2024 Elections

Trump cozying up to the steely Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and revering Russia's Vladimir Putin are the tell-tale signs of a democracy-deficient direction he'd like to take the country.

This week former president Donald Trump broke bread with Orbán and suggested he could end the Russian-Ukranian war by preventing even a "single penny" be allotted to fight the invasion.

Donald Trump's attorneys in his criminal hush money case accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of "significant and ongoing discovery violations" and are demanding hearing to discuss their accusations, newly released court records show.

The hearing demanded by Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles would be the week of March 25 — the same week Trump's New York City trial was slated to begin.

"The View" co-host Joy Behar thinks she has a winning campaign slogan for President Joe Biden: "Vote for me — I'm the only one who's not nuts."

Her creative idea for a catchy lawn sign came amid a discussion about "spoiler" candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's running as an independent against Biden and the GOP's presumptive nominee Donald Trump.

The Republican National Committee's new chair Friday gave a resounding "No" to a question he asked himself on nationally broadcast television: Was the nation better off under former President Donald Trump?

Whoops.

Setting aside for the moment his contempt for Donald Trump, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele claimed the former president will come to regret his "hostile takeover" of the RNC because it will lead to his loss in the 2024 presidential election.

In a column for MSNBC, the co-host of the network's "The Weekend" suggested sticking the RNC with loyalists will lead to a bevy of yes-men giving a thumbs up to anything he wants whether it makes sense or not.

Noting that Trump put in place daughter-in-law Lara Trump to lead the way as co-chairman, he wrote, "An army of Trump-installed loyalists are replacing senior staffers to run the Republican National Committee. With the general election just eight months away, don’t expect this to look anything like a typical operation focused on getting out the vote, reaching out to undecided voters, standardizing messaging across campaigns, and doing other normal tasks. Instead, this will be a group solely devoted to the glorification of Trump."

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And that, he suggested, will be their — and the party's — downfall because it will lead to "groupthink."

"Staffers [will] make bad strategic moves because they can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t think like they do. It will lead to self-censoring, as staffers who have ideas that might rub Trump the wrong way will keep their heads down. And it will set the party up for another string of defeats, all the way up the ballot to Trump himself," he predicted.

Citing what he called the "decapitation of the RNC," Steele explained the dismantling of much-needed voter outreach programs are already underway that will cripple the party in November, particularly when it comes to roping in so-called swing voters.

"The RNC's extreme makeover undermines this goal of attracting swing voters," he writes. "This slice of the electorate has repeatedly rejected candidates who talk like Trump, act like Trump, and back Trump’s 'Big Lie.' Yet far-right election deniers now have their hands on the organization’s levers of power," he explained before pointing the finger at Lara Trump over her lack of qualifications for her new job.

New Hampshire residents and voting rights groups on Thursday launched a federal lawsuit against a Democratic consultant and two companies behind January robocalls featuring audio that mimicked Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden's voice using artificial intelligence to discourage recipients from participating in the state's primary election.

"These types of voter suppression tactics have no place in our democracy," declared Celina Stewart, chief counsel at the League of Women Voters (LWV) of the United States. "Voters deserve to make their voices heard freely and without intimidation."

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon expressed skepticism about two motions to dismiss a classified documents case against Donald Trump and two co-defendants.

At Thursday's hearing in Miami, Cannon appeared skeptical of both of Trump's arguments for dismissal.