Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump takes on ‘dictator’ Biden as his upside down show moves to New Hampshire

      by

      Snow was falling, lightly dusting the tables full of “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and “Fight for Trump” and other “Make America great again” regalia. Still, in subzero temperatures, people waited in a long and winding line on Saturday for a chance to see their greatest showman.Donald Trump, the former US president, was about to hold the biggest campaign rally yet in New Hampshire’s primary elections, where victory would put him within touching distance of the 2024 Republican nomination – and trigger renewed warnings that democracy itself will be on the ballot in November.But his ardent supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, saw things differently – 180 degrees differently. In their view it is Joe Biden who acts like an autocrat and Trump who is the saviour of the constitutional republic.The ex-president has long deployed strategy in which accusations against him are flipped and turned on the accuser. And the rally, and this election season so far, is proof that it’s working.“The funny thing is that everything the other side seems to accuse Trump of they’re guilty of themselves,” said Steve Baird, 52, a chief financial officer. “I feel more that Biden seems to be running the country like a dictator with all his executive orders and everything else.“Trump might be a billionaire but I feel more of a connection, that he’s more of a president for the people and that he’ll follow the constitution more than what the current establishment is doing.”During a presidential election debate in 2016, when Hillary Clinton called Trump a “puppet” of Russian president Vladimir Putin, he interjected: “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”Trump has perfected this twist of message over the years. In his inverted mirror, “fake news” refers not to online disinformation but a corrupt media ranged against Trump; the threat to democracy stems not from election lies but the weaponisation of the justice department; minority rule is less about gerrymandering than the radical left imposing big government, open borders and “woke” ideology.‘We’re living in dictatorship right now’There is no greater symbol of this reversal than the deadly January 6 insurrection, for which more than 1,200 people have been charged and nearly 900 have been convicted or pleaded guilty. Collectively they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison. Yet in Trump’s telling, they are “patriots” and, more recently, “hostages” whom he intends to pardon.Interviews in Manchester, where thousands of Trump supporters packed a sports arena in a show of force that spelled out the challenge facing primary rivals Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, demonstrated that this strategy, amplified by rightwing media, has soaked into the grassroots. If the 2024 election is a battle for democracy, they believe Trump is on the right side of history.Derek Levine, 52, a commercial airline pilot who served for 23 years in the air force, was wearing a “Trump: Save America again” cap. “Trump has already been a president once and he wasn’t a dictator then,” he said.“We’re seeing a dictator right now with weaponizing the FBI against conservative people, calling parents in Virginia who are concerned about what their kids are being taught domestic terrorists. That’s a dictator; not what Trump did.”Jenna Driquier, 31, a hairdresser, added: “We’re living in dictatorship right now. The high prices, trying to get to communism, it’s not what this country was founded on.”The struggle over perception is a struggle over language. As Biden and his allies frequently stress the need to protect democracy at home and abroad, Trump has co-opted the word, repeating it ad nauseam, draining it of meaning and establishing a false equivalence between a man who has served in Washington for half a century and one who attempted a coup.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt Saturday’s rally, early in a speech lasting more than an hour-and-a-half, a giant screen above Trump’s head stated in stark black and white: “Biden attacks democracy.”The Republican frontrunner, wearing his customary dark suit, white shirt and red tie, said: “He is a threat to democracy. He really is. He’s a threat to democracy. We have to get him out. You know why he’s a threat to democracy? A couple of reasons but you know the first reason? He’s grossly incompetent.”Trump, facing 91 criminal charges, accused Biden of weaponising the justice department against him and railed against the president’s “protectors” in the “fake news” media.He did also pivot to attack Haley, seen as his strongest challenger in New Hampshire. Messages on the big screen included: “Nikki Haley is loved by Democrats, Wall Street & Globalists.” In a further piece of political theatre, Trump invited Governor Henry McMaster and other officials from South Carolina to assure him the state will vote in his favour, even though it is Haley’s home turf.Notably, he spent less time on Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who finished second in the Iowa caucuses but is polling weakly in New Hampshire. “You notice I haven’t mentioned the name of Ron DeSanctimonious yet,” he said “I think he’s gone.”Trump addressed a flippant remark that he made on Fox News vowing to be a dictator on “day one”, insisting that he had been unfairly edited. But some of his other comments left room for speculation about his authoritarian impulses.He argued that presidents should be immune from criminal prosecution once they have left office, a case his lawyers are attempting to make as he prepares to stand trial for election subversion. He said of the media: “These are sick people. We have to straighten out our free press.”He heaped praise on Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and casually observed: “It’s nice to have a strong man running your country.” And for good measure, in a bizarre closing riff accompanied by hypnotic music, he again referred to those imprisoned for their part in the January 6 riot as “hostages”.The crowd went home happy. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s campaign trail runs via the courthouse – and he’s fine with that

      by

      Monday night: Des Moines, Iowa, celebrating victory with supporters over beer and popcorn. Tuesday morning: Manhattan, New York, on trial for defaming a woman he sexually abused. Tuesday night: Atkinson, New Hampshire, campaigning for the US presidency. Wednesday morning: court in New York again.Donald Trump, the former US president and frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024, has intertwined his political and legal calendars until they are all but indistinguishable. At rambunctious campaign rallies, he plays the victim and rails against a biased justice system. In sombre courtrooms, he creates a spectacle that guarantees airtime and fundraising to fuel his run for the White House.The jarring juxtaposition seems to be working.Trump’s 91 criminal charges across four cases did not stop him winning 98 out of 99 counties in Monday’s frigid Iowa caucuses, and interviews with his support base showed they accept his narrative of politically motivated prosecutions. He is leading opinion polls in New Hampshire and looks poised to become the Republican standard bearer.“The court appearances are his campaign,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “He’s spending much less time than the other candidates in the key states. He’s not spending as much on TV advertising. He’s doing all kinds of things that candidates for president usually don’t do because he’s got an ace card that none of the others have.“This has convinced not just his supporters but in a broad-based way the whole Republican party that he’s being oppressed, that Joe Biden is using the judicial system to try and put a stake in the heart of his toughest challenger for November. And they buy it.”Trump’s recent court appearances have been voluntary, not obligatory, at a time when his Republican rivals are crisscrossing states in search of votes. Last week the 77-year-old former reality TV star showed up for a hearing in Washington DC to hear his lawyers argue that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election. A day later he was in Des Moines, Iowa, for a Fox News town hall.The duelling schedule evidently did him no harm in Iowa, where he romped to victory over the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, by nearly 30 percentage points, more than twice the biggest winning margin ever achieved by a Republican. During his speech in Des Moines, Trump nodded to his legal tribulations: “I go to a lot of courthouses because of Biden, because they’re using that for election interference.”The following morning, he was in a Manhattan federal court – again by choice – to watch the selection of a jury that will decide whether he should pay damages for defamatory comments he made in office about the writer E Jean Carroll. Last year a jury concluded that Trump sexually abused her in a department store in 1996 and defamed her in 2022.That evening he headed to Atkinson, New Hampshire, for a campaign rally where he boasted about his win in Iowa but told supporters: “If I didn’t get indicted all these times and if they didn’t unfairly go after me, I would have won, but it would have been much closer. I tell you, I don’t know if I would have made the trade. I might have just liked the position we’re in right now.”Come Wednesday, it was back to New York and the Carroll case. This time Trump was animated, shaking his head at testimony he disliked, passing notes to his lawyers and speaking to them while jurors were in the room.He was scolded by Judge Lewis Kaplan after a lawyer for Carroll complained that he was grumbling about the case so loudly that jurors could hear him. When the judge threatened to expel him, Trump retorted: “I would love it.” The judge admonished: “I know you would. You just can’t control yourself in this circumstance, apparently.”Outside the courtroom, the Republican frontrunner then held a press conference, describing the trial as “rigged” and Carroll as “a person I never knew”. He complained that Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, was “a nasty judge” and a “Trump-hating guy” who was “obviously not impartial”.Somehow he had made the case about himself rather than his victim. Maggie Haberman, author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, told CNN: “He showed up for her testimony and so instead of us talking about her testimony we are talking about the fact that he was making noises, he was overheard whispering to his lawyer.”She added: “He would have liked to have gotten thrown out because he would then claim he was a victim. It’s heads he wins, tails the other side loses.”Trump was not in court on Thursday so he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Florida. He will soon head back to New Hampshire to hold rallies ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, where he could in effect seal the Republican nomination. As endorsements from senior Republicans pour in, it seems that the party has made a collective decision to carry the legal baggage of a man who now openly brags that he has been indicted more often than Al Capone.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCharlie Sykes, editor of the Bulwark website and a former conservative radio host, said: “He’s going to have a courtroom campaign because Donald Trump relishes the idea of being the martyr. He thinks that being associated with these trials will actually help him in the polls and so far he’s not wrong. Every time he’s been indicted, he’s gone up.”But Sykes believes that Trump’s decision to attend the trial involving E Jean Carroll could be a mistake as he pivots to general election voters. “How many Americans actually know about this case? There’s been such a firehose of indictments, hearings, charges. Now Donald Trump himself has decided that he is going to draw attention to a case that he’s already lost, that has found him liable for sexual assault.“It’s hard for me to imagine any swing voters in the suburbs of Philadelphia or Milwaukee hearing for the first time about this case and thinking, yeah, this is the guy that I want to support for president.”Anna Greenberg, a senior partner at polling firm GQR, also sees limitations in Trump’s gameplan. She said: “He saw that when he got indicted he got a major boost, and you saw it in the primary polls, and so he may be thinking if I engage with these trials against me and I rail and I attack, that’s going to continue to give me some kind of benefit.“I think he already got the benefit. I don’t think there’s any additive benefit for him but I think there’s a real downside for him, which is that’s how he’s spending his time and not out on the campaign trail and doing the campaigning.”Trump has pleaded not guilty in four state and federal criminal cases, including two claiming he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden. This week his lawyers filed paperwork in another case – over his allegedly illegal retention of sensitive classified documents – arguing that intelligence agencies were politically biased against Trump.Some observers fear that the scorched earth approach poses a far-reaching danger to civil society and American legal and political structures. Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, added: “Donald Trump is waging a concerted campaign to de-legitimize the justice system in America.“He is trying to discredit not just prosecutors, but also judges and juries and the entire process of legal accountability and the damage is going to be long lasting and it’s going to be profound.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump claims he prevented ‘nuclear holocaust’ in released deposition tapes – video

      by

      Donald Trump says there would have been a ‘nuclear holocaust’ if he did not ‘deal’ with North Korea when he was president, in footage from his deposition last April and released this week by the New York State attorney general’s office. The former president called the fraud case against him ‘crazy’, insisting that banks ‘were fully paid’. Responding to a question about his 40 Wall Street office tower, across the street from the office of the attorney general, Letitia James, Trump insisted that somebody ‘open the curtain’ to look at the building More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Video released of petulant Trump in civil fraud trial deposition

      by

      Months before Donald Trump’s defiant turn as a witness at his New York civil fraud trial, the former president came face to face with the state attorney general who is suing him when he sat for a deposition last year at her Manhattan office.Video made public on Friday of the seven-hour, closed-door session last April shows the Republican presidential frontrunner’s demeanor going from calm and cool to indignant – at one point ripping into the lawsuit of the attorney general, Letitia James, against him as a “disgrace” and “a terrible thing”.Sitting with arms folded, an incredulous Trump complained to the state lawyer questioning him that he was being forced to “justify myself to you” after decades of success building a real estate empire that is now threatened by the court case.Trump, who contends James’s lawsuit is part of a politically motivated “witch-hunt”, was demonstrative from the outset. The video shows him smirking and pouting his lips as the attorney general, a Democrat, introduced herself and told him that she was “committed to a fair and impartial legal process”.James’s office released the video on Friday in response to requests from media outlets under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Trump’s lawyers previously posted a transcript of his remarks to the trial docket in August.James’s lawsuit accuses Trump, his company and top executives of defrauding banks, insurers, and others by inflating his wealth and exaggerating the value of assets on annual financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.Judge Arthur Engoron, who will decide the case because a jury is not allowed in this type of lawsuit, has said he hopes to have a ruling by the end of January.Friday’s video is a rare chance for the public at large to see Trump as a witness.Cameras were not permitted in the courtroom when Trump testified on 6 November, nor were they allowed for closing arguments in the case on 11 January, when Trump defied the judge and gave a six-minute diatribe after his lawyers spoke.Here are the highlights from Trump’s videotaped deposition:‘You don’t have a case’Telling James and her staff, “you don’t have a case,” Trump insisted the banks she alleges were snookered with lofty valuations suffered no harm, got paid in his deals and “to this day have no complaints”.“Do you know the banks made a lot of money?” Trump asked, previewing his later trial testimony. “Do you know I don’t believe I ever got even a default notice and, even during Covid, the banks were all paid. And yet you’re suing on behalf of banks, I guess. It’s crazy. The whole case is crazy.”Don’t take my word for itTrump said he never felt his financial statements “would be taken very seriously”, and that people who did business with him were given ample warning not to trust them.Trump claimed the statements were mainly for his use, though he conceded financial institutions sometimes asked for them. Even then, he insisted it didn’t matter legally if they were accurate or not, because they came with a disclaimer.“I have a clause in there that says, ‘Don’t believe the statement. Go out and do your own work,’” Trump testified. “You’re supposed to pay no credence to what we say whatsoever.”‘Most important job in the world’After he was elected, Trump said, he was busy solving the world’s problems – like preventing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un from launching a nuclear attack.“I considered this the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives,” Trump testified. “I think you would have nuclear holocaust if I didn’t deal with North Korea. I think you would have a nuclear war, if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.”Obstructed viewIn one of his more animated moments, Trump urged his inquisitors to look right out the window for a view of his 40 Wall Street office tower – just across the street from James’s office where he testified.Asked how the building was doing, financially, Trump gestured toward the building with his thumb and answered: “Good. It’s right here. Would you like to see it?”“I don’t think we’re allowed to open the windows,” state lawyer Kevin Wallace said.“Open the curtain,” Trump suggested, bobbing his head around waiting for someone to oblige.“No,” Wallace said. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Nikki Haley bets on frosty New Hampshire to warm up to her candidacy

      by

      There is rest for neither the wicked nor the warm undergarments among Republican presidential candidates this week, as the Republican primary rolls from a bone-bustingly cold Iowa to an almost-as-frigid New Hampshire.In Manchester, the state’s largest city, the temperature dropped to 10F (-12C) in the days before Tuesday’s primary election, cold enough for icicles to cling to cars, rooftops and, in a park near the center of town, a roundabout.But despite the snow piled high by the sides of roads, and the near constant need for a woolly hat, the remaining Republicans are set to spend the next few days making a last-minute pitch to voters.After a disappointing time in Iowa, where she placed third in the state’s caucuses, Nikki Haley is hoping the Granite state can hand her a boost, as she seeks to prevent what is threatening to become a Donald Trump march to the Republican nomination, and there are some signs that the former governor of South Carolina might just be in luck.In a state that takes an unusually aggressive pride in its independence – “Live free or die”, New Hampshire’s state motto, is the kind of thing a guy might scream before ripping off his shirt and initiating a bar fight – Republican voters at least appear to be considering someone other than their party’s de facto leader.Polls show Haley winning almost 34% of the vote in the state, 13 points behind Trump but riding a surge despite a disappointing performance in Iowa. Haley’s pitch of calm instead of the “chaos” of Trump, and her positioning of herself as a relative centrist, could prove appealing in New Hampshire.“The Iowa Republican party is dominated by conservative evangelical Christians, whose first, second and third concerns are cultural relations – they care about LGBTQ+ issues, they care about abortion, all that sort of stuff,” said Christopher Galdieri, a professor in the department of politics at Saint Anselm College.“Republicans here, there is a constituency for those sorts of issues, but a lot of Republicans here, particularly in what passes for the party’s establishment these days, their main concern is fiscal conservatism, low taxes, low regulation.”Haley, who in the American media’s telling has become the main threat to Trump, was scheduled to hold a slew of events in the coming days, including intimate gatherings in New Hampshire’s smaller towns, such as Keene and Exeter. But in Manchester, where looming red-brick buildings serve as a nod to its UK namesake, it is Trump who seems to have the largest presence, with signs heralding the former president prominent and his campaign headquarters a hub of activity.The former president traveled to New Hampshire on Friday after spending much of Thursday in court in New York, where a judge is deciding what damages he must pay to E Jean Carroll, who a jury found was sexually assaulted by Trump in 1995. The case appears to have distracted him, at least in the short term, from his efforts to win the presidency: Trump spent Thursday night posting more than 30 times on Truth Social, the rightwing social media network he formed after being banned from Twitter (now X) in 2020.Still, as the vote approaches, Trump is following a similar plan as the one he used in Iowa, swooping in to New Hampshire to hold bombastic rallies in venues his rivals could only dream of filling. The one-term former president was due to hold four rallies over the four days before the primary, including one at the 10,000-seat SNHU arena in Manchester.Trump addressed thousands of supporters at the same venue the night before the 2016 primary, memorably calling Ted Cruz, then one of his main rivals, a “pussy”. Trump had narrowly lost to Cruz in Iowa, but swept to victory in New Hampshire with a commanding 20-point victory that lit a fire under Trump’s campaign and propelled him to the Republican nomination.There are signs that things may be closer on Tuesday.In recent days Trump has complained about independent voters, who under state rules are able to vote in the Republican primary, potentially backing Haley, and has launched racist dog-whistle attacks against his opponent. He referred to Haley, whose parents emigrated to the US from India, as Nimrada, a butchering of her legal first name, Nimarata. Haley has gone by Nikki, her middle name, since she was born, a spokesperson said in 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor her part, Haley is running a new ad in the state which links Trump with Joe Biden, claiming “both are consumed by chaos, negativity and grievances of the past”, and her relative calm seems to have some appeal.“I like her policies. I like what she did in South Carolina. I think she’s got good international experience, obviously, as a former UN ambassador,” said Jeanne Geisser at an event at a fancy hotel in Salem, a 20-minute drive from Manchester. She voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, but said she would cast her ballot for Haley this time.“With Trump, all these lawsuits that are going on, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with those. And just his demeanor, his belittling of people. I don’t see that as presidential,” Geisser said.One person mostly absent from New Hampshire is Ron DeSantis, the cowboy boot-wearing Florida governor who came second to Trump in the Iowa caucuses. Though he beat Haley there, DeSantis is averaging 5% in New Hampshire polls, and though he held some events in the state on Friday, he has largely switched focus to South Carolina.While the focus is on the Republican primary, there are Democratic hopefuls active in New Hampshire too; Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, and Marianne Williamson, a self-help guru, are engaged in a largely futile battle to replace Joe Biden as the presidential nominee.Both Phillips and Williamson have both spent weeks criss-crossing the state, but New Hampshire will effectively have no say in the Democratic primary, after an internal party feud. The national Democratic party ditched decades of tradition this year in choosing South Carolina, a much more racially diverse state, to host the first presidential primary. When New Hampshire said it would host its primary first anyway, the Democratic National Committee essentially said it would ignore the results.That means most eyes will be concentrated on the Republican side of things next week, where Haley’s wealthy backers are demanding a good result.Ken Langone, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder and a key Haley donor, told the Financial Times on Thursday that he was prepared to spend “a nice sum of money” to support his candidate – but only if she does well in the Granite state.“If she doesn’t get traction in New Hampshire, you don’t throw money down a rathole,” Langone said. More

    • 238 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Weekend podcast: Bernie Sanders on Trump and democracy, Marina Hyde on Prince Harry, and is brain-boosting coffee a fad?

      by

      So Prince Harry is a living legend of aviation? Why not, says Marina Hyde (1m21s); Bernie Sanders on what happens if Trump wins – and how to stop him (8m32s); and mushroom macchiato, anyone? Are the new boosted coffees worth the hype? (34m37s)

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

    • 250 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Former Republican candidate Tim Scott to endorse Donald Trump ahead of New Hampshire primary, reports say – as it happened

      by

      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week.Here is a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
      Anti-abortion activists gathered in Washington DC on Friday as part of the March for Life campaign. The rally comes ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, which brought national reproductive rights to the country, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the supreme court’s decision to strike it down.
      Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him. In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.
      In response to whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization, White House spokesperson John Kirby said: “That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States.”
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has pushed back against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal for a Palestinian state, writing in a statement on X:
      Ideological extremism is destroying prospects for peace. Most Americans will support a pragmatic peace strategy to free the hostages, provide aid to the population of Gaza, launch the two-state solution and put Hamas terror & right-wing fanaticism behind us.
      The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is at the March for Life rally in Washington DC where anti-abortion activists are protesting ahead of the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade.Here are some of her dispatches:Donald Trump has renewed his mistrial request in E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against him.In a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is overseeing the case, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba said that Carroll’s actions “severely prejudices the president Trump’s defense [sic] since he has been deprived of critical information relating to critical evidence which plaintiff has described to the jury”.Earlier this week, Trump complained loudly in the Manhattan courthouse during Carroll’s testimony, making comments including “It is a witch-hunt” and “It really is a con job” to his lawyers.In turn, Kaplan threatened to remove Trump from the courtroom, to which Trump replied: “I would love it, I would love it.”While speaking at a briefing, White House spokesperson John Kirby answered a question on whether the White House would publicly support a testimony from defense secretary Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee over his recent hospitalization.Kirby said:
      That’ll be a decision for the secretary of defense and he has to make that decision … I’m not going to get into personal and private discussions that the secretary has had with the president of the United States. They have spoken as recently as late last week. As you have heard the president say himself, he has full trust and confidence in Secretary Austin and his leadership at the Pentagon and that will continue.
      In a letter to Austin on Thursday, Mike Rogers, a Republican representative from Alabama who chairs the committee, said that he is “alarmed” over Austin’s recent hospitalization.He added: “I expect your full honesty and cooperation in this matter. Anything shot of that is completely unacceptable.”Here is where the day stands:
      Joe Biden has signed a stopgap government funding bill. The bipartisan legislation narrowly avoided a government shutdown at the 11th hour.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill. On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.
      Joe Biden has approved the debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country. The latest announcement brings the total number of people who have had their debt cancelled under the Biden administration to 3.7 million.
      Former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has endorsed the presidential bid of Minnesota’s Democratic representative Dean Phillips. Calling himself a former “campaign surrogate for Joe [Biden]” at a campaign event on Thursday, Yang said: “Dean Phillips is the only one with the courage, the character and conviction to go against the grain, to go against the legion of followers in Washington DC.”
      Donald Trump is trying to convince allies of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis that the Republican race for a presidential nominee is over, according to a new report by Vanity Fair. As Trump continues to face mounting legal troubles, the ex-president is reported to have been pressuring Haley and DeSantis to drop out of the race.
      Anti-abortion activists are gathering in Washington DC today for the annual March for Life campaign.This time the event takes place ahead of the 51st anniversary, on Monday, of the supreme court’s ruling in Roe v Wade in 1973 that brought in the national right to an abortion in the US, and ahead of the two-year anniversary of the current, right-leaning supreme court striking down Roe in 2022.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to highlight the depletion of reproductive rights, which is proving a vote-loser for Republicans, on the 2024 campaign trail next week, amid high Democratic party spending on related ads, Axios reports.The Guardian’s Carter Sherman is in the cold and snowy capital and will be sending a dispatch. Meanwhile, she’s on X/Twitter with vignettes.The move follows the House of Representatives passing the short-term spending bill late on Thursday, sending the legislation to the president’s desk with just two days left before government funding was to run out, in the latest nail-biter.The bipartisan legislation averted a government shutdown that would have begun at one minute past midnight tonight.The bill, which represents the third stopgap spending measure of this fiscal year, will extend government funding at current levels until 1 March for some government agencies and until 8 March for others.The House vote came hours after the Senate approved the bill in a vote of 77 to 18, following bipartisan negotiations that stretched into late Wednesday evening. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, praised the bill as a vital measure that would allow lawmakers more time to negotiate over full-year appropriations bills.“Avoiding a shutdown is very good news for the country, for our veterans, for parents and children, and for farmers and small businesses – all of whom would have felt the sting had the government shut down,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “And this is what the American people want to see: both sides working together and governing responsibly. No chaos. No spectacle. No shutdown.”You can read more on the passage of the legislation last night, from my colleague Joanie Greve, here.The Associated Press is also now reporting that Tim Scott of South Carolina is expected to endorse Republican frontrunner Donald Trump for president ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. It would be a blow to Scott’s fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations during his presidency.The New York Times was first to report the story today, noting it would “spur more talk” of Scott’s prospects as Trump’s vice-presidential pick.The AP news agency also further reports:
      A person familiar with Scott’s plans confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that Scott would travel from Florida to New Hampshire with the GOP front-runner.
      The person spoke on the condition of anonymity due to not being allowed to discuss the plans publicly.
      Scott launched his own bid to challenge Trump last May before shuttering his effort about six months later. Trump has been appearing on the campaign trail with several other former rivals who have endorsed him, including North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
      Scott’s endorsement was sought by the remaining major contenders in the Republican primary, particularly ahead of South Carolina’s February 24 primary, which has historically been influential in determining the eventual nominee.
      Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012.
      South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott will endorse Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Hill.On Friday, a source familiar with Scott said that the senator, who pulled out of the 2024 presidential race last fall, will endorse Trump on Friday evening.In separate report released by Vanity Fair on Friday, multiple sources said that Trump has been calling Scott in attempts to win his endorsement ahead of next month’s primary in South Carolina, which is also the home state of Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley, who was previously the state’s governor.The report of Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes as the ex-president prepares to rally in New Hampshire this weekend ahead of the state’s primary next week. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      US should ‘reset relationship of unconditional support’ for Israel, progressives say

      by

      Leading progressive and Jewish members of Congress have criticized the US’s “unconditional support” for Israel after Benjamin Netanyahu declared bluntly that he was opposed to a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza and directly rejected American policy.The Israeli prime minister declared on Thursday that Israel would forever maintain control over all land west of the River Jordan, making an independent Palestinian state there impossible. “This is a necessary condition, and it conflicts with the idea of [Palestinian] sovereignty,” Netanyahu said. “What to do? I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel’s security.”Pramila Jayapal, the US representative who heads the influential Congressional Progressive caucus, on Friday issued one of the sharper responses to Netanyahu, saying in a video that the Israeli prime minister’s stance “should cause us to reset our relationship of unconditional support to [his] government”.“These are policies that are diametrically opposed to the US’s stated goals,” Jayapal said about Netanyahu’s calls for the permanent expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.Meanwhile, 15 Jewish members of the House released a statement Friday saying they “strongly disagree with the prime minister” of the predominantly Jewish nation.“A two-state solution is the path forward,” said the statement, whose signatories included Jerry Nadler, Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Elissa Slotkin. They were joined by 11 fellow House Democrats: Jake Auchincloss, Rebecca Balint, Suzanne Bonamici, Steve Cohen, Daniel Goldman, Seth Magaziner, Mike Levin, Dean Phillips, Jan Schakowsky, Kim Schrier and Bradley Sherman.In a separate statement, the Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid predicted that “continuing to unconditionally fund Israel’s war in Gaza” would cost him enough votes to doom Joe Biden’s campaign to be re-elected as president.“He will break a fundamental trust with many Democrats,” said Shahid, a former spokesperson for the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats. Shahid also warned that “lecturing about the greater evil” represented by the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, would do “little” to repair it.Trump is facing more than 90 pending criminal charges for attempting to forcibly overturn his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office, and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him. He has also been grappling with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape accusation which a judge has determined to be substantially true.“I pray, for all our sakes, that Biden corrects course – because our country cannot afford to pay the bill for disregarding Palestinian lives should it come due in November,” Shahid said.A spokesperson for Biden’s national security council, John Kirby, said the president and Netanyahu discussed “post-conflict Gaza” on Friday by telephone, as the foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen wrote on the social media platform X.Biden made clear that “an independent Palestinian state” was important for long-term security, Kirby remarked, as reported by Rozen.“The president still believes in the promise and the possibility of a two state solution,” Kirby said, in part, according to Rozen. “And the United States stands firmly committed to eventually seeing that outcome.”Despite occasionally endorsing the concept, Netanyahu has worked to obstruct the establishment of a Palestinian state throughout his political career.His statements on Thursday were his most pointed attack on the US’s preferred foreign policy approach in Gaza, however.It came after Biden’s administration had spent enormous domestic political capital – and billions of dollars in aid – to support Israel’s military in its strikes there.Israel, which receives $3.8bn annually in security assistance from the US, mounted the offensive in Gaza in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200. Israeli military operations in Gaza have since killed more than 24,000 people.Netanyahu’s comments on Thursday came two days after US senators defeated a measure from the progressive Bernie Sanders that would have made military aid to Israel conditional on whether the Israeli government is violating human rights and international accords with its offensive in Gaza.Biden’s White House opposed Sanders’s proposal and has asked Congress to approve an additional $14bn for Israel. More