| Think you’re seeing more TV ads on the presidential race? Your eyes are not deceiving you. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has been steadily airing commercials on Twin Cities television since early September. Former President Donald Trump went up on air here on a sustained basis last week. Public records kept by the stations show Trump will spend upwards of $250,000 per week for about three weeks, according to the initial buys. Harris has been adding to her purchase as well. Remember that Twin Cities TV has a two-state effect: voters in Minnesota and western Wisconsin see the ads. In case you were wondering, both will plunk down $9,000 apiece for 30-second spots the final Sunday night before the election. That’s when the Vikings play the Indianapolis Colts on NBC (KARE) in a coveted Sunday Night Football timeslot and you can bet most viewers in the market will be tuned to that. The presidential candidates are back in the swing states this week. Trump spent the day campaigning in North Carolina. He spoke to victims of Hurricane Helene in a town outside of Asheville and held a rally in Greenville. Harris stumped with Liz Cheney in three Midwestern battleground states, beginning her day in suburban Pennsylvania and making stops in the Milwaukee and Detroit suburbs. The three suburban counties she stopped in were won by Republican Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary.
Walz continued a media blitz yesterday, appearing on “The View” and “The Daily Show” for interviews. The governor appeared on the programs this week to try and hammer home his messages for center-left audiences. Walz told the hosts on “The View” that Donald Trump is “unhinged” and becoming exhausted, meanwhile voters are growing exhausted of his campaign. “The guardrails are off with Donald Trump right now. And I think we know that,” Walz said. “I'm an optimist, but our systems are strained, and the ability to politicize the military has never been tried in this country. He's trying it.” The interview closed on a light note as the hosts gave Walz a red flannel shirt with “Dad in Plaid” emblazoned across the back — a term coined by Sen. Amy Klobuchar as she introduced Walz at the Democratic National Convention.
On Smartless, a podcast hosted by a trio of comedic actors, Walz talked about how quickly his life changed after being added to the presidential ticket. In an episode posted Monday, Walz recounts how aides swooped in, got him packed up and had him on his way to Philadelphia, where he practiced in a college locker room using a teleprompter before his debut appearance. “You’ll get about 90 percent good and 10 percent you’ll have to clean up because that’s the way I talk,” Walz said he told VP vetters, adding “I practiced it a little bit and I am standing at that door in Philadelphia — 12,000 to 15,000 people waiting to see the vice president in this announcement. She and I are standing at this curtain and she’s like you know, ‘Well, get this right.’” Of his shaky start to the vice presidential debate, Walz said anyone would have been nervous to be on such a big national stage. And he said “as a geographer by training I love maps, except one. Whoever built the red-blue map did more damage than you can imagine,” Walz said. “They created this false mindset, and it’s very visual.”
Misinformation this election season has been running rampant. Two notable examples this week have to do with Gov. Tim Walz. An individual posing as former Mankato West student Matthew Metro posted a fabricated video on social media platforms alleging that he was assaulted by Walz when the governor was a high school teacher. The Washington Post found the real Matthew Metro , who confirmed that the story was fake and he was being impersonated. But the video has already been viewed more than 5 million times across X, TruthSocial and Gettr. Poynter reported that an X account, which goes by the name “Black Insurrectionist” claimed to have insider knowledge that Walz had an “inappropriate relationship with a minor” when he was a public school teacher. The user shared screenshots of a supposed former student’s emails, but they contained multiple inconsistencies. The account is known for spreading misinformation. Despite this, these claims have gained traction on social media. With just two weeks until Election Day, it seems as if nothing is off limits for individuals and groups interested in tipping the scales.
This election season, MPR News invited its audience to walk a mile in someone else’s news. Here’s how it works: two participants on opposite sides of the political spectrum swapped their go-to news sources and then let us record their conversations. For this week’s installment , Catharine Richert spoke to Addie Raum, a 20-year-old junior at St. Olaf College who considers herself to be more conservative, and Lauren Biegler, a moderately liberal 45-year-old corn and soybean farmer in southwestern Minnesota. Biegler, the left-leaning farmer, shared traditional media sources and Raum, the conservative college student, chose two podcasts from the Free Press, a right-leaning media outlet. Then they met to discuss. You can listen to and read the results of their conversations here.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is in the Twin Cities this week. Last night, she spoke at the grand opening of the Justice and Democracy Center at the St. Paul federal courthouse. The center includes exhibits about the Constitution, basics of the legal system and landmark cases. The justice also met with middle and high school students from around the state. Today, she is expected to speak at the investiture ceremony for Judge Elizabeth Bentley, the newest member of the Minnesota Court of Appeals and a former law clerk for Sotomayor.
The men formerly known as the Central Park Five filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump. The group accused the former president of making “false and defamatory statements” about them during last month’s presidential debate. The men were teenagers when they were accused of the 1989 rape and beating of a white female jogger in Central Park. The five, who are Black and Latino, say they confessed to the crimes under duress and later recanted, pleading not guilty in court. They were later convicted after jury trials, but their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime. During the debate, Trump misstated key facts of the case when Harris brought up the matter, appearing to confuse guilty pleas with confessions and falsely stated that a victim died. An attorney for the men said Trump essentially “defamed them in front of 67 million people, which has caused them to seek to clear their names all over again.” A Trump spokesperson called the suit frivolous and a distraction from the election. | 