers for Trump’s Madison Square Garden event (non-exhaustive). - Elon Musk .- Stephen Miller.- Tucker Carlson .- Speaker Johnson .- Dana White .- RFK Jr .- 2 key transition ppl: Brooke Rollins & Howard Lutnick . Plus: singers, comedian, and a live painter.
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NEW: Former President Trump is scaling back his campaigning in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia, states he was targeting just six weeks ago, a sign of how Kamala Harris' rise has shifted the dynamics of the race. w/ @toreyvanoot
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Personal news: This week will be my last at Axios—I’ll be joining Politico on Jan. 16 to author West Wing Playbook and cover the White House!.
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Trump's team eventually asked NABJ not to post the fact-checking on its social media platforms or allow the moderator to disclose that there would be fact-checking, per Lemon.
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NEWS: Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancé Kimberly Guilfoyle are traveling to El Salvador to attend the inauguration of President Nayib Bukele tomorrow, I’m told. They’ll be honored alongside Argentina's President Javier Milei, Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa, and other world.
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Scoop: Don Jr. is scheduled to speak right before the VP pick on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Axios has learned. It's the latest sign that Trump has zeroed in on J.D. Vance, who Don Jr. has supported for VP.
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New: Trump’s real time VP reviews, per Mar-a-Lago audio obtained by @axios . Sen. Marco Rubio — "His name is coming up a lot for vice president!". Sen. Tim Scott — "As a candidate he did a good job, but as a surrogate he's unbelievable.". Sen. J.D. Vance — "He wasn't a supporter.
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“Use the same theories Democrats are bringing against Republicans like RICO and 18 U.S.C. 241 (conspiracy against rights) and 18 U.S.C. 242 (Deprivation of rights under color of law)” Davis @mrddmia said.
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Scoop: Ron DeSantis' gubernatorial office has hired 3 people who have been laid off by the campaign, including conservative influencer Will Chamberlain and his wife Jordan Chamberlain. w/@AlexThomp
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A measure of the importance the White House is placing on its digital strategy: Rob Flaherty, who leads the effort, has been named assistant to the president — the same rank as the White House communications director and press secretary. Four full-time WH staffers are focused on.
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SCOOP: Biden admin has asked refugee resettlement agencies to prepare for as many as 50,000 Afghans arriving in the U.S. from Kabul under humanitarian parole, per three people familiar.
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Biden calls Trump “the former guy” while discussing reopening. “You had the former guy saying that we just can open things up and that's all we need to do. You got to deal with the disease before you deal with the with getting the economy going well.”.
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Republican panic about VP Harris' sudden rise has produced the first break-glass moment Trump's campaign. Trump . - Posted on X for first time in a year. - Did 2-hour convo with Musk .- Unveiled a barrage of online ads. - Scheduled two swing state rallies.- Hired Taylor Budowich.
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Democrats are on the cusp of picking one of their highest-profile members, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), to lead their defense against Republican investigations on the House Oversight Committee. w/ @AndrewSolender
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NEW: The White House chose the same night as Trump’s 2024 announcement to launch a new webpage highlighting manufacturing among Biden’s other big legislative wins.
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New: Larry Hogan, in an interview with Axios, won’t say if he’ll vote to codify access to abortion or IVF federally. He’s running for U.S. Senate in Maryland.
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Fetterman’s Comms Director:.
This morning at 9:30 Dr. Oz called John Fetterman to concede.
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Good morning from across the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia where Trump is golfing for the third day in a row. He took Marine One from Camp David.
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Scoop: At least 3 people on Trump’s list of Iowa endorsements tell Axios they weren’t consulted & remain undecided on GOP field. “No one called, texted or emailed me,” Laura Carlson, vp of the Iowa Federation of Republican Women said. w/@zacharybasu
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George Santos blocks away from the courthouse: “This starts a precedent. what stops the next prosecutor in two years?”
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New: Secretary Pete Buttigieg tells me he’s ready to engage on GOP investigations into EVs and the Biden admin’s infrastructure agenda. “I’m absolutely ready to take our case to the Hill.” .
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NEW: Trump is getting anxious, asking more questions and demanding more work from his aides. His restlessness is evident in late-night/early-morning calls in which he peppers aides w/ Qs on how things are going — and whether they think he'll win.
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President Biden has NOT been briefed on the classified documents the FBI recovered from desks inside Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago, the White House says.
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NEW: Trump thinks the Manhattan DA’s probe into hush money has been “dropped,” he tells reporters aboard his plane. He adds that his former lawyer Michael Cohen should be indicted “for all the lies he told.”.
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NEWS: Tim Scott tells me it was indeed his girlfriend — Mindy — who came to watch the debate and greeted him on stage afterwards. They have been dating for “about a year or so.”.
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NEW: Senate Senate Minority Whip John Thune tells me there's "some interest" among Senate Republicans in reforming an existing federal law —the Electoral Count Act of 1887— to reduce the potential for election subversion.
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The family of Martin Luther King Jr. leads a march for voting rights as the Senate prepares to take up legislation.
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Liz Cheney plants the seed of a 2024 run, saying: “Abraham Lincoln was defeated in elections for the Senate and House before he ultimately won” the White House.
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NEW: Six Democratic senators introduced legislation to block Trump's Schedule F plans following @jonathanvswan reporting.
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Trump at Pam Bondi’s swearing in: “I know I'm supposed to say ‘she's going to be totally impartial with respect to Democrats’…I'm not sure if there's a possibility of ‘totally’ but she's going to be as total as you can get.”
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NEW: The family of Martin Luther King Jr. is urging the public not to celebrate his legacy next month if Congress hasn't passed new national voting rights legislation.
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Harris campaign introducing a new biographical detail that Harris has not talked or written about, to my knowledge: . Working at a McDonalds.
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👀 White House @PressSec is now name-checking Republicans Biden considers extreme:.- Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.).- Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC).- FL Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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Still in disbelief. Thank you, @axios @mikeallen @sarakgoo @DLLindsey @margarettalev for believing in me.
🏆 Tonight, our politics reporter @SophiaCai99 won the @aaja Emerging Journalist of the Year award at #AAJA23. Congratulations, Sophia!
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NEW: Gov. Doug Burgum is moving up Trump’s VP ladder . Trump likes his measured demeanor & gubernatorial experience and sees Burgum as reliable and low-drama — a safe choice who could attract moderate voters. w/ @juliegraceb.
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New: CA Gov. Newsom is asking AG Garland to open an investigation into states transporting migrants, arguing that “interstate travel. provides a basis for federal jurisdiction.”.
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New: Democrats are considering passing in the House the Senate-approved China competition bill — a bill that doesn’t have everything Dems want, but would stop McConnell from preventing Dems getting a win. Via @HansNichols
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Greetings from the White House. Trump appears to be tweeting and watching OANN from the Oval Office this New Year’s Day. The press pool has not been covid-tested for a second day in a row.
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Vice President Harris opened a new frontier in the presidential race: Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina — which had been trending toward former President Trump — are suddenly crackling battlegrounds online, on the airwaves and on the ground.
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New: Trump camp coming out to defend Rep. Byron Donalds after DeSantis campaign compares him to VP Harris. @JasonMillerinDC says Donalds is “conservative hero” who “calls it like he sees it, and if he thinks something is BS, he'll tell you.”. “That's why we like him so much.”.
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Nearly half of AmeriCorps’ 600-person workforce had already accepted deferred resignations and the agency yesterday dismissed 1,500 young volunteers for the National Civilian Community Corps who provide disaster relief and other services around the country.
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Interviewer says at the top of the interview: . “Mr. President, we still appreciate you giving us an hour of your time.”.
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A coordinated firing & hiring: . After DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck told staffers at campaign HQ they were being let go, his chief of staff from the gov. office, James Uthmeier, appeared & urged them to apply for state jobs.
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NEW: Sen. Vance - a close Trump ally - says he’s holding up all Biden DOJ nominees (except US Marshals Service). “If Merrick Garland wants to use these officials to harass Joe Biden’s political opponents, we will grind his department to a halt,” Vance says in statement to @axios.
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Trump and Putin have had as many as *seven* phone calls since Trump left the White House in 2021, Bob Woodward reports. In 2020, Trump had “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”.
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Friday news dump from the Trump campaign: . Trump campaign raised $44.5 million in August, with ~$135 million cash on hand. (FEC reports are due today and the campaign waited until the very last moment to file.).
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Scoop: Trump’s new RNC team has tapped former RNC executive Sean Cairncross to help run the party's operations and watch its spending in the run-up to the November election. He’ll be Chris LaCivita’s #2 at the RNC and be based in DC.
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Several hundreds of people appear to have been placed on leave, including those in DC and across the country. Only a handful of senior officials and program heads remain active at the agency, agency staff say.
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NEW: The Senate is poised to extend selective service registration to women for the first time as a part of the National Defense Authorization Act. w/ @alaynatreene .
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Taliban somehow infiltrating WhatsApp group chats of students to send voice recorded threats, source says. Taliban also suggesting that female Afghan students will only be allowed to study if they cover their faces and eyes.
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The full voice message, translated: “Cover your faces, cover your eyes, come back to classes without fear, but if I see your nails polished or if I see your toes or if you wear lipstick, I'll chop you in pieces and throw you away.”.
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NEW: Gov. Roy Cooper says North Carolina is no longer the “fullback” but the “the wide receiver…[that’ll] dance in the end zone” in November. “I have a 2008 feeling about this,” Cooper tells me in Chicago. @_lucillesherman @axios
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NEW: A bipartisan group of 8 Senators met on Zoom today to discuss election reform—including updating the Electoral Count Act of 1887—while Biden and Schumer remain laser-focused on the voting rights bills. w/@AndrewSolender
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Motorcades running inauguration rehearsal on Pennsylvania Ave.
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📍Butler, Pa (finally able to post here) . 6:14pm Sound of four gun shots. Blood on Trump’s right ear when five people protected him with their bodies, got him up, and ushered him off. Two men with body armor and ARs on either side of the stage.
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Trump campaign preemptively weighing in on Biden’s speech: “If [it] does not include absolute commitments to economically isolate the Iranian regime & support the Israelis in…permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas, then Joe Biden does NOT stand with Israel.”.
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New: A bipartisan group of senators has revised their marijuana legislation per DOJ guidance and plan to attach it to a must-pass bill like the NDAA. It would let cannabis companies access banking institutions and create grants for state expungement of past convictions.
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Protestors have lined up on the ground in front of the Supreme Court, some with water and snacks in addition to signs and candles.
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NEW: An internal memo from co-campaign manager Susie Wiles, outlines post-election plans, w/ phrases "should we be victorious," "regardless of the outcome of the election" & "God willing" — acknowledging that Trump could lose the election.
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Several rally goers pointed fingers at a male reporter on the media riser who they accused of laughing about the shots. “Look at him, he was laughing.” . “You are as fake as the tits on these reporters,” one Trump supporter shouted. “Come down here,” they challenged him.
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