Conservative commentator Ann Coulter's dislike for Donald Trump manifested itself once again, this time in a recent post to X where she said the best thing Trump could do for America is to "die."
This Saturday, Coulter randomly responded to a commenter on a July post when she shared a Mediaite article on a poll that showed Trump losing to President Joe Biden in 2024.
In the comment thread beneath the post, someone wrote: "Ann Coulter has been right about Trump in the past. I'd love to hear what he needs to do, in her opinion to help us take America back."
On Saturday, Coulter reposted the comment, adding, "Maybe he could die?"
Despite her best-selling book "In Trump We Trust," released during the run-up to the 2016 election, Coulter has since soured on him over what she believes are his failed immigration policies.
Nor is Coulter impressed with Trump's followers. Just last month, she called people who plan to vote for Trump "morons."
"Dems lie about Trump, THEREFORE he’d make a great president!" she said, mocking the logic of Trump supporters. "There aren’t enough drugs in the world that could make me that stupid."
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When Sarah Lee Hooper’s mail-in ballot for Nevada’s presidential primary arrived last month, the Las Vegas Republican was utterly confused.
The candidate she wanted to vote for, Vivek Ramaswamy, wasn’t included. Neither were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and, most notably, former President Donald Trump. The only name she recognized was former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
“What the heck? This is weird,” she remembered thinking. “Are they trying to convince people Nikki is the only option?”
A quick internet search turned up the answer: The Nevada Republican Party opted to eschew the state-run presidential primary on Feb. 6, in favor of running its own caucus two days later, which will decide who wins Nevada’s delegates to the national GOP convention. Presidential contenders who participate in the primary are prohibited by the party from also being candidates in the caucus.
While legal, the party’s decision to host a competing nominating contest in the state has confused and angered GOP voters.
Hooper had no idea there would also be a caucus or that Ramaswamy opted to participate in it instead of the primary before dropping out of the race.
“If you don’t want me to be a conspiracy theorist, then be transparent,” Hooper said. “Send me all of the information at once.”
Since Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, supporters have cultivated an ecosystem of confusion around election processes through unfounded claims of voter fraud, demands for paper ballots and hand counts, and state-by-state efforts to subvert the 2020 results.
Leaders of the caucus effort are among those who tried to keep Trump in power. Three caucus overseers face felony charges for their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Others running the caucus have been on the vanguard of those pushing unfounded election fraud allegations in the state.
These Republicans claim the caucus will serve as a model for how to run a more secure election — a claim disputed by election experts who note the drastic differences between a caucus, which attracts a fraction of the electorate to decide a single race, and elections, where many more voters cast ballots for local, state and federal offices.
The primary election is run by state election officials and adheres to Nevada’s voting laws — which allow for mail-in ballots, early voting and same-day registration. The Nevada Republican Party’s rules for its caucus reflect some GOP leaders’ efforts to limit voting. Participation requires registering as a Republican 30 days in advance, arriving at a set location and time, and presenting identification.
The confusion created about how elections work, including fraud allegations and now around how Nevada will choose who it backs in the Republican primary, has provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories and misinformation to take hold, experts say, causing a greater share of voters to distrust election results and democratic institutions.
“It does make the misinformation environment more dangerous,” said Gowri Ramachandran, deputy director of elections and government for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “These information gaps about voting, how it works, that sort of thing, can get filled in by incorrect information.”
“It’s clear from Jan. 6 that when that kind of misinformation spreads, it has a negative impact on people’s trust in elections and willingness to abide by the results,” she added. “It’s had a negative effect on democracy over the years.”
Confusion over competing contests
When primary ballots absent Trump’s name began hitting mailboxes, Republicans across the state reacted with angry bewilderment.
Some thought he had been kicked off the ballot by a court because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, as happened in a Colorado case that is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. (A judge in Nevada rejected a similar challenge.) Others latched on to a false rumor that an inept campaign staffer forgot to file paperwork to get Trump on the ballot. Voters also wondered whether they could participate in both contests, or if casting a primary ballot and caucusing would constitute an illegal attempt to vote twice. (Nevada’s attorney general and secretary of state have assured voters they are free to participate in both.)
“I haven’t heard anybody who is happy with this unless they are with the state party and the county parties,” said Assemblywoman Danielle Gallant, R-Las Vegas, who has spent recent weeks explaining the situation to her constituency of mostly older voters.
The Nevada Republican Party’s decision to force candidates to forgo the primary if they wanted to be included in the caucus will likely hand the state’s 26 convention delegates to the former president. (At this point only one other obscure candidate remains in the caucuses.) It also foreclosed on any of Trump’s opponents building momentum from a strong showing in the state’s primary even as the field has shrunk since Iowa and New Hampshire, leaving Haley and a handful of lesser-known contenders.
Trump’s allies in the state, including Nevada’s popular Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, have urged GOP voters who participate in the primary to mark “none of these candidates” on the ballot rather than vote for a candidate. They hope to avoid Haley emerging with a larger vote total in the primary than Trump receives in the caucus, a possibility because more voters are expected to cast a ballot in the primary than attend the caucus.
In a Jan. 27 campaign visit to Las Vegas, Trump urged supporters to skip the primary entirely, describing it as a “con job” and a “meaningless event.” The caucus, he said, “is the right way and the legitimate way.”
“Don’t go on Tuesday, Feb. 6,” he told the crowd. “Don’t do it. Don’t use the mail-in ballot.”
'We will deliver you 100% of the delegates'
Because of the primary-caucus confusion, candidates and the national political press have largely ignored Nevada’s “First in the West” contests despite the state’s early spot on the presidential nominating calendar. Trump is the only candidate to visit the state more than once since August.
Democrats have worked since 2007 to establish Nevada as an important early primary state. The effort was spearheaded by the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who used caucuses as a party-building exercise. Since then, both parties have held early caucuses with varying success at making them relevant and competitive.
A couple of years back, that looked to be changing. With the caucus process coming under fire for hindering participation, the Nevada Legislature passed a law in 2021 to create this year’s presidential preference election. Although that effort was led by Democratic lawmakers, Republicans had tried years earlier without success to swap the caucus for a primary.
The Nevada GOP rejects the notion that by holding a caucus it has rigged this year’s contest for the former president. But Trump has been actively preparing to secure the nomination for the past year, including courting party insiders across the country. Those efforts extended to Nevada. Early last year he wooed GOP leaders — including Nevada Republican Chairman Michael McDonald, National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid and Bruce Parks, chairperson of the second-largest county party — at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
McDonald, DeGraffenreid and Jim Hindle are under indictment for acting as fraudulent electors for Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 election — charges to which they’ve pleaded not guilty and are arguing to have dropped. Hindle, as Storey County clerk, is responsible for administering elections, putting him in the novel position of overseeing parts of both the primary and the caucus.
“I’m just doing the job I was elected to do,” Hindle said.
Despite claims of neutrality, McDonald has referred to Trump as the “next president of the United States.” At Trump’s January rally, McDonald stated his intentions more explicitly, referring to Trump simply as “the president.”
“When I talked to the president, I said, ‘I guarantee you Nevada will show up and we will deliver you 100% of the delegates for the state of Nevada to Donald J. Trump,’” he said.
While the caucus favors Trump, the party was transparent with Republican voters and GOP presidential candidates in creating it, McDonald argued.
McDonald blamed the state’s lack of a voter identification requirement for the party’s decision to run a caucus, saying Republican voters don’t trust the system without it.
Parks, chairperson of the party in Washoe County, home to Reno, has also been a leading voice in promoting unfounded election fraud allegations. Under his leadership, the county party adopted a resolution in 2022 declaring Joe Biden’s presidency to be illegitimate. Trump endorsed Parks in his reelection bid for county party chair last year, which Parks described as “one of the proudest moments of my life.”
In an interview with ProPublica, Parks said the party’s central committee decided not to participate in Nevada’s new presidential preference primary election because it wants to demonstrate what he contends is the proper way to run an election: required identification, paper ballots and hand-counting with results reported on the same day.
“There was much discussion — the pros and cons were weighed and measured — and in the end, the people decided we are going to do a caucus because it is more secure and more transparent than a universal mail-in system that does not require ID,” he said.
“Anybody who wants to observe is welcome to,” he said before catching himself. “Let me rephrase that: Anybody who is a Republican and can participate in the process is welcome to observe.”
Until ProPublica raised the issue with the state party, Parks said he wouldn’t allow the news media into Washoe County sites. Now, he said he will allow a few reporters into a single caucus site. McDonald said each county’s chairperson decides whether reporters can observe the proceedings. In the past, reporters have not been barred from observing caucuses held by either party in Nevada.
When asked why the GOP was changing its policy, Parks said, “For obvious reasons. There seems to be a shortage of honest reporters. We’re not going to open the doors and allow a particular narrative to be put out there that is not truthful. That is just not going to happen.”
Anyone who disagrees with the way the caucuses are being run can register with the party and keep an eye on things themselves, he said. “You want to make sure everything is above board? Get involved. Most importantly, change your registration and become a Republican,” he said.
Counting caucus results is not the same as counting election results, Ramachandran said. Hand-counting an election with hundreds of thousands of voters and dozens of races is neither efficient nor accurate.
“It’s really important when people are looking at those issues not to make the mistake of comparing apples to oranges,” she said.
Unknown impact on the general election
How the confusion and resulting disinformation from the presidential nominating process will influence general-election voter behavior is difficult to forecast. Ramachandran said it’s challenging to study how disinformation affects turnout.
“It’s hard to know who’s been subjected to that confusion or has become susceptible to misinformation, and it’s really hard to tie that to impact on turnout or specific candidates,” she said.
Gallant, who is running for reelection to the Assembly this year, isn’t so sure. Beliefs about unfounded voter-fraud accusations kept Republican voters home in 2020, she said, describing it as “oops, we screwed up.” Polling has backed that up, with surveys showing claims of fraud have made Republicans less likely to vote.
“We’ve done a lot of reeducation around that,” Gallant said, referencing the national party’s “Bank Your Vote” campaign that now encourages Republicans to vote early and by mail.
Jeremy Hughes, a Republican political consultant who is not involved in any of the presidential campaigns this year, said too much is being made over the caucus confusion.
“Donald Trump would have won the primary and he will win the caucus, so the mode of voting isn’t going to matter,” he said. “I have zero concern with it affecting voting behaviors.”
Liz Cheney, the former Republican lawmaker who has positioned herself as a political opponent to Donald Trump, summed up Sen. J.D. Vance's position on presidents obeying Supreme Court rulings in two words.
Cheney was addressing Vance after he went on ABC News Sunday and told George Stephanopoulos that a sitting president could defy rulings from the Supreme Court.
“If the Supreme Court said that the president of the United States can’t fire a general,” Vance said, “that would be an illegitimate ruling and the president has to have Article 2 prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”
Vance also asserted he would not have certified President Joe Biden’s election had he been vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent Mike Pence from doing just that.
“If I had been Vice President,” Vance said, “I would have told the states…we needed to have multiple slates of electors.”
Those multiple elector slates are at the heart of two criminal court cases Trump faces in Georgia and Washington D.C. where the former president faces election interference charges, as Cheney pointed out Monday.
“Vance also admitted he would have done what VP Pence refused to do on January 6th—help Trump illegally seize power,” Cheney wrote on X. “Neither Trump nor Vance is fit to serve.”
Vance’s controversial Supreme Court statement spurred Stephanopoulos to cut the interview short, snapping at the Republican lawmaker, “You’ve made it very clear: You believe the president can defy the Supreme Court.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) cleared up some misconceptions about border security during Donald Trump's presidency.
The Oklahoma Republican has been leading negotiations on a bipartisan Senate border agreement that House speaker Mike Johnson has promised to kill if it passes the upper chamber, and Lankford said President Joe Biden should be doing more to stop the flood of migrants crossing the border – but he said Trump's record wasn't much better.
"Obviously we want to be able to stop the chaos at the border," Lankford said. "We had the worst month ever in the history of the country in December. The response of that is changing how we handle asylum doing our catch-and-release, doing a new system where we don't have this 10-year backlog. We quickly turn people around, building more wall, adding more detention beds, doubling the deportation flights. I mean, it's a dramatic shift, and people are focused on one or two areas and saying, 'I don't like that area,' and they're ignoring all of the rest of it and literally saying I'd rather do nothing."
"Now I have had folks that have said the president has the authority to do and he's not doing it – that is 100 percent true," Lankford added. "Biden is not using the authorities he currently has, but I would also remind folks during the Trump administration we also had days of more than 4,000 people that were illegally crossing the border under the Trump administration in 2019, and they were struggling because there's gaps and loopholes in the law."
Fox Business host Neil Cavuto on Monday pushed back on Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) after he trashed the bipartisan bill in the United States Senate aimed at curbing illegal border crossings.
During the interview, Cavuto acknowledged that the bill negotiated in the Senate didn't give Republicans everything they wanted, but he questioned whether passing it would be better than simply doing nothing.
Davidson countered by arguing that the House shouldn't feel pressured to consider the Senate bill when the Senate hasn't considered the much stricter bill passed in the House.
Cavuto countered that the legislation would mandate that the federal government shut down the border during periods of high border crossings, and that it would force President Joe Biden to take actions that he has so far not taken.
"In that gap, sir, you don't have anything getting done," Cavuto said.
"What's going to happen is [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas is going to be impeached," Davidson said. "He's earned it. He's violated the law."
This prompted Cavuto to cut in.
"He's not going to be impeached," he said.
"He's going to be impeached by the House," insisted Davidson.
Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving party leader in the history of the U.S. Senate, is facing increased rebellion from the far-right faction of his conference, with calls for his ouster including from one longtime GOP Senator who declared, "WE NEED NEW LEADERSHIP — NOW," and a reporter calling it a hint "at mutiny."
At issue is the bipartisan U.S. Senate border deal, months in the making, which includes funding for the southern border, a major rewrite of immigration laws, and funding for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Axios calls it "one of the harshest immigration bills of the century," and even the traditionally right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports it. The bill was crafted by hardcore conservative U.S. Sen. Jim Lankford (R-OK), hardcore liberal U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), and libertarian-leaning progressive Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). It is strongly supported by President Joe Biden, and both Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"Brawl erupts in Senate GOP over border security supplemental," is the AM headline at Punchbowl News, with the news outlet reporting: "the bill’s release Sunday night was like pouring gasoline on the fire that is the Senate GOP internal war. Senators and aides publicly and privately questioned whether a majority of the Republican Conference would back it, a key metric. There were even calls for an immediate leadership change from some GOP senators and conservative outside groups."
The text of the legislation, unveiled Sunday evening, has drawn harsh criticism from Republicans of all stripes in the House of Representatives, with Speaker Mike Johnson calling it "dead on arrival," and from far right Republicans in the Senate. Mike Lee of Utah appears to be the loudest of the three ringleaders charging against the bill – and against McConnell.
"This bill unites Senate Democrats and sharply divides Senate Republicans," Lee wrote on X Monday morning, the latest in a screed of dozens of posts that began Sunday evening.
Behind all of this is Donald Trump, who has very publicly opposed the legislation long before the text of the bill was released. Those opposed to the border bill, strong promoted by Senator Lankford, are largely Trump acolytes. In addition to the large number of House Republicans, on the Senate side they include Steve Daines of Montana, who also serves Senate leadership as the Chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Newsweek puts the count of GOP Senators opposed to the just-unveiled border bill at eleven. In addition to Daines, they include: Marsha Blackburn, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Eric Schmitt, Tommy Tuberville, JD Vance, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Mike Lee.
Senators Lee, Hawley, and Cruz appear to be the ringleaders opposing the bill.
Late Sunday night Senator Cruz (R-TX) wrote, "Two weeks ago, at a Senate press conference, I said this deal was a 'stinking pile of crap.' It turns out my assessment was too generous." He also wrote, "This…is…INSANE. On Schumer’s Open-Borders Legislation, Republicans shouldn’t just vote no… …but HELL NO."
Overnight and into Monday, Senator Lee went on a social media extravaganza, blasting the bill, and the Senate GOP Minority Leader.
"If you had a lawyer, agent, or employee who (while negotiating on your behalf) botched a deal as badly as Senate GOP leadership botched this border / supplemental aid package, would you immediately fire that person?" Lee asked on X, suggesting he wants McConnell gone.
"This is worse than bad negotiation. It’s betrayal. The Senate GOP can still stop it if 41 [Senators] will stand together," Lee wrote on X, calling it a "crap-sandwich" and the "Border Capitulation Bill."
Making even more clear his desire to see McConnell replaced, Lee added: "Senate GOP leadership screwed this up—and screwed us. Even while refusing to let us see the bill they claimed to be negotiating on our behalf—for MONTHS—they were never in doubt, insisting we’d be dumb and even unpatriotic NOT to support it. This is a disqualifying betrayal.
Unsurprisingly, Sen. Lee was the one to announce, "WE NEED NEW LEADERSHIP — NOW."
MSNBC " Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough dropped the hammer on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) early Monday morning after the GOP leader announced his opposition to a proposed Senate border bill just hours after it was released.
Late Sunday, Johnson posted on social media, "I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, 'the border never closes.' If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival."
According to Scarborough, Johnson is only doing it to appease Donald Trump who wants the border issue to remain a problem for President Joe Biden.
"He continued to lie," he said. "As Liz Cheney said, and he basically admitted, he was going around spreading a lie about January 6th, trying to get people to sign onto a letter that would continue the lie and help Ken Paxton spread the lie in Texas, he lied about that. He is lying about this, he knows. [Sen.] James Langford (R-OK) said, 'I wish they'd all read the bill. I wish they would understand how strong the bill is.'"
"But the sad thing is, and it's pathetic, and we say things can be two things at once, I mean, the new speaker is both dangerous and pathetic," Scarborough exclaimed. "Dangerous because he has decided, and he said it publicly, we're going to put politics over stopping fentanyl from coming into the United States. We're going to put politics above allowing our border security to stop terrorists from coming into the United States. We're going to keep the border chaotic for at least another ten months because we want things to be as chaotic as possible for Joe Biden."
"It's just like Donald Trump saying he wants the economy to crash, there to be a Great Depression, and he wants Biden to be Herbert Hoover," he added.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Sunday he is expanding his troops' control of the southern US border to protect it from a migrant "invasion," as President Joe Biden's administration accuses him of overstepping his authority.
Abbott, flanked by 13 fellow Republican state governors, arrived at Shelby Park, in the Texan city of Eagle Pass, which has an access ramp to the Rio Grande river that forms the natural boundary between the United States and Mexico.
"We are here to send a loud and clear message, that we are banding together to fight to ensure that we will be able to maintain our constitutional guarantee, that states will be able to defend against any type of imminent danger or invasion," Abbott told a news conference.
Eagle Pass, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Quemado, has become the epicenter of a prickly conflict between Abbott and the Biden administration.
The federal government is suing Abbott for taking control of Shelby Park and for laying barbed wire along the riverbank.
The Biden administration complained in mid-January that Texas national guardsmen had prevented federal border police from reaching the river to try to rescue three migrants, who subsequently drowned.
Texas has rejected the accusation.
Biden has taken the case to the US Supreme Court, which has authorized border police to cut the barbed wire.
However, a defiant Abbott has ordered more fencing erected and has garnered support from Republican governors around the country who have sent their own guardsmen or other resources to the border.
"The Texas National Guard... (are) undertaking operations to expand this effort. We're not going to contain ourselves just to this park," he said.
"Now we are expanding to further areas to make sure that we will expand our level of deterrence and denial of illegal entry into the United States."
Abbott, a staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump, who made the fight against immigration one of the main themes of his 2016 election campaigns, has openly questioned the authority of the Biden administration, accusing it of "deliberate inaction" in the face of a record influx of migrants at the border in recent months.
Biden campaigned in 2020 on restoring "humanity" to immigration, ending controversial Trump-era policies that led to families being separated at the US-Mexico border.
Abbott's latest remarks came as a convoy of activists calling themselves "God's army" arrived at the border in southern Texas to protest against what they call a migrant "invasion".
He said neighborhoods, businesses and golf courses in Eagle Pass have been "invaded", something which dozens of protesting residents dismissed Sunday while also rejecting the heavy military presence in the area.
On Sunday night, the US Senate unveiled the text of a deal between Democrats and Republicans that would unlock billions in new aid for Ukraine and Israel while tightening US border laws.
However, the prospect of it becoming law is uncertain.
The nation's leading newspapers were under fire this weekend after publishing opinion pieces seen as "Bigoted," "Islamophobic," "Racist," and "Reckless."
Dearborn, Michigan, a city with the largest Muslim population in the US, has increased its police presence, fearing hate attacks after the Wall Street Journal branded it America's 'jihad capital.'
The Islamaphobic article was written by Steven Stalinsky, who is a commentator on' terrorism' and has served as executive director of the pro-Israel Middle East Media Research Institute based in Washington, DC.
The mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah H. Hammoud, said Saturday that the city's police officers were ramping up their presence across places of worship and major infrastructure points following the publication of Stalinsky's piece that he called "bigoted" and "Islamophobic." The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee condemned the piece as anti-Arab and racist for suggesting the city's residents, including religious leaders and politicians, supported Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and extremism.
In response to the Wall Street Journal piece, President Joe Biden tweeted Sunday afternoon:
"Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong. That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town. We must continue to condemn hate in all forms."
Shortly after Biden's tweet went out, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer tweeted:
"Dearborn is a vibrant community full of Michiganders who contribute day in and day out to our state. Islamophobia and all forms of hate have no place in Michigan, or anywhere. Period."
Friedman's piece in the New York Times entitled, "Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom," posited Iran as a metaphorical "parasitoid wasp" with proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria as caterpillars. Friedman claimed, "We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle," suggesting that the US militarily destroys the entire Middle East to annihilate Iran and its allies. He concluded that he could "contemplate" the Middle East by watching Animal Planet.
Abed A. Ayoub, Executive Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, tweeted:
"Go ahead and say this about any other people and see the reaction - @tomfriedman would be fired before the ink dries. This election season kickoff is a reminder that anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia are mainstream. That’s why this trash is acceptable to so many, and there will be no accountability."
Erin Overby, former Archive Editor at The New Yorker, tweeted:
"This @nytimes column by Thomas Friedman comparing countries in the Middle East to animals, pests & insects is so virulently racist it could have run in Der Sturmer or on Radio Rwanda pre-‘94 genocide. It’s appallingly offensive & Friedman should be fired."
Republicans in Nevada will get not one, but two chances this week to register support for a candidate in their party's presidential nominating contest when the western US state hosts both a primary vote and a caucus.
While much of the political attention in the United States is focused on South Carolina's February 24 Republican primary, where Nikki Haley is hoping to make a dent in Donald Trump's commanding lead, the Silver State is actually the next place to award its delegates.
Trump as the winner of those delegates is a foregone conclusion because Nevada's Republican Party has decided to ignore the results of the state-mandated primary, where Haley is the sole significant candidate, and focus only on its own caucus, where the property tycoon is the only major contender.
That has left some voters claiming the whole setup is all a fix by the Trump-leaning Nevada GOP.
"There’s no point in participating in the caucus. I can’t vote for my candidate," Haley supporter Charles Fruit told the Las Vegas Review Journal.
"They’re basically disenfranchising me. And this is happening by my own Republican party. I’m very unhappy about it."
- Swing state -
In recent history, both parties in Nevada have staged caucuses to select their presidential preference.
In 2021, a Democratic Party-sponsored bill mandated primaries, with the express intention of increasing voter turn-out through options like vote-by-mail or absentee balloting.
But, like swathes of the national party, the Nevada GOP is wildly distrustful of such measures, insisting without evidence that in-person voting with a photo ID is the only way to ensure the security of the ballot.
Daniel Lee of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says there's also a political dimension to the decision.
"The state Republican Party have been vocal supporters of Trump's candidacy," he told AFP.
A caucus -- where voters have to spend several hours in a public building -- clearly favors Trump.
"Caucus-goers are going to be those who are really fervent, like really enthusiastic, energized supporters of the candidate.
"They're the ones that are going to take the time out of their day to go to a smelly gymnasium
"And that's precisely the type of supporters that Trump has."
Nevada, which carries six votes in the electoral college that picks the US president in the general election, is a swing state that has by-and-large voted for the White House winner in recent decades.
In 2020, it backed Joe Biden by a narrow margin -- less than 35,000 votes separated him from Trump.
Many in the Nevada Republican Party refused to accept the results, falling in with Trump's repeatedly disproven claims that the election was stolen and sending a slate of false results to Congress.
Six people -- including the state party chairman -- have been indicted over this so-called "fake electors" plan.
A Trump candidacy and eventual 2024 White House win would open the door to a pardon for those convicted under such charges.
For some in the local party, the transparent attempt to put a thumb on Trump's side of the scales is hypocrisy.
"It feels like the guys that were complaining about an election being stolen are stealing an election," said Las Vegas resident Thomas Kramer, the Review Journal reported.
- 'Doesn't matter' -
Neither Haley nor Trump has campaigned particularly hard in Nevada -- Haley stopped off in the state in October, and Trump has focused most of his rallies on states further east.
For Haley, it was never in play.
"The caucuses have been sealed up, bought and paid for a long time," she told reporters last month. "But we’re going to focus on the states that are fair."
Trump will win the caucus and sweep the delegates; Haley will win the primary and get nothing, says Peter Loge of George Washington University, but the situation isn't going to move any needles.
"It doesn't matter, because, you know, Haley's decided and the national press have decided it doesn't matter," he said.
"I think most of the attention is on South Carolina, because Haley has said: 'Look, I'm going to make a race of it.'"
Additionally, the Nevada vote will struggle to gain traction when millions of Americans have their eyes focused on another big event taking place in Las Vegas next week -- the showcase final of the American football season.
"No one here is even thinking about the primary and caucus," said David Damore of the University of Nevada.
"They're much more concerned about the Super Bowl."
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Recently the internet has been Freaking Out about artificial intelligence. I’m sure you’ve noticed.
The worries are not unfounded. Last month, what appears to be an AI-generated robocall in a voice made to sound like President Joe Biden went out to New Hampshire voters, telling Democrats not to vote in the upcoming presidential primary because it “only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump.” The caller ID made the call appear as if it had come from someone associated with the Biden campaign in the state. No one seems to know who is responsible.
That will not be the last time this happens. The horse, as they say, has left the barn.
So, I was excited to participate in a convening of scholars, election officials, and journalists in New York last week meant to at least begin to assess the potential impact of AI on the 2024 election. While I am well-acquainted with what one might describe as the beep-boop side of the journalism world, AI seemed overwhelming and scary to me prior to this. It’s still scary, but I’m — surprisingly — walking away less worried about it.
The program was the brainchild of Julia Angwin, an investigative journalist and author, and Alondra Nelson, a social scientist who served as acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under Biden. It was the first program of their new initiative, AI Democracy Projects.
Participants were broken into groups and asked to test four AI language models, or chatbots, on a set of prompts about the election — how to register to vote by mail in a given county, where a voter could find the nearest polling location, etc. — and assess the quality and the differences of the responses. It’s certainly not a complete answer on the goodness or badness of any of the language models, but measuring the impact of new technology has to start somewhere.
Ultimately, what the day proved to me was that the problems AI may cause aren’t really that new, and that with appropriate collaboration between interested parties — in this case, election officials and AI leaders — the public can build up defenses appropriately, even if we might need to do so in a different way than we have before.
Quinn Raymond, who participated in the day, co-founded Voteshield, a program that monitors changes in voter registration databases to spot malicious activity, and analyze anomalies. He says he and his colleagues at Protect Democracy have been thinking about these problems a lot. “The consensus is that the threat of AI in elections is ultimately one of scale. Someone trying to disrupt an election is basically using the old same dirty tricks (imitation, intimidation, etc), but now the barrier to entry is a bit lower, and the verisimilitude higher,” he said in an email after the event. “So a comparatively small number of motivated individuals can do a lot of damage even if they start out with minimal knowledge and resources.”
The Brookings Institute has recently released a helpful explainer on AI’s possible impact on elections, with a realistic take on its potential for harm. It comes to a similar conclusion.
All of that sounds terrifying, I realize, but here’s why I’ve downgraded my own terror to “twingy discomfort.”
For much of the day, I was testing election prompts in a room with two local election officials from large counties, two academics, and a former federal official. I’d played with ChatGPT before, but certainly not in this way. And, honestly, it was surprising how dumb the responses were, sometimes flatly unhelpful to the point of uselessness. Language models are — at least for now — not quite there yet.
For example, when asked to locate the nearest polling location to a Koreatown zip code in Los Angeles, one language model popped out the address of a veterans center several miles away that is not a polling location. I realize that seems harmful: maybe a voter would rely on that information and show up. But ultimately, the answers make such little sense that it’s likely that person would ignore it or seek information elsewhere.
“For voters seeking information on how to vote, a basic Google search performs much better than asking any of the chatbots,” said David Becker, a participant in the conference and the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
And, really, that makes sense given what AI is, says Raymond. “AI is fundamentally a technology about ‘guessing,’ and providing voters with accurate election information is fundamentally about ‘knowing,’” he said.
At least for now, it’s likely that a person sophisticated enough to seek out and use these language models for answers would pretty quickly realize they aren’t very good yet at election information and go elsewhere. Many of the public-facing models also explicitly label election information as potentially unreliable, referring users to local election offices or Vote.gov.
What was useful, though, was watching the election officials and the AI experts talk to each other. It’s a model for real collaboration in this area, and makes me optimistic about our ability to proactively address both the models’ shortcomings and the growing threat of disinformation as the technology becomes more sophisticated.
A robocall like the one in New Hampshire was inevitable. And this will keep happening. Like any evolving technology, experts and government officials need to rise to the occasion and update technology policies to address real-world conditions. For example, a handful of states are requiring images created using AI to be explicitly labeled. State-level attention to the issue has grown even since the start of the year, energized by the robocall.
This event was a great first step, and suggests that there really is common ground to be found on this important issue. Legislators working on bills should take note of the collaborative, interdisciplinary way Angwin and Nelson chose to approach possible solutions.
As I spoke to the election officials and journalists who’d attended the event, I realized that a common refrain was this: You just have to start playing with AI in order to understand it, and you shouldn’t be afraid to do it. Open ChatGPT and ask it questions. See what kind of images you can create with Microsoft’s Image Creator, and look closely for the tell-tale signs such generated images carry, such as not showing faces or distorting text. Try and clone your voice, and see what it sounds like.
Given how inaccessible the whole premise of AI seems, there is a real impulse to avoid engaging with it — as if it might shock us through our keyboards or take over our homes like that Disney movie from 1999. While an understandable response, it’s not a viable one if we — consumers of real information who attempt to assess that information in context — want to understand the pros and cons of this very real thing that is already having very real impacts.
If you want to dip your toe in gently, here are some good places to start (none of which require any previous knowledge to understand):
“Artificial Intelligence, Explained” from Carnegie Mellon University is a great introduction to the various vocabulary words you might come across while exploring, and links out to helpful information on the history of AI’s development.
Harvard University has an extensive site dedicated to AI. While it’s aimed at students, it’s open to all and contains really fascinating tools and suggestions for how to explore the seemingly endless options offered by language learning models. I specifically recommend their guides on text-based prompts and their comparison of currently available AI tools.
We played a terrifying game in which a graduate student showed the room — full of experts! — a series of AI-generated images blended with actual photos and asked us to vote on which were real. There wasn’t consensus on a single image, and most people got most of them wrong. I certainly did. You can test your own skills in a similar quiz from the New York Times.
If you are an elections official who has concerns about this stuff, tell me what they are. I plan to remain engaged in this conversation, and Votebeat will certainly cover AI-related issues this year and beyond. Let us know what’s important to you.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
Restaurateur Antonio Munoz feels the political winds changing in his native Nevada, where parts of the traditionally Democratic Latino community are drifting Republican ahead of this year's presidential election.
It's a trend across the United States, and with a fifth of eligible voters identifying as Latino, it's one that could prove decisive in November.
"In the last election, I voted Democrat... but this year I really am in the middle. I don't know what to do," Munoz, an ex-police officer, tells AFP at his colorful Las Vegas eatery.
Joe Biden, the 81-year-old incumbent, will almost certainly go head-to-head again with Donald Trump, whom he defeated in 2020 partially by harnessing a significant majority of Latino voters.
Despite facing a raft of criminal charges, including some relating to his alleged efforts to overthrow results of the last election, 77-year-old Trump has the edge in several national polls.
That's also true in Nevada, a southwest swing state that Biden carried last time by a small margin -- and where voters begin casting ballots this week in the parties' nominating processes.
Munoz says his feeling is that Latinos in Las Vegas overall probably lean Democratic, but not like in years past.
"I have friends (who are) there in the middle like me," he said.
- Generational change -
The Latino community is one of the fastest growing in the United States, explains Mark Hugo Lopez, director of research on race and ethnicity at Pew Research Center.
While it is not a monolith -- Latinos in Florida, many of whom have family connections to communist Cuba, lean heavily Republican -- historically the community has been more favorable to Democrats, he said.
Polling data shows that is changing.
Biden won Hispanic voters two to one over Trump in 2020, but now trails among that demographic by five points, 39 to 34 percent, according to January's USA Today/Suffolk University poll.
"Our most recent figures show... 65 percent disapprove of the job he's doing and 32 percent approve," Lopez said of Biden.
That is down significantly from 2021 when most Latinos approved of Biden's performance.
Some of that is related to kitchen table issues such as inflation, but also immigration, with the widely held belief there is a border crisis that the White House cannot control.
Those on the left have made much of Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric -- such as when he said "rapists" and drug dealers were crossing the border from Mexico -- assuming this would play badly in immigrant communities.
But a changing Latino demographic means such sentiment is not always unpopular.
"In a place like Nevada... there are many US-born children of immigrant parents," said Lopez.
"But there's also a growing number of people who are third or higher generation. And they have tended to lean more Republican" than other Latinos.
It's a shift that life-long Democrats like Maria Elena Castro have noticed with dismay.
She says she hears increasingly right-wing sentiments from her son and nephews when they talk politics.
"Kids don't know much about the past, what their parents had to go through," said the 51-year-old Mexican-American.
Young Latino voters favor Republicans "due to the lack of information."
- 'Better off?' -
It is perhaps the struggle of previous generations of Latinos that is animating the community's growing animosity towards newcomers, said Jesus Marquez, a political consultant who has worked on Trump's campaign in Nevada and spoke at a recent Las Vegas rally headlined by Trump.
The constant drumbeat of right-wing media and its associated social media sphere emphasizes what is happening at the border, where thousands of impoverished people arrive daily.
Once there, they walk across into the United States and say they want to claim asylum, before being released for a court date many years down the line.
The perception that this is unfair is a powerful one, according to Marquez.
"That is something that the Latinos that have lived here for decades don't really like, because they feel that the new people are just jumping the line and getting ahead of them," he told AFP.
Ultimately, it makes less and less sense to speak of "Latinos" as a distinct community in America's ethnic melting pot, he said.
Latinos, and the working class in general, struggle with the high cost of living, Marquez said.
"A lot of Hispanics did much better during Donald Trump's years," he claimed.
"So that is the question they ask themselves: Are we better off right now or when he was in office?"
WASHINGTON — After protecting – and studying – lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol for the past 15 years, Harry Dunn turned his service revolver over to the Capitol Police at the end of 2023.
He then entered the 2024 race to represent residents of Maryland’s 3rd congressional district, which curls through the suburbs south and west of Baltimore, as a Democrat.
Dunn found his life upended during the 2021 Capitol insurrection as he protected then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staffers from militia group the Oath Keepers and other violent attackers.
In the three years since the Capitol attack, Dunn has made it his mission to raise the alarm about what he sees as the greatest threat to American democracy: former President Donald Trump.
He offered gripping testimony about the day to the U.S. House’s select January 6 committee.
“I was distressed, I was angry, and I was scared," Dunn testified to the select committee in 2022. "During the event, it was just about surviving."
He also became a New York Times bestselling author with his book “Standing my Ground.”
In this Raw Story exclusive, Dunn discusses more than his newfound ambitions as a politician – “Don't think of me as one! I’m a public servant.” He also pulls the veil back on how his fellow officers reacted to his accidental activism and what he views as the hypocrisy of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“I refuse – win or lose this election – to let the story of January 6 and the narrative go in any other direction than the truth. Hell, that's been my mission since I started speaking out three years ago,” Dunn told Raw Story.
The distinguished former Capitol Police officer also discussed his personal interactions with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other lawmakers – “a lot of the people that are holding those seats shouldn't be there” – including House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who has supported imprisoned Jan. 6 attackers and seems to be auditioning to get the vice-presidential nod from Trump.
Raw Story’s conversation with Dunn is lightly edited for length and clarity:
Raw Story: “So now you are running…”
Harry Dunn: “I know. What the hell am I thinking, right?”
RS: “Exactly! You’ve looked at all these politicians from the other side and, to now to be running — how's that change feel?”
HD: “Maybe ‘inspire’ is the right word. I've been up close and personal with them every day of my life for the last 15-plus years, and I feel like I see what they're doing and I'd say, ‘I could do it a little better’ – or not necessarily better but different or more effective. I've watched them. I've heard the things that they said, specifically the MAGA faction of the Republican Party that has kind of downplayed everything since January 6. Now, obviously, Jan. 6 was the catalyst that brought me to this point, but I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things.”
RS: “Even before we jump into January 6, just seeing lawmakers every day, you kind of get a takeaway, like, ‘oh, wait, they're just humans.’”
HD: “I love that part of it, man. Because that's what public servants, to me, are supposed to be: just people – average people that aren't on a pedestal. But my job is to give a voice to the members of the community that I represent, and that's what your job is as an elected official. Your job is to represent those people, and you should be an everyday American because that's what the government should be made up of.”
RS: “Now to get to January 6, especially this year with the anniversary, it just had a different feeling at the Capitol, almost like it never happened.”
HD: “Because that's what Donald Trump wanted. Everything that Donald Trump has said — slowly but surely it starts trickling down into Congress. Everything that Donald Trump has said they are saying – ‘they’ meaning the subordinates of him in Congress parroting his talking points – and that's not how Congress is supposed to work.”
RS: “You'd expect it more – I'd expect it more from someone like MTG – but how is it watching…”
HD: “Do I expect more? At the Capitol, we would see these individuals every day so maybe we expect more from the position that they hold but not necessarily the person. Like, I don't expect more from Donald Trump, I expect more from the presidency. And that's how I was able to do my job. I was able to separate that, the institution of Congress – I marvel at it; I respect it – but a lot of the people that are holding those seats shouldn't be there.”
RS: “I've been with MTG to the D.C. jail for her to advocate for J6 prisoners, and it's been a part of her rhetoric. But now to hear Elise Stefanik – who’s been in Republican leadership – say, ‘January 6 hostages,’ that's new.”
HD: “So what is Elise Stefanik right now? She’s vying for a VP nod, right? So it's anything to stay in Trump's graces. We've seen it all the way from the beginning of January 6 with Kevin McCarthy when later that night he went on the floor and condemned Donald Trump. Few days later, he’s down at Mar-a-Lago changing his tune, right? [Sen.] Lindsey Graham, same thing with him. Elise Stefanik. The list goes on and on and on. He has that much of a hold over the people that it's dangerous and very counterproductive in Congress.”
RS: “We see Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party, how would it be serving with those folks?”
HD: “The same way it was for me protecting them. This isn't just something that I'll have to get used to being able to see them and say ‘hi’ to them every day. I did that January 7th – the day we went back after the attack at the Capitol, because I revere the institution. I hold it in high regard. I think the world of it, and I expect great things to come from Congress. The fact that we haven't been able to doesn't mean that we shouldn't still strive to get greatness out of it.”
RS: “Have you been surprised watching the rhetoric of MTG and that faction trickle into the leadership?”
HD: “I'm disappointed. I'm not surprised, because Donald Trump has this stranglehold over these individuals. It's very important to acknowledge, though, what Congress is supposed to do. I believe in it, and maybe that's crazy on me for believing in something that hasn't functioned well for a long time.”
RS: “How important is this election just for the legacy of January 6, because it feels very tied to Donald Trump and his future?”
HD: “It's very important, not necessarily for the legacy of it, so to speak. I refuse – win or lose this election – to let the story of January 6 and the narrative go in any other direction than the truth. Hell, that's been my mission since I started speaking out three years ago. But I think what this election will show is how important the threats to free and fair elections are and holding on to our democracy is to people. Donald Trump said it himself that [he] wants to be a dictator on day one. He said that. So I think what the election will show is how many people think that what we have now is worth preserving and worth fighting for it.”
RS: “When you were on the force, what was the reaction from Capitol Police brass – but then your fellow officers – to you speaking out?”
HD: “That was tough to navigate, because Capitol Police officers aren't allowed to give press conferences or speak to the media. So when I spoke, I was speaking as a citizen. I wasn't representing Capitol Police. So it was difficult to navigate, because those things are tied together – the Capitol Police and January 6 – so I was in a tough bind. I never went rogue or anything like that. I was respectful to the department. I said, ‘Listen, this is what I want to do. I'm not here to bash the department. I'm here to get the people responsible and hold them accountable.’ Period. There were a couple head bumps about me speaking out. I respect the Capitol Police leadership, and they were great. And obviously, when you talk about frontline — my co-workers — a lot of them were indifferent. A lot supported me, and said, ‘keep going.’ And there were a few that hated it – you know, ‘I'm making it about me’ – which kind of sucks, but it’s expected. If you look, the FOP [Fraternal Order of Police], the last few times Donald Trump ran, they endorsed him, so there's a lot of police officers that support Donald Trump, even after January 6. So I expected all types of mixed reactions. But I know what I'm doing, I'm standing up for what I believe in.”
RS: “What do you make of seeing law enforcement come around Trump or, more so, seeing Republicans still try to wear the mantle of law enforcement when they threw y'all literally under the bus?”
HD: “Does that make me dislike Donald Trump more or does that make me have to face the sad reality of what our country is? I don't think that necessarily makes me hate Donald Trump even more, I think it makes me have an awakening to, ‘hey, this faction exists, and it's not a small faction – it's a large population of people.’ We have to figure out how to navigate that, because they're here and clearly aren't going anywhere.”
RS: “When it comes to the lead up of January 6, have your questions been answered? For one, on congressional leaders – Pelosi and [Sen. Mitch] McConnell — for the pre-planning. But then also the agencies. Are you sure we can’t have a repeat?”
HD: “I don't believe in any conspiracy that McConnell or Pelosi wanted to see the Capitol attacked. I don't believe that at all. I believe in incompetence, versus it was a setup or some s— like that. Somebody dropped the ball, and they need to be held accountable. I don't know where that is, but somebody did. But I don't believe it was the leadership. I think they trusted people that they put in positions to answer for those things, and those people need to be held accountable.”
RS: “Seeing groups like Moms for Liberty take root on the right, are you worried about — maybe January 6 not repeating itself in a physical assault but them kind of taking root at the local level and trying to really take control of the reins of democracy at voting stations, etc.?”
HD: “We have to realize this faction – this chokehold that Donald Trump has – it's not just limited to members of Congress. It's triggered all the way down to local school board elections, like Moms for Liberty. And that's why it's so important to have truth tellers, individuals that really understand what is at stake right now. Obviously, we all want, in the long run, the same things, but I don't think that a lot of people realize the dire situation and how urgently we need to fight for it right now. Because it is a clear and present threat right now and we have to take it seriously. I left my job early. Meaning, I was there 15-plus years, four years short of being able to collect a full pension, because it's that important to me. It can't wait.”
RS: “How's that been going? Because it's hard for me to think of you as a politician, but, I guess, technically on paper, you are.”
HD: “Don't think of me as one! I’m a public servant. You saw me at the Capitol every day. You saw me interacting with people, ‘how can I help you?’ My job was to help people, and that's what I did. I've been doing that for the last 15 years of my adult life, and that won't change.”
RS: “But now you gotta dial for dollars and stuff like that. How's the campaigning?”
HD: “That sucks. I hate asking people for stuff. It’s difficult, but it's necessary. It's not like I'm raising money and putting it in my pocket. It’s for messaging, and I want to reach as many people as I can. Obviously, to win the election, but, the bigger picture, to educate and inform people of what is at stake right now.”
RS: “I'm from Chicago, which is very much like Baltimore, you got these old political machines. How's it been navigating Maryland Democratic politics?”
HD: “It's a lot to learn, but I've cared about politics, so it's not like, ‘who is the lieutenant governor?’ I'm engaged. Before I'm a candidate, before I'm a police officer, I'm a proud citizen of Maryland – and I have been my whole life – who wants to see the people and the state thrive. So running for office or not, that is always how I felt. But being a player now, so to speak, I don't want to lose the essence of who I am, which is a public servant.”
RS: “You obviously get a lot of focus from January 6, but what are the other things you're running on that you think – especially coming from law enforcement – that you can really bring to the table?”
HD: “Since you said it, let’s talk about that, law enforcement and police reform. There's been a long time where Cory Booker and Tim Scott, two black senators, were working together to create a bill to address police reform of criminal justice reform. They were unable to come to an agreement through a consensus, so the talks stalled and now it's just tabled. But the change can't wait … I've been very vocal about mental health. I think we need to reallocate funding to fight the war on mental health right now and the stigma that is associated with it. We all are struggling in some capacity every single day, and we need to make accessibility to mental health way more accessible … Lower health care costs. Obviously, I agree with the majority of the Democratic principles: the woman's right to choose, common sense gun reform. That's the stuff that I agree on, and those issues fall under the umbrella of democracy to me, because, you know, if Trump is elected back into the White House, do those issues even matter? They’ll be gone just like that.”
RS: “You have a presence, and it's usually a smiley, happy presence at the Capitol, but knowing that you were one of our boys in blue but then if you're wearing a suit and wearing that congressional pin, what signal would that send to the MTGs, the Matt Gaetzes, the Boeberts, the people trying to whitewash January 6th?”
HD: “That I can't be dismissed. It's easy to dismiss me when I was an officer, right? As just some ‘angry liberal plant,’ right? It's easy to dismiss me as that. But actually, I'm your colleague, now, I'm your equal. You can't dismiss me. You have to listen. I can bring an issue to the table and force it to be addressed.”
RS: “What would the lawmakers tell you like, personally off the record, post January 6?”
HD: “Well, the ones that I got to talk to, the ones who would dare talk to me about it – and that’s how bad it was – a lot of those members aren't in Congress anymore. That’s just a symptom of being a truth teller in a Donald Trump Congress, so to speak. It sucks. It’s unfortunate. But you mentioned MTG, I mean, she was a very friendly person. When I saw her on the Hill, she would always wave. She would always say hello. I don't know if she knew who I was, but she would always say hello. So I don't have anything bad to say about her about that.”
RS: “You get that southern nice but then it seems like some of those policies are very harmful but then they're cloaked in this smile. Like, does that worry you?”
HD: “I think it's disingenuous – smiling without even having your pulse on what's going on.”
