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      Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book says

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      Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book saysIn book aimed at 2024 run, ex-secretary of state also says Trump asked him to be secretary of defense at same time, a ‘nutty idea’ In a new memoir peppered with broadsides at potential rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, accuses Nikki Haley of plotting with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to be named vice-president, even while she served as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreDescribing his own anger when Haley secured a personal Oval Office meeting with Trump without checking with him, Pompeo writes that Haley in fact “played” Trump’s then chief of staff, John Kelly, and instead of meeting the president alone, was accompanied by Trump’s daughter and her husband, both senior advisers.“As best Kelly could tell,” Pompeo writes, “they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice-president’ option. I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America.”The gossipy nugget is contained in Pompeo’s new book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.The Haley story is not the only startling scene in a book which also says Trump had the “nutty idea” that Pompeo could be secretary of state and secretary of defense at the same time.But the story about Haley is firmly in the vein of Washington reportage and tell-alls that Pompeo claims to disdain. It also adds weight to stories which said Trump did indeed consider dumping his vice-president, Mike Pence, for Haley, a rumor Trump was compelled to deny in 2019.It will also add to intrigue around reports that Kushner’s family is fundraising for Haley ahead of her 2024 run.A year out from the primary, Trump is still the only declared candidate for the Republican nomination. But jockeying for position is increasing. Among campaign books from possible contenders, Pompeo follows Pence into print but is a month ahead of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is Trump’s only serious polling rival.Pompeo is studiedly respectful in his descriptions of Pence, a self-proclaimed fellow devout Christian, and mostly of Trump himself. Unlike Pence in his memoir, So Help Me God, Pompeo avoids overt criticism of his former boss. Pompeo is also more comfortable with the former president’s often vulgar language.For instance, Pompeo describes Trump calling John Bolton, his third national security adviser, a “scumbag loser”. After being fired, Bolton produced a memoir of his own, The Room Where It Happened. Trump sought to prevent publication but the book was a bestseller, relaying the president’s private conversations and what Pompeo considers highly sensitive material.Bolton has now floated a White House run of his own, to try to block Trump. Pompeo fires salvos Bolton’s way, at one point comparing him to Edward Snowden, who leaked surveillance secrets to the media in 2013, but saying the National Security Agency contractor “at least had the decency not to lie about his motive”.Bolton, Pompeo writes, should “be in jail, for spilling classified information”. Pompeo also says he hopes one day to testify at Bolton’s trial on criminal charges.Regarding Haley, who has also published books as she considers a presidential run, Pompeo disparages both the role of UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and Haley’s performance in it.“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” Pompeo writes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”Haley resigned – or, in Pompeo’s words, “flat-out threw in the towel” – in October 2018. By quitting, Pompeo writes, Haley “abandoned” Trump as she had “the great people of South Carolina”, by resigning as governor.True to his title, Pompeo does not give an inch in his descriptions of his own success, first as CIA director and then atop the state department.But the former soldier and congressman does spill details of a private conversation in which, he says, the president’s chief of staff said Trump wanted him to add secretary of defense to his portfolio while remaining secretary of state.According to Pompeo, on 19 July 2020, midway through the tempestuous summer of the coronavirus pandemic and protests for racial justice, Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told him Mark Esper was “not going to make it” at the Pentagon for much longer.So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead morePompeo says Meadows told him Trump wanted his secretary of state to “dual hat”, meaning to “take on leading the department of defense as an additional duty”.Pompeo says he told Meadows that was “a nutty idea” as he had “plenty” to do at state and “couldn’t possibly command defense at the same time”.Nor, Pompeo writes, was that the only time Trump asked him to do two jobs. After Bolton left, he writes, “someone had reminded the president that Henry Kissinger had been both national security adviser and secretary of state” to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.“President Trump pitched the idea to me,” Pompeo writes. “I think he was half-kidding.”Trump may not feel in a kidding mood when he reads Pompeo’s descriptions of such “nutty ideas” which, the former secretary of state writes, quickly “faded, all for the good”.TopicsBooksUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpTrump administrationMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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      ‘He’s a coward’: Lucas Kunce on his Senate run – and Hawley running away

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      Interview‘He’s a coward’: Lucas Kunce on his Senate run – and Hawley running away Martin Pengelly in New York Missouri Democrat mounting a second bid for US Senate hammers the Republican incumbent over his actions on January 6Announcing his second bid for US Senate in Missouri, Lucas Kunce needed to hit the ground running. He did so by running an ad targeting the Republican he hopes to defeat, Josh Hawley, for running away from the January 6 rioters he encouraged.Republican Josh Hawley fled January 6 rioters – and Twitter ran with itRead moreThe ad appeared on the second anniversary of the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters. On 6 January 2021, before the mob broke in, Hawley was photographed raising his fist in its direction. The House January 6 committee showed what happened after rioters breached the walls: the senator ran for cover.Hawley has insisted he is “not gonna run” from his political opponents. But Kunce’s ad, showing a fleeing man in a ripped suit, entitled simply Running, attracted national attention.A self-described populist in the midwestern tradition of President Harry S Truman, Kunce told the Guardian the ad “goes back to the reasons why I’ve run the campaign.“What I want to do is change who has power in this country, and take some back for everyday people. Folks in Missouri, they’re tired of career politicians like Josh Hawley just doing things for power for themselves and not caring about Missouri and not caring about the country.“And so that’s why we launched on January 6. It was a seminal moment where Josh Hawley showed he only cares about power for himself. He doesn’t stand for anything. He gets out there when he thinks it’s gonna get him some sort of political power, he’s raising his fist, he’s ‘rah-rah-ing’ the crowd, trying to incite them to do things. And then the second things get real, he’s getting out the back door, running as fast as he can to get away. It shows what a fraud and a coward he is.”Kunce is a military veteran who also worked on international arms control. In his new ad, as in conversation, he takes aim at Hawley’s contention that America has forgotten what it means to be a man, an argument the senator will make at length in May with a book, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.Kunce said: “As a marine who ran missions in Iraq, deployed to Afghanistan twice, if any of us had shown that type of cowardice [that Hawley showed on January 6], we would have been court martialed.“Missourians deserve better than someone who’s just going to run. They deserve someone who’s gonna stand for them, fight for them, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”The Hawley campaign responded to the Kunce ad by wielding the most obvious attack line back: Kunce has lost once in Missouri already.An adviser said: “We welcome this desperate woke activist to yet another political race. He just barely finished losing his last one. Maybe he’s running in the wrong state.”Kunce said Hawley’s camp was “obviously worried” because the senator, though thought to be eyeing the Republican presidential nomination, “has never had to run after showing everybody what a fraud and a coward he is. Now he’s got to deal with that.”In Missouri in 2022, the Democratic primary decided who would run for an open Senate seat as the Republican Roy Blunt retired. Kunce lost to Trudy Busch Valentine, a member of the Anheuser-Busch brewing dynasty who was then beaten by Eric Schmitt, the Republican attorney general, in the general election.Asked what he learned, Kunce said he had “shown people that no matter how hard it is, I’m not going to take money from the wrong folks. I’m only going to owe the people that took care of my family, everyday Missourians.“We took no money from corporate Pacs, no federal lobbyists, no big pharma, no big fossil fuel executives. The list is pretty long. And we did that because we want to show that in America everyday people, an everyday person like me, who doesn’t come from connections, doesn’t come from money, can get elected and can do it without corrupting themselves. It’s an uphill battle, but I think it’s worth it.“Josh Hawley does understand that when he got elected, he took millions of dollars from banks who wanted to control him. His dad was the president of the bank, he had all sorts of connections. And we provide a very good contrast to that.”01:08Kunce raised more than $5m in 2022 but Valentine, who would ultimately spend more than $16m of her own money, won comfortably. Kunce said: “What we learned in the primary was that money is critical in this political environment. And so we had to figure out a way to raise money without selling out.”Josh Hawley’s schooldays: ‘He made popcorn to watch the Iraq invasion’Read moreHe says “we did that. By the end, we had a record-breaking grassroots fundraising operation. And the beautiful thing is that all that work we did last time, none of it’s gone. The people are still there behind us. We’re growing it out even more, so we’re going to be very formidable this time. We have an operation that can run us all the way through November [2024].” In most minds, Missouri is a solidly red state. Asked why he thinks a Democrat can win there, Kunce cited recent ballot measures including “expanding Medicaid, increasing the minimum wage $5 over the federal level, passing medical and then recreational legalisation of marijuana, overturning right to work” anti-union laws.These, he said, were all “things that Josh Hawley did not stand for, that I do stand for. And … Missourians are willing in those situations to flip their vote.“In 2016, probably the reddest year of all time in Missouri, Donald Trump won here by 17 points. But the Democratic US Senate candidate, Jason Kander, he came within three points of winning.“I think we’re trending in the right direction. We just need to be able to capture the energy of everyday people trying to take back power for themselves, which clearly is my mission, and which we’ll be able to do.”TopicsUS SenateUS CongressUS elections 2024US politicsDemocratsMissouriinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Trump to ramp up efforts to secure 2024 Republican nomination after slow start

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      Trump to ramp up efforts to secure 2024 Republican nomination after slow startEvents aim at giving ex-president a narrative reset after being criticized for his ‘low energy’ and inactivity, sources say Donald Trump is scheduled to venture out of his Mar-a-Lago resort and conduct a swing of presidential campaign events later this month, ramping up efforts to secure the Republican nomination after facing hefty criticism around the slow start to his 2024 White House bid, according to sources familiar with the matter.The former US president is expected to travel to a number of early voting states for the Republican nomination – the specific states have not been finalized – around the final weekend of January, the sources said, where he is slated to announce his state level teams.The move comes after a slow start to the campaign and an announcement speech at Mar-a-Lago that has been widely panned as “low energy” and inactive in terms of events, further knocking Trump’s political image after key Senate candidates he endorsed in November’s midterms faced embarrassing defeats.That has apparently given enough confidence for a host of Republicans to prepare their own White House runs and though Trump says he believes a wide field will be beneficial, he seems set to face possible candidates including Florida governor Ron DeSantis and ex-cabinet officials like Nikki Haley.Trump’s quick blitz of travel on his private plane is aimed at giving him something of a narrative reset, the sources said, as well as conveying a sense of swagger and the insurgency feel of his 2016 presidential campaign that he has told advisers in recent weeks he is determined to recapture.The campaign has otherwise planned for Trump to gradually increase the number of political events this year, while it first spends time building out the wider political operation with the aim of starting to peak in activity at the start of election year.The idea, the sources said, is to do the less glamorous but operationally necessary groundwork now, when Trump remains the only declared candidate for the presidency, to build as large of a head start as possible for when DeSantis or others formally enter the 2024 fray.In the weeks since Trump announced his candidacy at Mar-a-Lago last November, the campaign appears to have spent the majority of its time building its fund-raising operation based off small-donor lists that his political action committees have amassed since 2016.Trump has historically had among the best lists in politics and the team has started to transfer the rich data of names, email address, phone numbers and contributions histories over to the campaign.The snag has been that the lists are technically owned by his Pacs, and the campaign has needed to find workarounds to access the data; for instance, Trump has raised money through another Pac that shares proceeds between an entity like Trump’s Save America Pac and the 2024 campaign.The campaign has also focused on expanding the pool of potential donors, one source familiar with the matter said. In recent weeks, it has stepped up efforts to identify moderate Republican voters who have supported Trump politically but have not made contributions for possible ad targeting.Trump has endorsed this strategy of completing the groundwork while he remains the only declared candidate for 2024, people close to the campaign said, and has largely shrugged off his initial anger at having the launch derided as “low energy” after a disappointing midterms for the GOP.Still, Trump has remained attuned to criticism that the campaign had a slow start and appears to have taken steps to make the leadership team for his latest bid for the White House similar to the 2016 team, which featured a group of core aides and advisers.The campaign is being helmed by Susie Wiles, the top political adviser to Trump for the past two years who helped him win Florida in his previous two presidential bids, and Chris LaCivita, a veteran strategist and former political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.Both Wiles and LaCivita are considered seasoned political operatives who know how to run successful campaigns but Wiles in particular is expected to be an asset for 2024 as Florida governor Ron DeSantis considers a presidential run, given she previously worked as a top adviser for DeSantis.The group of top aides also includes former White House political director Brian Jack, former Trump 2016 campaign rapid response director Steven Cheung serving as the senior adviser for communications, Justin Caporale who helped create some of the most memorable Trump rallies in the past, and Trump’s in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn.But even as Trump assembles what Republican operatives consider the gold standard for a presidential campaign team, whether he heeds their advice over the long term remains an issue.The former president invariably turns to informal advisers on all topics and over the objections of his professional team, particularly when he finds people who might be willing to affirm his own ideas and impulses, or find him convenient exits to otherwise uncomfortable realities.To be sure, part of the reason for Trump’s early 2024 campaign announcement was his own eagerness to begin a new campaign. But it was also a result of advice that declaring his candidacy might make the justice department less inclined to pursue criminal investigations or indictments against him.That theory did not pan out, and the 2024 campaign launch led the Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel whose prosecutors have in fact been even more aggressive and escalatory than before Trump announced his third bid for the White House, the Guardian has previously reported.The legal blowback underscores how Trump at times has demonstrated a remarkable ability for self-sabotage, such as when he was waived off taking a meeting with the disgraced rapper Kanye West but did it anyway, and ended up also having dinner with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.Advisers have also wrestled with Trump’s impulses for airing grievances about the 2020 election, even when the topic was shown to be a loser in the midterm elections. But even at his campaign launch, Trump could not help himself, and discussed it at length in his speech.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Octogenarian Biden begins new year facing age old question on 2024 race

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      Octogenarian Biden begins new year facing age old question on 2024 raceIn coming months, Biden will probably answer a simple question: would he still want to be president at age 86? Joe Biden has presided over legislative deals that American presidents have sought for years, struggled with unpopularity yet led the Democrats to a historically strong performance in last year’s midterm elections, all before turning 80.Now, in the coming months, Biden will probably answer a simple question: would he still want to be president at age 86? And, if so, is he prepared to take down Donald Trump – or perhaps another, possibly much younger, Republican candidate – to win a second term in 2024?Trump seems to have a large war chest – but is he struggling to raise money?Read moreShould the answer be yes, Biden will make clear that despite many Americans’ wariness and the fact that he is the oldest president ever to occupy the White House, he is ready to continue leading the Democrats.But if the answer is no, a vigorous battle to inherit his crown will ensue, with everyone from his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to his transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, expected to participate.By all outward appearances, Biden currently plans to run for a second term.“Watch me,” he replied in November, when asked to respond to one of the many polls that has found a majority of Americans do not want him to stand again. That same month, one of the biggest arguments against his candidacy – that his unpopularity would harm Democrats nationwide – was undercut when the party did much better than expected in the midterms.“I think Biden’s running again,” said David Brock, a veteran liberal political operative. “Had the midterm turned out differently, we’d be in a different place where we’d be handicapping who was best to take on the Republicans, but I don’t think we’re in that moment now. I think we’re in a Biden moment.”November’s elections were indeed a show of unexpected strength. The party in power typically does poorly in its first midterm, but the Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and only barely lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans.Biden has not yet made his decision official, and there are still reasons to think he could decide that one term is enough. “The economy’s a question mark. His health is a question mark, international affairs is a question mark,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, who otherwise believes Biden is sure to stand again.“He spent his entire adult lifetime running for president, and on the third try, he finally got there. Who would give it up under those conditions, who? Almost nobody,” Sabato said.Biden won the Democratic nomination in 2020 after outmaneuvering a crowded field of candidates, his strongest challenger being the leftwing senator Bernie Sanders. As his re-election decision approaches, there are signs the party’s left flank hasn’t overcome their unease with Biden.“We see Biden as a brake on the good things that need to happen,” said Jeff Cohen, a media critic and co-founder of the progressive group RootsAction. While Biden has pursued some policies popular with their voters, such as a partial student debt cancelation and provisions aimed at reducing America’s carbon emissions that were included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Cohen views these as half measures.His group has started a campaign, Don’t Run Joe, which is circulating a petition and airing television ads in early primary states Michigan, Georgia and South Carolina that encourage Biden to step aside.“We need a bold, Democratic party leader with a bold agenda,” Cohen said. “Our feeling is that … anything less than a bold agenda, where Joe Biden is running again in 2024, and he’s seen as the symbol of the status quo, he could be defeated by one of these Republican faux-populists” like Trump, or Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is seen as a potential alternative among Republicans, though has not yet entered the race. Cohen expects that even if Biden does run again, he’ll face at least one challenge from the party’s left.For its part, the Republican party is expected to do everything it can over the next two years to frustrate and undercut Biden, including by using the House’s powers of investigation to raise questions about how the White House handled the pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, and about the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.They will also continue trying to draw Americans’ attention to Biden’s gaffes – the message being that he is too elderly to lead. Brock, however, believes Biden could turn the situation around by casting himself as something of an old wise man.“If it was couched properly, the age issue could become an asset,” said Brock, who recently founded Facts First USA, a group that plans to push back against the GOP’s investigation campaign. “What I would do is craft a campaign around the idea of trust, and age is part of trust. And that Joe Biden can be trusted … he’s proven he’s been able to achieve a lot.”Biden hasn’t said when he will make his decision, but Sabato expects him to do so around when spring begins, to stop any rival Democrats from laying the groundwork for their own run.Should he step down, any number of alternatives could emerge, from 2020 veterans like Buttigieg, Sanders and Harris to new contenders from the ranks of Democratic state governors, like Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, or Jared Polis of Colorado.“The party feels like things are going well right now … there’s just no obvious reason to challenge him,” the Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg said of Biden. “And so I think that the nomination is his if he wants it, and if he doesn’t run, I think the Democrats will have a very vigorous primary and we will still be more likely to prevail in 2024 than the Republicans no matter who becomes the nominee.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsUS elections 2024featuresReuse this content More

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      Trump seems to have a large war chest – but is he struggling to raise money?

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      Trump seems to have a large war chest – but is he struggling to raise money? Some high-profile mega-donors have fled, small-dollar donor stream that fueled his past runs is drying up, and he is accused of violating ‘soft money’ lawsWith his 2024 presidential candidacy officially kicked into gear, Donald Trump would seem poised to enter the Republican nomination race a step ahead: his Pacs and committees boast a war chest of about $95m, enough to give pause to the Republican candidates jockeying against him.But a scratch beneath the surface reveals a different reality. About $78m of the $95m cannot be directly used for Trump’s campaign, according to a Guardian analysis of the Trump fundraising web.What’s more, there’s evidence the small-dollar donor stream that fueled his past runs is drying up. Some high-profile mega-donors have fled. And a campaign finance watchdog has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over Trump allegedly violating “soft money” laws as he appears to play a shell game with his cash.“There are a lot of moving parts, but there are a lot of reasons to believe that Trump is struggling more than he has in recent years to raise money,” said Robert Maguire, research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Trump’s fundraising in recent years has raked in eye-popping sums. During the 2020 cycle he raised $882m, and another $500m since then. But the savings have been depleted by Trump spending on his own legal defenses, on Melania Trump’s personal designer, and on helping the January 6 rioters.In recent years, the Trump team and its close allies have worked off an ever-expanding web of at least a dozen similarly named Pacs and committees. Typical examples: the “Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee” and the “Save America Joint Fundraising Committee”.The most prolific entity over the current cycle has been the Save America leadership Pac, which raised about $111m and has about $21m left over post-midterm. But federal rules prohibit Trump from using leadership Pac funds for his campaign because leadership Pacs exist to support other candidates. It can, however, be used to support the large rallies that are a central campaign strategy.Various Super Pacs hold another $57m, and though those can be used to support Trump’s campaign or attack his opponents, the Pacs legally cannot coordinate with the campaign.In total, that means about $78m of the $95m on hand as of 28 November cannot be directly used for Trump’s campaign.Still, that isn’t stopping the former president from trying to move money from leadership Pacs to Super Pacs via a legally questionable shell game. On 3 October, the Save America leadership Pac made a $20m contribution to Make America Great Again, Inc because the latter can spend more freely.But that caught the attention of legal observers who say the move clearly violated “soft money” provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act. On 14 November, the campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the FEC.It alleges that Trump, based on multiple statements and fundraising totals, was already a presidential candidate when he made the transfer from the leadership Pac to the Super Pac.“Therefore Trump violated federal law that prohibits that kind of soft money transfer,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for the CLC.Moreover, Trump seems to be circumventing the Super Pac rules that prohibit coordination with his campaign.“Super Pacs are nominally independent of the candidate, but with Trump it is heavy-quotes ‘independent’,” Ghosh said. “Clearly when you have a Super Pac like this, which is organized by allies and folks who worked on prior Trump campaigns, the independence is illusory.”Trump has expressed his disdain for these rules, telling Fox News in an August 2021 interview that “campaign finance laws are extremely complicated and unbelievably stupid”. He also used the interview to strongly hint at his candidacy.“The interview tells you all you need to know,” Ghosh said.The new committee that will act as Trump’s official fundraiser is “Donald J Trump for President 2024”. Filling it with funds from the usual sources, however, may prove more difficult than in the past.That’s because low-dollar donations that fueled previous campaigns – some of which were raised through questionable recurring payments plans – seem to be dwindling. The Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee has fused his Save America leadership Pac and official candidate committee.The joint committee boasted about its $24m haul from July to September, but it spent $22m to get there, records later showed. All told, his Pac network ran $13m in the red over the three-month period leading up to the midterms, fuelling speculation of small-donor fatigue.Moreover, the campaign showed $111m in receipts prior to the election, and is down to about $95m post election as its spending exceeds its fundraising.“He captivates a huge population of small-dollar donors willing to keep giving their money to him,” Maguire said. “He still has the capacity to raise money off the Maga crowd, but the question is ‘Is that going to cool off? Is there enough in the till?’, and that remains to be seen.”Among those defecting from Trump’s large-donor battalion are his top 2016 contributors, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, CNBC reported. The billionaires have instead donated to his likely primary rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis.The hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who threw around $67m in the midterms, has also backed DeSantis: “I’d like to think that the Republican party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser,” Griffin told Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum in September.Meanwhile, Blackstone financier and CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who spent $34m in the midterms, expressed a similar sentiment.“America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” Schwarzman said in a statement. “It is time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”But DeSantis faces a similar predicament as Trump. He has raised an enormous amount of money through his state-level Pac, but that can’t be transferred to a federal campaign. Ghosh said he suspects DeSantis will try to transfer the money to a Super Pac, as Trump did.That could prompt another complaint from the Campaign Legal Center, but it’s unlikely to go anywhere: with an equal number of Democratic and Republican commissioners, the agency has been stuck in partisan gridlock for years.“These are serious violations because the federal system is designed to be insulated from spending outside of limits,” he said. “But the FEC rarely enforces the laws, and in the case of Trump they have a particularly awful track record, so I don’t expect that they’re going to change here. Obviously I hope they do as this is a clear violation, but we recognize what we’re up against.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsUS political financingfeaturesReuse this content More

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      2024 Veepstakes: who will Donald Trump choose as his running mate?

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      2024 Veepstakes: who will Donald Trump choose as his running mate?From familiar faces to breakout Republican stars, 10 contenders for Trump’s vice-presidential pick for his third White House run Donald Trump, the former US president, is making a third consecutive run for the White House. But there is a job vacancy this time: his running mate. No one thinks it will be former vice-president Mike Pence after the pair fell out over the 2020 election and January 6 insurrection. Trump, a 76-year-old straight, white man who needs to broaden his appeal, might look to a person of colour, a woman or a young person for 2024 (or all of the above) – or he might not. Here are 10 potential contenders:Tucker CarlsonThe Fox News host turned up last summer in Iowa, which gets the first say in the Republican presidential nominating process, prompting speculation about his political ambitions. He is a Trump kindred spirit who goads liberals, appeases Russian president Vladimir Putin and promotes the far-right “great replacement” theory that western elites are importing immigrant voters to supplant white people. But Carlson would be sure to turn off moderates and independents.Ron DeSantisSome “Make America Great Again” voters torn between the authentic original and his upstart rival want to see them join forces on a dream Maga ticket. Florida governor DeSantis once made a campaign ad in which he read Trump’s book about getting rich, The Art of the Deal, to one of his children and encouraged them to “build the wall” along the US-Mexico border by stacking toy bricks. But Trump has now branded him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and the pair seem too similar to run together: less yin and yang than yin and yin.Tulsi GabbardThe former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate is attempting to launch a new career as a rightwing media personality. She campaigned for election-denier Kari Lake and other Republicans in the midterm elections. Her provocative challenges to western orthodoxy towards dictators such as Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad are likely to strike a chord with Trump. He may also decide he needs a female running mate to make himself less toxic to suburban women.Marjorie Taylor GreeneThe far-right congresswoman from Georgia personifies the age of Trumpism with racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements, indications of support for political violence and wild conspiracy theories such as the claim that a Jewish-controlled space laser started a California wildfire. She recently suggested that, if she had led the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the mob would have been armed and victorious in its efforts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory (she later claimed this was “sarcasm”). She has little experience but her pugnacious campaigning style is right up Trump’s street.Nikki HaleyThe former South Carolina governor was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations. She turned against him over the January 6 insurrection but, like many other Republicans, found it easy to forgive him. She also proved willing to campaign for Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker despite his glaring incompetence and scandals. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, might regard the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India as the perfect foil to charges of sexism and racism.Kari LakeShe was the breakout Republican star of the midterms all the way until election day – when she lost the race for governor of Arizona. The charismatic former TV anchor was endorsed by Trump and found a way to repeat his election lies while sounding almost credible. Despite his distaste for losers, Trump has twice welcomed Lake to his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida since her defeat. It would be no great surprise to hear him say she is straight from “central casting”.Kristi NoemThe governor of South Dakota has become another familiar face on the conservative conference and media circuit, railing against targets such as coronavirus pandemic lockdowns and the Chinese Communist party. In July, she told CNN she would support Trump in 2024 and “would be shocked if he asked” her to be his running mate. Noem has experience in elected office and could give Trump a new shot at credibility among Christians, rural Americans and women.Sarah SandersShe was unswervingly loyal as Trump’s White House press secretary, championing his agenda and insisting that he was misunderstood by critics. Last month she was elected as governor of Arkansas, following in the footsteps of her father, Mike Huckabee, creator of The Kids Guide to President Trump. Sanders and Huckabee, a former pastor, might help Trump shore up the Christian evangelical vote against potential challengers such as Pence. Tim ScottThe South Carolina senator is said to be eyeing his own run for the presidency. The Trump campaign might regard Scott as a compelling choice, hoping that he would neutralise accusations of racism and rally “Blacks for Trump”. He told the Republican national convention in 2020 that his grandfather “suffered the indignity of being forced out of school as a third-grader to pick cotton and never learned to read or write … Our family went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.”Elise StefanikTrump prizes loyalty and few have been more loyal than congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York, the number three Republican in the House of Representatives. Once a moderate, she staunchly defended the former president during his impeachments and declared this year: “I am ultra-Maga. And I’m proud of it.” Shrugging off disappointing midterm results, she was quick to endorse Trump for 2024. He has described her as “a star” and said: “She looks like good talent.”TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansRon DeSantisUS elections 2024US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump insider says ‘some accurate stuff’ in profile of moribund 2024 campaign

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      Trump insider says ‘some accurate stuff’ in profile of moribund 2024 campaignEx-president calls magazine reporter who likened him to Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard a ‘shaky and unattractive wack job’ Rejecting a New York Magazine story which said his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 was all but moribund a little more than a month after he announced it, Donald Trump subjected the writer to misogynistic abuse.As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaignsRead moreOlivia Nuzzi, Trump said, was “a shaky and unattractive wack job”.The former president also called Nuzzi’s story “fake news”, insisted “her ‘anonymous sources’ don’t exist (true with many writers)” and said: “I’m happily fighting hard for our GREAT USA!”The Guardian, however, has seen messages in which a veteran Trump campaign insider says there is “some accurate stuff in” Nuzzi’s piece and, when told “time catches up with all of us”, answers: “True”.Nuzzi’s story, The Final Campaign, ran under a pointed subtitle: “Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for re-election. (Which isn’t to say he can’t win).”The piece quoted numerous anonymous advisers, including one who said: “It’s not there. In this business, you can have it and have it so hot and it can go overnight and it’s gone and you can’t get it back. I think we’re just seeing it’s gone. The magic is gone.”When such insiders were asked why Trump was running for the White House again, Nuzzi wrote: “Few … are certain of the answers.“‘It seems like a joke,’ said one ex–Trump loyalist, a former White House official. ‘It feels like he’s going through the motions because he said he would.’”She also said Trump was “sensitive about smallness” and compared his isolation at Mar-a-Lago in Florida to the predicament of Norma Desmond, the character played by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, a movie Trump is known to adore.Nuzzi wrote of “a washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed”.Trump faces extensive legal jeopardy, from the January 6 investigation and four House referrals to the Department of Justice; from the department’s own investigation; from an investigation of his election subversion in Georgia; from investigations of his business and tax affairs; and a rape allegation he denies.Nuzzi also wrote that Trump, 76, does sometimes leave his resort – to go to his golf course in the Florida city of Doral. There, Nuzzi wrote, he “meets regularly with an impressive, ideologically diverse range of policy wonks, diplomats and political theorists for conversations about the global economy and military conflicts and constitutional law – and I’m kidding. He goes there to play golf.“‘He just goes, plays golf, comes back and fucks off. He has retreated to the golf course and to Mar-a-Lago,’ one adviser said. ‘His world has gotten much smaller. His world is so, so small.’”Trump still polls strongly with Republicans, though he now has a serious rival in the notional GOP primary: Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.Nuzzi has repeatedly made headlines with stories about Trump and his close allies, including, in 2019, a series of startling exchanges with Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became Trump’s attorney and is now in legal jeopardy of his own.Speaking to CNN on Monday, Nuzzi was asked how she thought Trump would react to her piece.“It’s like an 8,000- or 9,000 word-piece,” she said. “I don’t know that he’s going to be sitting down to read it. I think he’ll probably just look at the cover, look at the headline and think ‘Eh, fake news,’ and move on from there.”Trump did call the piece fake news but he also resorted to abuse.Sunset Boulevard at 70: we’re all Norma Desmond nowRead moreWriting on his Truth Social platform, the former president said he agreed to an interview with “a once very good, but now on its ‘last legs’ and failing, New York Magazine.“The reporter was a shaky and unattractive wack job, known as ‘tough’ but dumb as a rock, who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago. Her name, Olivia Nuzzi.”On Monday night, Nuzzi responded – but not with a written rejoinder.Seemingly replying to Trump’s claim she was “dumb as a rock”, the writer tweeted two pictures of Trump at the White House in August 2017, during a solar eclipse.Trump was not wearing shades. In both pictures, he stared straight at the sun.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      The Guardian view on the January 6 committee: Trump’s terrible, no-good year | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on the January 6 committee: Trump’s terrible, no-good yearEditorialThe referral of the former president to the justice department on four criminal charges is largely symbolic, but increases his woes In its closing months, 2022 is looking like an annus horribilis for Donald Trump – or to put it in the former president’s terms, a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad year. The January 6 committee’s recommendation on Monday that criminal charges be brought against him over his attempt to subvert the 2020 election results and the deadly storming of the Capitol was unprecedented – the first time that Congress has referred a former president to the Department of Justice. Though largely symbolic, it has set down a marker. And it is the latest in a string of recent setbacks.His candidates triumphed in Republican primaries, but then tanked in the midterms. His announcement on his 2024 bid was lacklustre and bathetic. A New York jury found his business guilty of tax fraud. On Tuesday, a House committee was set to vote on whether to release six years of his tax returns to the public. And, of course, the list of civil actions and criminal investigations targeting him is growing.The congressional committee’s referral does not change the legal position, though some of the evidence it turned over to the justice department theoretically could. In its impact on public opinion, however, it may have an indirect effect on whether charges are brought. The evidence the committee amassed and its presentation of the facts are compelling. In televised hearings and presentations, in the executive summary published on Monday, and presumably in the full report to follow this week, it has shone an unflinching light on the brutality of that day and Mr Trump’s culpability.His own aides have testified that he was repeatedly told he had lost, and that they urged him to tell the crowd to be peaceful. Instead, he pressed Republican officials to overturn the results, then his vice-president to block Congress from approving Joe Biden’s victory. When those attempts failed, he summoned a crowd to Washington, urged it to the Capitol and for hours failed to call off supporters as they rampaged and hunted down elected politicians. Unlike Mr Trump himself, at least some participants have since admitted their responsibility. One described his involvement as “part of an attack on the rule of law”; another conceded that “I guess I was [acting] like a traitor”.The referral will, if anything, spur on Mr Trump’s fight for the Republican candidacy, further convincing him that power is the best form of protection. Charges, if laid, may reinforce rather than shift the minds of his diehard supporters. More than two-thirds of Republicans still believe that Mr Biden’s victory was illegitimate. Nonetheless, they are turning away from the former president in the polls. A large majority of Republican voters or independents who lean towards the party think someone else should be its candidate in 2024. Mr Trump wanted to clear the field, to run unchallenged. But those who trade on a strongman image cannot afford to look weak. Support for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, has surged. Mr Trump’s media cheerleaders, every bit as cynical as the ex-president, have turned on him. Ivanka Trump wants nothing to do with her father’s 2024 bid.It would be immensely foolish to write off the 45th president. For years he has defied the laws of political gravity, surviving scandals and offences that individually would have sunk any other candidate or office-holder. The Republican elite remain notably silent or mealy-mouthed about him. Even if he cannot recover, others are already using his playbook. Yet the prospect that he will rebound, or another like him take his place, is all the more reason to establish the full record of his actions – whether or not they ultimately lead to legal consequences.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackRon DeSantisJoe BidenUS elections 2024US justice systemeditorialsReuse this content More