The Latest: Harris and Trump focus on closing messages with rallies in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona

Former President Donald Trump will be holding rallies in Tempe, Arizona, and Las Vegas on Thursday. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris will be holding a rally Thursday night in the Atlanta suburbs with former President Barack Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the latest:

By moving to podcasts, Harris and Trump are turning away from legacy media to spread their messages

Among the legacy news outlets that have come up empty in their efforts to interview Kamala Harris and Donald Trump during the general election campaign: NPR, The New York Times, PBS and The Washington Post.

Yet Harris chose to meet with Alex Cooper for her “Call Her Daddy” podcast and talk a little Bay Area basketball with the fellows on “All the Smoke.” Trump rejected “60 Minutes,” but has hung out with the bros on “Bussin’ With the Boys” and “Flagrant.”

During this truncated campaign, some of the traditional giants of journalism are being pushed aside. The growing popularity of podcasts and their ability to help candidates in a tight race target a specific sliver of the electorate is a big reason why.

There are certainly exceptions. Harris spoke to NBC News’ Hallie Jackson on Tuesday and held a CNN town hall on Wednesday. But political columnist John Heilemann of Puck noticed what he called “an ancient, dying beast railing against the diminishment of its status and stature in the new world.”

Read more about the candidates and the media

Donald Trump says he would fire special counsel Jack Smith ‘within two seconds’ of taking office if elected president

In an interview Thursday on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Trump was asked whether he’d first pardon himself or terminate Smith to remove the legal cloud hanging over him as he seeks to reclaim the presidency.

He responded that the decision was “so easy” and that “I would fire him within two seconds.”

Trump can order the Justice Department to remove Smith though he would technically not be able to do it himself since Smith isn’t a presidential appointee and was instead named to the post by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

When he was investigated by a special counsel as president, Trump urged his then-White House counsel, Don McGahn, to press the Justice Department for Robert Mueller’s termination but McGahn refused and Mueller remained in his position.

Smith has brought two federal cases against Trump. One, accusing him of illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, was dismissed in July. The other, charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, has been delayed by a Supreme Court opinion conferring broad immunity on former presidents.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler says she’s noticed additional momentum over the past two weeks for Harris

And she expects to pull in more volunteers for outreach as the election nears.

Shuler said the unions have been keeping track of their conversations with members, saying that as of now, 64% of those they’ve spoken to will back Harris and 19% will back Republican Donald Trump. Those numbers leave some room for voters who might support the former president but declined to say so, as well as undecided voters who might ultimately support Harris.

In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 16% of voters came from union households, 56% of which backed President Joe Biden and 42% went for Trump.

President Biden will meet with labor leaders in Pittsburgh on Saturday to help shore up their critical support for Harris in Pennsylvania

Biden will meet with local leadership of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, and he’ll be joined by President Brent Booker.

Biden, who has said he’s the most pro-union president in history, walked the picket line with the United Auto Workers and his administration worked most recently to prevent the dock workers strike. Biden has been calling local union workers in the critical battleground state to push for continued mobilization on behalf of his vice president, the Democratic nominee.

Beyoncé, whose ‘Freedom’ is Harris’ campaign anthem, is expected at the Democrat’s Texas rally on Friday

Beyoncé is expected to appear Friday in her hometown of Houston at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Harris’ presidential campaign has taken on Beyonce’s 2016 track “Freedom” as its anthem, and the singer’s planned appearance brings a high level of star power to what’s become a key theme of the Democratic nominee’s bid: freedom.

Harris headed to the reliably Republican state just 10 days before Election Day in an effort to refocus her campaign against former President Donald Trump on reproductive care.

The three people weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Harris campaign did not immediately comment.

Read more about Beyoncé at Harris’ rally

With two women running, the New Hampshire governor’s race is both close and personal

One of the nation’s most competitive gubernatorial races has also become intensely personal.

None of the nation’s 12 female governors are up for reelection, but five women are running as major party gubernatorial nominees in four states. Two of them are in New Hampshire, where Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig are competing to succeed Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who’s not seeking a fifth two-year term.

While voters and the candidates themselves say their gender is a nonissue in a state with a history of electing women to top offices, it has influenced their approaches to the topic of abortion and reproductive health care. Both candidates have produced television ads in which they describe having miscarriages after medical appointments during which no fetal heartbeats were detected.

Read more about the New Hampshire governor’s race

Trump claims he is ‘maybe more conservative than any human being that’s ever lived’

The comment during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt came after Hewitt gave the Republican former president a chance to claim the moderate mantle in the closing days of the 2024 campaign, an opening Trump swiftly closed.

“You’re not a particularly conservative. You’re not as conservative as Ronald Reagan. And you’ve tried to make that point. You’re kind of a moderate Republican, aren’t you?” Hewitt asked.

“I’m very, very conservative,” Trump said. “Maybe more conservative than any human being that’s ever lived.”

One of the primary criticisms of Trump when he entered political life in 2015, especially from conservative Republicans, was that he wasn’t a true conservative. Trump had been a registered Democrat during portions of his business career in New York and received considerable coverage at the outset of his successful 2016 campaign for being a moderate Republican, something his primary opponents like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio used against him.

Trump says he watched Harris’ Wednesday night town hall on CNN

Speaking during a Thursday morning interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump called the vice president’s performance “an embarrassment.”

“I watched her charade story last night on CNN,” Trump said during the friendly interview. “It was an embarrassment that she was running for president, representing a major party.”

The town hall with CNN was meant to replace a second debate between Trump and Harris. After one debate with Harris, the former president declined to participate in another debate and did not accept CNN’s invitation for a town hall.

Harris used the forum to lambast Trump before an audience of undecided voters in Pennsylvania. She agreed — twice — that Trump was a fascist, echoing the criticism of Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, and said if Trump is elected again, he would be “a president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

Trump returned to the town hall later in the interview, saying Harris was “like a child almost.”

The RNC is rebuilding its legal operation after Trump allies’ failed effort to undo the 2020 race

The last time Donald Trump ran for president, the lawyers most directly involved in his efforts to overturn the election wound up sanctioned, criminally prosecuted or even sued for millions of dollars.

This time around, Republican party leaders are working to present a more organized, skilled legal operation even as Trump continues to deny he lost the 2020 election and sows doubt about the integrity of the upcoming one.

“It has been very important to make sure that in every aspect, we are going to have a fully professional operation,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley told The Associated Press.

As Republicans and Democrats fight in court over election rules, the Trump team finds itself under a particularly intense microscope given the aftermath of the 2020 race when meritless legal efforts challenging the results were repeatedly rejected by judges appointed by presidents of both political parties.

Read more about the Republican legal operation

Republican former Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid

His endorsement on Thursday marks another cross-party backing for the Democratic presidential nominee, who’s campaigned this week with Liz Cheney, the GOP former Wyoming congresswoman.

Both Upton and Cheney were among the House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Upton, who represented West Michigan and served in Congress for 36 years, said in a statement that Trump is “unfit to serve as commander in chief again.” Upton said he has already cast his ballot for Harris.

“Time and time again respected senior national Republicans have urged our former president to focus on governing rather than personal attacks, mistruths, and continued false 2020 election claims,” said Upton. “Instead of heeding that advice, we see unhinged behavior not acceptable in most forums almost daily.”

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