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US presidential campaign: The view from Ukraine

The U.S. presidential campaign is being closely followed in Ukraine as its outcome could significantly impact regional security, U.S. foreign policy, NATO support, aid to Ukraine, and relations with Russia. VOA Eastern Europe Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports. Camera: Daniil Batushchak, Vladyslav Smilianets
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Microsoft: Iran accelerating cyber activity in apparent bid to influence US election

NEW YORK — Iran is ramping up online activity that appears intended to influence the upcoming U.S. election, in one case targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack, Microsoft said Friday.

Iranian actors also have spent recent months creating fake news sites and impersonating activists, laying the groundwork to stoke division and potentially sway American voters this fall, especially in swing states, the technology giant found.

The findings in Microsoft’s newest threat intelligence report show how Iran, which has been active in recent U.S. campaign cycles, is evolving its tactics for another election that’s likely to have global implications. The report goes a step beyond anything U.S. intelligence officials have disclosed, giving specific examples of Iranian groups and the actions they have taken so far. Iran’s United Nations mission denied it had plans to interfere or launch cyberattacks in the U.S. presidential election.

The report doesn’t specify Iran’s intentions besides sowing chaos in the United States, though U.S. officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes former President Donald Trump. U.S. officials also have expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump. This week, the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against a Pakistani man with ties to Iran who’s alleged to have hatched assassination plots targeting multiple officials, potentially including Trump.

The report also reveals how Russia and China are exploiting U.S. political polarization to advance their own divisive messaging in a consequential election year.

Microsoft’s report identified four examples of recent Iranian activity that the company expects to increase as November’s election draws closer.

First, a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in June targeted a high-ranking U.S. presidential campaign official with a phishing email, a form of cyberattack often used to gather sensitive information, according to the report, which didn’t identify which campaign was targeted. The group concealed the email’s origins by sending it from the hacked email account of a former senior adviser, Microsoft said.

Days later, the Iranian group tried to log into an account that belonged to a former presidential candidate but wasn’t successful, Microsoft’s report said. The company notified those who were targeted.

In a separate example, an Iranian group has been creating websites that pose as U.S.-based news sites targeted to voters on opposite sides of the political spectrum, the report said.

One fake news site that lends itself to a left-leaning audience insults Trump by calling him “raving mad” and suggests he uses drugs, the report said. Another site meant to appeal to Republican readers centers on LGBTQ issues and gender-affirming surgery.

A third example Microsoft cited found that Iranian groups are impersonating U.S. activists, potentially laying the groundwork for influence operations closer to the election.

Finally, another Iranian group in May compromised an account owned by a government employee in a swing state, the report said. It was unclear whether that cyberattack was related to election interference efforts.

Iran’s U.N. mission sent The Associated Press an emailed statement: “Iran has been the victim of numerous offensive cyber operations targeting its infrastructure, public service centers, and industries. Iran’s cyber capabilities are defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces. Iran has neither the intention nor plans to launch cyber attacks. The U.S. presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere.”

The Microsoft report said that as Iran escalates its cyber influence, Russia-linked actors also have pivoted their influence campaigns to focus on the U.S. election, while actors linked to the Chinese Communist Party have taken advantage of pro-Palestinian university protests and other current events in the U.S. to try to raise U.S. political tensions.

Microsoft said it has continued to monitor how foreign foes are using generative AI technology. The increasingly cheap and easy-to-access tools can generate lifelike fake images, photos and videos in seconds, prompting concern among some experts that they will be weaponized to mislead voters this election cycle.

While many countries have experimented with AI in their influence operations, the company said, those efforts haven’t had much impact so far. The report said as a result, some actors have “pivoted back to techniques that have proven effective in the past — simple digital manipulations, mischaracterization of content, and use of trusted labels or logos atop false information.”

Microsoft’s report aligns with recent warnings from U.S. intelligence officials, who say America’s adversaries appear determined to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims ahead of November’s vote.

Top intelligence officials said last month that Russia continues to pose the greatest threat when it comes to election disinformation, while there are indications that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is proceeding cautiously when it comes to 2024.

Iran’s efforts seem aimed at undermining candidates seen as being more likely to increase tension with Tehran, the officials said. That’s a description that fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of the top Iranian general.

The influence efforts also coincide with a time of high tensions between Iran and Israel, whose military the U.S. strongly supports.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month that the Iranian government has covertly supported American protests over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran have posed as online activists, encouraged protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.

America’s foes, Iran among them, have a long history of seeking to influence U.S. elections. In 2020, groups linked to Iran sent emails to Democratic voters in an apparent effort to intimidate them into voting for Trump, intelligence officials said.
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Fact Focus: A look at Trump’s claims at news conference

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Biden set to share legacy with LBJ     

WHITE HOUSE — U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, known popularly as LBJ, sat at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House on the last day of March in 1968. There, he addressed the nation, opening his remarks by telling the American public, “Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.”

The country had been at war in Vietnam for years. Johnson had taken America’s involvement in the conflict he inherited from his slain predecessor, John F. Kennedy, from a robust and well-funded advisory mission to direct combat in which more than 58,000 American military members would die. Several million Vietnamese civilians and those in uniform in both the North and South perished.

Johnson, that evening, announced he was halting most of the U.S. military’s aerial attacks on North Vietnam. It was big news. Johnson’s speech, however, is remembered for the bombshell he dropped next: “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

In that same room, the Oval Office of the White House, 56 years later, President Joe Biden explained why he also had decided to not seek another term.

“You know there is a time and a place, but there’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices, and that time and place is now,” Biden told the nation on the evening of July 24, 2024. He emphasized the last word in that sentence by jamming an index finger onto the oak surface of the Resolute Desk.

His words were no surprise. Biden, under intense pressure from his Democratic Party, had taken to social media the previous Sunday to announce he would not continue to seek re-election, although he had secured more than enough Democrats’ delegates – unlike Johnson, who had dropped out early in a contentious party primary process.

Johnson, like Biden, suffered from low popularity in the final year of his presidency. And Johnson’s fractured party eventually chose his vice president to be their candidate.

“I am ready to lead our country,” Vice President Hubert Humphrey told a chaotic 1968 national convention.

The majority of voters in the November election that year did not think so, electing Republican Richard Nixon instead of Humphrey.

This time, Democrats quickly united behind their sitting vice president. 

“The momentum in this race is shifting,” Vice President Kamala Harris repeated within days at packed public rallies after being anointed by Biden as the heir apparent. Her confidence has rejuvenated the Democrats, helping to close what had been a widening lead in the polls for former President Donald Trump, whom the Republicans nominated for a third consecutive presidential election despite his being convicted of numerous felony counts for falsifying business records.

“In contrast to Humphrey, she has really been able, at least for the moment, to separate herself from that unpopularity, to kind of develop a political identity of her own and really recast the momentum of the election,” said Guian McKee, a University of Virginia professor of presidential studies, about Harris’s nascent presidential campaign. 

Compared to the 81-year-old Biden, no one could credibly contend that Harris, 59, was in cognitive decline or unlikely to finish another full term because of the frailties of advanced age.

At the LBJ Presidential Library last month, Biden said he had long admired the late president’s public service, from rural Texas schoolteacher to senator, then vice president and president, noting Johnson had a simple philosophy: In a great society, “no one should be left behind.”

The accomplishments of Johnson’s Great Society – civil rights and voting rights laws, social welfare programs, federal funding for schools and some of the first significant anti-pollution legislation – were overshadowed by his losing efforts in an unwinnable war in Vietnam. In recent years, however, Johnson has climbed just ahead of James Monroe and Woodrow Wilson into the top quartile of historians’ rankings of America’s 46 presidents.

That 46th president, Biden, will be remembered for the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, as well as his climate change initiatives and revitalization of America’s industrial base. Biden’s larger legacy may hinge on the fate of his unfinished diplomacy in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“It depends on whether the accomplishments grow over time and outweigh the limitations of his record, and that will shape his historical legacy and his rank among American presidents,” McKee told VOA.

Biden’s decision is an extraordinary moment in American history because a president is not pursuing another term because of scandal or policy failure “like Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968 with Vietnam. He’s deciding not to run with a very strong economy, with America actually in very good shape,” according to Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a center-left research institution.

Biden “is above the fray now” as a so-called lame duck, added McKee. But the presidential studies professor explained that status as a lame duck “might actually give him more efficacy in terms of actually executing the duties and responsibilities of the presidency than if he were a candidate.”

After he dropped out of the race, Johnson said he would do nothing during his remaining nine months in office except “trying to find peace” in Vietnam.

Biden departs in a little more than five months. Trump continues to criticize his successor, saying at a rally in Atlanta last Saturday that the president “was choking like a dog” when he was forced out of their rematch. Trump also quipped the Democrats carried out a coup, but Biden “didn’t know it.”

During the 1968 general election campaign, Nixon also criticized Johnson even though the sitting president was not his opponent. The Republican nominee told voters he had a better plan to end the Vietnam War than Johnson did and accused him of not doing enough to combat crime and civil unrest at a time of social upheaval.

The real reason Johnson dropped out of the race was that he was often seriously ill and Lady Bird Johnson, the first lady, feared her husband would not survive another term, according to the late research historian Vaughn Davis Bornet. Johnson died of what was probably his fifth heart attack in 1973 at age 65.

Johnson and Biden are not the only once-elected presidents who decided not to pursue an additional term. An exhausted and ill James Polk left in 1849 and died three months later. James Buchanan was unpopular and in poor health as the nation headed toward Civil War. In the 20th century, Calvin Coolidge was beset by personal depression and an economic one. Harry Truman decided to bow out early after an upset loss in the first primary amid the stalemate of the Korean War and a yearning to return to private life. 

Many presidents who survive their time in office seem to struggle with that return to private life after their tenure as leader of the free world. Johnson could not abandon some of the trappings of power. He had a 7/8th scale replica Oval Office built for his retirement in Austin, Texas, which is now part of his official presidential library. Johnson also purchased a custom-built Lincoln limousine in which he continued to be chauffeured by Secret Service agents.

Biden will also have Secret Service protection until his death. For the 46th president, after a political career spanning a half-century as a senator, vice president and president, the most difficult thing to give up may be his influence and the ability to command history.
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Tim Walz’s China ties highlighted after VP announcement

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s ties to China will likely inform his work if elected. Where does he stand on key issues? And how does Beijing see him? Everyone has an opinion. VOA’s Anita Powell and Paris Huang report from Washington.
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Silicon Valley luminaries take sides in presidential contest

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Foreign policy differences with fellow Republicans could complicate second Trump presidency

Congressional Republicans closely align with presidential nominee Donald Trump on a number of key foreign policy issues, including U.S. support for Israel. But as VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, lawmakers still have significant differences on China, tariff policy and aid to Ukraine that could complicate a second Trump term. Videographer: Saqib Ui Islam
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Harris, Trump one-up each other on campaign trail

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US presidential campaigns clash in Midwest battleground state 

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Biden ‘not confident’ of peaceful power transition if Trump loses election

washington — President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he was not confident about a peaceful transfer of power in the United States if Republican Donald Trump loses the Nov. 5 presidential election.

“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden said in an interview with CBS News when asked whether he thought there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the vote.

“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about if we lose there’d be a bloodbath,” Biden added.

During a March campaign appearance in Ohio, Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he fails win the election. At the time Trump was discussing the need to protect the U.S. auto industry from overseas competition, and Trump later said he was referring to the auto industry when he used the term.

Trump has falsely claimed he won the 2020 election against Biden and was criminally charged in Washington and Georgia with illegally trying to overturn the results.

Biden dropped out of the campaign last month after fellow Democrats called for him to step aside following a poor debate performance against Trump that raised questions about the Democratic president’s age and health.

Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, has since captured the Democratic nomination and is running against Trump.
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Are vice presidential picks game changers for US elections?

Now that both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have selected their running mates, the question is whether those picks will actually help boost the campaigns’ chances of winning the November election. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at the historical relevance of vice presidential candidates and what Tim Walz and JD Vance bring to their respective tickets.
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Dueling political rallies in one of US oldest cities

The two U.S. presidential tickets are set. Vice President Kamala Harris named her running mate Tuesday. But the presumed Democratic Party nominee wasn’t alone making news in one of America’s oldest cities, Philadelphia, in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania. That’s where we find VOA’s Senior Washington Correspondent Carolyn Presutti.
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US presidential campaigns focus on battleground states with three months before vote

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Successful Democratic presidential ticket would reverberate in Minnesota

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Kamala Harris’ VP choice, Tim Walz, ‘happy’ to be labeled a liberal

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Harris selects Tim Walz as her running mate

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate Tuesday, capping off a whirlwind sequence of events since President Joe Biden endorsed her to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee less than three weeks ago. Harris and Walz will kick off a seven-state trip to some of the biggest battleground states in the election. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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Harris selects Tim Walz as running mate for US presidential run

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