Trump News

Donald Trump's presidential campaign is scrambling to avoid a public relations disaster with their plans to go forward with an outdoor rally on Sunday in Las Vegas where the temperature is expected to near 104 degrees.

Hot on the heels of an appearance in heat-drenched Phoenix that was held indoors but still led to multiple Trump fans rushed to local hospitals due to heat-related complications, the New York Times stated the campaign is being forced to make new arrangements to protect attendees on Sunday.

According to the report, with the temperature expected to hit triple digits and little shade available, there are concerns about MAGA attendees who are known to stand in line long before the former president makes an appearance.

The Times' Michael Gold is reporting, "The Trump campaign is taking steps to avoid similar circumstances on Sunday, when Mr. Trump is scheduled to speak at an outdoor rally at noon at a park in Las Vegas. Forecasts expect the temperature to be around 105 degrees," before adding, "Mr. Trump’s rally in Phoenix was inside, and those who made it in could expect relief — and air conditioning — that may be harder to find at his outdoor event in Nevada."

According to the former president's campaign, a multitude of measures are planned to help attendees survive the heat.

"The Trump campaign said it will have thousands of bottles of water on hand in Las Vegas to offer to people in line and to those already inside the security perimeter. It will put up tents around the park so that people can get out of the sun, and there will be at least one tent with air-conditioning," the report states. "Campaign staff will set up a number of misting fans to help cool off attendees."

The Times report added, "Still, Mr. Trump is no stranger to holding rallies in extreme weather or canceling them because conditions are too dangerous. Earlier this year, as a blizzard swept into Iowa the week before its caucuses, Mr. Trump canceled all but one rally, citing the potential for severe weather."

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According to a report from Rolling Stone, lawyers and pro-Donald Trump conservative activists have been busy at work turning Georgia into a laboratory testing out how to make sure they don't lose elections with plans to export their successes to other states.

As Rolling Stones' Adam Rawsley and Asawin Suebsaeng are reporting, since Donald Trump's loss of the pivotal state in the 2020 presidential election — which led him to attempt to subvert the election results — there has been a concerted effort by hardcore MAGA supporters to stack the states election offices with likeminded officials while at the same time flooding the state with voter challenges.

According to the report, "As Trump has continued to lie that the 2020 election was 'stolen' and 'rigged', the former president and his supporters have been making concrete, step-by-step progress in shaping electoral processes to his benefit. Across the state, MAGA die-hards are devoting considerable resources to purging voter rolls, intimidating election officials, employing legal dirty tricks, and ousting Republican officials and election appointees who haven’t been initiated into the cult of Trump."

As one Trump insider admitted, "Georgia is our laboratory. If you can get this up and running in Georgia, you get a road map for other states, maybe the country as a whole.”

As part of their plan to ensure long-term changes, lawyers working for the former president are already making plans to use the Georgia voting results as part of a campaign to create more suspicions about fraud.

"Lawyers close to Trump are already preparing for the former president to claim fraud in Georgia and challenge the results of the election — even in the event that he wins — just to prove a point about imaginary 'fraud' in Democratic areas," the report states with one lawyer adding, "There’s massive fraud, so that should be … solved, no matter who wins in Georgia or any state. You can’t let the left get away with it just because their cheating did not work.”

The report adds, "Nearly every leader who matters in various state GOPs, the national Republican Party, and within the conservative movement is playing part in a well-funded, coordinated attempt to corrupt American elections in a way so transparently cynical, so authoritarian, that it makes the right’s 'voter fraud' crackdowns of the pre-Trump era look like a flicker of intellectual calm by comparison."

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Should Donald Trump receive jail time as a result of his conviction on 34 felony counts in a Manhattan courtroom, he will launch a holy war aimed at Judge Juan Merchan and encourage his followers to join him.

According to a report from the Guardian's Hugo Lowell, insiders around the former president have suggested he will ramp up his attacks on the New York jurist and attempt to pin the blame for all his legal woes on him.

Trump has already been taking potshots at Merchan, who oversaw the business fraud trial that resulted in him becoming the first convicted felon ex-president. Those attacks have been somewhat restrained because Merchan has yet to rule on jail time and legal experts believe Trump's comments could lead to a harsher penalty.

According to Lowell's new report, post-sentencing the gloves will be off if jail time is involved — even if the former president gets a stay that lets him put off turning himself in while he appeals.

RELATED: Trump 'more likely now' to get jail time as 'aggravating factors' pile up: legal expert

"Trump is likely to double down on his attacks against Merchan, directing his supporters at rallies and in Truth Social posts to take up their grievances with the judge, one of the sources added," Lowell wrote before adding, "Trump’s supporters have a history of making threats against judges Trump has assailed, including death threats to Tanya Chutkan, the US district judge who is presiding in his federal 2020 election interference case, and to the chambers of the New York judge who oversaw his civil fraud trial."

The report continued, "If a jail sentence does come, one of the sources said, they expected Trump to lash out in anger," before adding, "... if Merchan does actually sentence Trump to jail, the judge would be thrust forward by Trump as responsible for any fallout and any unrest from his supporters who have a history of engaging in political violence merely on the former president airing grievances."

"The pre-sentencing report is typically one major opportunity that defendants have to make a good impression on the judge, including by expressing contrition. Trump has suggested none of that since his conviction, including by attacking the verdict the very next day," Lowell added.

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Donald Trump's single-minded focus on his multiple felony convictions, which have become a centerpiece of his bid to return to the White House, is causing no small amount of alarm among some Republicans who think it's not the winning issue he seems to believe it is.

According to a report from Politico, polling has shown that, while Trump has solidified his base, independents and swing voters have edged away from him now that he is a convicted felon and, that by reminding them of his legal problems, he is making it harder and harder to bring them into the fold in what is expected to be a neck-and-neck race for the presidency.

As one Republican noted, the election will come down to a tiny sliver of voters many of whom will have difficulty voting for a felon.

ALSO READ: How Donald Trump could run for president — and lead the nation — from prison

"If Republicans had any hope of Trump tempering his hard-line rhetoric in an effort to win back more moderate voters he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 — something more traditionalist Republicans have pushed for — his post-conviction messaging shows the former president may be unwilling to do so," Politico's Lisa Kashinsky wrote.

That led to Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) to warn the former president needs to "be conscious” his ranting about the trial will have on potential voters.

“And I hope he is. Ninety percent already have their mind made [up], but that 10 percent is important," he cautioned.

Sarah Longwell, executive director of Republican Voters Against Trump, agreed, telling Politico, "Trump has not figured out how to appeal to more center-right voters, and I think he doesn’t think he has to.”

According to Longwell, a focus group she assembled after the verdict was handed down confirmed using conviction as a centerpiece of the campaign is a non-starter with voters who have gone for Trump twice before who, she claimed, indicated it was "just more confirmation of how unfit he is.”

Barrett Marson, an Arizona Republican campaign strategist, warned the former president needs to modify his message to win over fence-straddlers.

"It’s incumbent on Trump to give them a bit more reason” to choose him over President Joe Biden. “Talk to us about how you are going to bring down gas prices or bring down interest rates or bring down inflation.”

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Opinions on whether Donald Trump will avoid jail time after being convicted in a Manhattan courtroom on 34 felony counts are evolving as the former president continues to attack the presiding judge and refuses to admit he broke the law.

In an interview with Salon's Marina Villaneuve, Adam Shlahet, director of the Brendan Moore Trial Advocacy Center at Fordham Law, admitted he didn't see the former president being incarcerated by Judge Juan Merchan, but that Trump's conduct since the verdict was handed down has him leaning to thinking the judge will now come down harder on the former president.

According to Shlahet, there is a growing list of aggravating factors Trump has created that likely have not escaped the notice of Merchan which could override a previous plan to not send the elderly Trump to jail.

ALSO READ: How Donald Trump could run for president — and lead the nation — from prison

“When I first started thinking about this case, I thought that the judge sentencing him to incarceration was very unlikely. I'm thinking it's more likely now," he explained before adding that Trump has made himself even more "vulnerable" to imprisonment.

“He [Merchan] can take into account all of his civil fraud, can take into account all of his contempt, and so even though this is a guy with no record and he's an older gentleman, there are a ton of factors, aggravating factors that would lead a judge to give him some jail time,” he stated before pointing out that Trump's inability to keep his mouth shut about the trial and the judge will be a mitigating factor.

“When the person who's going to be deciding your sentence is the judge, it's also a really good idea to not antagonize the judge at every opportunity," Shlahet elaborated. "Every time he gets a microphone, he insults the judge and calls the judge crooked and calls the judge conflicted and shows no respect for the jury's verdict. And that is not the way a defendant who wants probation should be acting.”

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