Kamala Harris says Trump is a fascist at town hall – as it happened | US politics

Key events

Closing Summary

This blog is closing now, thanks for following along. You can read our US elections coverage here. Here are the major developments from today:

Kamala Harris attended a CNN town hall with undecided voters in Pennsylvania while her opponent Donald Trump held a rally in Georgia after rejecting an offer to participate in the town hall. At the town hall, Harris repeatedly returned to news that Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly claimed his one-time boss “falls into the general definition of fascist”. Harris herself called Trump a fascist when asked if she believed the ex-president qualifies as one during the town hall. Speaking from her residence in Washington DC earlier in the day, Harris accused Trump of seeking to subvert the independence of the military.

A former model told the Guardian that Donald Trump groped her at his Manhattan tower in 1993, after she was introduced to the real estate mogul by notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Stacey Williams said Trump put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and buttocks in their brief meeting, unwanted touching that left her “deeply confused”.

The Harris-Walz campaign announced that Harris will deliver a major “closing argument” address next week in the same location that Donald Trump rallied January 6 rioters before they stormed the US Capitol in 2021. According to a senior campaign official, Harris will speak at the Ellipse on 29 October – exactly one week before the 5 November election.

The justice department warned Elon Musk’s Pac that paying people to register to vote violates federal law, just days after Musk pledged to give away $1m a day to registered voters in battleground states in the US who sign a petition by his America Pac in support of the first and second amendments.

A new report from Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center detailed steps that Chinese operatives have taken to discredit Republican members of Congress and that Russian agents are taking to undermine the Harris-Walz campaign. Meanwhile, the justice department announced updates in four cases brought by its Election Threats Task Force today, sending a stern message one week before the 5 November presidential election.

On the first day of early voting in Wisconsin, Tim Walz called Elon Musk a “dipshit” while Barack Obama said of Donald Trump: “You’d be worried if Grandpa was acting like this.”

A campaign event that saw Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Lucas Kunce shoot an AR-15 went awry, after a reporter was hit by a bullet fragment.

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Updated at 22.40 EDT

Kamala Harris has concluded her appearance on CNN’s town hall. Over the course of the evening, Harris avoided giving direct answers to several questions (calling Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall “stupid”, for example, but then declining to commit to not building any more wall herself) instead seeking to define her opponent as dangerous.

Immediately following the town hall, CNN commentators noted that “she focused a lot more on Donald Trump, I think it’s fair to say, than she did on many specifics in terms of what she would do as president.”

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Updated at 22.14 EDT

The Trump campaign has responded to Kamala Harris saying she thinks Donald Trump is a fascist during the ongoing CNN town hall. Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has told the Associated Press, “Kamala will say anything to distract from her open border invasion and record high inflation.”

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Donald Trump has concluded his rally in Duluth, Georgia, while Kamala Harris continues answering questions from undecided voters at a live CNN town hall in Pennsylvania.

In Georgia, Trump delivered a characteristically rambling speech, joined by former independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr and former representative Tulsi Gabbard.

Meanwhile, Harris answered questions from voters on the economy, abortion, immigration, the war in Gaza, support for Israel and how she will distinguish herself from Joe Biden. Harris suggested she would look into eliminating the filibuster to pass reproductive rights protections, called for comprehensive immigration reform and criticized Trump for declining to appear at the town hall.

Asked the classic interview question, to identify one of her greatest weaknesses, Harris said: “I may not be quick to have the answer as soon as you ask it about a specific policy issue sometimes, because I’m going to want to research it, I’m going to want to study it.” She added: “I’m kind of a nerd sometimes.”

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Updated at 21.59 EDT

The Pennsylvania supreme court ruled today that voters should be allowed to cast their ballots in person if their mail-in ballots are rejected for certain reasons. The decision is a loss for the Republican National Committee, which appealed the case to the state’s highest court, and could allow thousands of Pennsylvanians to vote if their mail-in ballots are disqualified for lacking “secrecy envelopes”. The court ruled 4-to-3 that the Butler county board of elections must allow voters to cast provisional ballots in Pennsylvania – a crucial swing state where voters could determine the outcome of the 2024 election.

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Updated at 21.45 EDT

Harris says Trump is a fascist at CNN town hall

Kamala Harris has taken the stage at a live town hall with undecided voters in Pennsylvania, and is emphasizing recent comments from prior Trump administration officials saying the ex-president has authoritarian tendencies.

“I do believe that Donald Trump is unstable, increasingly unstable and unfit to serve,” Harris said.

“The people who worked with him in the White House, in the Situation Room, in the Oval Office, all Republicans, by the way, who served in his administration, his former chief of staff, his national security adviser, former secretaries of defense and his vice-president, have all called him unfit and dangerous. They have said explicitly he has contempt for the constitution of the United States. They have said he should never again serve as president of the United States.”

In response to CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asking her: “Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?”, Harris answered: “Yes, I do.”

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Updated at 21.28 EDT

With Donald Trump still speaking at his rally in Duluth, Georgia, Kamala Harris is about to take the stage for a live town hall with undecided Pennsylvania voters on CNN. Trump was invited to attend the same town hall but declined.

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The justice department announced updates in four cases brought by its Election Threats Task Force today, sending a stern message one week before the 5 November presidential election. The updates involved the charging and sentencing of four men – in Colorado, Alabama, Florida and Pennsylvania – for threats directed at elections officials spanning from 2019 to this year.

This week, Richard Glenn Kantwill of Tampa, Florida, was charged for allegedly threatening an elected official in February (Kantwill was already facing charges from 2019 and 2020), while John Pollard of Philadelphia was charged with threatening to kill a Pennsylvania elected official in September.

Meanwhile, in Colorado, Teak Brockbank pleaded guilty today to threatening Colorado and Arizona elections officials between September 2021 and July 2024. And, in Alabama, Brian Jerry Ogstad was sentenced to 30 months in prison for threatening election workers in Phoenix in 2022.

For more on the rising rates of violence against election officials, consider Sam Levine’s reporting:

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Updated at 20.56 EDT

Donald Trump has taken the stage in Duluth, Georgia, escalating his personal insults against Kamala Harris.

“This woman is crazy,” the former president said of the vice-president. He said voters should stand up to Harris and tell her: “‘You’re the worst ever. There’s never been anybody like you. You can’t put two sentences together. The world is laughing at us because of you.’” He also said that in her recent interview with CBS, she “gave an answer that was from a loony bin”.

Trump has been facing scrutiny over his vicious attacks on Harris’s intelligence, which have played into racist tropes. His rally comes amid growing criticism surrounding reports that he repeatedly praised Hitler and said he wanted generals who would display loyalty in a manner similar to Nazi commanders.

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Updated at 20.54 EDT

Georgia election officials say the state fended off a cyberattack against the state’s absentee ballot website, which they believe originated from a foreign country, CNN reports.

“It slowed our systems down for a little bit, but it never stopped our systems from working,” Gabe Sterling, an official in Georgia’s secretary of state’s office, told CNN. The attack had “the hallmarks of a foreign power or a foreign entity (acting) at the behest of a foreign power,” Sterling added.

Georgia’s secretary of state’s office repelled the attack, and there was no disruption to voters’ ability to request absentee ballots.

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It’s a pattern we’ve seen again and again since 2016: no matter what Donald Trump says or is reported to have said, powerful Republicans refuse to condemn him.

The latest example came today from New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu, who was asked on CNN about John Kelly’s condemnation of the former president, and the story of him asking for generals like those who served under Adolf Hitler. Here’s what Sununu said:

Chris Sununu on CNN on whether Trump praising Hitler causes him to reconsider his support for him: “No … we’ve heard a lot of extreme things from Donald Trump. With a guy like that, it’s kinda baked into the vote.” pic.twitter.com/zjvq1Mg9MO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 23, 2024

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Updated at 20.51 EDT

Trump to rally supporters in Georgia

We expect to hear from Donald Trump in about 10 minutes, when he is scheduled to take the stage in what looks to be a packed arena in Duluth, Georgia.

The former president’s speeches are more freewheeling and random than ever these days, but don’t be surprised to hear him condemn his ex-White House chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times yesterday that he believes Trump is a fascist.

As for the allegations of groping brought against him by Stacey Williams, his campaign has denied them, but we will be looking out for any comments he makes.

And, of course, Trump will undoubtedly say plenty about undocumented immigrants and inflation, the two issues he has put at the center of his campaign.

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Donald Trump has faced allegations of unwanted touching stretching as far back as the 1970s, the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:

Donald Trump sexual abuse accuser Jessica Leeds says she ruefully “laughed out loud” when the former president recently disputed her sworn testimony that he grabbed her, tried to kiss her and ran his hand up her skirt on a plane in the 1970s by insisting “she would not have been the chosen one”.

“He assaulted me 50 years ago and continues to attack me today,” Leeds said alongside her attorneys during a press conference in New York on Monday. “It was like he had 47 arms – like an octopus, but not a sound was spoken.”

Her remarks came after Trump appeared at an appeal hearing on the sexual abuse case brought by E Jean Carroll, which resulted in a jury finding Trump liable of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.

Leeds, 82, came forward in 2016 and later testified in the Carroll trial, which centered on Carroll’s testimony that the Republican nominee in November’s election had assaulted her at a department store in the 1990s. That set the stage for Trump to go into a lengthy rebuttal of both Carroll and Leeds.

With respect to Leeds, Trump said it was a “totally made-up story” that “never happened”, and he insinuated that she supported Democrats.

“And frankly – I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say – but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen. And she would not have been the chosen one.”

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Trump campaign spokesperson denies Williams’ allegation

Campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt denied Stacey Williams’ allegation of unwanted touching by Donald Trump.

She said:

These accusations, made by a former activist for Barack Obama and announced on a Harris campaign call two weeks before the election, are unequivocally false. It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign.

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Updated at 19.49 EDT

Stacey Williams’ allegation that Donald Trump groped her is the latest instance of the former president being accused of inappropriately touching women without their consent.

As our story notes:

About two dozen women have accused the former president and convicted felon of sexual misconduct dating back decades. The allegations have included claims of Trump kissing them without their consent, reaching under their skirts, and, in the case of some beauty pageant contestants, walking in on them in the changing room.

A former model named Amy Dorris shared allegations about Trump similar to what Williams described in an interview with the Guardian in 2020. Trump denied ever having harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris.

Last year, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing the columnist E Jean Carroll in 1996 and awarded her $5m in a judgment.

Trump has been appealing the judgment in the E Jean Carroll case, but a federal judge recently sounded skeptical:

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Updated at 19.20 EDT

Stacey Williams’ allegation of groping by Donald Trump is a reminder of how close he once was with Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump has claimed that they had a falling out and had not spoken in 15 years around the time of his death in 2019, but up to the early 2000s, the real estate mogul spoke highly of Epstein.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Here’s more, from the Guardian’s story detailing Williams’s allegation, on their relationship:

No evidence has surfaced that Trump was aware of or involved in Epstein’s misconduct.

But Trump and Epstein knew each other for decades and were photographed at the same social events in the 1990s and early 2000s, years before Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

After Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, Trump told journalists in the Oval Office that he “knew him, like everybody in Palm Beach knew him” but that he had a “falling out” with Epstein in the early 2000s.

“I haven’t spoken to him in 15 years,” Trump said. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”

Asked whether she had considered coming forward in the past, as other women were making allegations against Trump, Williams said she was a person who wanted to avoid negative attention or risk the backlash many other survivors have faced.

“I left the business,” she said. “I disappeared on purpose because I love being anonymous and I love my life of being a private citizen. Then I watched what has happened to women who come out and it is so horrifying and abusive. The thought of doing that, especially as a mother with a child in my house, was just not possible,” she told the Guardian.

“I just chose in my own way – comments on social media to contradict people who said he didn’t do anything,” she said.

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Updated at 19.25 EDT

Former model Stacey Williams also shed more light on the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of sex offenses and killed himself in prison in 2019.

Williams briefly dated Epstein, and knew Trump as his friend. “It became very clear then that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” Williams said.

One day in 1993, Epstein suggested stopping by Trump Tower while on a walk with Williams, and was present when the real estate mogul groped her, she said.

Here’s what she said happened:

Moments after they arrived, she alleges, Trump greeted Williams, pulled her toward him and started groping her. She said he put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and her buttocks. She said she froze because she was “deeply confused” about what was happening. At the same time, she said, she believed she saw the two men smiling at each other.

… After the alleged incident, Williams said that she and Epstein left Trump Tower, and that she began to feel Epstein growing angry at her.

“Jeffrey and I left and he didn’t look at me or speak to me and I felt this seething rage around me, and when we got down to the sidewalk, he looked at me and just berated me, and said why did you do that?” she said on the Zoom call.

“He made me feel so disgusting and I remember being so utterly confused,” she said.

She described how the alleged incident seemed to her to be part of a “twisted game”.

“I felt shame and disgust and as we went our separate ways, I felt this sensation of revisiting it, while the hands were all over me. And I had this horrible pit in my stomach that it was somehow orchestrated. I felt like a piece of meat,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.

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Updated at 19.22 EDT

Former model tells of being groped by Trump after Epstein introduction

A former model has told the Guardian that Donald Trump groped her at his Manhattan tower in 1993, after she was introduced to the real estate mogul by notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Stacey Williams said Trump put his hands “all over my breasts” as well as her waist and buttocks in their brief meeting, unwanted touching that left her “deeply confused”.

Here is the just-released story by the Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Lucy Osborne:

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Updated at 19.02 EDT