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August 21, 2024

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Vice President Kamala Harris has not released a policy page on her campaign website to detail her positions on key issues such as the economy and immigration, sparking the Trump campaign to create and release a platform website for her, Fox News Digital exclusively learned. 

‘Kamala Harris has yet to tell voters what her policies are, so we thought we’d help them out. Kamala Harris wants to open the borders, raise taxes, and free criminals,’ a Trump campaign national press secretary told Fox News Digital about the website. 

Kamala2024policies.com launched Wednesday morning on the third day of the DNC and takes viewers to a website declaring, ‘Kamala Harris’ dangerous policies are nothing to laugh about.’ The site details nine policy platforms for the Harris campaign, including declaring Harris fought ‘to set murderers free,’ wants to ‘abolish the border,’ seeks to ‘eliminate private health insurance’ and wants to give illegal immigrants Social Security and Medicare. 

‘Border Czar Kamala Harris opened the southern border to illegal alien criminals and deadly fentanyl, and as vice president, was the tie-breaking vote for far-left spending bills that raised taxes and sent prices skyrocketing for families across the country. While Harris has tried to rewrite history on her extreme record, she can’t hide from her promises to set murderers free, dismantle America’s border security, raise costs with massive spending bills, bring back the Green New Deal Scam, eliminate private health insurance, and more,’ the website states. 

The platform website notably hits the Harris camp on some of the most important issues this election cycle: the economy, spiraling inflation and taxes. 

‘Record high gas prices under the Harris-Biden administration is the ‘price to pay for democracy.’ Remember, Kamala proudly delivered the deciding vote that allowed the $1.9 trillion ‘stimulus’ to be passed. Don’t listen to former Obama economist Jason Furman, who said the spending bill is ‘too big,’ or former Obama and Clinton economist Larry Summers, who said the ‘tremendous wall of money’ led to inflation, or former Obama economic advisor Steven Rattner, who called Kamala’s $1.9 trillion stimulus ‘the original sin’ of inflation,’ the website says. 

On taxes, the Trump camp said ‘the middle-class will need to pay more’ under a potential Harris administration.  

‘Kamala Harris wants to eliminate the Trump tax cuts, which would mean a massive tax hike on middle-income families,’ the site says. ‘Harris was the deciding vote for the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which decreased the ‘average after-tax income for taxpayers at every income level. Americans earning less than $200,000/year saw their taxes rise by $16.7 billion in 2023.’

Harris proposed a handful of economic policies last week, including plans to implement federal price controls on groceries and other everyday expenses and raising the corporate tax rate, but the campaign has not detailed those policies or any others on its official website. The campaign website instead features biographies of both Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as well as donation buttons and a merchandise shop. 

Harris and Walz are in Chicago this week, where thousands of supporters are gathered for the Democratic National Convention. Harris rose to the top of the Democratic ticket last month after President Biden dropped out of the race amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity and age. Shortly after dropping out, he endorsed Harris to take up the mantle. 

Despite becoming the party’s presumptive nominee 31 days ago, Harris has also not yet held a formal press conference or sit-down interview with the media to detail her vision of a potential Harris administration. She has instead held repeated campaign events and rallies across the country, speaking to the crowds and only giving informal remarks to reporters while on the trail. 

Historically, presidential candidates have had campaign policy pages readily available for voters. When President Biden was on the campaign trail in 2020, a group of advisers crafted a 110-page policy document, according to The New York Times, which also reported Harris’ lack of a campaign platform on her site. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016 had a page with 200 distinct policy proposals on record. 

Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign website also includes a tab titled, ‘platform,’ which features the GOP’s 20-point policy agenda that covers issues ranging from the economy, ongoing crime and tax cuts.  

Pressure has also built on the Harris campaign to hold a press conference after weeks of avoiding the media, including CNN’s Jim Acosta questioning Harris’ communications director Michael Tyler last week on air. 

‘I’m sure this is not going to be the first time you’ve heard this question, but the Trump campaign is also going after the vice president for not doing enough interviews, for not holding a press conference. Would it kill you guys to have a press conference? Why hasn’t she had a press conference?’ Acosta asked. 

Tyler said that Harris and Walz have been ‘busy’ traveling across the country, citing multiple campaign rallies.

‘Michael, you know a campaign rally isn’t really a press conference,’ Acosta said to Tyler. ‘Why hasn’t she had a press conference? She’s the vice president, she can handle the questions. Why not do it?’ 

Tyler said Harris would hold a press conference at some point and would sit down for an interview with a media outlet by the end of the month. 

Some supporters of the Harris-Walz ticket have, meanwhile, struggled to identify the vice president’s accomplishments in interviews with Fox News in recent days. 

‘I really don’t know much of what she did,’ Bernard, an independent voter from New York who attended the American Federation of Teachers’ Convention last month, told Fox News Digital of Harris. 

‘I’m not sure I know enough about her accomplishments to answer that question,’ added Eric, a Harris supporter from Massachusetts.

The DNC kicked off in Chicago on Monday and has included a handful of high-profile Democrats taking the stage at the United Center to sing Harris’ praises, while also declaring support for Biden after dozens of Democrats called on him to exit the race last month. Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former first lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama have all held solo speeches this week in support of the Harris-Walz ticket. 

‘As a prosecutor, Kamala stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse,’ former President Obama said Tuesday evening. ‘As an attorney general of the most populous state in the country, she fought big banks and for-profit colleges, securing billions of dollars for the people they had scammed. After the home mortgage crisis, she pushed me and my administration hard to make sure homeowners got a fair settlement. Didn’t matter that I was a Democrat. Didn’t matter she had knocked on doors for my campaign in Iowa – she was going to fight to get as much relief as possible for the families who deserved it.’

He also praised Biden as a friend and ‘brother,’ despite his reported role in helping oust his former vice president from the 2024 White House run. 

‘History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. And I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend,’ the 44th president said of Biden. 

Harris is slated to take the DNC’s stage on Thursday evening, when she will deliver her acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination. 

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report. 

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Michelle Obama said during her speech on the second night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago Tuesday that her parents ‘were suspicious of folks who took more than they needed.’

But critics quickly pointed out how she conveniently omitted that the Obamas have an estimated net worth of $70 million, as well as luxury real estate holdings in Chicago, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. 

The former first lady began her DNC speech by saying the last time she was in her hometown of Chicago was to memorialize her mother, the woman ‘who showed me the meaning of hard work and humility and decency’ and ‘who set my moral compass high and showed me the power of my own voice.’ 

‘She and my father didn’t aspire to be wealthy. In fact, they were suspicious of folks who took more than they needed,’ Michelle Obama said. ‘They understood that it wasn’t enough for their kids to thrive if everyone else around us was drowning. So my mother volunteered at the local school.’ 

Her mother ‘always looked out for the other kids on the block’ and ‘was glad to do the thankless, unglamorous work that for generations has strengthened the fabric of this nation,’ Michelle Obama continued. ‘The belief that if you do unto others, if you love thy neighbor. If you work and scrape and sacrifice, it will pay off. If not for you, then maybe for your children or your grandchildren.’ 

‘You see, those values have been passed on through family farms and factory towns, through tree-lined streets and crowded tenements, through prayer groups and National Guard units and social studies classroom. Those were the values my mother poured into me until her very last breath,’ she said. ‘Kamala Harris and I built our lives on those same foundational values. Even though our mothers grew up an ocean apart, they shared the same belief in the promise of this country.’ 

One X user, who goes by ProudArmyBrat, decried the perceived hypocrisy to her more than 463,600 followers. 

‘The Obama’s have a net worth of $70 million. They own 4 luxurious properties: – Washington DC home bought for $8.1M – Martha’s Vineyard home bought for $11.75M – Beachfront home in Hawaii bought for $8.7M – Chicago home bought for $1.65M,’ she wrote. ‘Getting really tired of multi-millionaires preaching about the evils of money and greed.’ 

Trump War Room, the official account of former President Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, also shared a clip of Michelle Obama’s speech. 

‘Michelle Obama says her parents ‘were suspicious of folks who took more than they needed.’ She has a net worth of $70 million and lives in a mansion in Martha’s Vineyard,’ the account wrote to its 2 million followers.

Fox News chief political analyst Brit Hume said ‘the speech of the night was Michelle Obama,’ but also noted the disconnect from the former first lady’s message and her elite lifestyle.

‘She is an extraordinarily impressive woman, former first lady of the United States. You can see why members of the Democratic Party always kind of hoped that maybe she’d step in and run for president,’ he said. ‘It does however, I have to say this, get a little rich when she starts talking about hope.’

‘Remember she famously said when her husband was on the cusp of winning his party’s nomination it was the first time in her life that she had felt hope because of what he brought and what he was bringing,’ Hume said. ‘Here she is tonight saying it again. I can’t imagine why somebody who’s had the life she had, a product of Princeton and Harvard Law School, an elite law firm, the first lady of the United States, with a magnificent house on Martha’s Vineyard worth about $12 million and another one going up in Hawaii, why it is that she’s so hopeless all the time and has to have her hope revived by the goings-on in the Democratic Party.’ 

MIchelle Obama declared in her speech Tuesday: ‘America, hope is making a comeback.’ 

She then tore into Trump, a sharp shift from the 2016 convention speech in which she told her party, ‘When they go low, we go high.’

‘His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black,’ Michelle Obama said of Trump.

She was followed by her husband, Barack Obama, the first Black president in U.S. history. He insisted the nation is ready to elect Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage and would be the nation’s first female president. He also called Trump ‘a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.’

‘It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala,’ he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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A national poll finds that the 2024 vice presidential nominees are both still fighting to make themselves known to the U.S. voting public. 

The poll, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, shows 4 out of 10 Americans don’t know enough about Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to form an opinion. 

The same goes for about 3 out of 10 Americans regarding Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Walz is currently enjoying a higher level of support among U.S. adults, maintaining a 36% favorability rating compared to Vance’s 27%. 

This is compounded by Vance’s higher unfavorability rating among those polled, with 44% holding an unfavorable view compared to Walz’s 25%.

Vance’s popularity within the Republican Party is on the rise. In mid-July, only 3 out of 10 Republicans reported favorable feelings towards the Ohio senator as former President Donald Trump’s running mate — 6 out of 10 didn’t know enough about him.

The current polling finds that Vance’s support within the Republican Party has doubled to 6 out of 10 among Republicans — mostly attributable to a rise in awareness about him and his policies.

Similarly, the AP-NORC poll found Walz maintains favorable opinions with 6 out of 10 Democrats, with approximately 3 out of 10 not knowing enough about him to form an opinion. 

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll was conducted from Aug. 8 to Aug. 12. 

It surveyed 1,164 adults via the NORC ‘probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel,’ which it describes as ‘designed to be representative of the U.S. population.’ Its margin of error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and his wife, first lady Gwen Walz, have clarified that they conceived their children not through IVF, as the governor had previously said or implied in interviews, but through another fertility treatment. 

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, took to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to seize on the revelation and ask, ‘Who lies about something like that?’ after asserting that Walz had deceived the public about having children via IVF, adding to his earlier attack that Walz had ‘lied’ about his service in the National Guard. 

But the Harris-Walz campaign hit back at Vance:

‘The Trump campaign’s attacks on Mrs. Walz are just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare,’ Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg told Fox News Digital. ‘Infertility is a deeply personal journey, but the Governor and Mrs. Walz came forward to share their story because they know that MAGA attacks on reproductive rights are putting all fertility treatments at risk.’

Harris campaign spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg argued to CNN that Tim Walz ‘talks how normal people talk. He was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments.’ The couple did not receive in vitro fertilization (IVF) but instead intrauterine insemination (IUI). 

In a statement shared with media, Gwen Walz said that the journey through fertility treatments is riddled with anxiety, agony and ‘desperation that can eat away at your soul.’ 

‘I cannot fathom the cruelty of politicians who want to take away the freedom for couples to access the care they need,’ she said. ‘After seeing the extreme attacks on reproductive health care across the country — particularly, the efforts in Alabama that jeopardized access to fertility treatments — Tim and I agreed that it was time to formally speak out about our experience.’

‘Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time — not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family,’ Gwen Walz explained. ‘The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next-door neighbor.’

‘She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process. I’d rush home from school, and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track.’

Tim Walz stated during an interview with MSNBC in July that he had IVF to thank for their children, saying, ‘Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children.’ In other instances, Walz referred to ‘fertility treatments’ and stressed that the issue of IVF rights remained ‘personal’ for him due to the struggles he and his wife went through to have their children. 

Tim Walz has made his support of IVF a central cause after the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos created by IVF treatments should be considered children, which would lay the groundwork for further legislation on treatments. Embryos that have been fertilized but go unused are often discarded, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The ’embryo disposal decision’ deals with the question of storage after successful childbearing. Many couples end up donating good-quality embryos to a research program, but discarding fertilized embryos remains a common practice. 

IVF requires the removal of several eggs and fertilization outside the body before transfer into the uterus, while IUI directly injects the sperm into the uterus. IUI also involved ‘washing’ sperm to separate them from seminal fluid to increase the number of sperm transferred and increase chances of successful fertilization, according to Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials.

Former President Donald Trump shortly after the Alabama ruling stressed, ‘We want to make it easier for mothers and fathers to have babies, not harder! That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.’ 

‘Today, I am calling on the Alabama Legislature to act quickly to find an immediate solution to preserve the availability of IVF in Alabama,’ Trump said in a post on Truth Social following the decision. ‘The Republican Party should always be on the side of the Miracle of Life – and the side of Mothers, Fathers, and their Beautiful Babies.’

The correction issued by the Harris-Walz campaign is another they have had to make regarding previous statements Tim Walz has made, including clarification on his National Guard service. 

The team altered its biography of Tim Walz on the campaign website amid ongoing scrutiny of Walz’s service, changing it from saying he was a ‘retired Command Sergeant Major’ to ‘served as a command sergeant major.’

Tim Walz retired from the Guard after nearly 25 years of service, but his rank was reduced months later, leaving him as a master sergeant. 

National Guard officials have said that he retired before fulfilling requirements for the position, including coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. The subsequent lower rank was due to benefit requirements and a technicality.

The Trump-Vance campaign did not respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment by the time of publication. 

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw contributed to this report. 

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