Third-party candidates are the worrisome wild card amid Biden-Trump rematch in Wisconsin
CNN
As former President Donald Trump returns to Wisconsin on Tuesday night for the first time in nearly two years, Democrats have a close eye on him – but not only him – as they build a general election campaign in this critical battleground state.
As former President Donald Trump returns to Wisconsin on Tuesday night for the first time in nearly two years, Democrats have a close eye on him – but not only him – as they build a general election campaign in this critical battleground state. “Any appetite for Robert Kennedy Jr. this fall?” progressive host Mike Crute asked this week on “The Devil’s Advocate Radio Show,” where listeners call in and compare notes about liberal politics. “Would you consider voting for a third party?” As Wisconsin voters cast ballots Tuesday in a largely symbolic primary seven months ahead of the November election, that question is on the minds of Democrats and Republicans as they brace for a rematch between President Joe Biden and Trump – with Kennedy’s independent candidacy increasingly becoming a worrisome wild card in the race. “Third-party candidacies, to my opinion, are an unacceptable answer in the 2024 election,” Crute said, before delivering an even sharper message to his audience: “Don’t throw away your vote.” Look no further than Wisconsin to see how serious the threat of third-party challengers could be to the Biden-Trump rematch. In 2020, Biden won the state by fewer than 21,000 votes, with no Green Party candidates on the ballot. Four years earlier, Trump carried Wisconsin by nearly 23,000 votes, with the Green Party’s Jill Stein earning more than 30,000 voters. Stein, along with Kennedy and left-wing scholar Cornel West, are offering themselves up this year as alternatives to voters unimpressed – or even angry – over the prospect of choosing again between two of the least popular candidates in modern times. “I would say Jill Stein, the Green Party, worries me as much as Kennedy does,” said Crute, who broadcasts his progressive show across the state. “But I’m concerned. Anything that changes the head-to-head electoral math between Trump and Biden and I don’t like that.”
A Justice Department watchdog has found that former Attorney General Bill Barr was personally involved in the decision to publicize an incident from the 2020 election – nine mail-in ballots for Donald Trump being discarded in a dumpster in Pennsylvania – that flamed the false narrative of widespread voter fraud.
President Joe Biden is expected to be as forceful as he has ever been in urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire agreement when the two leaders meet privately at the White House Thursday afternoon, sources tell CNN, as US officials believe that a deal may be on the cusp.