Trump prepares to ramp up campaigning after attacking ABC News ahead of debate: Live

Donald Trump has ploughed millions of dollars of funds in campaign donations into his family businesses, a new report reveals.

The former president and associated political groups have spent $28m in campaign funds at Trump-owned businesses throughout his three presidential bids, a report from CNN revealed.

Katie Hawkinson takes a closer look.

Trump’s running mate famously declared himself a “never Trump guy” in 2016. Now his words have come back to haunt him in the shape of a viral hit on TikTok.

The 22-second long audio clip was created by DJ duo Casa Di and Steve Terrell, who sampled Vance’s comments from a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose when he was promoting his memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

In the clip, Vance can be heard saying: “I’m a never Trump guy. I never liked him.”

That sample was added to the Petey Pablo hip hop beat “Freek-a-Leek” and the resulting song has proved wildly popular on TikTok, where it has soundtracked more than 8,500 videos in the last month, racking up over 40 million views in total.

The clip has also been shared by @KamalaHQ, the official account of the Harris-Walz campaign.

HR McMaster, Trump’s former national security adviser, is warning that the ex-president is easily susceptible to manipulation and needs “a competent team around him to help him identify his own agenda.”

“He can make really sound decisions and disrupt things that need to be disrupted in terms of foreign policy, national security,” said retired US Army Lieutenant General HR McMaster on Sunday regarding the GOP presidential candidate.

“But [he] oftentimes struggles to hang on to those decisions and see them through.”

Appearing on CBS News’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, McMaster made the claim as part of the promotional activity concerning his new book, At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, which is set to go on sale on August 27.

It seems it’s not just Miller talking gibberish.

Here’s Rhian Lubin on the Republican‘s latest social media wig-out.

I don’t know what the above statement from Jason Miller means but here he is saying it anyway:

The Trump whisperer also claimed that RFK Jr’s endorsement for his man had sent the Dow Jones rocketing on Friday, which is highly fanciful, to put it mildly.

The slippery South Carolina senator was asked about the same issue by Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday and baulked at the very idea of giving a straight answer.

The Republican vice presidential contender also assured Welker yesterday that Trump would not sign legislation establishing a national abortion ban into law, although that position is somewhat complicated by the Ohio Senator’s own past support for such a proposition.

Here’s more from John Bowden.

Let’s get back to Trump’s running mate’s big interview with Meet the Press.

In addition to rowing back on his “childless cat ladies” slur, Vance declined to give specifics on one of the Trump administration’s greatest controversies when he was asked about immigration, border security and the former president’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of undocumented immigrants.

Trump’s own campaign has promised the “largest deportation operation in American history” if he returns to the White House but what that amounts to in reality is surely a massive operation requiring significant federal funding and state cooperation likely to yield serious consequences for communities around the country.

But when asked a question with a seemingly obvious answer by Kristen Welker — whether the concept of separating family units, including young children from their parents, would be revived under a second Trump term — Vance could not provide an answer.

Here’s more from John Bowden.

Here’s Gustaf Kilander with another perspective on Trump’s apparent malaise, this time from New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman – one of the most seasoned Trumpwatcher out there, attuned to the man’s every move.

She told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room and appears not to be “in command” of himself as he’s “jarred” by the rise and rise of Kamala Harris.

After Harris closed out the Democratic National Convention last week, a brand new poll showed that her address had actually had little immediate impact on voting intentions.

But with independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr since dropping out to endorse Trump, the presidential race could now be about to undergo a more significant shift.

So how will Harris actually fare against Trump and JD Vance this November?

Here’s Alicia Hagopian to look at the numbers.