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Front-runners emerge in contest for Trump vice president

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Biden, Trump set to debate in Atlanta 

U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off in their first debate of this election cycle Thursday. From Atlanta, VOA’s Calla Yu tells us what to expect. Contributor: Scott Stearns; Videographer: Yiyi Yang
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Famous US presidential debate moments

Public debates between presidential candidates have become a mainstay of American elections, though this wasn’t always the case. Sometimes amusing and sometimes shocking, presidential debates have been full of key moments shaping the way the public perceives the candidates and the issues.
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Biden, Trump to square off in 90-minute presidential debate

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Ahead of Thursday presidential debate, a look back to 2020

The first debate of the 2024 U.S. presidential election takes place on Thursday. But it isn’t the candidates’ first time debated each other. VOA’s senior Washington correspondent, Carolyn Presutti, looks back to 2020 for some clues about what we will see and hear in the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
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Once a rallying cry, ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ fades from Trump rhetoric

Washington — In 2016, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign echoed with a frequent vow to crush “radical Islamic terrorism.” 

Fast forward to today, as he seeks a second chance in the White House, Trump rarely mentions the phrase, his erstwhile rhetoric about Islamist terrorism eclipsed by a focus on immigration, crime and other domestic issues.  

The shift came into sharp relief on Sunday when a coordinated terrorist assault on a police station, churches and synagogues in southern Russia left at least 20 people dead. What might once have prompted a flurry of tweets went unmentioned on Trump’s Truth Social platform.  

Why the silence on what was once a rallying cry? Experts suggest two factors: diminished public concern about terrorism and a possible strategic play for the Muslim American vote. 

Brian Levin, an extremism expert who has closely followed Trump’s rhetoric, said the former president — “more of an opportunist than an ideologue” — is zeroing in on issues that resonate with voters.   

“Eight years ago, when the threat of foreign-inspired extremism polled among the top concerns of voters, Trump successfully invoked terror attacks … to drum up support,” Levin said. “Today, however, Trump has to pivot somewhat to domestic issues relating to the economy, democracy, crime and the border as well as the record of an incumbent he hopes to unseat.” 

Defending his record in office, including his handling of southern border immigration, President Joe Biden has made protecting democracy a centerpiece of his campaign, casting Trump as a grave threat to the country.  

But Biden’s staunch support of Israel during its military campaign in Gaza has angered many Muslim voters, opening a rare opportunity for Trump, according to experts.  

Gabriel Rubin, a justice studies professor at Montclair State University, said Trump may be eyeing the Muslim vote in key battleground states with large Muslim populations that could determine the outcome of the November election.   

“He has an avenue not to mention [‘radical Islamic terrorism’] too much,” Rubin, who has written about Trump’s past rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism, told VOA in an interview. “I think he can win some of these Midwestern states if he plays his cards right.”  

To be sure, the threat of international terrorism hasn’t vanished. In the months since the outbreak of conflict in Gaza, U.S. officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, have been sounding the alarm about an increased potential for terrorist attacks.    

But while the warnings seem to have raised the public’s worries about terrorism, “overall concern about the issue still doesn’t match the higher levels of concern it garnered” in 2015 and 2016, according to an April Gallup report.   

Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric — from claiming “Muslims hate us” to calling for a “complete and total” shutdown of Muslims entering the country — did not happen in a bubble.  

Though on the run, the Islamic State (IS) still controlled large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq and advocated attacking the West. Adding to Americans’ angst about terrorism were a spate of IS-inspired terror attacks across Europe and the United States. 

In the 12 months leading up to the November election, Trump tweeted 164 times about Islamic State, “radical Islam” and terrorism — nearly twice as much as he did about border security and immigration, according to one estimate. 

Trump’s vitriolic comments on Muslims and Islam, welcomed by his supporters, unnerved many in the Muslim community, drawing charges of Islamophobia against him, which he and his allies reject.   

VOA reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not receive a response. The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.    

Biden’s stance on terrorism, particularly Islamist terrorism, also has evolved over the years. 

While he is not known to have used the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” in the past he was more willing to employ similar language while taking a tough stance on terrorism.  

In 2014, as vice president under President Barack Obama, he criticized Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for supporting jihadi groups in Syria and “the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts to the world.” He later apologized for the comment. 

Since becoming president in 2021, Biden has focused on terrorism more broadly without singling out any one region or religion, moving away from the rhetoric of the “War on Terror” of the 2000s.  

On the day he entered the White House, he repealed the Trump administration’s “Muslim ban,” calling it “a stain on our national conscience.”

In the wake of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, moreover, his administration placed a greater emphasis on domestic terrorism as a significant threat to homeland security. In 2021, it launched the first-ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism. 

After the October 7 Hamas attack, Biden condemned the attack as “pure, unadulterated evil” while putting a distance between the perpetrators and the broader Muslim community. 

“You know, I know many of you in the Muslim American community or the Arab American community, the Palestinian American community, and so many others are outraged and hurting, saying to yourselves, ‘Here we go again,’ with Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11,” Biden said on October 10.  

Trump is not known for moderating his rhetoric, even while in office. But after his second year in the White House, the volume of his rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism fell dramatically as he shifted his focus to a new area: border security and illegal immigration. 

That trend has continued into the current campaign. A VOA examination of his most recent social media posts and campaign statements found fewer than 20 references since the start of his reelection campaign, including only one mention of “radical Islamic terrorists.” 

That came last July when he announced that he’d reinstate a travel ban on several Muslim countries that he imposed during his first term in office and which Biden later repealed. 

“We don’t want people coming into our country that hate us. We want people that love us,” he told a rally, citing anti-police riots in France sparked by the killing of a French Moroccan teenager.   

Trump supporters dismiss his rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism as just that — rhetoric.  

“Let’s forget about what this guy says. Let’s look at what he does,” a Muslim Republican activist said, speaking on condition of anonymity.  

Another activist questioned whether Trump has ever said he hates Muslims, adding that more Muslims will likely vote for the former president than did in 2016.  

But if there is one thing both Trump supporters and detractors agree on, it is that Trump will likely follow through on his vow to bring back the “Muslim ban.”  

“The legal structure that allowed the Muslim ban to be implemented in the first place is still on the books so we have to start planning as if a new Muslim ban will come into existence,” said Corey Saylor, research and advocacy director for the Council on American Islamic Relations. 
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Unpacking US campaign spending

Elections in the United States are some of the most expensive in the world. In 2020, more than $16 billion was spent on U.S. presidential and congressional races. 2024 election costs are likely to be higher. How do campaigns help finance these elections? Fundraising.
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How the presidential candidates see top foreign policy issues 

washington — An aggressive Russia, an emboldened China, a tempestuous Middle East and the fragile global relationships needed to confront these challenges are major foreign policy issues neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump can dodge if either wins November’s election.

As the two men hold their first presidential debate on Thursday, they’ll likely use their talking points to paint a picture of the role they want the United States to occupy on the world stage.

The difference couldn’t be starker, said Jeremi Suri, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Biden’s approach is a combination of liberal internationalism and forceful realism, echoing the Cold War,” he said. “Trump’s approach is a combination of isolationism and unilateralism, echoing the United States before World War II.”

Here’s a look at how they view major foreign policy hot spots.

Russian aggression

Biden’s administration sounded the alarm ahead of Russia’s February 2022 invasion and has vowed to support Ukraine “as long as it takes.” But that support faltered this year, when congressional Republicans stalled for six months on a $61 billion aid package.

At the NATO summit in Washington in July, Biden will seek to boost allies’ support for the conflict while passing Ukraine coordination duties to allies in Europe — moves seen as insulating the conflict from a hostile U.S. Congress or future president.

Trump’s view of the conflict is complicated, contradictory and colored by his own experience with that nation’s leader. It was, after all, a July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that sparked his first impeachment. A majority of the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted him of the charges that he improperly sought help from a foreign power to boost his reelection chances by asking Zelenskyy to help him discredit Biden politically.

On the war, Trump told a recent interviewer, “I will have that settled prior to taking the White House as president-elect.”

Analysts say he hasn’t made clear how.

“He advocated only for the need to start some types of talks and negotiations, and he said that he could be willing to engage in these negotiations between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Zelenskyy, but he never specified the design of the future outline of this peace agreement,” said Sergiy Kudelia, an associate professor of political science at Baylor University.

Biden recently assured Zelenskyy that their new 10-year bilateral security agreement serves as “another reminder to Putin: We’re not backing down. In fact, we’re standing together against this illegal aggression.”

But this tough stance is not limited to Biden, analysts say.

“We do know that Trump perceives himself as a strongman and does not want to be associated with foreign policy failure,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst told VOA.” And a Russian victory in Ukraine, if Trump is president, would look very much like a foreign policy failure.”

Chinese ambition

Biden’s mantra on Beijing is “competition, not conflict” — and economic statecraft is Washington’s tool of choice in this high-stakes game. This narrowed view of the relationship with China ties into what a consistent majority of Americans identify as a top election priority: the economy.

In May, Biden highlighted the risks he believes China poses, by imposing steep tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

“American workers can outwork and outcompete anyone as long as the competition is fair,” Biden said. “But for too long, it hasn’t been fair. For years, the Chinese government has poured state money into Chinese companies. … It’s not competition, it’s cheating.”

And Trump, a self-professed fan of tariffs, recently proposed a tariff on all imported goods and another levy of 60% or more on Chinese imports.

On China, professor Konstantin Sonin of the University of Chicago said, both men are aggressive. Biden, analysts note, has not reversed many of the Trump administration’s tough tariffs on China.

“Eight years ago, it sounded as if he would be a very different kind of U.S. president,” he said of Trump. “But actually, he was not that different. And a lot of things that Trump did were then continued by the Biden administration.”

But on Taiwan, where the policy of American “strategic ambiguity” comes into play — the idea that Washington refuses to signal how it would react if Beijing were to invade Taiwan — this hits different, depending upon who’s in charge, Sonin said.

“I think that these are still very different presidents,” he said. “For example, if it escalates around Taiwan, then perhaps Donald Trump would react differently.”

But, he added, further emphasizing Trump’s rhetoric, “In foreign policy, sometimes he sounds harsher than he acts. And this is true in respect to China, not only China [but] with respect to Mexico, as well.”

Middle East malaise

Trump’s ambivalence and use of superlatives come wildly into play when it comes to the Middle East. While Biden has publicly styled himself as Israel’s strongest supporter — yet increasingly publicly letting slip that he is often annoyed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the war in Gaza rages on — Trump’s personal relationship with the Israeli leader seems to shape his view of the region.

“I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump said, using the prime minister’s nickname, in a wide-ranging April interview with Time. “And it had to do with [the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military officer Qasem] Soleimani, because as you probably know by now, he dropped out just before the attack. …  And I was not happy about that. That was something I never forgot. And it showed me something.”

But then in May, when Biden pledged to withhold weapons from Israel if its forces were to launch a major ground assault on the highly populated Gaza city of Rafah, Trump fired back.

In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump described Biden’s words as “taking the side of these terrorists, just like he has sided with the Radical Mobs taking over our college campuses.”

Here, Trump uses a particular rhetorical trick: using one issue — in this case, Israel — to bring up a keyword — “terrorism” — that polls say is a top voter concern, and then using that to reach back to domestic issues. In this case, he noted growing campus protests over the war in Gaza with loaded language that appeals to voters’ feelings.

Americans’ top foreign policy issues, as documented by the Pew Research Center, appear to be focused through the same, particular lens that also seems to motivate voters: fear.

“The majority of Americans say preventing terrorist attacks (73%), keeping illegal drugs out of the country (64%) and preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction (63%) are top priorities,” the group said in its most recent roundup of Americans’ foreign policy priorities. 

But then, Pew says: “Even with these priorities, foreign policy generally takes a back seat to domestic policy for most Americans.”
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How Biden, Trump differ over Ukraine policy

U.S. presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump meet Thursday for the first of their two scheduled debates. Russia’s war on Ukraine is expected to be one of the top foreign policy questions. VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko looks at how the two candidates differ in their approach to Ukraine.
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On thorny issues, Trump, Biden campaigns hold their ground ahead of debate

The first of two U.S. presidential debates in this year’s contest will take place Thursday. But the candidates’ rhetoric around sensitive topics such as immigration and former President Donald Trump’s recent hush money trial conviction is already heating up. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Trump backs Ten Commandments in all schools, urges Christians to vote 

washington — Donald Trump told a group of evangelicals they “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” of the 2024 election, imploring them at one point to “go and vote, Christians, please!” 

Trump also endorsed displaying the Ten Commandments in schools and elsewhere while speaking to a group of politically influential evangelical Christians in Washington on Saturday. He drew cheers as he invoked a new law signed in Louisiana this week requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom. 

“Has anyone read the ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible,” Trump said at the gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “They don’t want it to go up. It’s a crazy world.” 

Trump a day earlier posted an endorsement of the new law on his social media network, saying: “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT — HOW CAN WE, AS A NATION, GO WRONG???” 

The former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee backed the move as he seeks to galvanize his supporters on the religious right, which has fiercely backed him after initially being suspicious of the twice-divorced New York City tabloid celebrity when he first ran for president in 2016. 

That support has continued despite his conviction in the first of four criminal cases he faces, in which a jury last month found him guilty of falsifying business records for what prosecutors said was an attempt to cover up a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. Daniels claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier, which he denies. 

Trump’s stated opposition to signing a nationwide ban on abortion and his reluctance to detail some of his views on the issue are at odds with many members of the evangelical movement, a key part of Trump’s base that’s expected to help him turn out voters in his November rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden. 

But while many members of the movement would like to see him do more to restrict abortion, they cheer him as the greatest champion for the cause because of his role in appointing U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned national abortion rights in 2022. 

Trump highlighted that Saturday, saying, “We did something that was amazing,” but the issue would be left to people to decide in the states. 

“Every voter has to go with your heart and do what’s right, but we also have to get elected,” he said. 

While he still takes credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Trump has also warned abortion can be tricky politically for Republicans. For months, he deferred questions about his position on a national ban. 

Last year, when Trump addressed the Faith & Freedom Coalition, he said there was “a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life” but didn’t offer any details beyond that. 

In April of this year, Trump said he believed the issue should now be left to the states. He later stated in an interview that he would not sign a nationwide ban on abortion if it was passed by Congress. He has still declined to detail his position on women’s access to the abortion pill mifepristone. 

About two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal, according to polling last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. 

Attendees at the evangelical gathering on Saturday said that while they’d like to see a national abortion ban, Trump isn’t losing any of their deep support. 

“I would prefer if he would sign a national ban,” said Jerri Dickinson, a 78-year-old retired social worker and Faith & Freedom member from New Jersey. “I understand though, that as in accordance with the Constitution, that decision should be left up to the states.” 

Dickinson said she can’t stand the abortion law in her state, which does not set limits on the procedure based on gestational age. But she said outside of preferring a national ban, leaving the issue to the state “is the best alternative.” 

John Pudner, a 59-year-old who recently started a Faith & Freedom chapter in his home state of Wisconsin, said members of the movement feel loyal to Trump but “we’d generally like him to be more pro-life.” 

“I think a lot, you know, within the pro-life movement feel like, well, gosh, they’re kind of thinking he’s too far pro-choice,” he said. “But because they appreciate his Supreme Court justices, like that’s a positive within the pro-life community.” 

According to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate, about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters supported Trump in 2020, and nearly 4 in 10 Trump voters identified as white evangelical Christians. White evangelical Christians made up about 20% of the overall electorate that year. 

Beyond just offering their own support in the general election, the Faith & Freedom Coalition plans to help get out the vote for Trump and other Republicans, aiming to use volunteers and paid workers to knock on millions of doors in battleground states. 

Trump on Saturday said evangelicals and Christians “don’t vote as much as they should,” and joked that while he wanted them to vote in November, he didn’t care if they voted again after that. 

He portrayed Christianity as under threat by what he suggested was an erosion of freedom, law and the nation’s borders. 

He returned several times during his roughly 90-minute remarks to the subject of the U.S.-Mexico border and at one point, when describing migrants crossing it as “tough,” he joked that he told his friend Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to enlist them in a new version of the sport. 

“‘Why don’t you set up a migrant league and have your regular league of fighters. And then you have the champion of your league, these are the greatest fighters in the world, fighting the champion of the migrants,'” Trump described saying to White. “I think the migrant guy might win, that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.” 

His story drew laughs and claps from the crowd. 

Later Saturday, Trump plans to hold an evening rally in Philadelphia. 
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