Former President Donald Trump is leading Vice President Kamala Harris in every swing state by narrow but expanding margins, according to a new poll.
The survey of likely American voters from AtlasIntel has revealed that the Republican nominee is favored to win in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania as the 2024 Presidential Election heads into its final days.
Four of the states are polling outside the margin of error.
AtlasIntel boasts in its poll that it was the most accurate in the 2020 election cycle — accurately predicting every swing state within the margin of error.
The Harris-Walz campaign claims late-deciding voters are breaking their way, and by a lot.
Former Obama campaign manager and current senior advisor to the Harris-Walz campaign made a rather bold claim on X/Twitter on Friday.
According to Politico, Plouffe's comments "echo[ed] those shared by senior campaign officials earlier Friday on a call with reporters."
“We have believed all along that there were still undecided voters here, and that the close of this race was really, really important,” said one of the senior campaign officials, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the state of the race. “And we are seeing that be the case as we are closing out in the last week.”
The official said that a recent focus group with undecided voters in a battleground state showed that the racist, misogynistic and vulgar language at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally in New York over the weekend isn’t just impacting Puerto Rican and Latino voters, but undecided voters as a whole.
“It really kind of crystallized for them the choice in their minds between the vice president, who they're seeing talk about being a president for everyone, someone focused on them and solving their problems, and Trump, and these really kind of dark, divisive language and events and activities,” the official said. “We don't always see, when we're talking to swing voters, anything that you can really see them kind of finalize their point of view or finalize their opinion.”
According to the Harris campaign, we're supposed to believe that a comedian’s joke holds more significance than pressing issues like the economy, immigration, and foreign policy.
During a 2WAY livestream, Mark Halperin took aim at the media for uncritically accepting David Plouffe’s claims, saying the assertion “seems questionable on the face.” He argued that proving whether undecided voters were truly swayed by the Madison Square Garden event would require precise analytics, but that hasn’t stopped the media from treating Plouffe’s statements “like it’s a fact” despite lacking hard evidence. Halperin also shared that, based on his conversations with the Trump campaign, they believe undecided voters lean 2-to-1 in Trump’s favor. He may not believe that's entirely true, but was clearly less convinced by Plouffe’s suggestion, which Halperin believes was intended to create a “bandwagon effect” for Kamala, shifting the narrative to portray her as gaining momentum.
Consider this: if the Access Hollywood tape couldn’t derail Trump’s campaign in 2016, there’s little reason to believe that a comedian’s joke at one of his rallies would, either. Americans recognized Trump’s comments as “locker room talk” back then, just as they understand that a comedian known for crude humor is simply aiming for laughs.
When Halperin asked Trump’s campaign advisor, Chris LaCivita, for his take, LaCivita responded bluntly: “What the hell is he going to say? He’s losing? Fact of the matter is David can’t do anything but bulls**t until Tuesday because we are kicking his a**. The only thing the Harris campaign has functional at this point is a bulls**t machine that is dutifully repeated by the legacy media as if fact.”
In the end, both campaigns believe, or are at least claiming, that they have the edge with late-deciding voters. Ignore it all. Just get out there and vote, and make sure every Trump supporter you know votes.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol isweighing directly providing arms to Ukraine, amid the ongoing reports that North Korea has sent some 10,000 troops to Russia, readying them to fight against the Ukrainian military.
FT has noted of the decision in a fresh report that "Seoul has previously resisted entreaties from western allies to draw on its vast stockpiles of military armaments, preferring to contribute to Kyiv’s war effort through non-lethal aid."
Seoul's "answer" to the north might indeed be to weaponize the other side, by providing badly needed 155mm artillery shells to Ukraine. So far this has only allegedly been done indirectly, by routing the shells to the United States. According to more from FT:
Yoon has vowed not to “sit idle” in response to the North Korean deployment. His office confirmed this week that Seoul intended to send a delegation to Ukraine to monitor the North Korean forces, following a call on Tuesday between Yoon and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But this has been consistently opposed by South Korea's left opposition, which maintains a parliamentary majority.
Park Chan-dae, floor leader of the Democratic party, declared days ago that "[Arming Ukraine] is an incredibly dangerous idea that treats people’s lives like pawns in a game of chess."
Yoon "shouldn’t engage South Korea in a proxy war with North Korea . . . in a faraway land," continued Park. He warned that escalating Seoul's involvement in any way would "risk starting a military conflict on the Korean peninsula."
A defense source has pointed out that if Seoul decided to supply Ukraine with artillery shells, significant legal and bureaucratic hurdles would remain in the way:
South Korea’s Defense Procurement Act and Foreign Trade Act currently prohibit the transfer of arms and ammunition to Ukraine, either directly or through third parties. Both laws would need to be amended for the delivery of 155mm shells to be possible.
This development marks another chapter in South Korea’s internal debate on whether to support Ukraine militarily, which was first discussed in July 2023 and again in April 2022. However, despite this consideration, the likelihood of an immediate shift remains unclear as Ukraine continues to await the delivery of K600 mine-clearing tanks, which South Korea had previously pledged.
Zelensky has of late been advancing the idea that the 'enemies' of the West have formed an axis to fight in Ukraine and ultimately push back NATO. He's identified them as Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
So far, the Western alliance is also resisting Ukraine's demands to greenlight long-range missile strikes deep into Russian territory. Putin has warned that this would cross all 'red lines' and unleash major escalation.
The majority of official surveys monitoring American and European support for Ukraine are many months old now. The last time we saw a flurry of polling on the issue was this summer and the media has been rather quiet on the issue since. Why? Because public support for the proxy war is in steep decline.
The last numbers show that 52% of Americans no longer want additional funding for Ukraine. With Donald Trump increasingly likely to return to the White House in 2025 the Ukrainians are already preparing for steep cuts to military aid (the US provides the vast majority of arms to Ukraine). This leaves the EU to pick up the slack.
However, Europe simply doesn't have the capacity to provide enough military aid to make a difference in the war and is currently discussing schemes to transfer frozen Russian assets to the effort while simultaneously scaling back their own funding. Central EU nations like Germany are already cutting their contributions in half in the coming year.
The decline in aid follows two important factors: Public support for the war in America and Europe is waning. And, Ukraine is clearly losing the conflict with their defensive lines in the east collapsing.
Ukraine has received well over $200 billion in the past two years from NATO nations, which eclipses Ukraine's annual GDP of around $160 billion. In other words, the war cannot continue without NATO. The disconnect between US and European governments vs the desires of the general public could not be more obvious. Even the Washington Post admits:
"As they signaled enduring support for Ukraine last week, European leaders worried about how long they can sustain it..."
"European leaders promise to support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” but they are increasingly threatened by public fatigue, a weakening of the political center and the prospect of Trump's return..."
"More than 2½ years into Russia’s war, public fatigue risks taking hold in some countries. Some European leaders are now in politically precarious positions and more constrained in what they can do. And across the continent, parties from the hard right to the hard left are pushing narratives against sending cash or arms..."
In the UK and Europe, protests have erupted over a number of problems, most importantly the threat of mass immigration from third world countries and the deliberate agenda to erase traditional European culture. Some of the unrest has also been related to the Ukraine war and ongoing discussions about "conscription" among government officials.
The UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, is one of many bureaucrats that are trying to lump all civil actions together, labeling them a "threat to democracy." The narrative also seeks to tie these events to "Russian disinformation." In other words, according to David Lammy the public is being brainwashed by Vladimir Putin into protesting and this is a strategy by the Kremlin to sow discord within Europe.
The U.K. government sanctioned three Russian agencies and their senior executives this month, accusing them of orchestrating disinformation campaigns and seeking to fuel anti-Ukraine protests across Europe.
The Social Design Agency (SDA), Structura National Technologies, and Ano Dialog, alongside their directors, are accused of spearheading a “vast malign online network” commonly known as "Doppelganger." The network used “deceitful tactics... to mask the truth around Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and distract from the true nature of the war,” the U.K. Foreign Office said in a statement Monday.
Lammy and others claim this constitutes a "threat to democracy" and he says he will take action to shut down all sources of disinformation. To be sure, Russia is involved in psy-ops as any country at war would be. That said, so is David Lammy and his ilk and they aren't only at war with Russia, they're also at war with the UK and EU populace.
It should be noted that Lammy is becoming a regular fixture at The Atlantic Council, which has been deeply involved in the escalation of Ukrainian tensions with Russia for over a decade. He is also on the advisory board for the European branch of the Council On Foreign Relations. His relationships with globalist institutions helps to explain his hostility to conservative and anti-progressive movements.
As Lammy argues in his recent conference with Ukrainian officials, any sense that allies are not united 'only benefits Putin.' Clearly this "unity" must also extend to the civilian population (by force if necessary), otherwise Lammy and his cohorts look rather ridiculous.
The tactic of attaching all civil dissent to the schemes of a foreign adversary is a tale as old as oligarchy. It's a way for governments to negate or dismiss public opposition to policy without losing face, because they can claim all the dissent is astroturf created by malicious foreign agencies.
China did this with the Hong Kong protests in 2019, seeking to blame western governments after the citizens of Hong Kong opposed being placed under total control of the CCP. In this way, the communist regime marginalized millions of people and their right to self determination simply by painting the protests as engineered. This is exactly what David Lammy is doing with UK and EU citizens that want a reckoning for government trespasses.
This brand of propaganda has been utilized regularly in the US as well, with Democrats consistently blaming Putin and Russia for the rise in conservative movements and the success of the Trump campaign. If the elites were to ever admit that public dissent is legitimate, they would lose the illusion that they are the "protectors of the realm." Without a foreign enemy to blame, these same officials are exposed as the true enemies of "democracy", and they certainly don't want that.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
- George Orwell
We interrupt today's important election coverage for a story that could have impacts even longer-lasting than President Kamala Harris's first ten-trillion-dollar budget.
I'll wash my keyboard out with soap later for typing the phrase "President Kamala Harris."
When the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine was hacked in early October, it looked at first like just another email-and-password smash-and-grab. But that was followed up by repeated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that crippled the service. The Internet Archive was hit again on Oct. 20, "this time with the threat actors gaining access to their Zendesk support email system."
The Wayback Machine came back but as a read-only service.
What that means is, while you can search archived webpages from before the attacks, "you can’t currently capture an existing web page into the archive."
That matters bigly. When the New York Times, Washington Post, or anyone else stealth-edits a news report to hide the truth, you could still find the original on the Wayback Machine. That's no longer true. "For the first time in 30 years, we have gone a long swath of time – since October 8-10 – since this service has chronicled the life of the Internet in real time," the Brownstone Institute reported this week.
As of this writing, fully three weeks of web content have not been archived. What we are missing and what has changed is anyone’s guess. And we have no idea when the service will come back. It is entirely possible that it will not come back, that the only real history to which we can take recourse will be pre-October 8, 2024, the date on which everything changed.
But it gets worse.
Google killed off its cache feature — similar to the Wayback Machine — right around the time the Internet Archive got hacked. Coincidence? Probably. But I'm making a tinfoil hat, just in case.
The White House just got caught altering Presidentish Joe Biden's "garbage" remarks. "Nothing to see here," Sean Davis quipped, "just the Biden-Harris administration deliberately falsifying federal records."
They got caught this time, and sources like X still have the original video. But what happens next time, when some politician or MSM editor waits until the furor dies down before making their stealth edit — and there's no Wayback Machine to catch them?
Wikipedia is the defacto internet encyclopedia but has proven time and again to be biased at best and subject to stealth edits at worst.
More people are using AI to perform their web searches and summaries for them, but the large language models are scraping data from sources increasingly subject to manipulation.
Is Donald Trump's vision of what is wrong with America and how to fix it true or is Bernie Sanders'? I'd say neither is. But what the internet does (especially platforms like Facebook and Twitter) is enable more of us to directly enter the discussion—the argument over who is right and who is wrong. That's a great and liberating development.
Indeed, it is. But our ability to have that argument — to sift through the raw data, past articles, news photographs, etc. — depends on having sources that are both shared and reliable. We used to settle arguments by pulling out a dictionary or a volume from the nearest encyclopedia. Or maybe the Guinness Book, which has reportedly settled more bar bets than any other resource.
But now everything has moved online and, despite what people believe, the internet is not forever.
"We can fact-check your a**," pioneer blogger Ken Layne reminded Big Media back in 2001. We built an entire alternative media based on "navigating this thicket of censorship and quasi-censorship," as Brownstone put it.
