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Biden defiantly charges ahead with election run despite speculation he would drop out this weekend

President Biden has defiantly remained in the presidential race despite mounting calls from allies to drop out, and speculation that he would bow out as early as this weekend. 

The Biden campaign has hit back against anonymous sources and speculation that Biden would end his campaign in the coming days, suggesting a pressure campaign was building to force Biden’s hand. 

‘There are a lot of anonymous sources out there this week telling y’all what is and isn’t happening on Team Biden-Harris. I’m here – on the record (!) – to give you an overview of what actually happened, what’s to come, and a few thoughts on the very bad things coming out of the Republican National Convention,’ Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Muonoz said in a press release late last week. 

The comment was released shortly following Newsmax’s Mark Halperin reporting that unnamed Democratic sources informed him that Biden will drop out of the race as soon as this weekend, that he would not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris to take the mantle, and would call for an open convention during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month. 

‘It will happen as early as this weekend. A speech has been drafted for him. He will continue on as president, is his intention. He also will not, I’m told, endorse Vice President Harris as his successor. They’re hoping that he will endorse an open process in which the convention will be open to Vice President Harris and a few other candidates in Chicago to pick the Democratic nominee for president,’ Halperin said on Thursday. 

Axios also speculated the president would drop out this weekend, with unnamed Biden aides allegedly saying the president was warming up to the idea of giving into the calls to bow out. 

The Biden campaign, however, has so far not given an inch on the speculation and calls for the president to drop out, with campaign and White House officials shooting down speculation on social media, releasing press releases and continuing to announce fundraising efforts. 

Biden’s deputy campaign manager doubled down on Sunday that reports of the president dropping out are ‘false’ and that Biden has been clear he is remaining in the race. 

‘It is false. And I think that it is false to continue to try to gin up this narrative. Joe Biden has said he is in this race,’ deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said on MSNBC on Sunday. ‘He is in this race to win it. He is instructing us to continue to carry out a plan to make sure that we are communicating [to as] many voters as possible. Actions speak louder than words, although sometimes, in this case, I wish that our words would speak louder so that people would stop asking this question. But we are doing both. The president has doubled down and said that he is running in this race to win it, and that he is not going anywhere.’

Biden is currently self-isolating in his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday. He was diagnosed while in Las Vegas, forcing the campaign to cancel events in the city as the president recovers. 

Thirty-six Democrats have called on Biden to drop out of the race in the days and weeks following his disastrous debate performance, which put his mental fitness under further scrutiny as he stumbled over his words and appeared more subdued than in previous years. 

Ahead of his COVID diagnosis, Biden hit the campaign trail at a faster clip than before the debate, holding rallies and meetings across the nation, coupled with his official duties as president, including hosting world leaders for a NATO summit earlier this month. Biden delivered a stronger than typical speech during the NATO summit, and received mixed reviews for his first solo press conference of the year. The events, however, have evidently not swayed Democrats that he’s up for the job, as traditional allies continue releasing statements calling on him to drop out. 

‘While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch. And in doing so, secure his legacy of leadership by allowing us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election,’ California Rep. Adam Schiff said in a statement last week. 

Despite speculation Biden would drop out as soon as this weekend, the New York Times reported that the president will not drop out ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nentanyahu’s visit to the nation’s capital this week. 

The president also has a fundraiser scheduled with former late night host David Letterman on July 29 in Hawaii and has received support from Squad members to remain in the race. 

‘There have been lots of Democrats who have been giving little anonymous quotes to the press, to some journalist to print, and I’m not here to knock the press on it,’ she said. ‘I’m here to knock my colleagues on it, because to me, I think that’s, and I’m sorry, I’m going to say because it’s after midnight. That’s bulls—. Like, if you have an opinion, say it with your chest and say it in public,’ Squad member, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said last week in defense of Biden. 

The chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jamie Harrison, has also notably not called for Biden to pull out of the race, instead saying earlier this month that Biden is the party’s nominee.

‘This ain’t the West Wing… we have had a process, millions voted for Joe Biden and we have our nominee!’ Harrison tweeted on July 2.

Biden is not yet the official nominee for the ticket, but is expected to be formally nominated in a virtual roll call on Aug. 7, DNC Rules Committee members voted Friday. The move leaves Democrats with roughly two weeks to rally renewed support for Biden as their nominee, or for Biden to drop out and let another candidate step up to the job. 

The speculation mounting around Biden dropping out comes as former President Trump was officially nominated as the Republican Party’s choice for president. Trump joined the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last week, where he announced Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate and accepted the nomination. 

The RNC was held just two days after an assassination attempt nearly ended Trump’s life, leaving him with an injury to his right ear. A shooter opened fire on Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last Saturday, injuring Trump and two others, and killing a 50-year-old married dad who was protecting his wife and family from the gunfire. 

Trump addressed the shooting in his highly-anticipated RNC speech, while noting ‘you’ll never hear it from me a second time, because it’s actually too painful to tell.’ 

‘I’m not supposed to be here tonight,’ he said. ‘I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God. And watching the reports over the last few days, many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was.’

‘For the rest of my life, I will be grateful for the love shown by that giant audience of patriots that stood bravely on that fateful evening in Pennsylvania,’ he added. 

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Sen. Joe Manchin calls on Biden to step aside, pass torch to ‘a new generation’

Independent Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Sunday called on President Biden to step aside. 

‘He will go down with a legacy unlike many people as one of the finest and surely a patriot, an American,’ Manchin said of Biden during an appearance on ABC’s ‘This Week.’ ‘And so with that, I come with a heavy heart to think the time has come for him to pass the torch to a new generation.’ 

Manchin changed his party registration from Democrat to independent this year, though he still caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

ABC host Martha Raddatz asked Manchin directly if he believes Biden should step aside as the Democratic nominee. Manchin said Biden ‘has the ability for the last five months of his presidency to be the president he always wanted to be, be able to unite the country, bring it back together, to be able to maybe spend all of his time on solving the problems in Gaza, bringing peace to Gaza and to the Middle East.’ 

From now until the end of his term, Manchin said, Biden could also ‘dedicate his time to enforcing, reinforcing Ukraine’s ability to defend and win their freedom, and then be able to show the rest of the world the orderly transfer of power from the superpower of the world.’

In the three weeks since Biden’s disastrous debate performance against former President Trump, Manchin said he ‘thought the president needed time to evaluate and make a decision if he was going to at that time.’ The senator also acknowledged Democratic colleagues facing competitive races in Congress or at the state level in November who fear Biden’s re-election campaign could ruin their chances. 

The senator privately expressed grave concern to Biden’s allies, including Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in the immediate aftermath of the debate but decided to cancel scheduled appearances on Sunday shows, Politico previously reported. In doing so, Manchin reportedly intended to give Biden time to decide the matter on his own, but the senator changed course. 

With the donor class also speaking up, saying ‘they want a different direction,’ Manchin told ABC he believes Biden must withdraw, noting it’s ‘concerning’ to watch the 81-year-old on the campaign trail.

‘It’s concerning. It’s concerning when you watch him. I’m concerned about the president’s health and well-being, I really am,’ Manchin said. ‘But when I’ve been talking to him, you know, I can tell when he’s in a good mood. He’ll say, ‘Hey, Joe, Joe, how’s it going?’ And when he’s upset with me, he’ll say, ‘Joe, what’s up?’ So we’re still communicating the way we always have.’ 

Though he believes Biden should stop his re-election campaign, Manchin said he believes Biden still has the mental acuity required to remain president for the remainder of his term. 

‘I think basically he can finish this job that he started and finish the way he wanted to lead,’ Manchin said.

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Secret Service admits leaning on ‘state and local partners’ after claim it ignored Trump team’s past requests

The U.S. Secret Service responded Saturday night to a bombshell report that top officials repeatedly denied past pleas to beef up former President Trump’s security detail, saying in a statement that it depends on ‘state or local partners’ to fill in gaps when it can’t accommodate such requests.

The report from the Washington Post came exactly a week after Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, while speaking at a rally, prior to his 2024 presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had been observed by attendees before the shooting began.

The Post reported that, before the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, top Secret Service officials ‘repeatedly’ denied requests for tighter security measures from Trump’s detail. An official granted the interview to the media outlet on the condition of anonymity.

According to the report, agents tasked with protecting Trump requested additional security resources in the past. These requests involved things such as magnetometers or a larger number of personnel to screen guests. Additional snipers had also reportedly been requested in the past.

Senior officials reportedly told the agents that the Secret Service lacked the resources to fulfill the requests. The Post reviewed multiple requests, but none of them pertained specifically to the Butler rally. 

On Saturday night, the Secret Service released a statement obtained by Fox News Digital explaining that the agency ‘has a vast, dynamic, and intricate mission.’

‘Every day we work in a dynamic threat environment to ensure our protectees are safe and secure across multiple events, travel, and other challenging environments,’ the statement read. ‘We execute a comprehensive and layered strategy to balance personnel, technology, and specialized operational needs.’

The Secret Service also added that, even if a request is denied, the agency still tries to accommodate in some form to ensure the safety of whoever is being protected.

‘In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protected,’ the statement added. ‘This may include utilizing state or local partners to provide specialized functions or otherwise identifying alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.’

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi previously denied the report. ‘This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,’ he previously wrote on X.

Investigations into the breakdowns that led to Trump being shot are underway by both the FBI and a Congressional committee. Questions have already been raised about a potential lack of communication between the state, local and federal workers who were charged with protecting Trump amid numerous reports members of the crowd saw Crooks on a rooftop and warned officials. In addition, there has been fingerprinting between the different levels of law enforcement that were on the scene.

In an interview that will premiere on Fox News Channel on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET, Trump told host Jesse Watters that he was never warned about Crooks, despite the fact that the gunman had been noticed.

‘How did somebody get on that roof?’ Trump asked Watters. ‘And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw he was on that roof.’

‘When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and who’s got a gun,’…that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. And I would’ve thought someone would’ve done something about it,’ he added.

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Populists shut out of European political systems that favor establishment parties

Voters abandoned mainstream center-right parties for the populist right in the U.K. and French elections this month but failed to convert support to electoral gains amid a right-wing vote split and tactical voting by the left.

Britain’s Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer, won a landslide election victory, scoring 412 seats in the 650-seat Parliament, eclipsing the mainstream Conservative Party that managed to hold on to just 121 seats after losing 244 seats. 

This was the worst performance in the Conservatives’ nearly two-century history amid the surge of upstart populist Reform Party, led by ‘British Trump’ Nigel Farage, that received over four million votes but gained only five seats.

In France, a broad leftist coalition consisting of hardline communists, environmentalists and socialists won 188 out of 577 seats in the parliament, seconded by French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance Ensemble (ENS), which won 161 seats, forming a ruling majority. 

France’s populist National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, won over 37% of the vote and was the single most popular party among French voters, yet it came third in the number of parliament seats. The mainstream center-right Republicans came a distant fourth, with just 6.2% of the vote.

‘What was quite clear was that this was a rejection of the Conservative Party, the mainstream Conservative party,’ Alan Mendoza, the executive director of the London-based Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital. ‘In France, they got a very high turnout for France, and in that case, it was clear that this was an anti-National Rally election.’

The elections demonstrated the voters’ persistent support for political movements embracing right-wing populism on issues related to immigration, crime and social issues while abandoning milquetoast traditional center-right parties for failing to bring meaningful change.

Yet, the insurgent populists came up short of converting the widespread support at the voting booth to electoral gains due to tactical voting agreements and support split among right-leaning voters.

‘In both cases, the left-wing parties were able to maximize their votes, and the right-wing parties were not able to maximize their votes,’ Mendoza said. ‘It’s been said that Labour’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep, but that’s what you need to win British elections with large numbers of support without being focused in certain areas,’ Mendoza added about Labour’s lower overall popular support.

‘The reality in France was that various left-wing parties and Macron got together and basically shut the right out, but the right did not do a similar thing. The Republicans stayed in the race and did not give way to the National Rally or vice versa.’

Le Pen’s National Rally came out on top in the first round of voting last month after campaigning on significantly reducing immigration and crime and improving the economy. 

The populist party was on the cusp of winning the majority of seats in the second round, but the effort was curtailed after a tactical election agreement was struck between Macron’s centrists and the leftist coalition. Both parties agreed to withdraw candidates to avoid splitting the anti-National Rally vote.

Farage’s Reform Party was the third-most-popular party with over four million votes across the U.K., but due to Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, in which the candidate with the most votes in the area wins the seat, the party ended up with just 1% of the seats in the parliament. 

The mainstream Conservatives got over two million more votes than the Reform Party but remain the second-largest political force in the country, prompting calls to reform the electoral system to give more representation based on the total votes.

Despite winning a historic number of seats in the U.K. Parliament, the Labour Party won the election with 9.6 million votes, down by over 600,000 votes, compared to its 2019 election results, when the party led under controversial socialist Jeremy Corbyn suffered two separate election defeats.

‘In some cases, the Reform vote was probably mostly conservatives who had left the Conservative Party and decided to go there. But the far bigger component in Britain’s case was people who just decided not to vote at all,’ Mendoza said. ‘The Conservative vote share went down 20 points, and a lot of conservatives who voted Conservative in 2019 just stayed at home and were not inspired by any of the parties.’

In the 2019 election, the Conservatives, under the leadership of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, won the majority of the parliament seats after campaigning on a populist platform of ‘Get Brexit Done.’ The Reform Party’s predecessor, the Brexit Party, stood down its candidates in the election to boost the Conservatives.

In the aftermath of the elections, influential Conservative figures argued that the ‘Conservative family’ consisting of the Reform Party and the Conservatives still beat Labour and won the majority of the votes – over 11 million – indicating the voters’ overall right-leaning bent.

Suella Braverman, a potential Conservative Party leadership contender, criticized the party’s performance in a speech at the Popular Conservatives conference and urged the party to embrace populism for the sake of the party’s future.

‘To my mind, the Reform phenomenon was entirely predictable and avoidable and all our own fault,’ she told the audience. ‘It’s no good denigrating Reform voters, it’s no good smearing the Reform party, it’s no good comparing Reform rallies to the rallies of Nuremberg. That’s not going to work. Criticizing people for voting Reform is a fundamental error to make.’

She further urged the Conservatives to ‘restore credibility on the core conservative policies that unite’ and address the immigration issue, ‘because we’ve been weak, we’ve been squeamish, we failed to tackle this very pressing concern.’

In France, although failing to gain legislative power, National Rally maintains populist momentum and is eyeing the 2027 presidential elections, with Le Pen primed to take control of the country’s highest office.

The new parliamentary majority of leftists and centrists, meanwhile, leaves Macron, already deeply unpopular, facing the prospect of presiding over a politically paralyzed hung parliament.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Secret Service responds to report they ‘repeatedly’ denied requests to Trump security detail in the past

The U.S. Secret Service recently responded to a Washington Post report that claimed the agency’s top officials ‘repeatedly’ denied requests to former President Trump’s security detail.

The report comes exactly a week after former President Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, while speaking at a rally, prior to his 2024 presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. 

The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had been observed by attendees before the shooting began.

The Post reported that, before the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, top Secret Service officials ‘repeatedly’ denied requests for tighter security measures from Trump’s detail. An official granted the interview to the media outlet on the condition of anonymity.

According to the report, agents tasked with protecting Trump requested additional security resources in the past. These requests involved things such as magnetometers or a larger number of personnel to screen guests. Additional snipers had also reportedly been requested in the past.

Senior officials reportedly told the agents that the Secret Service lacked the resources to fulfill the requests. The Post reviewed multiple requests, but none of them pertained to the Butler rally. 

On Saturday night, the Secret Service released a statement obtained by Fox News Digital explaining that the agency ‘has a vast, dynamic, and intricate mission.’

‘Every day we work in a dynamic threat environment to ensure our protectees are safe and secure across multiple events, travel, and other challenging environments,’ the statement read. ‘We execute a comprehensive and layered strategy to balance personnel, technology, and specialized operational needs.’

The Secret Service also added that, even if a request is denied, the agency still tries to accommodate in some form to ensure the safety of whoever is being protected.

‘In some instances where specific Secret Service specialized units or resources were not provided, the agency made modifications to ensure the security of the protected,’ the statement added. ‘This may include utilizing state or local partners to provide specialized functions or otherwise identifying alternatives to reduce public exposure of a protectee.’

In an interview that will premiere on Fox News Channel on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET, Trump told host Jesse Watters that he was never warned about Crooks, despite the fact that the gunman had been noticed.

‘How did somebody get on that roof?’ Trump asked Watters. ‘And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw he was on that roof.’

‘When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and who’s got a gun,’…that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. And I would’ve thought someone would’ve done something about it,’ he added.

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Trump’s second term foreign policy likely to focus on ‘strength’ and ‘deterrence’: expert

A second Trump presidency is giving supporters hope of a continuation of his first-term policies, while critics worry that he’ll isolate the U.S. on the global stage at a delicate time for the international security landscape.

Richard Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a former Trump administration NSC official, told Fox News Digital he sees a second Trump term as ‘going back to the basics of peace through strength [and] restoring deterrence.’ 

‘They’re prioritizing China as our top threat to national security,’ Goldberg said, referencing the campaign’s platform. ‘Investing in our military, modernizing our military, expanding the use of AI and space, to ensure that we are able to overpower the CCP and Beijing and its wider access around the world.’

Trump’s foreign policy record has remained a key point of comparison between him and his successor, President Biden, with many arguing Trump took an isolationist ‘America First’ approach that damaged relations with key allies. 

‘Isolationism is about going it alone and about viewing America’s way of engaging the world as unilateral and independent and alone, as opposed to building multilateral alliances — a sort of unilateral mindset,’ Joel Rubin, a former State Department official during the Obama administration, told Fox News Digital.

‘The U.S. can’t always act unilaterally, but that doesn’t need to be the predisposition,’ Rubin argued. ‘Trump never ignored the world, no, but what his foreign policy was focused on was America acting independently and unilaterally, and that I think is where there’s a difference. The United States is a leader, not an independent actor.’

Golberg disagreed with that assessment, arguing people often ‘mistake populist rhetoric for isolationism … or, certainly, some sort of instinct not to use force when necessary to defend the United States.’ 

‘The president was tested by Iran, and Qassem Soleimani lost his life because of it,’ Goldberg said as an example. ‘There was that moment where I think President Trump demonstrated to all the enemies of the United States that he’s not an isolationist. He’s a conservative. That’s following basic conservative principles of peace through strength, willing to show deterrence … which means you have the capability, but also the will, to use force when necessary.’

Rubin lamented that Trump’s hard-line stance on NATO ally contributions to defense spending hurt relations between the U.S. and such a vital network of allies and worried what that might mean for the alliance at a time when Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine requires unity and strength. 

‘Turning away from American alliances has put us in a hole that we’re barely coming out of now, and, thankfully, Biden restored our alliances with NATO,’ Rubin said, adding that the deal to withdraw from Afghanistan, which Trump first brokered and Biden decided to uphold, ‘really put us in a weak position.’ 

That fear remains firmly in mind for European leaders as they worry about what happens next in the event Russia succeeds in subduing and conquering Ukraine. Jens Spahn, a lawmaker of Germany’s center-right opposition party CDU, told outlet DW during the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., last week that ‘we should not make the same mistake again’ with Trump.

‘No one really had a network with his team,’ Spahn said, explaining the several meetings NATO delegations had arranged with Republicans close to Trump’s camp, DW reported.  

Ricarda Lang, co-leader of the German Green Party, meanwhile, argued that Trump’s vice resident pick of Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, left little doubt that Trump would ‘deliver Ukraine to Putin’ after Vance said in 2022 that he didn’t ‘really care what happens in Ukraine one way or the other.’ 

Rubin acknowledged that Trump made some positive contributions to the global landscape, such as through the Abraham Accords, which he judged as ‘a positive contribution to the Middle East’ along with Trump’s handling of North Korea. 

‘I thought that it was very important for him to do what he did with North Korea, in terms of making the effort to engage and speak with Kim and seek progress on the nuclear program,’ Rubin said, though he noted that, ‘unfortunately, nothing really came out of it.’

‘I think the lack of a real commitment to its symptomatic program with North Korea was a loss when he had opened up something in a way that had not been done before, which I thought had a lot of promise,’ Rubin added. 

Goldberg defended several Trump-era policies as significant wins for American foreign policy, mainly touting global stability during the majority of Trump’s pre-pandemic administration. 

‘Russia was deterred from any sort of aggression in Eastern Europe — certainly not an invasion of Ukraine,’ Goldberg said. ‘Iran was running out of money, almost bankrupt. And after the killing of one of the world’s leading terrorists, Qassem Soleimani, they stopped expanding and escalating their nuclear enrichment.’

‘Israel was not facing a seven-front war, and, obviously, other actors, most importantly, China, had to think about what was next as the United States was investing more in its military, spending more on its defense industrial base, trying to finally accelerate what was needed to compete with China and potentially win a war in the future against China,’ Goldberg added. 

He acknowledged, though, that Trump faced typical growing pains for a new president when he took office and was slow to begin some of his more effective policies, such as the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Iran. 

‘I think his instincts are always to do the unexpected, to do something that hasn’t been tried before,’ Goldberg argued. ‘If everybody’s tried doing things the same way and it hasn’t achieved the right result, maybe there is a different approach. And I think we’ll see more of that in a second term.’

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AI accusations mar UK election as candidate forced to defend authenticity: ‘I am a real person’

A candidate for the populist Reform UK Party in Britain had to defend himself after allegations that he was not an actual person but in reality an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated candidate put up for election last month.

‘I am a real person and that is me in the photo,’ Mark Matlock confirmed to British news outlet The Independent. ‘Though I must admit I am enjoying the free publicity, and when I feel up to it, I will put out a video and prove these rumors that I’m a robot are absolute baloney.’

‘I just laughed when I saw it,’ he added. ‘I think it perked me up. I thought, ‘I need to get back out there.’ This is doing more good for me than my campaign, it’s fantastic.’

Reform exceeded expectations in the most recent general election in the United Kingdom, taking 14% of the vote, which only translated to 1% of the seats in Commons – five seats overall – due to the ‘first past the post’ system. 

The party’s success was enough to deeply impact the ruling Conservative Party’s candidates, splitting the vote in the lowest voter turnout for almost a century, resulting in a near-historic win for the rival Labour Party.

A number of people on social media raised suspicions that Reform had tried to game the system and propped up fake candidates in many constituencies, of which Matlock, who stood in London’s Brixton and Clapham Hill, became the poster boy due to his seemingly artificial appearance. 

Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that ‘the political mainstream has been looking to catch Reform out – given its shock surge in the polls – for some time’ and that AI proved a useful cudgel to do so.

‘The surprise factor of the election and the need for Reform to field as many candidates as they could, even in unwinnable seats, provided ample opportunities to do so, and some Reform candidates were indeed exposed for their unpleasant views,’ Mendoza argued.

‘The idea of AI candidates was simply an extension of that approach, although it has now been proven completely false,’ he noted, adding that more such allegations will arise in cases where an election is called on short notice, leading to ‘paper candidates’ who may never be met by their prospective constituents.

‘Of course, were such a candidate to actually win, the whole scheme would collapse, so it is difficult to see the circumstances under which any political party would actually stoop to such lows,’ Mendoza said, referring to fully AI-generated candidates. 

Users online pointed to a severe lack of online activity from many of Reform’s candidates and soon started analyzing leaflets and campaign materials they claimed showed AI-generated candidates, Scottish outlet The National reported. 

Green Party candidate Shao-Lan Yuen seized on these allegations and claimed that she hadn’t ‘seen or heard’ from Matlock, running as a rival in his constituency. She mentioned ‘suspicions’ that people said he could be AI-generated, and Independent candidate Jon Key said he saw ‘no sign’ of Matlock on election night. 

Key claimed that Matlock ‘doesn’t live in the constituency’ and that he had not heard back from an email he sent out, which he had sent to all other candidates he ran against, but Matlock claimed to have illness the night of the election. 

‘I got pneumonia three days before election night. I was exercising, taking vitamins so I could attend, but it was just not viable,’ Matlock revealed. ‘On election night, I couldn’t even stand.’

Referring to his campaign poster, Matlock explained, ‘The photo of me was taken outside the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I had the background removed and replaced with the logo, and they changed the color of my tie.’

‘The only reason that was done was because we couldn’t get a photographer at such short notice, but that is me,’ he insisted. 

Matlock told the BBC that he’s received ‘a lot of nastiness’ from people online, calling them ‘very mean’ and dismissing their ridicule as ‘unnecessary.’ The BBC also reported that its own investigation into claims of fake Reform UK candidates revealed ‘no evidence’ of any fraudulent candidates.

Reform did admit that in a last-minute rush to find candidates – due to the surprise snap election decision then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called – and were so ‘desperate’ to find candidates that they ended up recruiting some friends and family to stand for office. 

‘Basically it’s friends, relations, office workers,’ a party spokesperson told reporters. ‘One of the candidates got their partner to stand.’

The entire episode shows the growing concern over AI’s potential impact on elections as the technology continues to improve. 

A candidate in last year’s Turkish presidential election claimed that Russia released an AI-generated sex tape that was created with deepfake technology using footage ‘from an Israeli porn site,’ The Guardian reported. 

‘I do not have such an image, no such sound recording,’ Muharrem Ince said before announcing he would drop out following the ‘character assassination.’ ‘This is not my private life, it’s slander. It’s not real.’

Nebraska Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts during a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing in 2023 referenced China and its alleged use of deepfake videos to spread propaganda on social media platforms.

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Trump tells Jesse Watters that he was not warned about gunman, despite reports

Fox News host Jesse Watters recently conducted a sit-down interview with former President Trump to discuss last week’s failed assassination attempt.

The interview, which will premiere on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET, featured both Trump and his vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Vance currently serves as a U.S. Senator representing Ohio.

The three men discussed the assassination attempt against the former president last week. Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump from a roof in the middle of a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, wounding the presidential candidate on his right ear.

Trump revealed during the interview that he was not warned about Crooks by the U.S. Secret Service.

‘Mistakes were made,’ Watters told Trump. ‘They were monitoring this guy for an hour beforehand. No one told you not to take the stage?’

‘Nobody mentioned it,’ the former president replied. ‘Nobody said it was a problem.’

‘[They] could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15, 20 minutes, 5 minutes.’ Nobody said…I think that was a mistake,’ he added.

Trump later questioned how Crooks could get on the roof in the first place.

‘How did somebody get on that roof?’ Trump questioned. ‘And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw he was on that roof.’

‘When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and who’s got a gun,’…that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. And I would’ve thought someone would’ve done something about it,’ Trump said.

Trump, who appeared at the Republican National Convention with a large bandage on his ear, has reportedly recovered well from the injury. On Saturday, his former physician, Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson, released a detailed report about Trump’s health.

‘He will have further evaluations, including a comprehensive hearing exam, as needed. He will follow up with his primary care physician, as directed by the doctors that initially evaluated him,’ he continued. ‘In summary, former President Trump is doing well, and he is recovering as expected from the gunshot wound sustained last Saturday afternoon.’

‘I am extremely thankful his life was spared. It is an absolute miracle he wasn’t killed,’ Jackson added.

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1 in 3 Democrats believe Trump faked assassination attempt. I talked to one

If some polls are to be believed, one in three Democrats think that Donald Trump faked his own assassination attempt. When I read that, I thought, could this possibly be true? But this weekend on my drive home to West Virginia from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, I got the theory first hand. And it’s a fascinating doozy.

Station Square Ristorante, just off of I-80 in Liberty, Ohio, is an absolute gem. Ottavio and Bridget Musumeci have somehow managed to create a legitimate fine-dining experience attached to the Super 8 motel. And no, I’m not kidding. In the wood-paneled bar, as I ordered oysters and antipasto for a late lunch, I met Mark, originally from northern New Jersey, which his accent revealed before he did. And Mark, well, he had some very interesting things to say.

As is my way, I turned the conversation to politics and the assassination came up.

‘That whole thing was a setup,’ Mark told me.

Before I could even respond, John, the bartender, who I would learn doesn’t like Trump or Biden, said, ‘Nah, two people are dead. No way.’ 

Mark’s response was, ‘this is Donald Trump, he’s capable of anything.’

So I dug in a bit. How did they get the kid to do it? Mark was ready with answers. They paid off the family, or maybe told him he’d get off with just a few years in jail, he suggested.

‘And the death of Corey Comperatore?’ I asked, referring to the retired fire chief who died shielding his family from the assassin’s bullets.

‘Donald Trump doesn’t care if his supporters die,’ Mark shot back, quite certain of himself.

You should know that Mark did not come off as some kind of lunatic. A bit prone to conspiracy theories maybe, but by no means crazy. So how could he believe all this with no evidence whatsoever?

He also had a good appetite, and as he wolfed down his caesar salad and veal piccante topped with mussels, he made it clear that it all came down to one simple precept: Trump is capable of anything.

I couldn’t help but think that the fact that Mark shares this kind of weird, irrational thinking with a third of his party faithful is because it is exactly what Democrats and their media allies have been feeding them. 

Why wouldn’t Mark, if he has a steady diet of liberal media, think that Trump is capable of killing innocent people? After all, they say he will deny women their rights, he won’t let black people vote, he will destroy democracy, and on and on and on. Mark is conditioned to believe that Trump is a unique evil and nothing should be put past him.

I said to Mark that if I thought one party, one side, or call it what you will, was willing to kill innocent Americans in this way, then it might be time to buy some guns. Then he said something that surprised me.

‘It’s not the other side, it’s just Trump.’

It made little sense, but in a strange way, I was glad to hear him say it. At least Mark doesn’t blame his fellow citizens who support Trump. Not yet, anyway. Mark finished and left before I did, and we had a wholesome and sincere goodbye. After the door closed, I asked to John, ‘What do you make of that?’ ‘It’s crazy,’ he shrugged.

Yes it is, but here we are. 

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DNC committee moving forward with plans for virtual roll call vote in early August

The Democratic National Convention is set to follow through on plans for an early roll call nominating President Biden as their presidential candidate next month.

DNC Rules Committee members voted Friday for a virtual roll call on August 7 to certify Biden’s victory, despite widespread upset over what many call visible mental decline.

The nearly 200 committee members will meet again on or before July 26 to formally adopt the virtual roll call format. The vote itself is expected to serve as a mere rubber stamp for the Biden campaign.

President Biden is planning campaign events weeks in advance, preparing to hit the ground running after his current illness with a high-profile fundraiser.

The Biden-Harris ticket is holding a fundraising event on July 29th in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, that will feature special guests — talk show legend David Letterman and Hawaiia Gov. Josh Green.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden will be in attendance.

Green, who has been governor of Hawaii since 2022, is a personal friend of the Bidens. The governor is among the administration’s closest political allies.

Axios reported that Biden has started laying out his travel plans as he recovers from COVID-19 at his Delaware beach house in Rehoboth. He has resisted calls from his party to step down, with his communications team holding a remote press conference on Saturday to push the argument for a second Biden term.

The calls for Biden to step down has drawn over 30 sitting Democrat congressmembers: Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, on Friday urged Biden to ‘end his campaign,’ arguing that ‘our full attention must return to these important issues.’

One senior Democrat official told Axios that the entire issue feels ‘stuck’ at the moment, adding that it’s ‘not to say it’s going to stay stuck.’

Senior officials are pushing Biden to make a final decision over the weekend and have continued arguing with Biden advisers as to why bowing out would best serve the party.

‘It’s a fairly universal sentiment internally that we have reached the end of the road,’ one Biden aide admitted, noting that some key hold-outs will keep fighting to keep Biden in the race.

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