Trump News

Reacting to a Donald Trump posting on Truth Social late Saturday where the former president issued a threat aimed at election poll workers, a furious Michael Steele hammered the ex-president for threatening people just trying to do their jobs.

The co-host of MSNBC's "The Weekend," started the segment by reading Trump's post while explaining normally they refuse to repeat what he has to say on social media.

Should Donald Trump go down to defeat in November in his bid for a second presidential term, that will, in all likelihood, be the death knell for the MAGA movement he began nine years ago.

That is the opinion of conservative David French in his column for the New York Times on Sunday, where he suggests there is ample evidence that the avid followers of the former president are so entrenched in their belief in him that they have no room to embrace an heir apparent for the 78-year-old Trump.

In his column, he bluntly stated "attempts to mimic Trump succeed in Republican primaries and deep red jurisdictions, but they fail in swing states and purple districts," before adding, "Trump is MAGA’s most popular figure, and if he loses, then MAGA has nowhere to go but down."

ALSO READ: Buckle up: Win or lose, Trump promises potential scenarios of violence

As he pointed out, the former president selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate in 2024, but he has failed to catch fire with voters, and that a broad array of MAGA-like candidates including Arizona's Kari Lake, Georgia's Herschel Walker and Pennsylvania's Doug Mastriano all suffered defeats in 2022 — and the prospects for far-right candidates in 2024 are not looking any better.

"Trump is peak MAGA, and even peak MAGA hasn’t been able to achieve Mitt Romney’s share of the 2012 popular vote. Stronger turnout masked this reality, but Trump has never achieved even 47 percent of the total votes cast," he pointed out before adding, "I’m under no illusions that defeating Trump will resurrect Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party — or John McCain’s or Mitt Romney’s. I’m also under no illusions about the fate of Never Trumpers in a post-Trump G.O.P."

Appearing on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade made fun of Donald Trump's lawyers for suggesting they will run to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to bail them out if Judge Tanya Chutkan rules against their attempt to get special counsel Jack Smith off the case.

Sitting down with fill-in MSNBC host Melissa Murray, McQuade was asked, "In that hearing last week and in Judge Chutkan's courtroom, there was a really stunning moment where Trump's legal counsel noted they would be challenging the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel and they noted they were directed to do it by Justice Clarence Thomas."

"Of course I think they were referring to Justice Thomas' concurrence in the Trump immunity case which questioned the authority of special counsels. What you make of this idea of a sitting Supreme Court justice essentially acting as a kind of shadow defense counsel here?" Murray asked.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are about to meet in-person for the first time on Tuesday night at ABC's televised debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And several Republicans are exceedingly nervous about how Trump will handle the moment.

Several longtime Republican strategists and consultants told Politico that they think Trump could score high marks in the debate if he refrains from lobbing personal attacks at Harris and sticks to discussing policy. But they also commented that it was unlikely the notoriously bombastic former president would be able to do so when standing across from his opponent.