Donald Trump blasts ‘fake’ Kamala Harris as he points out ‘glaring flaw’ in ‘staged’ photo
Donald Trump has launched into a bizarre rant over a photograph of his election rival Vice President Kamala Harris.
An image posted on the Vice President’s account on X shows the Democrat candidate aboard a plane with headphones while seemingly on a call.
The post mentioned she was coordinating with North Carolina’s governor Roy Cooper to help the state’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Helene killed at least 30 in the Asheville area.
However, the former President claimed the photograph showed the headphones were not plugged in.
The photo was captioned: “I was just briefed by [FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell] on the latest developments about the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene. We also discussed our Administration’s continued actions to support emergency response and recovery.”
On his Truth Social page, Trump said: “You have to plug the cord into the phone for it to work… Another fake and staged photo from someone who has no clue what she is doing.”
However, the angle of the image does not provide a sight-line to the port in the Vice President’s phone, raising the possibility that her headphones were in fact plugged in to the device.
Also, the earphone’s cord falls straight down seemingly on the VP’s lap and not onto the phone one the table before her, also meaning there could be a second phone.
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It comes as the vice-presidential candidates, Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance, will go head to head later today at the only vice presidential debate before the November 5 election.
Walz, 60, a liberal governor and former high school teacher, and Vance, 40, a bestselling author and controversial conservative senator will face off during the 90-minute debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York.
Harris was widely viewed as the winner of her sole debate with Trump on September 10 in Philadelphia, which was watched by an estimated 67 million people.
That square-off did little to change the trajectory of an extremely close election battle. While Harris has edged ahead in national polls of the electorate, most surveys show voters remain fairly evenly divided in the seven states that will decide the November election.
Walz, who has sought to cultivate a homespun image as a former high school football coach, is expected to get Vance to defend his 2021 comments criticizing Harris and other Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”
Walz is also likely to go after Vance for spreading a fictional story of Haitian immigrants eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio, a false claim that Trump has repeated and that local officials say has drawn bomb threats.
Trump advisers said Vance can be expected to try to force Walz to defend the Biden-Harris administration’s policies on immigration and the economy, as well his own handling of the riots in Minneapolis in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white policeman.
Vance will also bring up questions about Walz’s military service, said Tom Behrends, a retired command sergeant major who joined a Trump campaign call about the debate.
Republicans have accused Walz of exaggerating his final rank in the Army National Guard, where he served for 24 years. Walz has in the past described himself as a retired command sergeant major, one of the highest non-commissioned officer positions in the Army.
While he achieved that rank, he did not meet the requirements to retire with that title.