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Its arrival is the latest sign of the site’s growing importance for politicians to succeed with a young, heavily online audience. Although TikTok has fewer users in the United States than Facebook, its demographics lean much more toward people under 35. More than a third of the 170 million people on TikTok say they use it to stay up-to-date on politics and political issues. According to a recent Pew Research survey, a significantly higher percentage than Facebook or Instagram.
Before Biden dropped out of the race, his crusade had made significant investments in social media and TikTok, spending $2 million to rent a marketing firm specializing in recruiting influencers. Nearly 100 social media influencers have been credited to this month’s Republican National Convention as a component of what former President Donald J. Trump called a “Creator Hub” designed to generate animated content about Trump to take back the White House.
But seducing the potential electorate online is not without its problems. Biden’s crusade only joined TikTok in February, more than nine months after he announced his reelection bid. And at most immediately, it alienated many of the platform’s most loyal users through a supporting law that bans TikTok unless it is sold.
In March, Harris said the management had “national security concerns” about it but had “no goal of banning TikTok. “However, a month later, the president signed the bill banning the Array unless its parent company, China’s ByteDance Ltd. , sold the Array.
Biden has never opened a TikTok account. The crusade account, called “Biden-Harris HQ,” struggled to gain traction and gained around 340,000 fans on June 1, when Trump himself joined the platform with a video of himself with Ultimate. Dana. White, general manager of the Fighting Championship.
As president, Trump took steps to try to ban the Array, but in March he changed his position, saying blocking would gain advantages for Facebook, which he called “the real enemy of the people. “
In just 15 hours, Trump’s first TikTok post attracted 38 million views and the account amassed 2. 2 million fans, more than six times the number of fans on Biden’s crusade account at the time. Since then, Trump’s account now has 9. 2 million fans. and his posts have amassed around 500 million total views.
But the selection of Harris as the most sensible on the Democratic ticket has obviously injected excitement into the party’s social media game.
Earlier this week, the Biden-Harris HQ account replaced its call to KamalaHQ and now has 1. 8 million followers. At the same time, Ms. Harris’ Instagram account reached 17 million followers, and a post praising Mr. Biden and soliciting donations for his crusade has racked up 1. 6 million views, a significant figure for the site. A post announcing his candidacy on social network X has been viewed 14 million times since it was published on Wednesday night.
Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher
Advisers to former President Donald J. Trump have said they will not participate in the debate, which they had already agreed to participate in, now that Democrats have replaced candidates from President Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Biden and Trump had agreed to two debates for the general election, the first of which took place on June 27. Biden’s performance was so calamitous that it sparked a four-week uproar in preparation for his exit from the race.
The two men agreed a few months ago to a second debate, which will be held on September 10 and will be presented on ABC News. Trump complained at the time that they had even more.
But Biden announced on Sunday that he was taking flight from the race, and within 48 hours, the entire Democratic Party had rallied around Harris as a candidate to compete with Trump, the Republican nominee for the third consecutive presidential election. . The only Democrat in Ms. Harris’ primary, former President Barack Obama, is expected to do so imminently. Harris’ team is in the early stages of vetting potential vice presidential candidates.
However, in a statement released Thursday evening, Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, argued that there was “ongoing political chaos surrounding” Biden and the Democrats, making “the main points of the debate over The general election cannot be finalized until Democrats officially make a decision on what would happen.
He insists that many members of the Democratic Party – including Mr. Obama – think Ms. Harris can’t beat Mr. Trump and that they are “still waiting for someone ‘better’. ” There is no point in planning things with Harris, because it is very possible that the Democrats will replace their minds. “
He arrived here hours after Harris re-entered the debate on ABC News. “I think the electorate deserves to see the split screen that exists in this race on the debate stage,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews after a vacation in Texas. and Indiana, saying Trump was “backtracking” out of the election debate.
After Trump’s crusade released its statement, Harris posted on social media X, “What happened to ‘anytime, anywhere?'” referring to Mr. Trump to debate with Mr. Biden anytime, anywhere.
Trump first warned Sunday that he would reconsider his participation in the upcoming debate after Biden announced he was dropping out of the race. Trump advised that the debate on ABC News be moved to Fox News, whose prime-time hosts have been very friendly with Trump.
Fox News then proposed a debate for September 17.
“Well, I didn’t agree with anything,” Trump told reporters in a phone call this week organized through the Republican National Committee. “I agreed to debate with Joe Biden, but I need to debate it, and it will be no other because they have the same policies.
Another Trump adviser, Jason Miller, told Axios there will be “multiple debates,” but also took issue with the perception that the ABC News debate was set in stone.
A New York Times/Siena College ballot released Thursday shows Democrats united around Harris, helping to narrow the even larger gap between Trump and Biden. Research shows Trump and Harris are virtually tied, putting him among the most likely. electorate by one percentage point, from 48% to 47%.
Michael Gold contributed to the report.
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Reid J. Epstein, Lisa Lerer, Shane Goldmacher and Katie Glueck
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to announce a vice presidential nominee until Aug. 7 and her aides are conducting the first round of interviews with those under video call attention given the busy schedule, according to four other people briefed on the plans.
If she meets the Aug. 7 deadline, Harris will have narrowed the procedure for deciding, deciding and fielding a vice presidential nominee, which has been going on for months, to just over three weeks.
Harris’ crusade began investigative proceedings Tuesday and aims to temporarily make its variant to the legal threat of securing access to the ballot box in Ohio, according to three of the other four people briefed on the plans, as well as “one other person. “Ohio law required primary political parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice presidential candidates by Aug. 7. In May, Ohio lawmakers pushed back the state’s poll deadline to Sept. 1, but some Democrats say they don’t have confidence in that. . Republicans will not launch a legal challenge if the party submits a price list after Aug. 7.
Delegates to the Democratic National Convention will begin voting on Harris’ nomination for president on Aug. 1, provided no one else is qualified to challenge her, the conference’s rules committee reported this week. Party regulations do not require a similar roll-call vote for a vice presidential candidate. That selection can be qualified through conference president Minyon Moore, a former Democratic Party official and best friend of Ms. Harris.
“Vice President Harris has directed her team to initiate the vetting procedure of potential vice presidential candidates,” Harris campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said. “This procedure has begun in earnest and we anticipate more data until the vice president announces who will be her running mate and the next vice president of the United States. “
Some of the video interviews of the vice presidential candidates have already been conducted with Harris’ advisers, though it’s not yet clear if she participated. They are carried out on the Microsoft Teams platform, according to one of the other 4 people informed of the projects. , as well as another person.
Ms. Harris is reportedly considering as many as 12 candidates, among the most serious are Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and governors. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Andy Beshear of Kentucky.
Adm. William H. McRaven, former commander of the United States Special Operations Command, publicly acquitted himself Wednesday.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said this week that she was “not going anywhere,” meaning she had no plans to leave her workplace early to look for a new job. On Monday, he plans to appear with Shapiro at a rally in Philadelphia in Harris.
Harris, who underwent an extensive selection process when Biden chose her to be on his list four years ago, is looking to find someone who shares her political values, who is willing to be president and who can simply be a ruler. partner, according to an official at Harris’ crusade who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Harris has turned to Eric H. Holder Jr. , the former attorney general who led Barack Obama’s 2008 vice presidential election process, to oversee the process through his law firm, Covington.
Reid J. Epstein
Future Forward, the main super PAC supporting President Biden’s re-election campaign, announced Thursday that it would spend $50 million over the next three weeks on classified ads supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in six swing states. battle.
The PAC’s first 30-second ad tells Ms. Harris’s political biography, tracing her career from the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to the vice presidency.
“As America turns the page, Kamala is ready,” a voiceover says as Harris disembarks from Air Force Two.
The ad is expected to air on television and virtual platforms in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to Future Forward. More than a portion of its broadcast time will be dedicated to broadcasts of the Olympic Games.
The ad purchase will run through Aug. 18, the day before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Future Forward had previously announced $250 million in ad bookings that are expected to begin after the party next month.
“We are ready to take the field to make sure the electorate knows that Kamala Harris will be a president who will fight for them,” said Chauncey McLean, president of Future Forward. of all Americans, while Donald Trump only focuses on himself.
Due to an editing error, a previous edit of this article’s name incorrectly stated how much Future Forward spends on a three-week ad buy. It’s 50 million dollars, 50 billion dollars.
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