Donald Trump's attack on his former press secretary has cost the former president the endorsement of a Republican lawmaker.
New Hampshire Rep. James Spillane, who earlier this year announced his support for Trump in the 2024 presidential race, said Thursday he’s switching sides and backing the former president’s top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, The New Hampshire Journal reports.
Spillane cited Trump’s Tuesday social media post assailing former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who he accused intentionally reporting inaccurate poll numbers in her roll as a Fox News contributor.
McEnany served as Trump’s top spokesperson for most of the former president’s last year in office and by all accounts was among his most loyal aides before joining the right-wing outlet.
“Kayleigh ‘Milktoast’ McEnany just gave out the wrong poll numbers on FoxNews,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social website.
“I am 34 points up on DeSanctimonious, not 25 up. While 25 is great, it’s not 34. She knew the number was corrected upwards by the group that did the poll. The RINOS & Globalists can have her. FoxNews should only use REAL Stars!!!”
“I can no longer continue endorsing former President Trump,” Spillane said.
“I am officially withdrawing my endorsement, as his most recent attack on Kayleigh McEnany is beyond comprehension and explanation. Against my deepest hopes that Trump had learned some measure of control, he has attacked those who have been his staunchest supporters with no regard for their loyalty.”.
Former President Donald Trump's defense that he was allowed to mentally declassify the top-secret documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago has been thrown into chaos by reporting showing that audio tapes exist of Trump telling people he possessed a document showing plans to attack Iran, but didn't have the authority to show it to them.
But more interesting, argued New York University law professor Ryan Goodman, is the reports that Trump apparently wanted to use the document to embarrass Gen. Mark Milley and pin efforts to invade Iran on him.
"There were boxes and boxes of this stuff, storage rooms of this stuff," said anchor Erin Burnett. "Some of it obviously highly classified. We're talking about one document here ... and this is significant because we have Trump on tape talking about it. Its existence and his inability to declassify it which goes against his court event."
"What is the best possible explanation for Trump's motivation in keeping the documents?" asked the host.
"So the CNN reporting is in some sense a breakthrough on this particular question, the one that is hanging around that hasn't been answered: what is his motive?" said Goodman. "And here we have him, it seems like, in this situation using them for the motive of his public image. He's trying to control the narrative. There's been a report out that Milley stopped him from potentially attacking Iran in his final days. He says, no, I have the document that counteracts this, and Milley had a plan."
"That's him trying to control the narrative and his image, and that would be a reason to hold on to the documents because he could use them," Goodman continued.
Watch below or at the following link:
Ryan Goodman says Trump wanted to use classified documents to "control the narrative"
www.youtube.com
The North Carolina Republican party is facing backlash for calling a prominent local faith leader a “poverty pimp,” The Raleigh News & Observer reports.
The North Carolina GOP on Thursday made the insulting remark against Rev. William Barber II ahead of the religious leader’s scheduled visit to Durham with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for a “Rally to Raise the Wage” in support of hiking the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour.
“Socialist Bernie Sanders is teaming up with poverty pimp William Barber to hold a rally with NC Democrats in Durham today,” the North Carolina GOP tweeted Thursday.
“While @NCDemParty embraces Sanders’ push to make us more like his beloved USSR, Republicans work to protect the good old timeless values of the USA.”
Robert Reives, the state’s Democratic House Minority Leader, slammed the state’s GOP, saying “there are only a few terms they could have picked that would have been more demeaning.”
“It’s incredibly diminishing of his work. It’s amazing they could reduce all his work to one of the most diminishing terms that could be used for Black men in this country’s history.”
Reives likened the remark to a recent cringeworthy comment by another North Carolina Republican lawmaker that made national headlines.
Rep. Jeff McNeely during a floor debate earlier this month suggested that his Democratic colleague Abe Jones, who is a Black Harvard graduate, wouldn’t have been admitted to the prestigious school if he wasn’t a minority, video posted on Twitter by freelance journalist Bryan Anderson shows.
“I understand that you went to public school and that you went to Harvard and Harvard Law, and the question I have is would you have been able to maybe achieve this if you were not an athlete or a minority, or any of these things,” McNeely said.
Said Reives: “I would say this is even worse than Jeff McNeely’s comments.”
