Biden campaign accuses Donald Trump of parroting Hitler when he compared political enemies on left to vermin – US politics live | US politics

Joanna Walters

The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign criticism of Donald Trump’s remarks at the weekend that the campaign, along with others, compared directly to fascistic dictatorial speech, included a list of articles in various US publications.

They include prominent voices slamming Trump and the list is below. Meanwhile, the statement from the Biden-Harris campaign, via spokesperson Ammar Moussa, concludes with this remark: “Donald Trump thinks he can win by dividing our country. He’s wrong, and he’ll find out just how wrong next November.”

Then it adds: read what they’re saying about Trump’s statement.

Washington Post: “Trump calls political enemies ‘vermin,’ echoing dictators Hitler, Mussolini”

Forbes: “Trump Compares Political Foes To ‘Vermin’ On Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda”

The New Republic: “It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk”

HuffPost: “Fascism Expert Offers Truly Chilling Take On Donald Trump’s ‘Vermin’ Rant”

The Post piece includes this:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

One year after their last in-person talks, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden will come face to face once again on Wednesday in San Francisco.

The encounter will dominate events at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit as the Chinese and US presidents seek to stabilise relations in an increasingly fraught geopolitical climate.

The meeting, which could last several hours, is the culmination of months of lower level dialogues which took place over the summer, with Washington sending more delegates to China than Beijing did to the US.

The fact of China’s leader visiting the US for the first time in six years demonstrates some goodwill from the Chinese side.

A speech from Xi to the US-China business community would underline the Chinese president’s keenness to attract foreign businesses back to China, many of whom have been spooked by the three years of zero-Covid and the recent raids foreign consulting firms, as well as an increasing number of US restrictions on doing business with China, especially in hi-tech sectors.

Sweeping restrictions on the export of advanced technology to China will come into effect on 16 November, the day after Xi’s meeting with Biden. The new rules are a tightening of controls introduced last year, aimed at cutting off China’s access to the most sophisticated semiconductors, which are required to develop advanced artificial intelligence. Read more here.

The US political news landscape is tense, with a government shutdown looming, Joe Biden getting ready to meet Xi Jinping and Donald Trump being slammed for parroting fascist dictators, even as he dominates the opinion polls a year out from the presidential election.

Stay tuned for more news. The day so far:

• The Biden-Harris 2024 election campaign has issued a strong statement condemning remarks Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump made in a speech on Saturday, Veterans Day, in which he compared his political enemies on the left to vermin.

• GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley praised fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott after he suspended his White House bid.

• A fourth government shutdown in a decade would have far-reaching consequences for the nation in numerous different fields, including national security.

• New House Speaker and Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson is up against the clock to see if he can win support for his suggested spending plan, before the looming government shutdown this Friday.

Martin Pengelly

The Democrat Abigail Spanberger will quit Congress next year to run for governor of Virginia.

Announcing her move a week after voters delivered a rebuke to the current Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, she cited rightwing threats to reproductive rights and attempts to clamp down on public schooling.

“Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads,” Spanberger, 44, said in a video on Monday. “Our country and our commonwealth are facing fundamental threats to our rights, our freedoms and to our democracy.”

Last week, voters gave Democrats control of both houses of the Virginia legislature, seemingly ending talk of a late entry into the Republican presidential primary by Youngkin, a governor deemed relatively centrist who has nonetheless chosen to focus on culture war issues in office.

Spanberger is seen as a centrist. A former CIA officer and gun control group organiser, she was elected to the US House in 2018 from a state which has trended Democratic but remains keenly fought. In 2022, she won a redrawn seat by her widest margin to date.

Biden campaign accuses Trump of parroting Hitler

Joanna Walters

The Biden-Harris 2024 election campaign has issued a strong statement condemning remarks Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump made in a speech on Saturday, Veterans Day, in which he compared his political enemies on the left to vermin.

The term was an echo of the most infamous fascist dictators of the last century that immediately brought criticism, although the former president’s remarks were staunchly defended by a Trump campaign spokesman.

A statement from Biden’s campaign on Monday said: “On a weekend when most Americans were honoring our nation’s heroes, Donald Trump parroted the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini – two dictators many U.S. veterans gave their lives fighting, in order to defeat exactly the kind of un-American ideas Trump now champions.”

On Saturday, Trump promised in a speech to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and radical left thugs that live like vermin” in the US. Many commentators noted how the term “vermin” echoed antisemitic rhetoric that the Nazis frequently employed to dehumanize Jews as they murdered six million of them during the Holocaust.

As well as objecting to the remarks, Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa‘s statement also condemned the timing, as it coincided with Veterans Day and a weekend when many countries hold events to commemorate all those lost to war, including WWII where Britain and key allies such as the US fought to defeat Hitler and Mussolini.

“Trump doesn’t care about our troops or what they fought for – he thinks they’re ‘losers’ for making the ultimate sacrifice defending our country from forces opposed to democracy and its ideals,” the statement said.

This refers back to remarks Trump made in 2018 that war dead were losers.

“Tim Scott is a good man of faith and an inspiration to so many. The Republican primary was made better by his participation in it,” Haley said on X. “South Carolina is blessed to continue to have him as our senator. Scott announced conceded on Sunday, just six months after launching his campaign.”

Scott conceded on Sunday, just six months after launching his campaign.

“I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear that they’re telling me: ‘Not now Tim,’” Scott said.

How unusual are US government shutdowns?

Robert Tait

For the first 200 years of the US’s existence, they did not happen at all. In recent decades, they have become an increasingly regular part of the political landscape, as Washington politics has become more polarised and brinkmanship a commonplace political tool. There have been 20 federal funding gaps since 1976, when the US first shifted the start of its fiscal year to 1 October.

Three shutdowns in particular have entered US political lore:

A 21-day partial closure in 1995 over a dispute about spending cuts between President Bill Clinton and the Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich, that is widely seen as setting the tone for later partisan congressional struggles.

In 2013, when the government was partially closed for 16 days after another Republican-led Congress tried to use budget negotiations to defund Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare.

A 34-day shutdown, the longest on record, lasting from December 2018 until January 2019, when Donald Trump refused to sign any appropriations bill that did not include $5.7bn funding for a wall along the US border with Mexico. The closure damaged Trump’s poll ratings.

You can read the full explainer here:

This would result in the fourth government shutdown in a decade, the consequences of which are numerous.

Millions of federal workers and military service members would see a disruption in their pay, federal funded scientific research could be halted, and national parks and museums would close.

Although, social security payments would still be made to American seniors and the US postal service would continue operating so people can still expect to receive their mail. Other federal employees deemed “essential” would also continue working.

What’s not included is any additional funding such as aid for Israel, Ukraine, or the US-Mexico border – all requests made by Biden himself.

The plan is meant to maintain spending at current levels so it does not include any spending cuts, a point Johnson’s rightwing colleagues take issue with.

Included in Johnson’s plan is funding for military construction, veterans benefits, transportation, housing, urban development, agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and energy and water programs up until 19 January.

Funding for all other federal operations expires on 2 February.

“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said shortly after announcing the plan.

Good morning US politics blog readers. As the race against the clock to keep the government open continues, Speaker Mike Johnson found himself in a situation all too similar to that of his predecessor Kevin McCarthy: He won’t be able to secure the Democratic votes needed to reach an agreement.

On Saturday, Johnson unveiled an obfuscating, two-pronged funding plan that would stretch government funding to 19 January and include a spending bill to cover the budget until 2 February. The government is slated to shutdown on Friday if no agreement is reached and, given Johnson’s new proposal does not include any of the cuts that his Republican brethren are looking for, it’s not looking good. Though, it remains unclear how many, if any, Democrats the new bill may appeal to.

The House Rules Committee will meet today at 4pm ET to discuss. Here’s what else is going on today: