2024 Elections

'Jack Smith is living rent free in Trump's head': Justice correspondent hails documents case

Donald Trump is at major risk in the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal and he has "every reason to be worried," according to a justice correspondent for The Nation.

Elie Mystal was on a panel for MSNBC on Friday night, when he was asked if he thinks an indictment is incoming in Jack Smith's investigation into potentially unlawful conduct such as improper retention of classified documents, or obstruction. Hugo Lowell, The Guardian's political investigations reporter, said reports that Trump was showing the documents to others only adds to his culpability during prosecution

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Embattled Texas AG Ken Paxton calls for protest at the state Capitol

Embattled Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday called on supporters to protest at the state Capitol when the Republican-controlled House takes up impeachment proceedings that could lead to his ouster, The Associated Press reports.

A five-member state House committee on Thursday voted unanimously to recommend Paxton’s impeachment on corruption charges, sending the 60-year-old Republican’s fate to the House for a vote scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

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'All of his rallies are radicalization sites': fascism expert points to Trump as source of extremism

People you wouldn't typically expect to be right-wing extremists have been brainwashed by former president Donald Trump's rallies, which serve as "radicalization sites," according to an expert in fascism and extremism.

New York University history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat appeared on MSNBC on Friday and was asked about how the label of "white supremacist" has begun to more often include Latino men and others who don't have white skin. Ben-Ghiat, author of "Strongmen: How they rise, why they succeed, and how they fall," said part of it comes down to political alliances.

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Former RNC chairman outlines plan for Republicans to beat Trump

A former Republican National Committee chairman hears the desperation of party insiders looking for a way to stop the Donald Trump’s seemingly inevitable presidential nomination, and he has a grim message for them.

“That clamoring sound you hear is the donor and establishment political class saying we need someone in this race now,” former RNC Chairman Michael Steele said Friday during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber.”

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Prosecutors have a recording of Trump and a witness in hush-money case: report

Prosecutors have obtained a recording of a phone conversation between Donald Trump and an undisclosed witness in the Stormy Daniels case, according to a document that was made public Friday, CBS News reports.

The document, which is called an automatic discovery form, describes the nature of the charges a defendant is facing along with evidence prosecutors expect to use at a preliminary hearing.

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'Self-inflicted disaster': Former CNN contributor nails network for still not learning from Trump blowback

Reacting to announcements that CNN will be holding town halls for 2024 GOP presidential nomination contender Nikki Haley to be followed by another one starring former vice president Mike Pence, former CNN contributor Wajahat Ali shook his head at the network execs who have failed to learn from blowback after the Donald Trump town hall.

The surprising decision to hand primetime spots to Haley and Pence -- that latter of which has yet to announce he's running -- appears to be due to the network execs "doubling down" despite the post-Trump plunge in ratings for the already beleaguered network.

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Next stop for Jack Smith is Trump's financial ties to the Saudis: columnist

A report from the New York Times that investigators working for special counsel Jack Smith have issued a subpoena demanding information from the Trump Organization regarding its international business dealings led Salon columnist Heather Digby Parton to suggest Smith and his people should place their emphasis on financial ties to the ruling family in Saudi Arabia.

According to the Times report, "The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter.

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Here's why Trump's lawyers are following his strategy of 'bullying' his legal foes: columnist

Reflecting on an abrasive letter attorneys for Donald Trump sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding an audience to complain about the investigations headed up by special counsel Jack Smith, Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte suggested there is a reason the former president's legal team agreed to it despite the fact it likely will "backfire."

Earlier in the week, Trump attorneys John Rowley and James Trusty wrote to Garland and laid out their reasons in decidedly non-legalistic terms, which led many legal scholars to speculate that it was dictated by Trump and his attorneys agreed to sign it.

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'The Trump drag': Analyst says Republicans are 'correctly worried' about him bringing them down

Reacting to a Politico report that the Republican Party is having difficulties in recruiting down-ballot candidates because they think their odds of winning will be hampered with Donald Trump as the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, one election analyst said they good reason to be worried.

According to the earlier Politico report, "Many of their prospective recruits are wary of running alongside Trump, who dominates the spotlight, repels crucial independent voters and forces his fellow Republicans to answer for his unpredictable statements. It’s a dynamic that candidates don’t relish, and it has only come into sharper focus since Trump’s CNN town hall, when he spent 70 minutes on primetime television this month unleashing a torrent of incendiary remarks."

Writing for the Cook Political Report, Amy Walter said the numbers are not in Republican's favor in 2024 and a major factor is the "Trump drag."

The largest problem, she notes, is the fact that the former president is highly unpopular with the growing segment of independent voters who will have a major impact in swing districts, making it an uphill battle for the Republican nominee.

IN OTHER NEWS: 'Nerves are fraying at Mar-a-Lago': Legal expert says Jan. 6 sentences should worry Trump

As she explained, Public Opinion Strategies "released the results of a swing-state survey they conducted showing a ticket led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis produced a generic ballot advantage of one point for Republicans, while a Trump-led ticket produced a down-ballot advantage to Democrats of three points."

That may be too much for a Republican in a highly contested district to overcome.

"To hold the House, Republicans are going to need to beat Democrats in districts where Trump will likely lose," she explained. "In 2016, when Trump was a novelty, 23 Republican candidates won in districts Trump lost. Four years later, only nine Republicans were able to do the same thing."

She continued, "In 2022, Democrats effectively branded the GOP as the party of MAGA and Trump, helping them to pick up a Senate seat and hold down their losses in the House," before predicting, "This is why many Republicans are correctly worried that Trump on the top of the ticket could risk their majority."

You can read more details here.

'He's not really that stupid': Morning Joe flattens DeSantis' latest pitch to MAGA voters

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough jumped all over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on Friday morning for his promise to look into issuing pardons for Jan. 6 rioters should he be successful in his bid to be elected president in 2024.

Kicking off Friday's "Morning Joe," the host pointed to a clip of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich talking about simplifying the GOP's message to which Scarborough added, "That was Newt Gingrich encouraging Ron DeSantis to get on the level of third graders -- I'm not joking. You know, kind of like Donald Trump does."

Turning to DeSantis, he played a clip of the Florida Republican talking about pardoning the insurrectionists while on a radio show on Thursday.

It was at that point that he expressed disgust with DeSantis for pandering to Trump's MAGA base in an effort to peel some of them away.

READ MORE: 'Where the hell is Georgia?': Ex-Congressman says Trump faces most risk from Georgia probe

"I mean, he's not really that stupid," the MSNBC host suggested. "Maybe he's talking like a third grader."

"We're talking about people who tried to overthrow American democracy," he exclaimed. " Ron knows that -- he knows that! Yet, he's playing that game."

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'Where the hell is Georgia?': Ex-Congressman says Trump faces most risk from Georgia probe

Donald Trump faces the greatest legal and political peril from the investigation into election tampering in Georgia, and we should be talking more about it, a former New York congressman said Thursday evening.

Speaking on MSNBC's "The Eleventh Hour with Stephanie Ruhle," former democratic representative Max Rose, who lost his temper as a congressman in 2020 when GOP senators threatened to stall a stimulus bill, said we shouldn't be spending time and energy discussing the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal and the recent revelations of an alleged "dress rehearsal" to hide certain documents. Host Ruhle asked Rose about the legal analysis provided on the documents scandal by a fellow panelist.

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Lauren Boebert: People were 'more excited about Elon Musk' than DeSantis during Twitter reveal

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said on Thursday night that people were "more excited about Elon Musk" than about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during the latter's announcement on Twitter about his 2024 presidential campaign.

Boebert, who also made news earlier on Thursday when she implied that the Biden administration's vow to "fight hate" and antisemitism equated to a promise that they are "going after" conservatives, said in a live Twitter Spaces event that she is "not a DeSantis hater" but wants him to wait until 2028 to make his run for the office of presidency. The event also featured Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

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Whistleblower accusing IRS of slow-walking Hunter Biden probe is avoiding investigators: report

A whistleblower at the Internal Revenue Service who claims that the agency is dragging its feet on investigating President Joe Biden's son is ducking giving testimony to the Senate on the matter, reported The Daily Beast on Thursday.

"Gary Shapley is now ghosting the Democratic-led IRS-oversight committee following its several-hour-long meeting with his attorney, and has called off a planned interview with the panel," reported Isabella Ramirez. "'Committee staff on both sides agreed with counsel to meet directly with the whistleblower next week, however the whistleblower has since backed out of that agreement and declined an attempt to reschedule,' a source on the committee told The Independent."

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