Raw Story

Democrats are keying on three races — in New York, Florida and Maryland — that they hope can boost Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) chances of gaining a majority, according to a report.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm for House Democrats, is flushing cash into candidates Whitney Fox of Florida, April McClain Delaney in Maryland and John Avlon in New York, Axios reported Thursday.

Fox is running in Florida's 13th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who defeated Democrat Eric Lynn in 2022 with 53 percent of the vote in the right-leaning district.

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Meanwhile, Delaney is a former Commerce Department official, lawyer and philanthropist running against Republican Neil Parrott, a former state delegate, in Maryland's 6th Congressional District. The race is expected to be the state’s most competitive congressional race this year, according to Maryland Matters. The district has a very slight Democratic lean.

And Avlon, a former CNN anchor and political commentator, is running for Congress on in New York's 1st Congressional District on Long Island against Republican incumbent Rep. Nick LaLota. That district has a slight Republican lean.

A menswear fashion expert has no time for former President Donald Trump's new line of watches.

Derek Guy, a menswear expert who has contributed to the Washington Post and Esquire, publicly shamed Trump for shilling a $100,000 watches he described as an obvious scam.

"I don't understand how anyone can do this to their supporters," Guy wrote on X. "They play you as a sucker."

Trump the same day announced the release of his Tourbillon watches on Truth Social — where he often shares political messages — in an ad campaign from "your favorite president" standing in front of a row of American flags.

"That's a lot of diamonds," Trump says. "I love gold, I love diamonds."

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The Trump Watch website only offers 147 of the Trump Victory Tourbillon then a series of Fight Fight Fight watches that retail at between $499 and $799.

Guy argued this was a blatant attempt to exploit the halo effect, a marketing tactic that creates a false assumption of quality in lower cost items through association to similar high-price ones.

"This crappy $100k watch is a halo product to sell even crappier $500 and $800 non-Swiss steel and gold-plated watches with a cheap automatic movement," Guy wrote.

"The goal here is just to make money, not treat people with respect and offer them something of genuine value."

Guy — who has made a reputation explaining complicated men's fashion in straightforward terms while gently critiquing high profile male fashionistas — changed his tone when it came to discussing Trump.

"Buy watches from established watch brands or independent watchmakers who care more about watches than money," Guy told his followers. "This sort of behavior is genuinely disgusting."

A growing number of Republicans are doing cruel things to children's dogs then bragging about it in a new trend with ties to the former president, a new political analysis contends.

Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation president, joined the elite crew this week when his former New Mexico State University colleagues said he'd boasted of killing his 16-year-old neighbor's dog Loca with a shovel — a story the Project 2025 architect now denies.

"Killing a teenage neighbor’s pet out of irritation and then telling co-workers about it might seem like a whole new level of bizarre," wrote Heather Souvaine Horn for the New Republic. "In some ways, that denial is the most unusual part of this whole story."

Horn argues a mounting number of Republicans not only torment children's animals — but express pride after the fact.

Most notably among the crew is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who boasted in her book that she shot her family's 14-month-old puppy without apparently warning her 7-year-old daughter Kennedy what was about to happen.

"Where's Cricket?" Kennedy reportedly asked when she came home from school.

There's also Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) who accidentally strapped his five sons' Irish Setter Seamus on top of the family station wagon for a 12-hour road trip in 1983.

On Thursday, Horn argued the three Republicans were merely building on a long history of Republicans expecting praise for hurting animals that began with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who liked to shoot wolves.

"[Palin's] support for aerial wolf gunning—a practice deliberately designed to give hunters the advantage and thin out wolf numbers—was denounced by animal lovers but lauded by her supporters, who loved her “frontier femme” identity politics," wrote Horn.

But the tradition only reached a national level when it was picked up by the family Trump, Zorn argued.

"In 2011, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump traveled to Zimbabwe with a safari firm that Zimbabwean conservationists later said was not registered in the country," reported Horn. "They killed an elephant and leopard, among other animals, posing with the dead bodies."

A subsequent ProPublica report found Trump Jr. had shot an endangered argali sheep and received a retroactive permit to do so.

In the White House, the Trump administration reversed bans on importing lion trophies into the U.S., re-legalized killing wolf pups and using bait to kill bears in Alaska, Horn reports.

Trump famously was the first president in more than a century not to bring a dog to the White House — his late wife Ivana once explained her ex was "not a dog fan."

"It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that willingness to kill animals would become a kind of right-wing purity test," Horn concluded.

"So maybe Kevin Roberts bragged at work about killing his kid neighbor’s dog with a shovel, or maybe he didn’t. At this point in the history of American conservatism, he’s going to have a tough time convincing people to give him the benefit of the doubt."

The X (formerly Twitter) account of journalist Ken Klippenstein was suspended Thursday after he shared details of a dossier about Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) that Iran allegedly hacked.

"Here's the dossier the media refused to publish," Klippenstein wrote in a post on X soon before his account was suspended.

The former Intercept reporter also linked to an article on his website explaining why he published the so-called dossier.

"It reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign, and since June, the news media has been sitting on it (and other documents), declining to publish in fear of finding itself at odds with the government's campaign against 'foreign malign influence,'" Klippenstein wrote. "I disagree. The dossier has been offered to me and I've decided to publish it because it's of keen public interest in an election season."

According to Klippenstein, the dossier consisted of a "271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet now vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance."

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"As far as I can tell, it hasn't been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable," he added. "If the document had been hacked by some 'anonymous' like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I'm just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combatting foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know."

X CEO Elon Musk has previously likened the alleged suppression of stories about Hunter Biden's laptop to election interference.

Former President Donald Trump has found a new way to separate his supporters from their hard-earned money, according to critics.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, the former president announced he was now selling Trump-branded gold wristwatches.

"The Official Trump Watch Collection is here, and these Watches are truly special — You’re going to love them," he wrote. "Would make a great Christmas Gift. Don’t wait, they will go fast. GET YOUR TRUMP WATCH RIGHT NOW!"

In the past, Trump has also sold his supporters items such as golden sneakers, digital trading cards, Bibles, and cryptocurrency, so his foray into gold watches seems like a logical next step, observers says.

Nonetheless, many of the president's critics took to X to marvel at the sheer number of overpriced consumer goods he's pitching to his supporters, especially during a time when he is claiming that the American economy is in a supposed death spiral.

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"The grift never ends with Trump," wrote former NBCUniversal executive Mike Sington. "Now he’s selling watches to his MAGA fans. Get this, they’re priced from $499 to $100,000, and look like crap. Another total rip-off."

"He is the greatest conman and grifter in the history of America," wrote the pseudonymous account Spiro's Ghost. "He comes up with a new way to fleece his cult members constantly with completely worthless nonsense. All of this while he says AMERICA WILL END! and will become COMMUNIST! if he doesn’t win in November. Laser focus."

"If you already have a Trump Bible ($60), Trump digital Pokémon card ($99), Trump sneakers ($499) and Trump souvenir coin($100), clearly you need a Trump watch," joked Huffington Post reporter S.V. Dáte. "Prices: $499 to $100,000. This is what the second shift workers of western Pennsylvania have been clamoring for."

Twitter user Thomas Macioszek, meanwhile, dug up an old quote from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during a 2016 debate in which the Florida Republican said, "If Donald Trump hadn't inherited $200,000,000, he'd be in New York City selling watches right now."

And former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele labeled Trump a "two-bit huckster" who is "pumping out another trinket for the masses to consume (at $100K a pop) because that’s better than actual policies."

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For decades, Republicans have relied upon older voters turning out in large numbers to make up their deficits with younger voters.

However, CNN polling expert Harry Enten on Thursday highlighted polling showing that this could actually reverse in the 2024 election.

During a breakdown of recent polls, Enten showed that Vice President Kamala Harris at the moment is enjoying a three-point lead among voters who are 65 years or older, which is a significant shift from the four-point advantage that Trump had among voters 65 and older back in July when he was still running against President Joe Biden.

However, the same polls show that Harris at the moment isn't doing as well with young voters as Biden did in 2020, which lead to Enten being asked if this was a good tradeoff for her.

"It is an excellent tradeoff!" Enten exclaimed.

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He then explained that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 are projected to make up only 13 percent of likely voters, whereas voters 65 and older are projected to make up 29 percent of voters.

"If you're Kamala Harris, yeah, shed a little bit among younger voters," he said. "If you're going to shed support anywhere, shed it among younger voters.

Writing on X, Enten elaborated that Harris's lead among older voters is "one reason Harris has a small national lead over Trump" and is potentially a "huge development because seniors vote in huge numbers."

Watch the video below or at this link.

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