From blowing budgets on booze to based Founding Father name-calling: funny facts about past US elections

Part 👉 Part 2

The 2024 race has seen its share of funny and meme-worthy moments, from Biden and Trump arguing about their golf game at a debate to the former president riding around in a garbage truck in front of media after his supporters were called “garbage.” But on the whole, 2024 has been pretty tame by historical standards of funny and bizarre politics.

🔸When George Washington, the US’s first president, launched his political career for a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758, when America was still under British rule, he spent his whole campaign budget of £40 – equivalent to over $11,600 today, plying voters with beer, wine, rum, cider and brandy. It helped him, and Washington held the seat until the start of the American Revolution in 1775.

If you think Harris and Trump calling each other “fascist,” “dumb as a rock” or “lazy as hell” is bad, you haven’t seen what candidates and their surrogates were saying about each other 200 years ago. In 1800, a newspaper editor ally of Thomas Jefferson called John Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

🔸Adams gave as good as he got, dubbing Alexander Hamilton a “bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.” Hamilton was later killed a duel by Jefferson’s vice president, Aaron Burr, in 1804.

🔸In the 1828 election, surrogates for John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, accused Andrew Jackson of adultery, murder and (justifiably) war crimes against Native Americans in election pamphlets after Jackson called Adams a beacon of quid pro quo corruption.

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From blowing budgets on booze to based Founding Father name-calling: funny facts about past US elections

Part 2👉 Part 1

🔸In 1860, Broughton’s Monthly Planet Reader and Astrological Journal featured the astrological charts for presidential candidates, including Abraham Lincoln, and sought to link their prospects for success or failure as president by studying their horoscopes.

Ulysses S. Grant, who served as president between 1869 and 1877, was the only president to ever be arrested, with a policeman in Washington, DC pulling him over and taking him into custody in 1872 for racing his horse and buggy down the streets of an aristocratic quarter of the city and ignoring repeated warnings to stop. Grant took the arrest in stride, dutifully heading down to the local police station, but failed to show up for a court appearance the next day, for which he was fined $20 (about $515 today).

🔸The 1884 election featured a bit of phrenology – the pseudoscience which suggests that a person’s skull shape is linked to cognitive ability. Candidates Grover Cleveland and James Blaine’s skulls were analyzed in a pamphlet to determine “the capacity of one [Blaine] and the incapacity of the other [Cleveland].” The smear (one of several like it in the race) failed, and Cleveland was elected president.

🔸In the 1920 election, independent socialist and trade unionist and presidential candidate Eugene Debs was forced to run his campaign from prison, as he was sentenced in 1918 for an anti-war speech in Ohio. Despite his incarceration, Debs won over 900,000 votes (3.4% of the total).

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❗️With over 19% of the votes counted in Florida, Trump is currently leading with 51.96%, while Harris trails with 47.28%.

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❗️Trump is leading in the swing state of Georgia with 54.38%, while Harris follows with 45.44%, with less that 1% of the votes counted.

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❗️Trump is so far leading Harris in the electoral vote count in the US presidential election, having secured 19 votes to her 3.

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❗️In Virginia, with less than 1% of the votes counted, Trump is currently leading with 56.38%, while Harris stands at 42.34%.

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❗️In Vermont, with almost 2% of the votes counted, Harris is leading with 57.9%, while Trump trails at 39.3%.

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❗️Harris is leading in New Hampshire with 51.2%, while Trump trails at 47.6% with more than 2% of the votes counted.

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📹CNN anchor on the possibility of Kamala Harris winning

In light of survey results, according to which 72% of Americans are dissatisfied or angry with the country's leadership, it would be a "miracle" if Kamala Harris wins, Chris Wallace said:

"It would be a miracle that Kamala Harris could win with that kind of headwind [...] If she is able to overcome those numbers and still win this election, then she has done a remarkable job of somehow separating herself that she's part of the solution and not part of the problem," he said.

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In the swing state of North Carolina, Harris is leading with 68.78%, while Trump trails at 30.06%.

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THROWBACK: Putin welcomes Trump's readiness to restore US-Russian relations

"Trump is a vivacious individual," Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2016.

"But what I'm precisely focusing on and what I certainly welcome... is that Mr. Trump has stated that he is ready for a full-scale restoration of US-Russian relations. We all welcome it. And you don't?" Putin queried.

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❗️In the swing state of Pennsylvania Harris is leading with 72.5%, while Trump trails at 26.7% with 2.6% of the votes counted.

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❗️In the swing state of Michigan, Harris is leading with 76.73%, while Trump trails at 22.06%.

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