CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, told his supporters on Saturday to "go into" Philadelphia and two other Democratic-run cities to "guard the vote" in 2024, repeating his unfounded claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 as justification for the call to action.
Speaking at a campaign event in Iowa, Trump said it was important to scrutinize the vote in the battleground states likely to determine the general election. He singled out the biggest cities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Not all of Americans for Prosperity's (AFP) staff is on board with the group's endorsement of former UN ambassador Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
Chris Maidment, who has been AFP's director of grassroots operations in New Hampshire since March of this year according to his LinkedIn profile, blasted the Koch-funded group's announcement that it would be backing Haley in a recent thread on X (formerly Twitter). Maidment indicated he may lose his job over his post, but held fast in his position that the group had lost its "principles" and that he would not be casting his ballot for the former South Carolina governor due to her foreign policy positions.
"I will never vote for Nikki Haley. Not once. My children deserve better than to be drafted in some war overseas," Maidment tweeted. "If it comes down to it, I'll vote for [President Joe] Biden over Haley 10 times out of 10, because he's less of a threat to our country."
"In tweeting this I give up friends, family, and a job. I give up a lot. But for the right reasons," he wrote, clarifying that he still respects his colleagues who choose to vote for Haley. "I need the insurance. I need the pay. I need the benefits. But, more than that, I need to instill in the next generation that we do the right thing, always, despite the pay, benefits, and add-ons."
The endorsement from AFP is a critical boost for Haley's campaign — particularly in New Hampshire, where she has seen her poll numbers surge past all of her non-Trump rivals. According to RealClearPolitics' polling data, Haley was registering 18.7% support among likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State as of November 17, with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie coming in third with roughly 11% support and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lagging behind in fourth place with 7.7% support.
In announcing its endorsement of Haley, AFP pledged to lend "the full weight and scope of AFP Action’s unmatched grassroots army and resources to help her earn the support of Americans to become the next President of the United States of America." As director of grassroots operations in a state where Haley is performing her best, Maidment likely would be the group's main facilitator of get-out-the-vote operations for the former UN ambassador in New Hampshire.
Despite Haley's recent polling boost, she still lags far behind former President Donald Trump, who is leading by nearly 30 points in both early state polls and national polls. The Iowa Caucuses take place on January 15, and the New Hampshire primary is slated for January 23.
Donald Trump is up for another knock-down after picking a losing political fight, according to a Saturday analysis.
The former president has recently revived his fight against the Affordable Care Act, after failing to deliver on promises to repeal it during his first term in the White House. This time won't be any different, according to a report on Obamacare from the Business Insider.
"Former President Donald Trump just couldn't help himself. All it took was a less-than 600-word editorial to set him off. Trump has never had a reputation for self-control, but this time his detour may end up being one of the dumbest moves during an otherwise dominating primary campaign," the article says. "Because once again, we are talking about repealing Obamacare."
Brent Griffiths, a senior politics reporter at Inside, continues:
"The former president's initial revival of the debate was in response to a Wall Street Journal editorial. As a result, Trump has handed President Joe Biden a potent gift at a critical time... In reigniting the debate, Trump has picked a fight on the worst ground he could have possibly chosen. A September NBC poll found Americans trust Democrats on health care by a more than 2 to 1 margin. In comparison, Republicans hold massive advantages on the economy, crime, and border security."
In fact, according to the report, President Joe Biden's administration has already used the attack to its advantage.
"The Biden campaign wasted little time in highlighting Trump's comments. They already have a minute-long TV ad airing nationally," according to the analysis. "Unlike the rest of his party, Trump appears unable to learn the lesson that three Supreme Court decisions, a government shutdown, and an embarrassing failure on the Senate floor hammered into everyone else. Republicans still have gripes about the law. Many have just accepted they can do little about it."
The courts must handle Donald Trump's criminal cases with "deliberate speed" to ensure Americans are properly informed about the allegations at hand, a former federal prosecutor said Saturday.
Joyce Vance, who earlier in the day said Trump's lawyer claiming the former president can't be tried criminally if he retakes the White House is "contrary to the American notion of justice," wrote on her Substack that the recent decisions rejecting Trump's civil and criminal arguments for immunity meant "big losses for Trump."
But guilty or not, the appeals court and the Supreme Court must give proper consideration to the speed of the process in order for citizens to make an informed decision in 2024, according to Vance.
"It’s incumbent upon the appellate courts to handle these matters with all deliberate speed. Appeals take time, and Trump, like all criminal defendants, is entitled to have his case fairly considered with no prejudgement," Vance wrote. "But at the same time, Americans have rights that need to be protected. Our criminal justice system has to have the ability to let a jury decide whether a former president should be held accountable for his conduct. If we can’t hold the powerful accountable then it’s not the system Americans need and deserve. The District of Columbia prosecution is currently on track for a March trial. It’s up to the court of appeals and ultimately the Supreme Court to make sure that happens."
She further argued that Democracy itself is both on the ballot and the court docket.
"Democracy is on the ballot in 2024, but it’s also on the docket—the courts’ dockets. Their job is to make sure there is a process for Trump that is fair and efficient, but also one that gets the criminal cases in position, consistent with due process concerns, for juries to decide the question of Trump’s guilt, or not, in each case," the ex-prosecutor wrote. "That’s how our system works. Excessive delay, whether it’s a Trumpian strategy or court condoned/imposed is unacceptable. Americans need to know how juries of our peers assess the evidence against the former president before we vote in 2024. Only the courts can make sure that happens."
Donald Trump's lawyer claiming the former president can't be tried criminally if he retakes the White House is "contrary to the American notion of justice," a former federal prosecutor said on Saturday.
Joyce Vance appeared on MSNBC's Yasmin Vossoughian Reports, where she was asked about comments made by one of Trump's attorneys. The lawyer was quoted warning about the "notion of the Republican nominee for president" might be kept from campaigning for the presidency because he is in court defending himself.
"That would be the most effective election interference in history of the United States," the lawyer said in a clip played by the host.
"So, then it went one step further, Joyce, and they said oh, by the way, if he wins reelection he cannot be tried until he is out of office. Is there any possibility here the judge in the Fulton County case could actually be receptive to this?" the host asked.
"So the judge in Fulton County plays his cards remarkably close to his vest. He's always amiable towards all of the lawyers, always hears them out, and often simply looks at them when they're done and says thank you," Vance replied. "He doesn't really give us much indication of which way he's leaning, but he's a former federal prosecutor. He understands how these issues work."
Vance then added that, "he's very capable judge even though there were some early criticisms about him being relatively new to the state court bench."
"I think he's outlived that sort of criticism," she said. "Steve Sadow, on the other hand, has been doing this for a while. We tried a couple of criminal cases against each other, and he's a canny lawyer. He knows how to present the arguments he has to on his clients' behalf to the court."
However, this time, Vance said, "I don't think he gets his way here."
"This notion that Donald Trump can't ever be tried, but on the one hand, he can't be tried if he's the nominee, and on the other hand, he can't be tried if he's the president it really doesn't fly, it's contrary to the American notion of justice."
Donald Trump on Saturday said he hopes judges will let the 2020 election "be prosecuted" in court, bragging that he and his legal team have "so much evidence" that the election was stolen from him for President Joe Biden.
The former president was speaking in the Iowa city of Ankeny when he started talking about how he believes the 2020 election was "rigged." He said he believed that in part because he was told he would win if he hit certain metrics, and that he hit those but lost anyway.
He then started talking about the criminal charges he's facing in connection with the 2020 election, saying he hopes to bring election fraud evidence into court.
"If the judges allow us --- somebody's gotta allow this thing to be prosecuted," Trump said at his campaign event. "We wanna show how we won the election, not for the purposes of... what we want to do, is we want to win this one that's coming up because it's a lot simpler. Think to the future. But you have to learn from history. If you don't learn from history, you're a fool."
He then transitioned back to the 2020 election and the evidence he purportedly has.
"So I hope that's going to happen because we have so much evidence. We know it and they know it. The only thing they don't want to talk about is the election because they're guilty as hell," he claimed. "They cheated."
According to a report from Axios, those complaints also include a belief that the RNC is manipulating who controls the debates.
At issue was a earlier demand for $2 million to be spent on a debate as a "junior partner" to ABC News also carrying it.
According to Alex Thompson of Axios "The RNC also approached Newsmax about being the primary sponsor for the upcoming fourth GOP debate — which will be Wednesday in Tuscaloosa, Ala. — and would have required Newsmax to spend about $4 million producing the debate."
That, in turn, led Newsmax execs to accuse the RNC of "moving the goalposts" despite prior notice that the price was not set in stone.
In a statement, Newsmax complained, "Since the beginning of the process the RNC under [chair] Ronna McDaniel has consistently lied and obfuscated to Newsmax about us hosting a debate, so it's clear to us the RNC's goal has been to make sure anti-Trump media control the GOP debates."
According to a deep dive from the Washington Post, the former president and his campaign have taken in nearly $1.8 million from appreciative recipients and their families with more expected to come.
The report notes, Donald Trump's ability to grant clemency was mostly focused on those accused of white-collar crime than any other offenses, with the Post adding that "tax scofflaws, health-care fraudsters, corrupt politicians and Ponzi schemers all benefited."
Those people, the report notes, are well positioned to lavish money on his latest campaign.
"The Post found 26 clemency recipients or their immediate family members have contributed to a Trump campaign account or a pro-Trump political committee. That means more than 1 out of 10 of the people who received pardons and commutations gave money either before they received clemency, afterward or in both periods, for a total of nearly $1.8 million," the report states with Charles Kushner, father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner leading the way.
The elder Kushner, who received his pardon in 2020 has contributed $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2023.
The report adds, "New York-based real estate investor Alex Adjmi had served time in the late 1990s for a money-laundering conviction. He rarely donated to federal campaigns, records show, but in 2020he made three payments, including one contribution to the Republican National Committee and another to a joint account with the Trump campaign totaling $37,600. Adjmi was among the 144 people who received clemency on Trump’s last day in office. This year, he donated $100,000 to a pro-Trump political committee."
In an interview, Adjmi claimed, "It had nothing to do with my pardon.”
One of the featured guests on tomorrow's CBS Sunday Morning is former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), whose forthcoming book not only excoriates former President Donald Trump, but her fellow Republicans as well.
During the interview, CBS' John Dickerson asked Cheney if she stood by her claim that Trump winning a second term in the White House would signal "the end of the republic." Cheney nodded, and said that the once-reliable institutions meant to curb executive overreach would no longer apply if Trump was voted back into the presidency.
"[Trump has] told us what he will do. It's very easy to see the steps that he will take," Cheney said. "People who say, 'well, if he's elected, it's not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances,' don't fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted."
"One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States," she added.
The former Wyoming congresswoman isn't alone in her assessment of how Trump might govern in a second term. A recent essay published by Washington Post contributing editor Robert Kagan warned that America was on a "path to dictatorship" given the ex-president's domination of the Republican presidential primary and what he characterized as the justice system's "impotent" response to Trump's actions.
Cheney has written a book, Oath & Honor, documenting her time as the vice chair of the House Select Committee on January 6, in which she helped oversee the congressional investigation into the events surrounding the day Trump supporters ransacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Cheney — the former chair of the House Republican Conference whom FiveThirtyEight found voted in line with the former president's policies almost 93% of the time — was voted out of office in the 2022 Republican primary despite serving three terms, losing to a Trump-endorsed candidate by more than 35 points.
Former President Donald Trump, faced with an avalanche of criminal indictments, has sought to use his campaign for office as a kind of legal shield to defend himself from being prosecuted and convicted. But that isn't going to work, former federal prosecutor John Flannery argued on Friday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat."
"What [we were] told the last time this came up when Donald Trump was president ... [was], a state case would have to wait until he leaves office. No?" said Melber.
Flannery disagreed.
"The reason is this," he said. "You may remember Vice President [Spiro] Agnew. He was prosecuted while he was the vice president. He entered a plea of guilty and resigned from office—"
"I hate to lawyer you, but in a federal case," said Melber.
"Well, but the point is the same," said Flannery. "He was prosecuted while in office."
"But the supremacy is over the states, argument would be you can't have 50 different states all saying they may or may not bring charges against Biden and he has to go on trial, whoever the president is," Melber pointed out.
"Well, the Tenth Amendment refers to the states, police power," said Flannery. "It seems in the absence of a specific law that says you cannot be tried, you can be tried. Just in days we said you can prosecute a president in a civil case."
"You're saying — you take the position you think Georgia could go forward even if Trump returned to the White House?" said Melber.
"Absolutely," said Flannery. "In fact, there may be advantage with the series of cases — if he is running for office while being tried in Georgia and convicted any time near the election, presuming he is the standard bearer for the Republicans, I don't see that that helps him. It's going to be inescapable. These tricks he does in chapters right now using courtrooms for campaign advantage, that goes away."
With the Iowa Republican Party caucuses still looming and polls not looking good, the chances of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) catching front-runner Donald Trump have all but disappeared — and at least one campaign insider is already waving the white flag.
DeSantis, who attempted to shore up his floundering campaign in a debate with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) on Thursday night, has not seen any bumps in the polls after multiple Republican debates — which Trump avoided — and after spending millions on a campaign that has gone nowhere.
Adding to his problems, former Gov. Niki Haley (R-SC) has moved into the number two spot of GOP nominees trying to wrest the mantle away from Trump and this week landed the backing of the powerful political network helmed by Charles Koch.
According to a report from the Washington Post, the hits to the DeSantis campaign just keep on coming and, as far as some campaign staffers are concerned, "It's over."
With the Post reporting that DeSantis campaign officials are facing a "gloomy" future, the insider admitted, "People increasingly think it’s over. It’s a dumpster fire."
The report notes that the loss of Koch support, which had backed the Florida governor's bid, was a devastating blow in multiple ways including a report from the Koch flagship Americans for Prosperity that there was little evidence Trump voters would flock to his side if the former president dropped out for health or legal reasons.
Adding to that are the growing reports of finger-pointing and backstabbing in the DeSantis camp, with the Post reporting, "DeSantis and some of his advisers have criticized Never Back Down, the primary super PAC supporting him, according to several people familiar with the comments."
"Never Back Down officials have expressed their own concerns: CEO Chris Jankowski quit last week while saying his job had become untenable and alluding to problems 'well beyond a difference of strategic opinion.'"
In what could be taken as a backhanded compliment, one diehard DeSantis supporter said a decent showing in Iowa could keep the campaign afloat, telling the Post, "The best thing he’s got going for him is the expectations for him are so low.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom in Thursday night's debate shredded his Florida counterpart, GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis, for purportedly offensive attacks that "demean the LGBTQ community."
Newsom and DeSantis signed up to debate on Fox News, which has Sean Hannity hosting. Earlier in the night, the debate went off the rails as DeSantis tried to interrupt and talk over Newsom, and Newsom calmly stood his ground and rattled off statistics, appearing keen to use his time on the stage to talk up President Joe Biden's record to the Fox News viewership.
Afterward, Newsom took it upon himself to zero in on DeSantis' past attacks on anything connected to LGBTQ. Specifically, he targeted the Florida governor over his "Don't say gay" law in that state.
"It was not allowing teachers who happen to be gay to teach," Newsom said in the debate, referencing a 1970s law that predates DeSantis' own. "Reagan said, you can't catch gay like you can measles. I don't like the way you demean people. I don't like the way you demean the LGBTQ community."
He then added:
"I don't like how you humiliate people you disagree with. I find this fundamentally offensive and this is a core value that distinguishes the values of my state and frankly the vast majority of Americans against the weaponization of education."
Right out of the gate, the Fox News debate between Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA) in Alpharetta, Georgia went off the rails as DeSantis tried to interrupt and talk over Newsom, and Newsom calmly stood his ground and rattled off statistics, appearing keen to use his time on the stage to talk up President Joe Biden's record to the Fox News viewership.
"I'm happy that you continue to talk," said Newsom. "Let's talk about Bidenomics. I'm happy to take that on as well. 10 times more jobs than the last three republican presidents—"
"Because the jobs were because of the COVID lockdown. Are you kidding me?" snapped DeSantis.
"As he continues to talk over me, I'll talk to the American people," said Newsom. "The lowest unemployment in American history. The lowest unemployment for Hispanics. The lowest unemployment for women in 70 years. That is this administration's agenda. And by the way, as you smile and smirk over there, you should know this, the American people, here's a guy who celebrated Bidenomics just this week, celebrating $28 million that came in your state because of the CHIPS and science, one of the most significant economic plans since FDR. I'm proud of the of the work Biden/Harris have done."
"Would you like to respond?" asked Hannity. "I do have a follow-up. 6 percent rate on people, families, couples in California, they pay 6 percent income tax on any $4,000 a year."
"California has lower taxes, lower than 32 states for working families in their middle-class, significantly lower taxes," said Newsom. "People in the state [Florida] pay more taxes in the low end then we tax people on millionaires and billionaires."
After a several more minutes of crosstalk between Newsom and DeSantis, Hannity finally cut to commercial, saying that the debate needed "to breathe."
