Trump campaign melts down over Harris having beer with Colbert amid deadline to commit to final debate: Live

It’s worth drawing attention to the Vice President’s warning regarding Hurricane Milton on Colbert last night as Floridians brace for landfall.

Here’s what she had to say:

“The hurricane that is about to hit Florida is extremely serious. And it is predicted to be historic in proportion, in terms of the damage it will cause. And I know a lot of tough Floridians that have waited out many hurricanes and may think they can do the same with this one.

“This one’s going to be different.

“I ask anyone who’s watching, if you’re in Florida in the predicted path, if you have a family member who might think they can wait it out, please get in touch with them and tell them it’s not going to be like the ones we’ve seen before.

“Please follow your local leader’s instructions. And if they’re telling you to evacuate, grab your stuff and get out.”

You can, incidentally, follow live coverage of Hurricane Milton via our dedicated liveblog below.

Here’s the Republican nominee baselessly attacking the celebrated news show he backed out of being interviewed by because they presumed to fact-check him after seeing how well Kamala’s appearance on it on Monday night has gone down.

Speaking in Reno, Nevada, Harris’s deputy took Trump to task over Woodward’s reporting on his frequent phone calls with Putin with a characteristically neat line.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, JD Vance broke with his boss by insulting one of his favourite despots, fat-shaming North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Here’s Kelly Rissman on Vance being trolled for praising Barack Obama after saying he would never do so.

Kamala was also on ABC’s female-led panel show The View yesterday, where she received a very warm reception indeed and again attacked Trump for his Hurricane Helene lies as “the height of irresponsibility and frankly callousness” and indicative of his general lack of empathy.

She also rebuked him for his preoccupation with his own “grievances”, unveiled a new policy to expand the remit of Medicare and pledged to have a Republican in her Cabinet in the interests of bipartisanship.

Here’s Inga Parkel on what she had to say about being spoofed by Maya Rudolph on Saturday Night Live.

In return, here’s Trump on Newsmax rubbishing the great Bob Woodward, advising Israel on how best to blow up Iran, saying he considers all Haitians immigrants “illegal” even if they arrived in Springfield, Ohio, legally, warning against taxing the rich (he’s a billionaire!) and fantasizing about winning California while spreading election denialism.

And, for a bonus, here’s Melania selling magic beans on Fox News’s The Five.

In the interests of impartiality, we’re going to have to juggle back and forth between Harris and Trump’s duelling media appearances for a bit.

First up, here’s Kamala talking to the largely-reformed shock jock Howard Stern on his SiriusXM radio show yesterday, a mostly-friendly hour-long conversation focused on the threat posed by Trump, “an unserious man”, Harris said, whose re-election would have “hugely serious” consequences for everyone.

Alex Woodward was tuning in.

Of course they are. How utterly perfect.

The same book finds the 46th president on angry form, frequently cursing out his various enemies.

In one incredible passage spotted by CNN, Woodward quotes Biden complaining to an unnamed friend that Barack Obama failed to take the threat posed by Putin seriously, even when Russia annexed Crimea and the Kremlin’s “little green men” began appearing in the Donbas, and declares:

“They f***d up in 2014. That’s why we are here. We f***ed it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.

“We did nothing. We gave Putin a license to continue!

“Well, I’m revoking his f***ing license!”

Here’s more from Rhian Lubin on Scranton Joe.

Veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book War alleges that Trump has had “at least seven” phone calls with Russia’s pariah president Vladimir Putin since leaving the White House and even sent him “a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines” for his personal use during the pandemic when they were in short supply.

Both the Trump campaign and the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov have now denied those claims, with the aforementioned Steven Cheung dismissing the Watergate hero’s work accordingly:

“None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump derangement syndrome.

“Woodward is an angry little man and is clearly upset because President Trump is successfully suing him because of the unauthorized publishing of recordings he made previously.

“President Trump gave him absolutely no access for this trash book that either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or is used as toilet tissue.

“Woodward is a total sleazebag who has lost it mentally, and he’s slow, lethargic, incompetent, and overall a boring person with no personality.”

Another interesting line on Trump from Woodward, sleazebag or not, comes from South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, who is quoted as saying: “Trump is becoming more erratic. These court cases. I think they would rattle anybody.”

Kamala Harris attacked Trump for his admiration of “strongmen” dictators like Putin during her interview with Colbert last night, saying of Woodward’s Covid allegation:

“You remember how many people did not have tests and were trying to scramble to get them?

“You remember how rare it was to have one? You remember people by the hundreds were dying every day? We would watch the number every day being reported of people who were dying, people who were in hospitals without their family, where the only touch that they had was of a nurse that they hadn’t met because the family could not get there.

“And this man is giving Covid test kits to Vladimir Putin. Think about what this means. On top of him sending love letters to Kim Jong-un. No, think about it. He thinks Vladimir Putin is his friend. What about the American people? They should be your first friend.”

Here’s more from Alex Woodward (no relation!)

The Republican nominee is meanwhile running out of time if he plans to accept CNN’s offer to host a final presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 23, which Harris has already accepted.

The network has stepped up the pressure on Trump, giving him until Thursday to make up his mind.

“CNN sent invitations on September 21 to both Vice President Harris and former President Trump’s campaigns to participate in a CNN debate this fall as we believe the American people would benefit from a second debate between the two candidates for President of the United States,” it said in a statement.

“With less than 30 days to Election Day, we are placing a deadline for a formal response from both campaigns for this Thursday, October 10 at 12pm ET to participate.”

It was a CNN debate in that same city on June 27 that led to the demise of Joe Biden’s candidacy but Trump has since been bested on stage by Harris in Philadelphia, inadvertently going viral on September 10 for elevating an insane internet conspiracy theory about Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

Trump has so far insisted it is “too late” to have another debate before Election Day on November 5, although doing so would actually be entirely consistent with recent election cycles, suggesting he might be chicken.