The backlash continued to mount following Vice President Kamala Harris’ televised interview Friday, with critics calling out her unwillingness to give clear and specific answers.

In her first solo sit-down TV interview since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris seemed to filibuster to avoid direct answers. One example came when the interviewer, Brian Taff of the Philadelphia ABC affiliate, asked for her ‘specific’ plans to bring down prices for Americans.

‘Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid,’ Harris responded. ‘My mother raised my sister and me. She worked very hard. She was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. 

‘I grew up in a community of hard-working people, you know, construction workers and nurses and teachers. And I try to explain to some people who may not have had the same experience. You know, a lot of people will relate to this.’ 

Critics have slammed Harris on social media, saying she gave confusing answers to a number of questions. 

‘Kamala Harris did her first local sit down interview after prepping for 53 days and it was a nightmare[.] She couldn’t even name 1-2 things she would do to bring down inflation,’ Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump’s press secretary, wrote in post on X following the interview. 

California state Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones told Fox News Digital if Harris becomes president, the entire nation would suffer.

‘Kamala Harris has spent decades in public office, with a track record defined by rising costs and inflation. During her tenure in California, prices soared, and the affordability crisis has only worsened since she became Vice President,’ Jones said. ‘Talk is cheap, and while she promises to lower costs, her actions have repeatedly resulted in the opposite. 

‘Californians struggled under her leadership, and now the entire nation is bearing the brunt. America simply can’t afford a Harris presidency.’

Conservative podcaster Benny Johnson added that Harris’s answers made no sense.

‘Kamala Harris: ‘My focus is very much about what we need to do over the next 10-20 years to catch up to the 21st century around, again, capacity, but also challenges.’ What does this even mean?’ Johnson wrote in a post. on X. 

Harris’ answer resembled the response she gave during the ABC News presidential debate against former President Trump Tuesday, when she was asked by moderator David Muir whether Americans are economically ‘better off than they were four years ago.’

‘So, I was raised as a middle-class kid,’ Harris told Muir. ‘And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America. I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people, and that is why I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy.’ 

Although Harris drew praise from pundits for her debate performance, her sometimes unresponsive answers there foreshadowed Friday’s sit-down, particularly on economic matters. In the debate, Harris went on to tout the same proposals without answering whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago. 

‘Kamala Harris was very clearly and directly asked: Are the American people better off now than they were 4 years ago? She could not say yes because the answer is no — the American people are worse off today because of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s policies,’ former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard posted on X following Tuesday night’s debate. 

Harris and running mate Tim Walz have only done 10 unscripted interviews for the Democratic presidential ticket thus far, while Republican presidential nominee Trump and vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, have sat down for at least 49 interviews. 

Harris still has not held a formal press conference since replacing President Biden as the Democratic nominee. Trump took questions at a news conference on Friday in California, his third extended presser in recent weeks.

USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page said she believes Americans deserve to hear both candidates answer tough questions. 

‘I think part of the job description of being president is answering questions, not because reporters have a right to ask them, but because Americans have a right to hear them,’ Page told Fox News Digital. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris campaign for comment. 

Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report. 

Three American citizens have been sentenced to death in Congo after being convicted on charges of participating in a coup attempt, with one telling a court that his father — who led the failed effort — ‘had threatened to kill us if we did not follow his orders.’ 

A lawyer representing 21-year-olds Marcel Malanga and Tyler Thompson Jr. and 36-year-old Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, is now planning to appeal the verdict following the botched attack orchestrated by Malanga’s father, Christian Malanga, in May that targeted the presidential palace and a close ally of President Felix Tshisekedi. 

‘We have seen that a military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo sentenced a number of defendants, including U.S. citizens, to death for alleged involvement in the May 19th attacks against the government,’ State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Friday. ‘We understand that the legal process in the DRC allows for defendants to appeal the court’s decision. Embassy staff have been attending these proceedings … We’ll continue to attend the proceedings and follow the developments closely.’ 

When asked if he thought the court process was fair, Miller responded, ‘I don’t want to pass judgment on the proceedings so far, because we are still in the middle of the legal process.’ 

Six people were killed during the botched coup attempt, including Christian Malanga, who was fatally shot while resisting arrest soon after live-streaming the attack on his social media, the Congolese army said. 

Marcel Malanga, who is a U.S. citizen, told a court during the case that his father had forced him and his high school friend to take part in the attack, according to The Associated Press. 

‘Dad had threatened to kill us if we did not follow his orders,’ Marcel Malanga reportedly said. 

Other members of the ragtag militia recounted similar threats from the elder Malanga, and some described being duped into believing they were working for a volunteer organization, the AP adds. Marcel’s mother, Brittney Sawyer, maintains that her son is innocent and was simply following his father, who considered himself president of a shadow government in exile. 

Thompson Jr. flew to Africa from Utah with the younger Malanga for what his family believed was a free vacation, and Zalman-Polun is reported to have known Christian Malanga through a gold mining company. 

Thompson’s family says he had no knowledge of the elder Malanga’s intentions, no plans for political activism and didn’t even plan to enter Congo. He and the Malangas were meant to travel only to South Africa and Eswatini, his stepmother, Miranda Thompson, told the AP. 

‘We urge all who have supported Tyler and the family throughout this process to write to your congressmen and request their assistance in bringing him home,’ their lawyer in Utah, Skye Lazaro, said to the news agency, adding that the family is heartbroken over the verdict. 

Sen. Mike Lee and a spokesperson for Sen. Mitt Romney said they are both engaged with the State Department over the matter. 

In addition to the three Americans, a Briton, a Belgian and a Canadian were sentenced to death after being convicted of participating in the plot, along with 27 others. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Former President Trump’s 2024 campaign and the Republican National Committee are facing a fundraising deficit to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

But RNC chair Michael Whatley vows that the Trump campaign and the GOP’s national committee ‘absolutely have the resources’ to win in November.

Harris’ campaign, touting an ‘historic, 24-hour haul,’ this week showcased their fundraising prowess in the immediate aftermath of the first and potentially only debate between the vice president and Trump.

The money raked in by the Harris campaign was the latest sign of the vice president’s surge in fundraising in the nearly two months since she replaced President Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 national ticket.

Word of the post-debate fundraising comes a week after the Harris campaign announced that they hauled in $361 million in August, nearly triple the $130 million raised by the Trump campaign.

Asked about the fundraising, Whatley in a Fox News Digital interview Tuesday at the presidential debate in Philadelphia, responded that ‘the Democrats have a ton of money. The Democrats always have a ton of money.’

But he emphasized that ‘we absolutely have the resources that we need to get our message out to all the voters that we’re talking to and feel very comfortable that we’re going to be able to see this campaign through and we’re going to win on November 5.’

Longtime Republican strategist and communicator Ryan Williams noted that in the 2016 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton ‘vastly out raised Donald Trump and it didn’t make a difference. He was able to essentially commandeer free media and push his message without having to spend a lot of money on TV ads.’

‘People have an opinion about Donald Trump. You can run tens of millions of dollars in negative ads against him but the cake’s kind of already baked in terms of his public perception,’ added Williams, a veteran on multiple GOP presidential campaigns. ‘Harris is less known and less defined. I think the Trump campaign will have adequate resources to define her.’

The Harris campaign highlights that it is investing much of its fundraising dollars into its grassroots outreach and get-out-the vote efforts, noting that it’s ‘putting its resources to reach the voters who will decide the election.’

The large ground game operation, originally constructed when Biden was the nominee, according to the campaign, includes over 312 offices and more than 2,000 staff in the key battlegrounds coordinated between the presidential campaign, the DNC, and state Democratic parties.

In a straight Harris campaign and the DNC comparison to the Trump campaign and the RNC, the Democrats enjoy a sizable ground game advantage. But Trump is relying on a handful of aligned outside groups to help run turnout operations that are traditionally performed by a presidential campaign. 

Whatley took issue with the suggestion that the Democrats enjoyed a stronger get-out-the-vote operation.

‘No, they don’t have a stronger ground game. I feel very, very comfortable about the ground game we’re putting in place through Trump Force 47,’ the RNC chair told Fox News Digital.

Williams emphasized that ‘the ground game will be critical given how tight the margins are in the key battleground states and could tip the balance of the election.’

‘In this race, where each critical race seems to be within a point, the ground game can make a difference, and you need resources, and you need organization to run an effective ground game, to identify persuadable voters and turn them out,’ he added. ‘Democrats will have a very formidable operation and in many states will try to bank votes early.’

Pope Francis on Friday urged Catholic voters to ‘choose the lesser evil’ between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. 

The pope criticized Harris’ support of abortion rights as being an ‘assassination,’ while he also chastised Trump, saying ‘not welcoming migrants is a sin.’ 

‘You must choose the lesser evil,’ Francis told reporters in a press conference held from his papal airplane following a 12-day tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania. ‘Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know. Everyone, in conscience, [has to] think and do this.’

But he also said, ‘Not voting is ugly. It is not good. You must vote.’

Harris has said that she wants to codify Roe v. Wade into law if elected, and Trump has promised the ‘largest mass deportation in American history of our country.’ 

The pope didn’t specify which candidate, if either, he personally prefers. 

On abortion, he said, ‘It is an assassination. On these things we must speak clearly. No ‘but’ or ‘however.” 

On Trump’s deportation plans, the pope said: ‘Not giving welcome to migrants is a sin. It is grave.’

‘Whether it is the one who is chasing away migrants, or the one who that kills children, both are against life,’ he claimed. 

Trump previously sparred with the pope in 2016, after the pontiff claimed that his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border was ‘not Christian.’ 

‘I’m a very good Christian,’ Trump responded at the time in a news conference, ‘He’s questioning my faith. I was very surprised to see it.’ 

Trump called questioning a person’s faith ‘disgraceful,’ claiming that the pope was being used as a ‘pawn’ by the Mexican government. 

The pope has also previously criticized President Biden’s stance on abortion. Biden is a Catholic, but supports a woman’s right to choose, which Francis called an ‘incoherence’ in a 2022 interview, saying that he would leave it to Biden’s ‘conscience.’ 

There are more than 50 million Catholics in the U.S., including a sizable number of voters in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

North Korea released first-ever photos of a uranium enrichment site on Thursday.

Supreme leader Kim Jong Un  has been known to show off his nuclear bombs, but this week he revealed the facilities that create the key material that powers them. 

Kim released photos of himself touring the facility as he called for his military to ‘exponentially’ increase its nuclear arsenal and be ready for combat with the U.S. and its allies. 

The pictures released by state media KCNA show a glimpse into the country’s secretive nuclear program, which is banned under multiple UN Security Council resolutions. 

The images show Kim walking through rows of centrifuge machines that spin uranium at high speeds to produce nuclear warheads. 

Kim visited the Nuclear Weapons Institute and a production base for weapon-grade nuclear materials, KCNA said, and instructed the base to ramp up the number of centrifuges ‘in order to exponentially increase the number of nuclear weapons.’

‘He went round the control room of the uranium enrichment base to learn about the overall operation of the production lines,’ KCNA said, and was pleased to see the base ‘dynamically producing nuclear materials.’

The world gets little opportunity to glimpse life in the reclusive, nuclear-armed state, but photos also showed Kim visiting an army training base on Wednesday to ‘guide the drill of combatants,’ KCNA said/

On Thursday, North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, which landed in the waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan. The distance of the missiles suggests that they were designed to attack South Korea.

It was North Korea’s first public weapons firing activity in over two months. 

Kim said that his pledge to double down on his nuclear efforts was because North Korea faces ‘a grave threat’ because of what he called ‘the reckless expansion’ of a U.S.-led regional military bloc.

Last week North Korea flew balloons full of trash toward South Korea for five straight days. 

Officials in Seoul slammed Pyongyang for its nuclear developments.

‘Any nuclear threat or provocation by North Korea will be met with an overwhelming and strong response from our government and military, based on the solid extended deterrence of the South Korea-US alliance,’ the Ministry of Unification was quoted as saying by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

It’s not clear how many nuclear warheads North Korea possesses. In July, a report by the Federation of American Scientists concluded that the country may have produced enough fissile material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads, but that it has likely assembled closer to 50.

‘Buonasera Tutti,’ former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio toasted as he opened a three-hour ‘Paisans for Kamala’ virtual dinner this week in support of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid headlined by staunch Trump critic Robert De Niro.

De Blasio co-hosted the event with Paul Mercurio, a comedian who works on Stephen Colbert’s CBS late-night program.

During the livestream event, which featured several high-profile Italian Americans, many dinner guests lauded Harris while criticizing former President Trump’s immigration policies from the viewpoint of children or grandchildren of Italian immigrants.

De Blasio noted he had made an intentional visit to the childhood home of one such prominent Italian-American official.

‘We just did a little pilgrimage… [to] Little Italy in Baltimore — to the home of Nancy D’Alesandro-Pelosi; where she grew up,’ he said, as the former mayor also highlighted the visit on X, posing at Pelosi’s former home alongside Maryland State Sen. James Rosapepe, D-Laurel.

‘A dinner expresses who we are — we want to be a family as Italian-Americans — [and] bring everyone together for these amazing candidates,’ de Blasio said.

Mercurio went on to tell De Niro that Trump has ‘tapped into something’ within his base that have bonded them to him.

De Niro, who once expressed a wish to ‘punch [Trump] in the face,’ replied that he has indeed listened to some of Trump’s supporters.

‘I could very well see that there is a way, with them, that’s more for them than with Trump, because Trump doesn’t offer anything,’ the actor said.

‘We’ve seen this before in other countries and other societies… they think they can control someone like him… God forbid he becomes ‘the boss,’ all the people who thought they could control him, they’ll find out differently.’

Later, former Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, who said his maternal side is ‘fully Italian,’ joined the dinner sporting a ‘White Dudes for Harris’ hat and spoke about the values he believes Harris brings to the table.

De Blasio soon displayed a slice of pizza and proceeded to eat it with a fork — in an apparent homage to a 2014 controversy that erupted when he dined in the same fashion in Staten Island.

De Blasio argued he remains correct that it is the proper way to eat a pie.

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta later appeared and said he supports Harris because Trump appears to support isolationism, remarking that such behavior ‘didn’t work before World War II.’

‘[There is] the importance of presidents standing up to tyrants… not appeasing them,’ he said.

Later, actor Steve Buscemi said Harris struck the right tone as a descendant of immigrants.

‘Most immigrants are just looking for a better life, better opportunities, and they don’t deserve to be punished for pursuing that dream,’ Buscemi said. ‘Kamala Harris is smart, strong, kind and inclusive.’

When Pelosi appeared at the dinner, she recounted how her family lived for multiple generations in the Little Italy neighborhood of Baltimore that de Blasio visited.

‘My grandfather and his contemporaries came here thinking the streets would be paved in gold — little did they know they would pave the streets when they got here,’ said Pelosi, whose father and grandfather, both named Thomas D’Alesandro, were mayors of Baltimore.

‘It is an important race because of [Trump’s attitude toward immigrants] and so many other reasons. We must not take this election for granted,’ she said.

Pelosi went on to cite a speech by former President Reagan, highlighting the fact she was quoting a Republican, and saying that he understood in the speech that the Statue of Liberty is a ‘beacon of hope.’

She claimed to have recited the quote to Republicans, who did not applaud: ‘I said, ‘They don’t applaud for Ronald Reagan?’’

Near the close of the dinner, one of Trump’s former officials — who notably broke with the president years ago — appeared.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci quipped, in addressing de Blasio, ‘Can you imagine me, you and [former Republican Vice President] Dick Cheney getting together to support Vice President Harris?’

‘Yes, I can imagine it because each of us understands the systemic danger involved with the potential reelection of Donald Trump,’ he said, before pledging $5,000 to Paisans for Harris.

‘I bet they didn’t discuss Kamala’s support for ending Columbus Day, a very important national holiday for Italian Americans, named after the Italian explorer who discovered the Americas!’ Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign national press secretary told Fox in a statement.

‘While Kamala Harris is supported by these disconnected California elites who wouldn’t know their Sunday dinner costs 21.5 percent more thanks to Kamala’s economic policies, President Trump will continue to earn the support of everyday Americans who want to lower costs, secure the border, and Make America Great Again,’ Leavitt added.