(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) A high-profile leftist activist reproached former President Barack Obama after he lectured black male voters for committing the atrocious crime of not supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.
Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator and Bernie Sanders campaign surrogate, scolded Obama’s claims that black men “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president” and are hiding these sentiments by highlighting several of Harris’s flaws.
Turner slammed Obama’s remarks as “patronizing” and “wrong” in an X post on Friday, which included a clip of her CNN appearance from Thursday, where she directly countered the former president’s claims.
“Why are black men being lectured to? Why are black men being belittled in ways that no other voting group [has]?” Turner asked during her interview on CNN NewsNight.
“Now, lot of love for former President Obama, but for him to single out black men is wrong and some of the black men that I have talked to have their reasons why they want to vote a different way,” she continued.
Turner emphasized that Democrats need to “respect” the reality that some black men have pledged to vote for a candidate other than Harris.
Months ago, while President Biden was still the Democratic nominee, I said this.
God forbid, if Donald J Trump becomes President again, what we are NOT going to do is blame Black voters, ESPECIALLY Black men.
In Pennsylvania, Harris is polling at just 78% support from black male voters—a figure that, while still high, is strikingly lower than President Joe Biden’s 92% support in the state, according to a 2020 exit poll.
“Unless President Barack Obama is going to go out and lecture every other group of men from other identity groups. My message for Democrats is: Don’t bring it here to black men, who by in large, don’t vote much differently from black women,” Turner stated.
Turner later reiterated her outrage over Obama’s comments in an op-ed for Newsweek, affirming that his comments made her “jaw hit the floor” and her “blood boil.”
“I was infuriated to hear these remarks,” Turner wrote. “No other group of voters is talked to like this, as if they are children. But it’s not just the paternalistic tone that had me enraged. It’s the underlying message in his words—that Black men are misogynistic and can’t bring themselves to vote for a woman.”
These days, it feels like the most vilified person in America is the Black man.
(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) President Donald Trump’s campaign has requested enhanced security measures, including decoy planes capable of intercepting missiles after intel briefings showed Iran is actively trying to kill him.
The Trump campaign made these demands directly to the Secret Service and the Biden White House after the new briefings and following near-fatal assassination attempts against the former president.
According to a Friday report by The Washington Post, the main concern is that drones and missiles could target Trump as he flies between campaign stops ahead of the November election.
Trump’s senior adviser, Susie Wiles, stated that he has been forced to relocate, reschedule, and cancel events due to the Secret Service’s limited resources, The Post reported, citing emails sent by the campaign to the federal government.
Trump has already escaped at least two assassination attempts, with the first occurring during a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the second at one of Trump’s golf courses in Florida.
In addition to plotting to kill the former president, Iran hacked the Trump campaign by targeting officials with phishing emails.
The Post noted that the Trump campaign requested special armored vehicles, flight restrictions over his rallies and homes, reimbursements for decoy airplanes and more funding for the Secret Service and local law enforcement agencies protecting the former president.
Wiles suggested that the federal government’s inability to properly protect Trump is hindering his ability to campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, just weeks before the election.
In response, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi vaguely claimed Trump is already receiving “the highest levels of protection.”
He added that the Department of Defense is “regularly” providing Trump with protection, including explosive ordnance disposal, canine units and airlift transportation.
“Additionally, the former president is receiving the highest level of technical security assets which include unmanned aerial vehicles, counter unmanned aerial surveillance systems, ballistics and other advanced technology systems,” Guglielmi continued.
Former President Barack Obama begged his black “brothas” to support Vice President Kamala Harris for President Thursday as even CNN recognized the Democratic nominee’s problem with men.
Obama told black men to stop making “excuses” and vote for Harris before speaking at the vice president’s campaign rally in Pittsburgh.
“We have not yet seen the same kind of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” the ex-narcissist-in-chief told a group of black men. “I also want to say that seems to be more pronounced with the brothas.”
Obama continued by telling the black men they should support Harris because she “grew up like you” and had to “work harder.”
Democrats have reportedly been fearful as Harris struggles to gain male support, according to The Hill. Trump leads Harris by 11 points nationally among likely male voters, a New York Times/Siena College survey revealed.
Harris has hemorrhaged support from Hispanic and black men in battleground states, the outlet added. In Arizona, only 39% of Hispanic men support Harris, while 51% support Trump, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll.
CNN commentator Scott Jennings pointed out the obvious Thursday evening when he brought up gender ideology and Harris’s problem with male voters.
“This is a political party that thinks gender is just a state of mind, and all of a sudden they’re like, ‘we have trouble with moderate biological males.’”
Jennings said on CNN’s The Source that Obama admitted black men were “not enthusiastic” about Harris and blamed their lack of excitement on misogyny.
“He insulted them,” Jennings remarked.
The Harris campaign attempted to reach out to male voters with a new ad titled “Man Enough.” The 90-second video featured men of multiple racial backgrounds and physiques say they are “man enough” to engage in an array of activities, including some stereotypically emasculating, as well as vote for Harris.
“I’m man enough to tell you that I cry at Love Actually,” one man proudly declared in Harris’ ad.
None of the men featured in Harris’s ad were organic supporters as they were portrayed. They were all actors, X user @drrollergator revealed in a thread.
Actor Winston Carter, the star of the 2016 film Spaghettiman, played the simple small-town farmer in Harris’s ad. Spaghettiman tells the story of a man who “becomes a superhero that can fight crime with the power of spaghetti,” according to IMBd.
— President Dr RollerGator MVIP PhD (@drrollergator) October 11, 2024
Harris’s ad also featured actor Lanre Idewu, who starred in the film Hush. Idewu was the muscular black man casually chilling in a garage in Harris’ ad.
N ACTOR LANRE IDEWU FROM THE MOVIE "HUSH" IS SIMILARLY JUST UR NORMAL EVERYDAY GUY JUST GENERICALLY CHILLING IN HIS GARAGE GYM pic.twitter.com/tLUWYGBnKg
— President Dr RollerGator MVIP PhD (@drrollergator) October 11, 2024
A reporter off camera asked DeSantis Thursday about the role of “global warming.”
“Tornadoes? I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history for sure,” the Florida Republican said during a Thursday press conference.
He then proceeded to educate the reporter on climate and weather history.
“Florida, how does this storm rate in the history of storms,” DeSantis asked.
“I think if you go until 1851, there’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure on landfall than [Hurricane] Milton did,” DeSantis told the reporter.
He said that the “most powerful hurricane on record…in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s.”
More than 4,000 people were killed during the deadliest hurricane in 1928, the governor said.
Currently, 16 people have died so far from the hurricane, as reported by CBS News.
The governor noted that hurricanes are part of the state’s history. There might be more “potential for damage” in past years due to the increased size of Florida. However, the state also has better resources and planning that can mitigate damage, the governor said.
President Joe Biden also has praised Florida’s response.
“I know you’re doing a great job. It’s all being done well. We thank you for it,” Biden said, recounting his conversation with the governor earlier this week, according to the Washington Examiner.
DeSantis’ response drew praise from several commentators online.
“A perfect response — calm, factual, informative,” Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote on X.
President Biden has previously suggested climate change might lead to worse weather.
“All that I know is that the intensity of the weather across the board has some impact as a consequence of the warming of the planet and the climate change,” Biden said in 2021, commenting on tornadoes.
(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted evidence on Wednesday showing that the federal government has actively engaged in weather manipulation after President Joe Biden and others on the Left attempted to gaslight the public into believing it was a conspiracy theory.
This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election. pic.twitter.com/XIbNZjuC1q
Greene was ridiculed on Oct. 3 for suggesting that cloud-seeding or other scientific means to inject an Octobers surprise into the hotly contested election cycle.
“Yes, they can control the weather,” she wrote on X. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
After facing partisan attacks, the pro-MAGA congresswoman backed up her claims by pointing to the Weather Modification Act of 1972, which requires that the government document efforts to alter or manipulate weather patterns.
Everyone keeps asking, “who is they?”
Well some of them are listed on NOAA, as well as most of the ways weather can be modified, because they are required to report it to the Secretary of Commerce by the Weather Modification Act of 1972.
In the midst of a debate about the origins and paths of hurricanes Helene and Milton, both of which wrought massive damage in some of the nation’s most conservative regions, Greene said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration might have been involved.
After suspicious citizens, including Louisiana X user Kristy Legendrer, began combing through the NOAA’s lists, the organization appeared to begin removing information from its website, including over one hundred pages of “weather modification” reports.
Thread 🧵
Why is @NOAA removing information from their website if weather modification isn’t happening?
They’ve removed 103 pages of weather modification reports that were previously listed on their site.
Legendre suggested that she had been censored by TikTok for violating its “civic and election integrity” policy as she tried to share the publicly available information with her followers.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media was preparing the nation for low voter turnout in the red areas hit hard by recent storms.
The carnage wrought by the storms may be particularly damaging in the swing states of North Carolina and Georgia, both of which lean in favor of GOP candidate Donald Trump, but will require good turnout in key areas to secure the victory.
As the federal government and its propaganda outlets try to frame their opponents as conspiracy theorists, it has continued to act in a conspiratorial manner for many decades, potentially even engaging in the weather warfare across the globe—a tactic that could just as easily be turned to Trump supporters at home.
(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Billionaire Elon Musk suggested Thursday that 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will sit down for an interview on the highly influential Joe Rogan Experience podcast before Election Day.
Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder who recently became a Trump ally, teased that an interview between Joe Rogan and Trump “will happen” after social-media influencer Alex Lorusso, executive producer for the Benny Johnson podcast, observed that the GOP nominee had just 25 more days to appear on the show.
Like Musk, former leftist darling Rogan appears to have shifted his politics to the right since the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Rogan has renounced his past as a Los Angeles liberal and become a powerful champion of conservative causes like free speech.
“I don’t think it turns around if Kamala Harris gets into office,” Rogan said in a September episode of his podcast. “I think they clamp down more.”
Rogan’s podcast is notablypopular among young men—a demographic Harris has struggled to attract as the Democratic nominee, according to The Hill.
Rogan previously praised former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as “the only one who makes sense to me” in August. The former mix-martial-arts-fighter and Fear Factor host later clarified that his glowing comments were not an endorsement, Variety reported.
Like Musk, Kennedy has since joined forces with Trump and is actively campaigning on the GOP candidate’s behalf.
Nontraditional media interviews have emerged at the forefront of the 2024 election. On Sunday, the Call Her Daddy podcast released an interview with Harris trying to appeal to women. The conversation focused on abortion with segments about sexual abuse and “childless cat ladies.”
Trump, who recently refused to take part in CBS’s 60 Minutes interview, spoke with the FLAGRANT podcast in an interview released Wednesday.
“It’s just like, it would be interesting to hear his perspective on a lot of things,” Rogan said at the time.
This was a stark departure from his stance in 2022, when Rogan declared he would never have Trump on because he was “not interested in helping him,” according to The Gazette.
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer also published by the Daily Caller and The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
(Headline USA) Americans’ outlook on the economy soured a bit this month after two months of small gains, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, released Friday.
With Democrats banking on economic optimism to make their case for another term in office, the new development could spell more bad news for the Kamala Harris campaign, despite efforts by government agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the semi-private Federal Reserve to stack the deck in its favor with friendly economic policies and generous job estimates.
The consumer sentiment index slipped to 68.9 in October from 70.1 in September, which had been its highest reading since May. “Consumers continue to express frustration over high prices,” said Joanne Hsu, director of consumer surveys at University of Michigan.
Many consumers appear to be reserving judgement about the economy while they wait for the presidential campaign to finish, Hsu added.
Economists noted that the decline occurred after the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in September, while gas prices have steadily fallen—due to the depletion of the strategic petroleum reserves—and overall inflation has cooled from its peak roughly a year into the Democrat presidency.
Yet Hurricane Helene and Middle East turmoil could have pushed sentiment lower, Bradley Saunders, an economist at Capital Economics, noted. And after falling in anticipation of the Fed’s rate cut, mortgage rates have climbed in the past two weeks.
The survey bottomed out in June 2022, when inflation peaked at 9.1%, and has since risen by about 40%, though it remains significantly below pre-pandemic levels. In October, Republicans reported a much clearer drop in sentiment than Democrats.
Still, consumers have kept spending despite their gloomy responses to economic confidence surveys, buoying the economy.
(Headline USA) Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, though fans of the electric vehicle maker will have to wait until at least 2026 before they are available.
CEO Elon Musk pulled up to a stage at the Warner Bros. studio lot in one of the company’s “Cybercabs,” telling the crowd that the sleek, AI-powered vehicles don’t have steering wheels or pedals.
He also expressed confidence in the progress the company has made on autonomous driving technology that makes it possible for vehicles to drive without human intervention.
Tesla began selling the software, which is called “Full Self-Driving,” nine years ago. But there are doubts about its reliability.
“We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving. where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” he said. “It’s going to be a glorious future.”
Tesla expects the Cybercabs to cost under $30,000, Musk said. He estimated that the vehicles would become available in 2026, then added “before 2027.”
The company also expects to make the Full Self-Driving technology available on its popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California next year.
“If they’re going to eventually get to robotaxis, they first need to have success with the unsupervised FSD at the current lineup,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar Research. “Tonight’s event showed that they’re ready to take that step forward.”
When Tesla will actually take that step, however, has led to more than a little anxiety for investors who see other automakers deploying similar technology right now. Shares of Tesla Inc. tumbled 9% at the opening bell Friday.
Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Google parent-company Alphabet Inc., is carrying passengers in vehicles without human safety drivers in Phoenix and other areas.
General Motors’s Cruise self-driving unit had been running robotaxis in San Francisco until a crash last year involving one of its vehicles.
Also, Aurora Innovation said it will start hauling freight in fully autonomous semis on Texas freeways by year’s end. Another autonomous semi company, Gatik, plans to haul freight autonomously by the end of 2025.
“Tesla yet again claimed it is a year or two away from actual automated driving—just as the company has been claiming for a decade,” Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies automated vehicles, told the Associated Press in an email.
“Indeed, Tesla’s whole event had a 2014 vibe, except that in 2014 there were no automated vehicles actually deployed on public roads,” he added. “Now there are real AVs carrying real people on real roads, but none of those vehicles are Teslas. Tonight did not change this reality; it only made the irony more glaring.”
Tesla had 20 or so Cybercabs on hand and offered event attendees the opportunity to take rides inside the movie studio lot—not on Los Angeles’s roads.
At the presentation, which was dubbed “We, Robot” and was streamed live on Tesla’s website and X, Musk also revealed a sleek minibus-looking vehicle that, like the Cybercab, would be self-driving and can carry up to 20 passengers.
The company also trotted out several of its black and white Optimus humanoid robots, which walked a few feet from the attendees before showing off dance moves in a futuristic-looking gazebo.
Musk estimated that the robots would cost between $28,000-$30,000 and would be able to babysit, mow lawns, fetch groceries, among other tasks.
“Whatever you can think of, it will do,” he said.
The unveiling of the Cybercab comes as Musk tries to persuade investors that his company is more about artificial intelligence and robotics as it labors to sell its core products, an aging lineup of electric vehicles.
Tesla’s model lineup is struggling and isn’t likely to be refreshed until late next year at the earliest, TD Cowen analyst Jeff Osborne wrote in a research note last week.
Osborne also noted that, in TD Cowen’s view, the “politicization of Elon” is tarnishing the Tesla brand among Democrat buyers in the U.S.
Musk has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and has pushed many conservative causes. Last weekend he joined Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.
Musk has been saying for more than five years that a fleet of robotaxis is near, allowing Tesla owners to make money by having their cars carry passengers while they’re not in use by the owners. Musk said that Tesla owners will be able to put their cars into service on a company robotaxi network.
But he has acknowledged that past predictions for the use of autonomous driving proved too optimistic. In 2019, he promised the fleet of autonomous vehicles by the end of 2020.
The announcement comes as U.S. safety regulators are investigating Full Self Driving and Autopilot based on evidence that it has a weak system for making sure human drivers pay attention.
In addition, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration forced Tesla to recall Full Self-Driving in February because it allowed speeding and violated other traffic laws, especially near intersections. Tesla was to fix the problems with an online software update.
Last April in Snohomish County, Washington, near Seattle, a Tesla using Full Self-Driving hit and killed a motorcyclist, authorities said. The Tesla driver told authorities that he was using the system while looking at his phone when the car rear-ended the motorcyclist. The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
NHTSA says it’s evaluating information on the fatal crash from Tesla and law enforcement officials.
The Justice Department also has sought information from Tesla about Full Self-Driving and Autopilot, as well as other items.
Trentadue’s FOIA lawsuit against the FBI seeks records about Roger Edwin Moore, who was a CIA asset, an FBI informant and a business associate to OKC bomber Tim McVeigh; as well as for records about the Aryan Republican Army, a neo-Nazi bank-robbery gang also involved in the attack.
In response to his lawsuit, the FBI has given several batches of OKC bomb records to him this year. However, none of those records are related to Trentadue’s specific request, he said in his Tuesday filing.
“There was not a single document produced to Plaintiff that was responsive to either of his FOIA Requests,” Trentadue wrote.
Jesse Trentadue blistered the FBI in court today, accusing the bureau of seeking a 50-year coverup of its role in the OKC bombing.
Trentadue also noted that the FBI has withheld 453 pages from him on privacy grounds, even though the subjects of his request—Moore and McVeigh—are both dead.
Furthermore, he said, the FBI is producing records at a snail’s pace—the FBI has admitted it holds 36,795 pages of documents about Moore and the OKC-ARA links, but wants until 2036 to produce them all. Worse still, the FBI doesn’t want the court to review whether it’s complied with Trentadue’s FOIA request until 2036, Trentadue added.
“By asking the Court to not consider the lawfulness of Bureau’s withholding of these incriminating documents until the year 2036, the FBI is asking the Court to become a party to what is intended to be and will be a 50-year cover-up of the FBI’s heretofore secret role in the Oklahoma City Bombing,” Trentadue concluded.
“What the FBI is asking the Court to do is also both outrageous and unlawful because “[u]nreasonable delays in disclosing non-exempt documents violate the intent and purpose of the FOIA, and the courts have a duty to prevent these abuses.”
Trentadue now seeks to have the presiding judge order the FBI to compile a “Vaughn Index,” which would describe and identify each document being withheld, state the statutory exemption claimed for that document, and give a detailed explanation as to how disclosure of the particular document would damage the interest protected by the claimed exemption.
It’s not clear when the judge will rule on Trentadue’s motion.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
(Headline USA) A notoriously biased reporter for the Associated Press seized on former President Donald Trump’s visit to Colorado on Friday to push a disgracefully pro-open-borders propaganda piece that attempted to downplay a dangerous Venezuelan gang’s militant takeover of an Aurora neighborhood.
🚨 NEW: President Trump will be announcing “OPERATION AURORA” today in Colorado, which will force the removal of illegal migrant members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TDA)
The article by Nicholas Riccardi not only appeared to cast Tren de Aragua in a sympathetic light, but it also pushed demonstrably debunked information that falsely claimed a decline in violent crime rates, although it has been proven that the actual cause for a decrease in crime statistics resulted from changes in the way that agencies, including the FBI, had begun reporting crimes under the Biden administration
Nicholas Riccardi / PHOTO: AP
As was recently provent to be the case with job growth—after the Biden–Harris Labor Department admitted it had spent the past year lying about job increases just in time for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates ahead of the election—the agencies likely made a conscious decision to dishonestly report the crime statistics to make the Democrat administration’s failures seem slightly less egregious.
Instead, however, not only do most people see through the lies being told by the leftist leaders, but media outlets who report on the bogus claims without scrutiny—or who, like the AP, are actively complicit in pushing the propaganda—have also sacrificed to a great extent their own credibility.
As part of our ongoing effort to expose the AP’s humiliatingly slanted coverage, Headline USA is running the AP’s Riccardi piece below, completely unedited. We take not ownership of the views expressed, nor any disinformation that may be presented in the piece.
Trump seizes on one block of a Colorado city to warn of migrant crime threat, even as crime dips
A person holds up a placard during a rally by the East Colfax Community Collective to address chronic problems in the apartment buildings occupied by people displaced from their home countries in central and South America, in Aurora, Colo. / PHOTO: AP
(Nicholas Riccardi, Associated Press) The city of Aurora is roughly the size of pre-evacuation Tampa, Florida. With 400,000 people spread over 164 square miles, it has swank subdivisions, working-class neighborhoods and the high-end resort where Donald Trump will hold a rally Friday to highlight a city turned into “a war zone” by immigrants, in the words of his campaign.
The reality is much different from the one Trump has been portraying to his rally attendees. As with many other American cities, Aurora’s crime rate is actually declining.
The matter that brought the Denver suburb to Trump’s attention occurred in August in a single block of the city, in an apartment complex housing Venezuelan migrants.
It was then that video surfaced of heavily armed men going door to door in the complex, where the New York-based owners claimed a Venezuelan gang was extorting rent from tenants. Someone outside the complex was shot and killed around the time the video was recorded, police said.
Now, two months later, authorities say they have identified the six men in the video and arrested one. Tenants of the building say police check in regularly and the area is safe.
“They left, and it’s been nice and calm,” said Edward Ramirez, 38, of the gunmen as he climbed into his car this week. He was one of more than a dozen of tenants who said in interviews that the threat has ebbed. “It’s quiet, we can work, it’s normal.”
Trump exploits a local crime
Aurora’s crime rate has followed a downward trend seen across the country, a decline that has overlapped with the influx of Venezuelans fleeing their country who have funneled into Colorado and other cities nationwide.
Multiple studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. But Aurora also is an example of how Trump has been able to use real but isolated episodes of migrant violence to tar an entire population. He uses those examples to paint a picture of a country in chaos due to what he regularly calls an immigrant “invasion.”
“Do you see what they’re doing in Colorado? They’re taking over,” Trump, who often warns of “migrant crime,” said of Venezuelan gang members during a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. “They’re taking over real estate. They become real estate developers from Venezuela. They have equipment that our military doesn’t have.”
Trump’s sweeping claims about Aurora — his campaign’s announcement of the rally calls the city “a war zone,” linking to a story in the conservative New York Post that uses those words — have drawn sharp rebukes from local residents.
“Former President Trump’s visit to Aurora is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs,” Mayor Mike Coffman, who was an occasional Trump critic when he served as a Republican congressman, said in a statement. “The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity have been grossly exaggerated.”
Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, noted that Aurora has long fought to shake its reputation as Colorado’s rougher big city. It’s the third most populous in the state and has long lived in the shadow of its neighbor, Denver. One-fifth of Aurora’s residents were born in another country.
“This is a safer town than its been before,” Polis said in an interview. “Things are going really great” in Aurora, Polis added, “and I don’t want this bizarre counter-narrative out there.”
Asked how it could justify its sweeping claims about safety as crime drops in Aurora, the Trump campaign responded with a statement from the Republican National Committee: “The violent gang invasion of Aurora, Colorado, is just one example of how every state is a border state,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “Aurora apartment complexes are war zones, fentanyl is flooding communities, and migrant criminals are raping and murdering victims.”
Trump’s rally will be held at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center, roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the apartment complexes. His schedule for the day gives no indication he plans to visit the neighborhood.
Aurora became a magnet for Venezuelan migrants
Trump’s characterization of the city and the pushback from officials and residents are reminiscent of the falsehoods he and his running mate, JD Vance, spread about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Those repeated lies led to multiple bomb threats against schools, government buildings and city officials’ homes, forced evacuations and closures, and led the city to cancel an annual celebration of diversity, arts and culture.
Aurora did see a “slight” uptick in crime that coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Venezuelans in the city during September 2023, Police Chief Todd Chamberlain told a press conference last month. But that increase has since ebbed. According to Aurora police data, there were 12% fewer major crimes in the city — ranging from homicide to vehicle theft — last month than in September 2023.
The migrants began arriving in Denver at the end of 2022, which Colorado crime statistics show was the peak of a steady increase in crime in the state since the pandemic. In 2023, when Venezuelans became a staple on some Denver streetcorners selling flowers or offering quick car windshield washes, frustrating many Colorado voters, crime dropped statewide.
Aurora’s city council passed a resolution opposing resettlement of the migrants in their city, but nonprofits found willing landlords to take some anyway. Others moved independently, drawn by cheaper rents.
In July, thousands gathered at an Aurora shopping center to mark the elections in Venezuela, and police reported gunfire after the event, intended to celebrate the defeat of President Nicolas Maduro — who instead declared himself the winner despite tallies showing he lost.
It’s a rough neighborhood, slowly improving
On the campaign trail, Trump routinely cites specific cases of migrants committing crimes, often grim cases such as that of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia woman who was killed on a running trail in February. A Venezuelan citizen who entered the country illegally in 2022 has been charged with murder and other crimes in connection with the killing.
Trump has claimed Venezuela and other countries are emptying their prisons, mental institutions and “insane asylums” to send dangerous people to the U.S. and has contended that Venezuela’s notoriously violent capital of Caracas is safer than many U.S. cities. The latter claim drew disbelief from Venezuelan migrants who say they feel far safer in Aurora.
“It’s a thousand times better than Venezuela here,” said Dexe Medina, 44, as she left the Aurora apartment complex.
The buildings have numerous broken windows, the hallway lights don’t work, and trash and discarded mattresses spill from a dumpster behind it.
The run-down conditions are part of the reason the August episode grabbed attention. Aurora closed one of three apartment buildings owned by CBZ Management due to unsanitary conditions. Aurora has said conditions have been bad at the complexes for a long time, predating the Venezuelan arrivals. But CBZ countered that it was unable to provide maintenance because a notorious Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, took over the buildings.
The two buildings that remain open are now in receivership, and residents say they hope the new management finally restores regular maintenance. Medina said conditions have improved slightly — before, she said, the courtyards between the three-story buildings had “towers” of debris and trash.
The neighborhood where many Venezuelans settled has long been one of Aurora’s rougher stretches, close to Colfax Boulevard, a sometimes run-down drag that bills itself as the nation’s longest street and runs from Aurora west through neighboring Denver and into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. On the opposite corner from the apartment complex, a mounted camera sits above the fence around a day care and a recorded voice warns visitors: “You are under video surveillance.”
Longtime residents say they’ve heard the occasional gunshot for years, but that things seem relatively calm now.
“Honestly, this general area has improved,” said Diego Garcia, 18, a high school senior who lives a block away from the complex where the video was filmed. “It used to be a lot worse.”
‘We’re putting them in a terrible situation’
Though residents feel safer, they acknowledge the days in August during which the armed men roamed the neighborhood were terrifying. Richard Rodriguez, 48, got a call from his mother in Venezuela, panicked about his safety once the video aired.
“Remember the fear that put in people’s hearts,” Rodriguez said of the video. “Imagine how it felt to us to live here.”
Dustin Zvonek, an Aurora City councilman, also got concerned calls and texts once the video aired, asking if he was safe.
“I’m like, ‘Dude, I live 40 minutes away,’” Zvonek said.
Still, he said the situation was serious and problems remain. It can take many months before many of the Venezuelans awaiting asylum hearing can obtain work permits, leaving them desperate in a new country where they have few connections.
“We’re putting them in a terrible situation and it’s having an impact on businesses,” he said, adding that a nearby Walmart and Walgreens recently closed because of theft concerns.
Zvonek, a Republican, stressed that Aurora remains a safe city with falling crime, but warned against minimizing specific problems like those in the apartment complexes. He noted that residents of the buildings and its immediate neighbors haven’t been assuaged when told crime is dropping overall.
“It’s always not a big deal,” Zvonek said, “until it happens to you.”
