Election Updates: Trump says he proposed a ‘migrant league of fighters’ to the head of U.F.C.
Donald Trump told reporters at a campaign stop in Philadelphia on Saturday that he knows who his running mate will be and that the person would “likely” be in Atlanta during his debate against President Biden. But Trump has given varying answers about whether he’s chosen a running mate for months, and advisers have said he has not made a final decision yet.
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota said on NBC that she hadn’t received vice-presidential vetting paperwork from the Trump campaign, strongly indicating that she is not a contender to be his running mate.
Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a contender to be Donald J. Trump’s running mate, repeated a claim he’s made multiple times over the past week: that President Biden is running a “dictatorship.” He told CNN that this was because Biden used too many executive orders — though Biden has averaged fewer executive orders per year than Trump did, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Mitch Landrieu, a co-chairman of President Biden’s re-election campaign, went hard after former President Donald J. Trump in an interview on NBC. “It’s not just to call Donald Trump a convicted felon — it goes to his behavior and it goes to his character,” he said. “Remember, he’s actually filed bankruptcy six times. That means that he’s not just a bad business guy, it means he screwed all the small people who actually relied on him for a living.”
Former President Donald J. Trump said in an address to an evangelical group that he had suggested starting a sports league for migrants to fight one another.
Appearing at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s conference in Washington on Saturday, Mr. Trump described migrants with the dehumanizing terms he often uses to refer to them, saying they were “tough,” “come from prisons” and are “nasty, mean.”
Mr. Trump then said that he had suggested to Dana White, an ally of the former president’s who is the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters?”
He continued, referring to the U.F.C.: “And then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants? I think the migrant guy might win! That’s how tough they are.”
Mr. Trump said that Mr. White “didn’t like the idea too much.” But, he added, “It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. These are tough people.”
Mr. White, asked about Mr. Trump’s comment at a U.F.C. event on Saturday, confirmed that the former president had made the proposal, but said, “It was a joke, it was a joke. I saw everybody going crazy online. But yeah, he did say it.”
The Biden campaign denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, attacking what it called “a rambling, confused tirade,” at what it said was intended to be “a conference for Christian values.”
“Trump’s incoherent, unhinged tirade showed voters in his own words that he is a threat to our freedoms and is too dangerous to be let anywhere near the White House again,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement.
Mr. Trump has made immigration a central part of his platform in the 2024 presidential election, as it was in his two previous campaigns. He has pledged to carry out sweeping raids and to use military funds to erect camps to hold undocumented detainees. He has also escalated his rhetoric against migrants, at times using language that invokes the racial hatred of Hitler by describing migrants as “poisoning the blood of our country.”
“Fantasies about cage matches are a distraction from the very real plans Trump and his team are making to deport millions of people who have lived here for decades and the resulting inflation, joblessness and economic devastation,” said Douglas G. Rivlin, a spokesman for America’s Voice, an immigrant-rights advocacy group that has been tracking the escalation of Republican rhetoric on the issue. “Republican politicians are going to find that hard to defend while campaigning this year.”
Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting.
President Biden’s campaign will host more than 200 events across Georgia this week to engage voters in a key battleground state days before the first presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday.
In addition to rolling out several new digital and television ads, the campaign has scheduled events throughout the week, including rallies and debate watch parties, beginning with a news conference in Atlanta on Monday to commemorate the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. It will also make use of several campaign surrogates, including Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former mayor of Atlanta, and the television host Padma Lakshmi.
The week of events is part of a push across several battleground states that Mr. Biden’s campaign says will total 1,600 events and 300 watch parties. It comes as both Mr. Biden’s and former President Donald J. Trump’s campaigns focus on Thursday’s debate, which both have described in stark terms for the trajectory of what polls show is a very close race.
In a Sunday memo, Michael Tyler, the communications director for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said the campaign was “seizing on this moment to organize and activate our supporters, and help them begin to talk to their friends and families who have yet to engage with the choice on the ballot in November.”
Atlanta, the Democratic engine of a state Mr. Biden won by roughly 12,000 votes in 2020, is home to several key voting groups that Democrats will need to mobilize to win Georgia again in November, including young voters and voters of color. In polls and focus groups, Black voters and voters under 30 have expressed frustration with Mr. Biden and have said they are considering supporting Mr. Trump or staying home altogether.
Mr. Biden’s campaign has aimed to overcome this lag with grass-roots voter engagement. This week, the campaign will open an office in Sandy Springs, an Atlanta suburb and onetime Republican stronghold. After the debate, Mr. Biden will travel to North Carolina, a battleground state Democrats are increasingly bullish about.
Every weekend, the television airwaves fill up with surrogates for President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump seeking to reinforce their campaigns’ messaging — and, for some Republicans right now, auditioning to be Mr. Trump’s running mate.
Here is some of what happened on the morning shows on Sunday.
Doug Burgum called Biden a dictator.
Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, a contender to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, defended an inflammatory claim he made multiple times last week: that Mr. Biden was running a “dictatorship.”
“We’ve got three branches of government, and this president, more like any other, has bypassed Congress,” Mr. Burgum said on CNN, suggesting that Mr. Biden’s use of executive orders and the federal rule-making process was outside historical norms.
That is not true of executive orders. According to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Mr. Biden has issued an average of 41 per year — in the middle of the pack among the past eight presidents and significantly below Mr. Trump’s average of 55, which was the highest of any president since Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Burgum said he was responding to “a nonstop media attack” on Mr. Trump — who has been accused of authoritarianism because he tried to overturn a democratic election and has indicated that he wants to use the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, bring independent agencies under his control, purge the government of career civil servants who disagree with him, and refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress.
Kristi Noem indicated she was not a vice-presidential contender.
Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, once seen as a potential running mate for Mr. Trump, said on NBC that she had not received vetting paperwork — a strong indication that she is out of contention.
Ms. Noem did not engage with questions about whether she had cost herself a shot at being vice president by including in her recent memoir a story about killing her 14-month-old dog. (She defended her actions again — “that was a story from 20 years ago about me protecting my children from a vicious animal,” she said — and told the interviewer, Peter Alexander, that he should read the book.) She also refused to answer when Mr. Alexander asked why, in a since-deleted line, her book falsely claimed she had met with Kim Jong-un.
Mitch Landrieu highlighted Trump’s felony conviction.
Mitch Landrieu, a co-chairman of Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, attacked Mr. Trump in the sort of unsparing terms that the campaign has increasingly been using.
“Donald Trump wakes up every day pretty much thinking about himself, thinking about his rich friends, and then really thinking about ways to hurt people with the power that he would have if he were the president of the United States again,” Mr. Landrieu said on NBC.
He went on to describe Mr. Trump as “a twice-impeached convicted felon who’s been found to have defamed somebody, sexually abused somebody and gone bankrupt six times” — which, he said, “means he screwed all the small people who actually relied on him for a living.”
The interview was consistent with the Biden team’s recent strategy: While Mr. Trump was on trial in New York, Mr. Biden largely avoided talking about the case, but since Mr. Trump’s conviction, he and his campaign have leaned on it heavily.
Lindsey Graham and Chris Coons tangled on immigration.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and another co-chairman of Mr. Biden’s campaign, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, appeared back to back on Fox News in interviews that focused on immigration and the Supreme Court.
Mr. Graham pointed — as Mr. Trump and other Republicans have often done — to the killings of young women by a handful of migrants who were in the country illegally, and went so far as to suggest that Mr. Biden should be prosecuted for his immigration policies.
“Joe Biden better hope and pray there’s presidential immunity,” he said, alluding to a coming Supreme Court ruling on whether Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution for acts he took in office, including his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. “Because when he allowed the killer of Laken Riley to be released on parole because of lack of capacity, I think he’s subject not only to a lawsuit but criminal prosecution if there’s not presidential immunity.”
Mr. Coons said he agreed that “we need to get control of our border,” but noted that Mr. Trump torpedoed bipartisan legislation this year that would have enabled Mr. Biden to shut down the border under certain circumstances and would have funded thousands of new border-security agents.
He added, “You can’t assume that every person seeking asylum in this country is going to commit a crime.”
In his last scheduled rally before he takes the stage for a presidential debate, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday mocked President Biden over his preparations, suggesting his opponent might be using medical supplements.
“Right now, crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Philadelphia, pantomiming quotation marks with his hands. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass.”
Mr. Trump and his campaign for months challenged Mr. Biden to debate, taunting him with an empty lectern and suggesting he was too afraid to take the stage. But since the candidates agreed in May to two debates, one on June 27 and another on Sept. 10, Mr. Trump has at recent rallies sought to reframe the low expectations that he has set.
Mr. Trump has during rallies and speeches consistently attacked Mr. Biden’s mental capacities, contending that the president cannot put “two sentences together.”
But he did not use that line at Saturday’s rally before thousands of people at the Liacouras Center in North Philadelphia. Instead, he seemed to be preparing his supporters for the possibility that Mr. Biden might prove a formidable opponent by accusing him of using a chemical boost.
‘I’m sure he’ll be prepared’
“I say he’ll come out all jacked up, right?” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Biden. Moments later, Mr. Trump, who has previously demanded Mr. Biden take a drug test before their debate, seemed to accuse Mr. Biden of using illegal drugs.
“I’m sure he’ll be prepared,” Mr. Trump said. He paused, then, referring to an incident in which a bag of cocaine was found in the guest lobby of the West Wing last year, added with a smirk: “Whatever happened to all that cocaine that was missing a month ago from the White House?” (The Secret Service closed its investigation into that episode after security video failed to provide any leads and no fingerprints were found on the bag.)
Though Mr. Trump built anticipation for the debate with his insistence for months that he would be willing to challenge Mr. Biden “anytime, anywhere, any place,” on Saturday, the former president criticized debate rules his campaign had agreed to, including the network hosting the event and the lack of a live audience.
“It’s like death,” Mr. Trump said. “This could be the most boring — or it could be the most exciting. Who knows?”
While the Biden operation has blocked off much of this week for structured debate preparations, Mr. Trump has generally preferred looser conversations to more formal coaching.
Targeting Philadelphians
At a stop before the rally at a cheesesteak restaurant in South Philadelphia — a rite of passage for political candidates — Mr. Trump suggested that Saturday’s event was the only preparation he needed and said that his strategy for the debate was “to make America great again.”
During the rally, he consulted the crowd for strategy advice, asking whether he should be “tough and nasty” or “be nice and calm and let him speak.” The audience booed overwhelmingly at the second option, eliciting chuckles from Mr. Trump.
Saturday’s event was Mr. Trump’s first rally in Philadelphia, the most populous city in a battleground state that was key to his 2016 victory and just as instrumental in his 2020 loss. The Liacouras Center, on the Temple University campus, is in the center of an area where Mr. Trump had very little support in his previous two presidential campaigns.
Ahead of the rally, several dozen protesters wearing shirts from the Laborers’ International Union of North America demonstrated across the street from the arena and chanted “lock him up,” a twist on an old Trump campaign slogan meant to reflect his recent conviction in Manhattan.
But as the Trump campaign seeks to draw a contrast with Mr. Biden, it has been scheduling events in deeply Democratic urban areas, including the Bronx and Detroit, in an attempt to project its efforts to reach Black and Hispanic voters across the country.
‘I might just flip a coin’
Emanuel Morales, who lives in Philadelphia and is from Puerto Rico, said that he voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and for Mr. Biden in 2020, but that his 2024 vote is up for grabs. He came to the rally to hear from Mr. Trump in person, rather than through media coverage.
“I just want to listen to him talk,” said Mr. Morales, 54. “I just might flip a coin for my vote.”
Shabazz Boone, 67, of North Philadelphia, acknowledged that while he had supported Mr. Trump since 2016, everyone from his neighborhood knew him as the local Trump supporter in an area that always votes for Democrats.
“Living in this city, you rarely see a Trump supporter in my neighborhood,” said Mr. Boone, who is Black. “I’m the only one.”
Mr. Boone — who wore a pair of golden high-top sneakers that Mr. Trump unveiled on his last visit to Philadelphia, at a sneaker convention in February — said that Mr. Trump’s visit to his neighborhood was encouraging.
Inside the arena, the crowd was overwhelmingly white and did not reflect the demographics of the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood surrounding it.
An exchange on immigration
During his speech, Mr. Trump largely stuck to the same themes that have animated his campaign. He said Mr. Biden had done little to curb inflation and derided his energy and environmental policies, which Mr. Trump said are raising the cost of goods. Mr. Trump also said Mr. Biden had done little at the border.
He again claimed without offering evidence that Black and Hispanic Americans had been “the most hurt” by the influx of undocumented immigrants.
The point was somewhat undercut after he finished the thought, when a Black man with a hat stood up to cheer him on. “Have they taken your job yet, sir?” Mr. Trump called to the man.
“No, they have not,” the man shouted back.
Mr. Trump often vilifies migrants as a tough, invading force in his speeches. During Saturday’s rally, he again made an unsubstantiated claim that other countries are deliberately sending criminals across the border. And he for the second time that day he suggested that migrants coming to the U.S. should have their own separate fighting league.
Philadelphia and its suburbs are being targeted heavily by both the Biden and the Trump campaigns. Mr. Biden campaigns frequently in the city, and its metropolitan area was critical to helping him win Pennsylvania by about 80,000 votes in 2020.
But Black voters were an important part of Mr. Biden’s coalition in the state, and as polls have shown their support for Democrats softening, Mr. Trump has been eager to win them over.
Democrats are fighting back. On Saturday, the Democratic National Committee paid for both a billboard and a mobile billboard attacking Mr. Trump as a “disaster” for Black Americans.