Politics
Dem Party blame game: Accusations fly as to who is responsible for Harris' massive loss to Trump
The Democratic blame game is at a fever pitch after Vice President Kamala Harris was swiftly defeated by President-elect Donald Trump at the ballot box in an election that had been anticipated to drag out for days as polling indicated the match-up was razor-thin.
Trump sailed to victory in the early morning hours last Wednesday, after locking down key battlegrounds such as Pennsylvania and Georgia and clearing 270 electoral votes. He concluded the race with 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226, and won the popular vote.
In the final days of the campaigning cycle, polling indicated that the results for the election would likely be very close, which could have resulted in state recounts and lawsuits before the winner was announced.
Following Trump’s clear victory, Democrats across the nation issued statements accepting the results and congratulating the president. Fallout from the devastating loss, however, has reverberated across the party as members point fingers at each other for the Trump win.
5 MISTAKES THAT DOOMED KAMALA HARRIS’ CAMPAIGN AGAINST TRUMP
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a concession speech after the 2024 presidential election, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi spar over claims Dems ‘abandoned working class’
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders pinned blame for the loss on the Democratic Party for “abandoning” the working class, sparking rebuke from former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change,” Sanders posted to X last week, accompanied by a press release on the election results. “And they’re right.”
NANCY PELOSI FIRES BACK AT BERNIE SANDERS FOR COMMENTS ON DEMS’ SWEEPING ELECTION LOSS: NO ‘RESPECT’
Pelosi responded that the party has not left the working class behind in favor of kowtowing to “big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party,” as Sanders had argued in his press release.
“With all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him [Sanders], for what he stands for, but I don’t respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families. That’s where we are,” Pelosi told The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast on Saturday.
Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to speak during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Under President Biden, you see the rescue package, money in the pockets of people, the shots in the arm, children in school safely, working people back to work. What did Trump do when he was president? One bill that gave a tax cut to the richest people in America,” she continued.
Sanders doubled down on his remarks Sunday, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker that “the working people of this country are extremely angry.”
“Nancy is a friend of mine,” Sanders said. “But here is the reality. In the Senate in the last two years, we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour.”
SANDERS DOUBLES DOWN ON HIS CRITICISM OF DEMOCRATS, FIRES BACK AT PELOSI’S PUSHBACK
“Bottom line, if you’re a working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the max, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no,” Sanders said.
Harris, Biden campaigns pin blame on each other
The Harris campaign and Biden campaign have reportedly pinned blame for the loss on each other, Axios reported last week.
“The 107-day Harris campaign was nearly flawless. The Biden campaign that preceded it was the opposite,” one Harris campaign member told the outlet.
“We did what we could. I think the odds against us were insurmountable,” another individual involved with the Harris campaign said, referring to President Biden’s exit from the presidential race in July and his low approval ratings.
Biden dropped out of the race over the summer following his disastrous debate performance against Trump, where he frequently lost his train of thought and stumbled over his words. The debate opened the floodgates to both conservatives and traditional Democrat allies calling on the president to pass the torch to a younger generation as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and his age.
THE ‘SQUAD,’ WARREN AND SANDERS AMONG PROMINENT POLITICAL FIGURES WHO CRUISED TO RE-ELECTION VICTORIES
Many of those who worked on the Biden campaign also joined the Harris campaign following the president’s endorsement of his VP to take up the mantle as Democratic presidential candidate.
A person who worked on the Biden campaign shot back in comment to Axios that the Harris team was to blame: “How did you spend $1 billion and not win? What the f—?”
“The Harris team benched [Biden], and then they lost, so now the people who represent Biden are saying, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have benched him,’” another person familiar with the dynamics between the teams said.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the outlet, “Anyone criticizing the vice president’s campaign is at odds with President Biden.”
Pelosi points to Biden for loss
Pelosi appeared to pin blame for the loss on the president, claiming that Biden had dropped out of the race too late in the game and that that hadn’t provided an opportunity for an open primary.
“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” she told the New York Times podcast.
“The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” Pelosi continued. “. . . Because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.”
TRUMP WINS ARIZONA TO SWEEP SWING STATES AND SECURE 312 TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES
Biden dropped out of the presidential race on a Sunday afternoon in July via a social media post. He endorsed Harris minutes later in a follow-up X post, sparking other Democrats to rally around the VP.
Pelosi did defend Biden in June, when the Wall Street Journal ran an article doubting Biden’s mental fitness as president.
”Many of us spent time with @WSJ to share on the record our first-hand experiences with @POTUS, where we see his wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking,” Pelosi wrote on X at the time. “Instead, the Journal ignored testimony by Democrats, focused on attacks by Republicans and printed a hit piece.”
Pelosi, as well as other high-profile Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also notably called on Biden to run for a second term ahead of the 2024 cycle kicking off in earnest.
Obama to blame?
Other Democrats and insiders pointed to former President Barack Obama for the loss, after Obama reportedly worked in the background over the summer to encourage Biden’s ouster from the race.
A handful of Obama’s allies and former advisers helped lead the charge in calling on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race earlier this summer, including former Obama adviser David Axelrod saying that Biden was “not winning this race;” longtime Obama friend George Clooney calling on the president to drop out of the race in a bombshell op-ed; and Jon Favreau, who served as former director of speech writing for Obama, also calling on Biden to drop out of the race ahead of his eventual departure.
“There is no singular reason why we lost, but a big reason is because the Obama advisers publicly encouraged Democratic infighting to push Joe Biden out, didn’t even want Kamala Harris as the nominee, and then signed up as the saviors of the campaign, only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama,” one former Biden staffer told Politico.
Former President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign rally supporting Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
DNC National Finance Committee member and Harris campaign fundraiser Lindy Li told Fox News this weekend that Obama’s seemingly delayed endorsement of Harris after Biden dropped out added to Harris’ defeat.
”I want to point out they waited three days – Michelle and Barack Obama waited three days to endorse Kamala Harris,” Li said on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday. “It was the silence heard round the world.”
“The truth is, this is just an epic disaster – this is a $1 billion disaster,” Li added during the interview.
‘ABANDON HARRIS’ MOVEMENT FLIPPED DEARBORN TO TRUMP ON ELECTION DAY
Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, with the Obamas endorsing Harris in a video message posted to social media on July 26, five days after Biden’s announcement. The silence was not lost on the media, as headlines spread across the nation on Obama’s “silence.”
David Axelrod says Dem Party morphing into ‘smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party’
Similar to Sanders, longtime Democratic strategist David Axelrod appeared to pin blame for the loss on the Democratic Party’s shift away from blue-collar, middle class voters.
“You can’t approach working people like missionaries and say, ‘We’re here to help you become more like us.’ There’s a kind of unspoken disdain, unintended disdain in that,” the CNN contributor said last week.
“The only group … Democrats won among were people who make more than $100,000 a year,” Axelrod said. “You can’t win national elections that way, and it certainly shouldn’t be that way for a party that fashions itself as the party of working people.”
“I think Biden has done programmatically some good things for working people. But the party itself has increasingly become a smarty-pants, suburban, college-educated party, and it lends itself to the kind of backlash that we’ve seen,” he continued.
Claims of underwhelming VP choice
Politics
Kamala Harris blasts Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s Maduro as ‘unlawful and unwise’
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Former Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday evening condemned the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, calling the operation both “unlawful” and “unwise.”
In a lengthy post on X, Harris acknowledged that Maduro is a “brutal” and “illegitimate” dictator but said that President Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela “do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable.”
“Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable,” Harris wrote. “That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before.
“Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price.”
SEE PICS: VENEZUELANS WORLDWIDE CELEBRATE AS EXILES REACT TO MADURO’S CAPTURE
Vice President Kamala Harris had strong words for the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
Harris made the remarks hours after the Trump administration confirmed that Maduro and his wife were captured and transported out of Venezuela as part of “Operation Absolute Resolve.”
The former vice president also accused the administration of being motivated by oil interests rather than efforts to combat drug trafficking or promote democracy.
“The American people do not want this, and they are tired of being lied to. This is not about drugs or democracy. It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman,” Harris said. “If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies.”
SECOND FRONT: HOW A SOCIALIST CELL IN THE US MOBILIZED PRO-MADURO FOOT SOLDIERS WITHIN 12 HOURS
President Donald Trump shared a photo of captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima after Saturday’s strikes on Venezuela. (Donald Trump via Truth Social)
Harris, who has been rumored as a potential Democratic contender in the 2028 presidential race, additionally accused the president of endangering U.S. troops and destabilizing the region.
“The President is putting troops at risk, spending billions, destabilizing a region, and offering no legal authority, no exit plan, and no benefit at home,” she said. “America needs leadership whose priorities are lowering costs for working families, enforcing the rule of law, strengthening alliances, and — most importantly — putting the American people first.”
MADURO’S FALL SPARKS SUSPICION OF BETRAYAL INSIDE VENEZUELA’S RULING ELITE
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, left, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio watch U.S. military operations in Venezuela from Mar-a-Lago in Florida early Saturday. (Donald Trump via Truth Social)
Maduro and his wife arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn late Saturday after being transported by helicopter from the DEA in Manhattan after being processed.
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Earlier in the day, Trump said that the U.S. government will “run” Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
Harris’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.
CARACAS, Venezuela — It was about 2 a.m. Saturday Caracas time when the detonations began, lighting up the sullen sky like a post-New Year’s fireworks display.
“¡Ya comenzó!” was the recurrent phrase in homes, telephone conversations and social media chats as the latest iteration of U.S. “shock and awe” rocked the Venezuelan capital. “It has begun!”
Then the question: “¿Maduro?”
The great uncertainty was the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro, who has been under Trump administration threat for months.
The scenes of revelry from a joyous Venezuelan diaspora celebrating from Miami to Madrid were not repeated here. Fear of the unknown kept most at home.
Hours would pass before news reports from outside Venezuela confirmed that U.S. forces had captured Maduro and placed him on a U.S. ship to face criminal charges in federal court in New York.
Venezuelans had watched the unfolding spectacle from their homes, using social media to exchange images of explosions and the sounds of bombardment. This moment, it was clear, was ushering in a new era of uncertainly for Venezuela, a nation reeling from a decade of economic, political and social unrest.
Government supporters display posters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, and former President Hugo Chávez in downtown Caracas on Saturday.
(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)
The ultimate result was an imponderable. But that this was a transformative moment — for good or bad — seemed indisputable.
By daybreak, an uneasy calm overtook the city of more than 3 million. The explosions and the drone of U.S. aircraft ceased. Blackouts cut electricity to parts of the capital.
Pro-government youths wielding automatic rifles set up roadblocks or sped through the streets on motorcycles, a warning to those who might celebrate Maduro’s downfall.
Shops, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed. There was little traffic.
“When I heard the explosions, I grabbed my rosary and began to pray,” said Carolina Méndez, 50, who was among the few who ventured out Saturday, seeking medicines at a pharmacy, though no personnel had arrived to attend to clients waiting on line. “I’m very scared now. That’s why I came to buy what I need.”
A sense of alarm was ubiquitous.
Motorcycles and cars line up for gas Saturday in Caracas. Most of the population stayed indoors, reluctant to leave their homes except for gas and food.
(Andrea Hernandez Briceno / For The Times)
“People are buying bottled water, milk and eggs,” said Luz Pérez, a guard at one of the few open shops, not far from La Carlota airport, one of the sites targeted by U.S. strikes. “I heard the explosions. It was very scary. But the owner decided to open anyway to help people.”
Customers were being allowed to enter three at a time. Most didn’t want to speak. Their priority was to stock up on basics and get home safely.
Rumors circulated rapidly that U.S. forces had whisked away Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
There was no immediate official confirmation here of the detention of Maduro and Flores, both wanted in the United States for drug-trafficking charges — allegations that Maduro has denounced as U.S. propaganda. But then images of an apparently captive Maduro, blindfolded, in a sweatsuit soon circulated on social media.
There was no official estimate of Venezuelan casualties in the U.S. raid.
Rumors circulated indicating that a number of top Maduro aides had been killed, among them Diosdado Cabello, the security minister who is a staunch Maduro ally. Cabello is often the face of the government.
But Cabello soon appeared on official TV denouncing “the terrorist attack against our people,” adding: “Let no one facilitate the moves of the enemy invader.”
Although Trump, in his Saturday news conference, confidently predicted that the United States would “run” Venezuela, apparently during some undefined transitional period, it’s not clear how that will be accomplished.
A key question is whether the military — long a Maduro ally — will remain loyal now that he is in U.S. custody. There was no public indication Saturday of mass defections from the Venezuelan armed forces. Nor was it clear that Maduro’s government infrastructure had lost control of the country. Official media reported declarations of loyalty from pro-government politicians and citizens from throughout Venezuela.
A billboard with an image of President Nicolas Maduro stands next to La Carlota military base in Caracas, Venezuela, on Saturday. The graffiti reads, “Fraud, fraud.”
(Andrea Hernandez Briceno / For The Times)
In his comments, Trump spoke of a limited U.S. troop presence in Venezuela, focused mostly on protecting the oil infrastructure that his administration says was stolen from the United States — a characterization widely rejected here, even among Maduro’s critics. But Trump offered few details on sending in U.S. personnel to facilitate what could be a tumultuous transition.
Meantime, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez surfaced on official television and demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, according to the official Telesur broadcast outlet. Her comments seemed to be the first official acknowledgment that Maduro had been taken.
“There is one president of this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” the vice president said in an address from Miraflores Palace, from where Maduro and his wife had been seized hours earlier.
During an emergency meeting of the National Defense Council, Telesur reported, Rodríguez labeled the couple’s detention an “illegal kidnapping.”
The Trump administration, the vice president charged, meant to “capture our energy, mineral and [other] natural resources.”
Her defiant words came after Trump, in his news conference, said that Rodríguez had been sworn in as the country’s interim president and had evinced a willingness to cooperate with Washington.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.
Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Saturday after President Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country.
(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)
Somewhat surprisingly, Trump also seemed to rule out a role in an interim government for Marina Corina Machado, the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime anti-Maduro activist.
“She’s a very nice woman, but doesn’t have respect within the country,” Trump said of Machado.
Machado is indeed a controversial figure within the fractured Venezuelan opposition. Some object to her open calls for U.S. intervention, preferring a democratic change in government.
Nonetheless, her stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, did win the presidency in national balloting last year, according to opposition activists and others, who say Maduro stole the election.
“Venezuelans, the moment of liberty has arrived!” Machado wrote in a letter released on X. “We have fought for years. … What was meant to happen is happening.”
Not everyone agreed.
“They want our oil and they say it’s theirs,” said Roberto, 65, a taxi driver who declined to give his last name for security reasons. “Venezuelans don’t agree. Yes, I think people will go out and defend their homeland.”
Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston. Contributing was special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City.
Politics
Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizes Trump’s meetings with Zelenskyy, Netanyahu: ‘Can we just do America?’
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Sunday called for President Trump to only focus on America’s needs as the president meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president has been heavily involved in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts since returning to the White House.
Trump met with Zelenskyy on Sunday at Mar-a-Lago to discuss a peace plan aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war that began with an invasion by Moscow in February 2022.
Netanyahu arrived in Florida on Sunday ahead of their scheduled meeting on Monday at Trump’s estate to address Israel’s conflicts in the Middle East. It will be the sixth meeting of the year between the two leaders.
TRUMP ZELENSKYY SAY UKRAINE PEACE DEAL CLOSE BUT ‘THORNY ISSUES’ REMAIN AFTER FLORIDA TALKS
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized President Donald Trump’s meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Greene, responding to Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy and Netanyahu, said that the Trump administration should address the needs of Americans rather than becoming further involved in global conflicts.
“Zelensky today. Netanyahu tomorrow,” she wrote on X.
President Donald Trump welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. (Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)
“Can we just do America?” the congresswoman continued.
The congresswoman has been a vocal critic of supplying U.S. military aid to foreign countries amid the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.
She has also referred to Zelenskyy as “a dictator who canceled elections” and labeled Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide and humanitarian crisis.
ZELENSKYY READY TO PRESENT NEW PEACE PROPOSALS TO US AND RUSSIA AFTER WORKING WITH EUROPEAN TALKS
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and President Donald Trump had a public feud in recent months. (Getty Images)
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This comes after Taylor Greene, who is set to resign from the House in January, had a public spat with Trump over the past few months as Trump took issue with the Georgia Republican’s push to release documents related to the investigations into deceased sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump had withdrawn his endorsement of Greene and called her a “traitor” over the public feud.
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