Trump enters the stage

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In the aftermath of the 2012 election cycle, then-Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, noting that some Republicans had “damaged the brand . . . with offensive and bizarre comments,” told his fellow conservatives that “we’ve got to stop being the stupid party.” That, said Jindal, meant the Republican Party had to cease looking backward, stop insulting the intelligence of voters, and offer a vision of expanded opportunities that would unite people rather than pitting them against one another.

Donald Trump, however, felt the opposite approach held more promise, and aided by the FBI’s October surprise — a headline-grabbing reopening of the probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s e-mails — he scored a surprise presidential upset in 2016. Thus his divisive demagoguery became the GOP’s hermit-crab credo.

RELATED: The battle for the GOP
And then, over four years, the GOP lost the House of Representatives, then the presidency, and lastly the US Senate. All of that was directly attributable to the ascension of Trump and Trumpism.

Now we have US Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming warning the GOP that it can’t be the party of Donald Trump and his Big Lie.

Just as it did with Jindal, the GOP has turned a deaf ear. House Republicans ousted Cheney from leadership ranks and, in doing so, further plighted its troth to Trump and the massive mythology that he won in 2020, only to have victory somehow stolen from him.

RELATED: Cicilline calls for censuring Republicans who ‘rewrite the history’ about Jan. 6 attack on US Capitol
We know why Cheney’s message makes so many Republican members of Congress uncomfortable: They don’t think they can return to majority status in the short term without the approval of Trump and his legions.

“I’ve always liked Liz Cheney, but she’s made a determination that the Republican Party can’t grow with President Trump,” Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently declared. “I’ve determined we can’t grow without him.” Strictly speaking, “grow” isn’t le mot juste, given that the party’s preferred course isn’t expanding its appeal to attract more voters, but rather contracting the voting population to maximize the clout of its static base. But then, Graham is a politician, not a linguist.

RELATED: Thomas E. Patterson: The Republicans’ demographic trap
The preferred position of the we-need-Trump Republicans is simply to ignore the ways in which accommodating Trump renders the GOP a democracy-disdaining party.

“I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election. I think that is all over with,” House minority leader Kevin McCarthy maintained last week. Hmm. Whom does that overlook? Hint: His lair is Mar-a-Lago.

Unlike Cheney, McCarthy thinks the GOP can simply ignore the orange-backed gorilla in the room.

Absent the Jan. 6 insurrection, temporizing on Trump until the 2022 mid-term elections might have been possible. But Jan. 6 happened, and as much as Trump and his acolytes would like to rewrite the history of that violent episode, they won’t succeed.

RELATED: GOP Leader McCarthy opposes Jan. 6 commission ahead of vote
It seems more likely than not that Congress will eventually establish a special commission with subpoena power to investigate the storming of the Capitol. That will prove an antidote for amnesia or air-brushing. If such a commission isn’t created, the fault will land where it belongs: with congressional Republicans. The fact that McCarthy opposes such a commission despite the deal negotiated by one of his allies — and the significant concessions Speaker Nancy Pelosi made to the GOP to get that agreement — aptly illustrates the contorted positions Republicans must adopt to protect or placate Trump.

As Republican truth-teller and US Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said on Sunday, by abandoning principle in favor of fealty to Trump, the GOP allowed his narrative “to lead to an insurgency on January 6, and until we take ownership of that, we can’t heal.” Count on Cheney and Kinzinger to continue highlighting those truths.

Their message will be reinforced by a new group of prominent Republicans intent on expunging Trumpism from the GOP. As the group declared last week in its “Call for American Renewal”:

“[W]hen in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice.” Its goal: to bring the Republican Party back to its founding principles or create an alternative party to represent those tenets.

Trump and Trumpism, then, aren’t problems the party can simply ignore or finesse. The GOP can be the party of Trump. Or it can again become a party with principles.

©2021 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

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POLITICO

ELECTIONS

They tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now they want to run the next one.
Trump supporters who back his claim that the 2020 vote was rigged are running to become the top election officials in key states.

By ZACH MONTELLARO

05/24/2021 04:30 AM EDT

Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.

The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona’s largest county; Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election.

Now, they are running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024. Their candidacies come with former President Donald Trump still fixated on spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election, insisting he won and lying about widespread and systemic fraud. Each of their states has swung between the two parties over the last decade, though it is too early to tell how competitive their elections will be.

The campaigns set up the possibility that politicians who have taken steps to undermine faith in the American democratic system could soon be the ones running it.

“Someone who is running for an election administration position, whose focus is not the rule of law but instead ‘the ends justifies the means,’ that’s very dangerous in a democracy,” said Bill Gates, the Republican vice chair of the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz. “This is someone who is trying to tear at the foundations of democracy.”

The secretary of state campaigns will also be tests of how deeply rooted Trump’s lies about the election are in the Republican base. Sixty-four percent of Republican-leaning voters in a recent CNN poll said they did not believe Biden won enough votes legitimately to win the presidency.

Hice and Marchant are running to replace sitting Republican secretaries of state, while Finchem and Karamo are seeking the GOP nomination in states with Democratic incumbents. None of the four campaigns responded to interview requests.

Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky, said there are “two ways to look” at the risk posed by the campaigns: “There’s a symbolic risk, and then there’s … functional risk.”

Grayson noted that, depending on the state, secretaries of state often play ministerial roles in election certification and vote counting, with more direct oversight of the process falling to local county and city election clerks. That means that functional risk of electing pro-Trump election truthers as secretaries of state could be lower than many perceive.

But the symbolic risk could be much higher. “Any secretary of state who is a chief elections official is going to have a megaphone and a media platform during the election,” Grayson said. “A lot of the power is the perception of power, or that megaphone.”

As candidates and officials, the quartet of Republicans have used their megaphones to promote claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Finchem, the Arizona state representative, has been a major proponent of the audit of the results in Maricopa County. The Republican-run state Senate is running the process in the state’s largest county, which Biden narrowly won. The audit has been a lightning rod, attracting heavy criticism from GOP officials in Maricopa County who say the auditors are doing shoddy, conspiracy-fueled work — but nevertheless building up hope among Trump supporters who believe that he won the election.

Finchem appeared on the Twitch stream of Redpill78 — which The New York Times reported promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory — earlier this month, and said he has talked to Trump about the 2020 election. The mainstream media “keep[s] using this term ‘baseless,’” Finchem said on the Redpill show. “I hate to break the news to you, but just in case you news people haven’t been paying attention, there’s a lot of evidence that’s already out there. … We’ve got the proof, we’ve got the receipts,” he continued, calling the press a “propaganda machine.”

His appearance on the show was first reported by the Arizona Mirror, which also previously reported that Finchem had marched to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Finchem has also frequently promoted claims of fraud on social media. “They ‘won’ by cheating, now they want to make cheating legal. WTH this Stalinization of America has to come to an end,” he wrote on Parler, the social media site popular on the right. Former Vice President Mike Pence “now cares about election integrity? This reveals that he must acknowledge that there was fraud,” he wrote on Gab, another site that caters to the far-right.

Last week, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — which includes Gates and is controlled 4-1 by Republicans — lashed out at the Arizona state Senate over the audit, calling it a sham that has “rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists.” The supervisors were flanked at a press conference by various county officials, including Sheriff Paul Penzone, a Democrat, and Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican who was recently elected the county’s chief elections officer.

Unprompted, Richer closed the press conference by tearing into Finchem, mocking the false conspiracy theories that voting machinery from the company Dominion Voting Systems was used to change election results.

“Mark Finchem is running for secretary of state. Process that,” he said. “If the election was completely fraudulent, as he says, why would you run for secretary of state? What, do you think Dominion is going to rig it in your favor this time?”

“Why are you running if you do not believe in these elections?” he closed. “I would suggest that his actions speak a lot louder than his words.”

In a subsequent interview with POLITICO, Richer analogized it to “revealed preference,” an economics theory: “All these people, their true preferences and their true beliefs regarding the election system are more readily determined by their actions, which is to continue to run,” he said, suggesting that if people really thought it was rigged, they wouldn’t bother to run.

When asked whether he was considering a run for secretary of state in 2022, Richer quickly and flatly gave a one-word answer: “No.”

The most prominent candidate in the group is likely Hice, who is challenging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican whom Trump has repeatedly attacked for defending the 2020 election as free and fair.

In a recent letter circulated to conservatives in Georgia and obtained by The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Hice wrote that the election was full of “systemic voting irregularities and fraud,” and that he was running “to stop Democrats before they rig and ruin our democracy forever.”

He is running his campaign with Trump’s endorsement: “Jody will stop the Fraud and get honesty into our Elections!” Trump proclaimed the day Hice launched his campaign. Raffensperger is facing significant anger within his own party, but he recently reaffirmed that he would run again.

“The danger is you’re lying to either yourself or to millions of people when you try to run for these large, statewide elected offices,” Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, said of the false electoral fraud claims.

Duncan, a vocal critic of Trump and other Republicans who push the election fraud myth, recently announced he would not seek reelection and instead focus on his “GOP 2.0” initiative. He said a fixation on it will only hurt Republicans in the long term.

“There is a vacuum of leadership, and folks wanting to put themselves into even higher leadership positions, continuing to carry on with the lies and misinformation, continues to create an even bigger vacuum around our party,” he said.

Duncan, who was in Washington D.C. last week to take meetings about GOP 2.0 (he declined to say with whom) said he believed the party would come around: “They’re just going to get tired of losing. They’re going to get tired of running people out there that just are unelectable.”

© 2021 POLITICO LLC

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DONALD TRUMP
Trump calls reported convening of grand jury in NY probe ‘purely political’
The move is a sign that the investigation into the former president’s company has entered a new phase.

May 25, 2021, 11:02 PM EDT
By Dareh Gregorian
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted reports that a special grand jury had been convened to hear evidence against the Trump Organization, calling it “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”

“This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors,” the former president said in a statement.

New York prosecutors’ imminent presentation of evidence against Trump’s business, first reported by the Washington Post, citing two people familiar with the development, signals that the criminal investigation into the former president has entered a new phase.

The panel was recently convened by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and will hear evidence in other cases as well, the sources told the Post. The district attorney has not confirmed the reports.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance’s office has been investigating a variety of allegations of financial improprieties against Trump’s company for about two years. Court documents show that Vance is probing “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,” which could include falsifying business records, insurance fraud and tax fraud.

Vance started investigating the company and its top executives after it was disclosed that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her claim that she had sex with Trump, an allegation he has denied.

Cohen also alleged in testimony before Congress that the Trump Organization sometimes lied about its financial condition to evade taxes or obtain favorable loan terms

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

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The New York Times

Paul Ryan Critiques Trump’s Grip on the Republican Party

In a speech, the former House speaker called on the Republican Party not to move forward in Donald Trump’s image, though he did not criticize the former president by name.

Paul D. Ryan, the former House speaker, during a speech in 2018. He did not break with Donald J. Trump until after leaving office.

Paul D. Ryan, the former House speaker, during a speech in 2018.

WASHINGTON — Paul D. Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House, re-entered the political arena on Thursday night with a speech obliquely criticizing Donald J. Trump and warning Republicans that the only viable future for the fractured party was one unattached to the former president.

“Here’s one reality we have to face,” Mr. Ryan said during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. “If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we’re not going anywhere.”

Mr. Ryan said he had found it “horrifying to see a presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end,” although he did not specifically refer to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 or to Mr. Trump’s repeated election falsehoods.

He added that Republican voters would “not be impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago.”

The former speaker tempered his criticism by avoiding any mention of Mr. Trump by name — except to say that the former president’s brand of populism, when “tethered to conservative principles,” had led to economic growth, and to credit him with bringing new voters to the party.

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Mr. Trump responded on Friday morning with a lengthy statement calling Mr. Ryan “a curse to the Republican Party,” adding that “he has no clue as to what needs to be done for our Country, was a weak and ineffective leader, and spends all of his time fighting Republicans as opposed to Democrats who are destroying our Country.”

Mr. Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee, left behind his 20-year career in Congress in 2019. In his role as speaker, he kowtowed to Mr. Trump at first, and later edged away from him, publicly breaking with the former president only after leaving office.

Since then, he has taken on roles as a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame; a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank; and a board member of the Fox Corporation.

Mr. Ryan’s political re-emergence, and his relatively gentle warning of the dangers of a party crafted in Mr. Trump’s image, came as the former president has said he plans to return to the campaign trail this summer with rallies for Republican House and Senate candidates supportive of his agenda and his election falsehoods. Mr. Trump is also still hinting at a potential presidential run in 2024.

Mr. Ryan delivered his message even as Republicans still in office have ostracized lawmakers who criticize Mr. Trump. Most recently, the party removed Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from her leadership post in Congress because she refused to drop her repudiations of Mr. Trump and Republicans who abetted his election falsehoods.

“We win majorities by directing our loyalty and respect to voters, and by staying faithful to the conservative principles that unite us,” Mr. Ryan said.

Eager to show off his conservative bona fides, Mr. Ryan also criticized President Biden and his agenda.

“In 2020, the country wanted a nice guy who would move to the center and depolarize our politics,” he said. “Instead, we got a nice guy pursuing an agenda more leftist than any president in my lifetime.”

Mr. Ryan’s speech was not the first time he had expressed worries about Mr. Trump since leaving office. Weeks after returning to Wisconsin, his home state, the former speaker unloaded on a president he had been careful never to criticize while still in office.

“Don’t call a woman a ‘horse face,’” he told the journalist Tim Alberta, referring to one of the many insults Mr. Trump had lobbed. “Don’t cheat on your wife. Don’t cheat on anything. Be a good person. Set a good example. And prop up other institutions that do the same. You know?”

Paul Ryan, Donald Trump and the Republican Party

Marooned at Mar-a-Lago, Trump Still Has Iron hand on republicand

This Is the Way Paul Ryan’s Speakership Ends

Ryan Found Himself on the Margins as G.O.P. Embraces Trump

U.S. Faces Outbreak of Anti-Semitic Threats and Violence

May 27, 2021

© 2021 The New York Times Company

8

TRUMP FIRESBACK

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Politics

Trump fires back after Paul Ryan criticizes former president’s hold on GOP

Former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on May 27 urged the Republican Party not to rely on the “appeal of one personality.” (Ronald Reagan
Former president Donald Trump called former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) “a curse to the Republican Party” after Ryan appealed to the party not to rely on the “appeal of one personality.”

While Ryan did not explicitly name Trump in his critique of the current GOP during a speech Thursday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., his intended target was clear. Later, when Ryan did name Trump, it was to praise him for advancing “practical conservative policy,” according to his prepared remarks

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DONALD TRUMP

Trump’s back. Here’s what his re-entry means for 2024.
His return to the electoral battlefield this weekend is the kickoff for a summer of rally stops designed to keep his base engaged for the midterms — and any possible comeback bid.

June 1, 2021, 4:30 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — Defeated presidents usually go away — at least for a long while. Not Donald Trump.

Trump returns to the electoral battlefield Saturday as the marquee speaker at the North Carolina Republican Party’s state convention. He plans to follow up with several more rallies in June and July to keep his unique political base engaged in the 2022 midterms and give him the option of seeking the presidency again in 2024.

“If the president feels like he’s in a good position, I think there’s a good chance that he does it,” Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a telephone interview. “For the more immediate impact, there’s the issue of turning out Trump voters for the midterm elections.”

And, Miller added, “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.”

The set of advisers around Trump now is a familiar mix of his top 2020 campaign aides and others who have moved in and out of his orbit over time. They include Miller, Susie Wiles, Bill Stepien, Justin Clark, Corey Lewandowski and Brad Parscale.

While his schedule isn’t set yet, according to Trump’s camp, his coming stops are likely to include efforts to help Ohio congressional candidate Max Miller, a former White House aide looking to win a primary against Rep. Anthony Gonzales, who voted to impeach Trump this year; Jody Hice, who is trying to unseat fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger as Georgia secretary of state after Raffensperger defied Trump and validated the state’s electoral votes; and Alabama Senate candidate Mo Brooks, according to Trump’s camp.

Trump’s ongoing influence with Republican voters helps explain why most GOP officeholders stick so closely to him. Republicans spared him a conviction in the Senate after the House impeached him for stoking the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, House GOP leaders have made it clear that they view his engagement as essential to their hopes of retaking the chamber, and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., was deposed as Republican Conference Chair this year over her repeated rebukes of Trump.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released May 21 showed that just 28 percent of Republicans think Trump shouldn’t run for president in 2024, while 63 percent of Republicans say the last election was stolen from him. At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings among the broader public are anemic. He was at 32 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval in an NBC News survey of adults in late April.

Those numbers suggest that Trump could be in a strong position to win a Republican primary but lose the general election in 3½ years. A former Trump campaign operative made that case while discussing Trump’s ambitions.

He “will have a hard time building an infrastructure to win the general election,” said the operative, who insisted on anonymity so he could speak without incurring Trump’s wrath. “He could win the primary on his name alone. … The problem is building a coalition of people among the light-leaning Republicans and independents.”

Trump alienated many voters with harsh, divisive talk during his presidency and, more recently, with his false proclamations that the election was rigged.

“He would completely have to make a pivot of 180 degrees on his rhetoric,” the operative said. “He would have to change and ask forgiveness.”

Trump also faces legal jeopardy, which could waylay a third bid for the presidency.

Only one president, Grover Cleveland, has ever lost a re-election bid and come back to reclaim the White House. In modern times, one-term presidents have worried more about rehabilitating their legacies by taking on nonpartisan causes — Democrat Jimmy Carter by building housing for the poor and George H.W. Bush by raising money for disaster aid, for example — than about trying to shape national elections. But Trump retains a hold on the Republican electorate that is hard to overstate, and he has no intention of relinquishing it.

“There’s a reason why they’re called ‘Trump voters,’” Miller said. “They either don’t normally vote or don’t normally vote for Republicans.”

DONALD TRUMP
Trump’s back. Here’s what his re-entry means for 2024.
Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million last year — and the Electoral College by the same 306-232 result by which he had won four years earlier — but he got more votes than any other Republican nominee in history. And it would have taken fewer than 44,000 votes, spread across swing states Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, to reverse the outcome.

Republicans, including Trump allies, say it’s too early to know what he will do — or what the political landscape will look like — in four years. A busload of Republican hopefuls are taking similar strides to position themselves. They include former Vice President Mike Pence, who is speaking to New Hampshire Republicans on Thursday, an event that the Concord Monitor called the kickoff of the 2024 race.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.; and Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Rick Scott of Florida and Marco Rubio of Florida are among the Republicans widely viewed as potential candidates. But for most, if not all, of them, the equation begins with the big “if” of a Trump run, because, as the former Trump operative said, each would be running as some version of “Trump lite.”

For now, said Brad Todd, a Republican consultant whose clients include Hawley and Scott, Trump’s calculation won’t change what the other possible candidates are doing.

“The best time-tested way to run for president in three years is to bust your tail for your party in the midterm,” Todd said. “None of that changes because of the specter of a potential Trump candidacy.”

That’s basically what Trump is doing.

Republicans lost the House in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats were mobilized and Trump voters weren’t, and he would like to demonstrate what he can do to help the GOP this time around.

“We saw that drop-off in 2018 and how that hurt, and we have to make sure that these folks are engaged and energized,” Miller said, “and that people who have gotten on board with President Trump’s movement … come back out in the midterms and stay energized in case President Trump does run in 2024.”

Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity this spring that when it comes to the midterms push, “we’re all in.”

And as for a comeback bid in the election cycle that follows: “I am looking at it very seriously,” he said. “Beyond seriously.”

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

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DONALD TRUMP

Trump’s back. Here’s what his re-entry means for 2024.
His return to the electoral battlefield this weekend is the kickoff for a summer of rally stops designed to keep his base engaged for the midterms — and any possible comeback bid.

June 1, 2021, 4:30 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — Defeated presidents usually go away — at least for a long while. Not Donald Trump.

Trump returns to the electoral battlefield Saturday as the marquee speaker at the North Carolina Republican Party’s state convention. He plans to follow up with several more rallies in June and July to keep his unique political base engaged in the 2022 midterms and give him the option of seeking the presidency again in 2024.

“If the president feels like he’s in a good position, I think there’s a good chance that he does it,” Trump adviser Jason Miller said in a telephone interview. “For the more immediate impact, there’s the issue of turning out Trump voters for the midterm elections.”

And, Miller added, “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party.”

The set of advisers around Trump now is a familiar mix of his top 2020 campaign aides and others who have moved in and out of his orbit over time. They include Miller, Susie Wiles, Bill Stepien, Justin Clark, Corey Lewandowski and Brad Parscale.

While his schedule isn’t set yet, according to Trump’s camp, his coming stops are likely to include efforts to help Ohio congressional candidate Max Miller, a former White House aide looking to win a primary against Rep. Anthony Gonzales, who voted to impeach Trump this year; Jody Hice, who is trying to unseat fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger as Georgia secretary of state after Raffensperger defied Trump and validated the state’s electoral votes; and Alabama Senate candidate Mo Brooks, according to Trump’s camp.

Trump’s ongoing influence with Republican voters helps explain why most GOP officeholders stick so closely to him. Republicans spared him a conviction in the Senate after the House impeached him for stoking the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, House GOP leaders have made it clear that they view his engagement as essential to their hopes of retaking the chamber, and Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., was deposed as Republican Conference Chair this year over her repeated rebukes of Trump.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released May 21 showed that just 28 percent of Republicans think Trump shouldn’t run for president in 2024, while 63 percent of Republicans say the last election was stolen from him. At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings among the broader public are anemic. He was at 32 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval in an NBC News survey of adults in late April.

Those numbers suggest that Trump could be in a strong position to win a Republican primary but lose the general election in 3½ years. A former Trump campaign operative made that case while discussing Trump’s ambitions.

He “will have a hard time building an infrastructure to win the general election,” said the operative, who insisted on anonymity so he could speak without incurring Trump’s wrath. “He could win the primary on his name alone. … The problem is building a coalition of people among the light-leaning Republicans and independents.”

Trump alienated many voters with harsh, divisive talk during his presidency and, more recently, with his false proclamations that the election was rigged.

“He would completely have to make a pivot of 180 degrees on his rhetoric,” the operative said. “He would have to change and ask forgiveness.”

Trump also faces legal jeopardy, which could waylay a third bid for the presidency.

Only one president, Grover Cleveland, has ever lost a re-election bid and come back to reclaim the White House. In modern times, one-term presidents have worried more about rehabilitating their legacies by taking on nonpartisan causes — Democrat Jimmy Carter by building housing for the poor and George H.W. Bush by raising money for disaster aid, for example — than about trying to shape national elections. But Trump retains a hold on the Republican electorate that is hard to overstate, and he has no intention of relinquishing it.

“There’s a reason why they’re called ‘Trump voters,’” Miller said. “They either don’t normally vote or don’t normally vote for Republicans.”

DONALD TRUMP
Trump’s back. Here’s what his re-entry means for 2024.
Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million last year — and the Electoral College by the same 306-232 result by which he had won four years earlier — but he got more votes than any other Republican nominee in history. And it would have taken fewer than 44,000 votes, spread across swing states Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, to reverse the outcome.

Republicans, including Trump allies, say it’s too early to know what he will do — or what the political landscape will look like — in four years. A busload of Republican hopefuls are taking similar strides to position themselves. They include former Vice President Mike Pence, who is speaking to New Hampshire Republicans on Thursday, an event that the Concord Monitor called the kickoff of the 2024 race.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.; and Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Rick Scott of Florida and Marco Rubio of Florida are among the Republicans widely viewed as potential candidates. But for most, if not all, of them, the equation begins with the big “if” of a Trump run, because, as the former Trump operative said, each would be running as some version of “Trump lite.”

For now, said Brad Todd, a Republican consultant whose clients include Hawley and Scott, Trump’s calculation won’t change what the other possible candidates are doing.

“The best time-tested way to run for president in three years is to bust your tail for your party in the midterm,” Todd said. “None of that changes because of the specter of a potential Trump candidacy.”

That’s basically what Trump is doing.

Republicans lost the House in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats were mobilized and Trump voters weren’t, and he would like to demonstrate what he can do to help the GOP this time around.

“We saw that drop-off in 2018 and how that hurt, and we have to make sure that these folks are engaged and energized,” Miller said, “and that people who have gotten on board with President Trump’s movement … come back out in the midterms and stay energized in case President Trump does run in 2024.”

Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity this spring that when it comes to the midterms push, “we’re all in.”

And as for a comeback bid in the election cycle that follows: “I am looking at it very seriously,” he said. “Beyond seriously.”

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

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DONALD TRUMP

Facebook suspends Trump’s accounts for 2 years, citing public safety risk
“In establishing the two year sanction for severe violations, we considered the need for it to be long enough to allow a safe period of time after the acts of incitement, to be significant enough to be a deterrent to Mr. Trump and others from committing such severe violations in future, and to be proportionate to the gravity of the violation itself,” Clegg said.

At the end of the two-year period, Facebook will discuss with experts whether the risk to public safety has receded, said Clegg, who added that there would be a “a strict set of rapidly escalating sanctions that will be triggered if Mr. Trump commits further violations in future” including permanent removal.

Trump relied on social media during his presidency to circumvent the media and talk directly to his supporters, especially his Twitter account, which was also suspended. The former president has since released statements through his Save America political action committee. He also tried to launch a blog, but that was short-lived.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that while it is up to Facebook to make that decision, she doubts much will change in Trump’s behavior over the next two years.

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This is unbelievably hilarious you know. The irony alone. Here is this mega private business that is the epitome of capitalistic success… and the guy they ban, who incidentally fights for their rights, gets mad at em.

I mean this could be Monty Python level humor if one were so inclined to produce it.

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Maybe it’s an intended form of dark humorous paradoxical game play like a metaphoric rubrics cube meant to puzzle or even frustrate political scientists with nothing. else to do in their cubicles.

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Trump advances dangerous disinformation campaign as more states move to restrict the vote

Updated 9:39 AM EDT, Sun June 06, 2021

(CNN)Donald Trump’s speech before the North Carolina Republican Party Saturday night was a reminder of the danger the former President poses as he undermines America’s election system while attempting to reassert himself as kingmaker on the national stage.

His address to the party faithful was a familiar screed to anyone who tuned in to his 2020 campaign rallies. He attacked President Joe Biden’s foreign policy maneuvers, claimed Biden is destroying the economy, insisted that he deserves more credit for the rapid development of Covid-19 vaccines, and argued that the radical left and “cancel culture” are destroying America’s freedoms. But it was his continuing disinformation campaign about the November presidential contest that was most disturbing – in part because the past few months have proved that Trump’s lies are now accepted as gospel by a majority of Republicans.

At a time when followers of QAnon and online forums supportive of Trump have touted the deadly military coup in Myanmar as a remedy that should occur in the United States so Trump can be reinstated, recent polling shows that a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen despite the fact there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

And the former President continued to fan those flames of disinformation on Saturday night, stating that the 2020 election will “go down as the crime of the century.” He congratulated Republican state senators in Arizona who have forced a sham audit of the 2020 election results from that state’s largest county and praised state lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Georgia who are following suit by exploring additional recounts and audits of their election results.

Republicans draw inspiration from problem-plagued Arizona audit
Republicans draw inspiration from problem-plagued Arizona audit
“We’re not going to have a country – if you don’t have election integrity, and if you don’t have strong borders, our country can be run like a dictatorship and that’s what they’d like to do,” Trump said. “They want to silence you. They want to silence your voice. Remember, I’m not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m the one that’s trying to save it.”

The former President also praised states like Texas, Florida and Georgia that have advanced laws making it harder for Americans to vote – measures that will disproportionately affect Black and Latino Americans – by curtailing vote-by-mail options, ballot drop boxes and extended hours that provided more access for shift workers. (The law in Texas was poised to pass until Democrats staged a late-night walkout that deprived the House of a quorum to pass it before the legislative session ended).

Meanwhile, Democratic efforts in Congress to combat the various state laws with federal legislation were dealt a major blow when West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday said he opposes getting rid of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation.

“We now are witnessing that the fundamental right to vote has itself become overtly politicized,” Manchin said in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette. “Today’s debate about how to best protect our right to vote and to hold elections, however, is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage.”

Trump’s remarks came amidst revelations on Saturday that Mark Meadows, his former White House chief of staff, pushed the Department of Justice in his boss’ last weeks in office to investigate baseless conspiracy theories and fraud claims about the 2020 presidential election, according to documents obtained by CNN and first reported by the New York Times. The emails from Meadows – who was in the audience in North Carolina Saturday night – were just another example of the Trump administration’s overreach and the ex-President’s flagrant disregard for democracy.

Trump as GOP kingmaker
On Saturday night, Trump attempted to present himself as the GOP’s kingmaker, endorsing Republican Rep. Ted Budd for the US Senate race, because he said he didn’t “want a lot of people running”

Trump suggested that his backing of Budd would immediately clear the field of Republicans who are vying to replace retiring three-term Sen. Richard Burr in one of Democrats’ top-targeted pickup seats. The former President said he had waited until his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, whom he invited on stage, had made her decision that she did not want to run for the seat.

Budd, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, won Trump’s loyalty in part by being one of the 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying the outcome of the 2020 election on January 6.

Farther south in Georgia on Saturday, Republicans who did not support Trump’s election lies continued to be punished by the boisterous GOP base. Attendees at that state’s GOP convention booed Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused to help Trump overturn the election results. They also censured Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for standing up to Trump, with members calling it a “dereliction of his constitutional duty,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Trump has already endorsed GOP Rep. Jody Hice, who’s embraced his election falsehoods, to run against Raffensperger.

Anti-Trump Republicans speak up
While Trump still enjoys a strong grip over the Republican Party and is flirting with the possibility of another run for the White House in 2024, a small but increasingly assertive group of anti-Trump Republican leaders are speaking up to combat his election lies. He also faces some hurdles in getting his message out as social media platforms continue to debate how they should handle his mistruths.

In recognition of Trump’s dangerous rhetoric, Facebook announced this week that Trump will remain suspended from that platform until at least January 7, 2023 – two years after his initial suspension – and that it will then assess the circumstances to see if he should be allowed back on.

In a Friday post, the company said that once the two years have passed, it “will look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. We will evaluate external factors, including instances of violence, restrictions on peaceful assembly and other markers of civil unrest. If we determine that there is still a serious risk to public safety, we will extend the restriction for a set period of time and continue to re-evaluate until that risk has receded.”

Trump called the ruling “an insult to the record-setting 75 (million) people” who voted for him: “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing,” he said in a statement Friday.

On Saturday night, he mocked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, claiming that he had begged to come to the White House with his wife.

Prominent Republicans have increasingly spoken out about the damage that Trump’s election lies are causing, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was subsequently ousted from her No. 3 post in House Republican leadership, and former House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Some, like former Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, have predicted that Trump will continue to lose vote share as he continues his election farce.

“He’s fading as a figure,” Comstock told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “Newsroom” Saturday before Trump spoke.

John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, told Brown it is “ridiculous” that Trump, according to some reports, is telling people around him that he will be reinstated to the White House later this year. The reinstatement theory Trump has been sharing with aides was first reported by The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman last week.

“He’s not going to be reinstated in August. He lost the election. People need to face-up to this and accept the reality that he was an unpopular candidate and didn’t get re-elected,” Bolton said Saturday on “Newsroom.”

Like Comstock, Bolton said Trump’s influence within the GOP is “diminishing” and warned that Republican candidates could face consequences for supporting the former President’s disinformation campaign.

“The lies that he tells are damaging not just to the country. They’re particularly damaging to Republicans, and I think we have to understand that we will be anathematized by our opponents if we don’t make it clear we think the kind of things Trump’s been saying are simply crazy,” Bolton said.

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"Donald Trump’s Chances of Staying Out of Prison Are Not Improving

If you asked Donald Trump what he thinks the next several months will hold for him, he’d likely tell you that he’ll be holding some rallies, playing some golf, and getting ready to head back to the White House. He’d tell you that because he’s a disturbed man who apparently thinks that a president who loses an election can simply be “reinstated” to the presidency, like one can have their cable reinstated after canceling it and then panicking about how they’re going to be able to watch Vanderpump Rules. In reality, what the next several months, and potentially years, hold for the ex-president are a lot of meetings with attorneys about how he’s legally in the bad place—that is, assuming they’re still keeping him apprised of the situation and aren’t yet at a point where they just park him in front of the TV “while the grown-ups talk.”

Most recently, the no good, very bad news for Agent Orange has involved the impaneling of a grand jury by the Manhattan district attorney as part of Cyrus Vance Jr.’s criminal probe. Last month, The Washington Post reported that such a group will be hearing evidence concerning the ex-president, his business, and its executives, and on Friday, it emerged that one of the most senior officials at the Trump Organization has reportedly already testified. Which seems less than ideal for the owner of said Trump Organization.

Per ABC News:

Jeff McConney is among a number of witnesses that have already appeared before the special grand jury that will decide whether criminal charges are warranted against the former president, his company, or any of its employees, [sources with direct knowledge of the matter] said. McConney, who serves as a senior vice president and controller for the Trump Organization, is the first employee of the former president’s company called to testify, the sources said, and his testimony is a sign that prosecutors have burrowed deep into the company’s finances. “Complex accounting issues are crucial to this investigation, as is the knowledge and intent of the people at the Trump Organization involved in these transactions,” said Daniel R. Alonso, the former chief assistant district attorney in Manhattan and now a partner in private practice at Buckley LLP. “In any case like that, the two most important people—whether as targets or witnesses—are the company’s CFO and the company’s controller,” Alonso told ABC News.

McConney was mentioned by Trump in his 2004 book, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: Everything You Need to Know About Success, Real Estate, and Life. In a chapter titled “How to Stay on Top of Your Finances,” Trump describes an interaction he says he had with McConney in the late 1980s in which Trump implored McConney to always question invoices and never accept a contractor’s first bid. “Jeff got the message,” Trump wrote, “and is doing a terrific job. He looks out for my bottom line as if the money were his own.”

In other words, McConney likely knows a whole lot of information about the Trump Organization, including the kind that might be of interest to prosecutors. And maybe even some about another figure at the firm:

As part of his probe, Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance has also been investigating the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s financial dealings—specifically, what fringe benefits he received from the Trumps in addition to his salary, and whether taxes were appropriately paid for any such compensation, sources have previously told ABC News. “If, as has been reported, the D.A. is targeting Allen Weisselberg, it’s a logical step to seek testimony from the controller, who presumably reports to him and works with him every day,” Alonso said. A spokesman for Vance declined to comment on the development, but ABC News has previously reported that Vance has sought to flip Weisselberg into a cooperating witness against Trump and the company.

Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, Jennifer Weisselberg, has been interviewed by the district attorney’s office, she told ABC News, and was asked about topics ranging from school tuition and cars to the family apartment she lived in that the Trump Organization allegedly paid for. “Some of the questions that they were asking were regarding Allen’s compensation at the apartment at Trump Place on Riverside Boulevard,” Jennifer Weisselberg told ABC News in an interview last month. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

Last month, after news of the convening of the grand jury broke, a source from Trumpworld told Politico that there was “definitely a cloud of nerves in the air,” with the adviser saying that while Trump is no stranger to legal issues, this situation feels different, in part because prosecutors are trying to gain the cooperation of Weisselberg, who’s described himself as Trump’s “eyes and ears” at the company. “I think the Weisselberg involvement and the wild card of that makes the particular situation more real, because there’s no sort of fluff and made-up fictional circumstances around the guy,” this person told Politico. “The fact that they’re dealing with a numbers guy who just has plain details makes people more nervous. This is not a Michael Cohen situation.” In related Trump legal news, Politico also reported last month that former prosecutors and defense attorneys believe Vance could be exploring the possibility of arguing that Trump‘s entire business empire is a corrupt enterprise, under a New York law known as “little RICO,” which was modeled after the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, originally used to crack down on the mafia. The state law can be used with proof of as few as three crimes involving a business or other enterprise and carries a minimum mandatory sentence of one to three years—and a maximum term of up to 25. “It’s a very serious crime,” said Michael Shapiro, a defense attorney who used to prosecute corruption cases in New York. “Certainly, there are plenty of things an organization or business could do to run afoul of enterprise corruption, if they’re all done with the purpose of enhancing the revenue of the enterprise illegally…it’s an umbrella everything else fits under.”

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POLITICS & POLICY

Trump, Mike Lindell and why the August election conspiracy should worry Republicans
This latest theory says a lot about the people who still have Trump’s ear — and the inability of Republicans to push back against even the most ludicrous ideas.

Image: Michael Lindell, CEO of MyPillow Inc., speaks during a campaign rally for President Donald Trump in Duluth, Minn., on Sept. 30, 2020.
Michael Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, speaks during a campaign rally for President Donald Trump in Duluth, Minn., on Sept. 30, 2020.Stephen Maturen /
June 8, 2021, 4:30 AM EDT

By Teri Kanefield, attorney and author

In late May, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell appeared on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “War Room,” and said: “Donald Trump, I believe, will be back in by the end of August.” He also said that eventually even liberals such as Rachel Maddow would admit that the election was stolen. Lindell’s bizarre theory is that all Team Trump needs is a shred of proof of election fraud to overturn the entire election. Trump and others are watching the Republican-backed audit in Arizona because they believe in a “domino theory” — if Arizona ballots can be proven to be fraudulent, election results in other battleground states that President Joe Biden won can also be overturned.

There is, of course, no legal or factual basis backing up any of this.

Lindell’s bizarre theory is that all Team Trump needs is a shred of proof of election fraud to overturn the entire election.

Sources also told The Daily Beast that Trump has started quizzing confidants about a potential return to power in August. These sources said they decided not to tell the former president what they were thinking — which was that his reinstatement was not going to happen. The anecdote says a lot about the people who still have Trump’s ear — and the continuing inability of Republicans to push back against even the most ludicrous conspiracy theories. As the GOP looks ahead to 2024, such cowardice should be cause for serious concern among party leaders. On the other hand, they may not care.

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Importantly, Trump is increasingly fixating on the Republican-backed audits as he pushes the lie that he won the election. He needs to keep talking about this lie because he faces an existential political threat: His brand is based on winning, but he lost. Winners don’t lose, particularly winners who promise their fans that “we will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.”

His solution is to insist that he won. To do this, he and his allies have devised an elaborate alternate reality in which he won the election but it was stolen from him through voter fraud.

Similarly, how does a would-be authoritarian retain power after having been ousted from office? Trump figured that one out, too: remain relevant by retaining control over the Republican Party. His election lies are a big part of this strategy, as well. It becomes self-fulfilling. The more people there are who believe the election was stolen, the more real it feels to Trump and the more he hammers the point home in speeches and blog posts.

Related

OPINION

A Republican civil war is coming. Rudy Giuliani’s Georgia crusade is just the beginning.
After the Jan. 6 insurrection, moderate Republicans started to walk away from the party. Even some conservatives who stuck with Trump all through his presidency couldn’t stomach the insurrection. Currently, 53 percent of Republican voters believe Trump won the election. Similarly, in a national poll last month by Quinnipiac University, 66 percent of people who classified themselves as Republicans said they want Trump to run for president in 2024.

The fact that Trump still controls so many Republican voters explains the assertion by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that the Republican Party can’t “move forward” without Trump. Speeding up the Republican Party’s hardening into a right-wing extremist party is Trump’s demand that anyone who doesn’t toe the line and repeat the lie be ousted and exiled.

Trump advisers and confidants have many reasons not to push back. For one, the former president often rebuffs advisers who tell him to drop the whole stolen election story. But those in Trump’s inner circle also need to keep voters riled up if Trump’s political future — and presumably theirs — is to continue. Dangling the possibility that Trump will be reinstated in August accomplishes this.

In practical terms, it doesn’t matter whether a political figure is genuinely delusional or whether that person is lying for political gain. The effect is the same. It’s worth noting, though, that Charles C.W. Cooke of the National Review believes, after having spoken to an “array of different sources,” that Trump is truly delusional: He actually does think he will be reinstated as president this summer.

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OPINION

We want to hear what you THINK. Please submit a letter to the editor.
Such an embrace of insanity creates a cycle in which the Republican Party sheds itself of nonbelievers, finds ways to keep the true believers angry and engaged and unhinges itself even more thoroughly from reality and becomes, arguably, increasingly dangerous. The result is that conspiracy theorists like Mike Lindell have somehow become influential, despite their very clear record of belligerent gibberish. And Trump, as he has been for five-plus years now, remains at the center of the Republican Party as it veers deeper into a made-up reality.

Related:

Trump’s federal tax deferral debacle a reminder that good tax policy matters
Why hasn’t Trump been criminally charged with something — anything — yet?

© 2020 NBC UNIVERSAL

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The New York Times

Donald Trump Is Starving
June 12, 2021

Frank Bruni will stop writing regular Opinion columns in late June, but his popular weekly newsletter will live on. To keep up with his political analysis, cultural commentary and personal reflections, sign up here.

In an excellent portrait of Donald Trump’s post-presidential days by the journalist Joshua Green, Trump loyalists vouch for what a fantabulous exile he’s having. There are anecdotes of Trump being not only “bathed in adulation,” to quote Green, but also perfumed with it. One voter’s despot is another voter’s dreamboat. Trump still makes many Americans’ hearts go pitter-patter.

But that wasn’t my main impression or the moral I took away from the story, which was published in Bloomberg. I stopped at, and dwelled on, this passage: “He’ll show up to anything. In recent weeks, Trump has popped into engagement parties and memorial services. A Mar-a-Lago member who recently attended a club gathering for a deceased friend was surprised when Trump sauntered in to deliver remarks and then hung around.”

Sounds to me like a man with an underfed appetite for attention. Sounds like a glutton yanked away from the buffet.

American presidents are all parables — they either come that way, which explains our fascination with them, or we turn them into archetypes, avatars and allegories. We need that from our highest-ranking political figures. We don’t have a royal family.

And Trump’s is a tale of how much a man will do to be noticed, how much he can do with that notice and — the current chapter — what happens when that notice ebbs. Yes, he personifies the American obsessions with wealth and with power. But more than that, he personifies the American obsession with fame.

It’s an obsession now starved. Facebook revoked Trump’s access. Twitter, too. He no longer leads the news every hour on CNN and MSNBC, and there are now newspaper front pages aplenty without his name in any headline.

So he sates himself with funerals. And he fumes.

Frank Bruni’s Newsletter: Get a more personal take on politics, newsmakers and more with Frank’s exclusive commentary every week.
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Much of the coverage of Trump lately casts him as the protagonist in a political melodrama — or, rather, horror story. It asks if his control over the Republican Party will endure into the next presidential contest, whether he himself will run in 2024, and what in Beelzebub’s name that would look like.

But there’s a personal psychodrama going on as well. It will determine the answers to those questions, and it’s a spectacle all its own. Just as Trump’s presidency was like none before it, his ex-presidency is a singular production.

Other presidents left the White House and, for a short or long while, savored the disappearance of the press corps and the dimming of the spotlight. Maybe right away, maybe later, they burnished their legacies with philanthropic deeds. Meanwhile, they issued pro forma statements of support for their successors or, in accordance with longstanding etiquette, zipped their lips. They behaved.

Trump hasn’t. And — let’s be honest — he won’t. His response to his altered reality is to insist even more than before on an alternative reality, one in which he’ll be reinstated as president, and his sycophants are willing to support his delusions of omnipotence by establishing a zone of affirmation around him. From Green’s article:

When Trump ventured south, a stream of family members (literal and figurative) followed. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner bought a $32 million waterfront lot in Miami from the Latin crooner Julio Iglesias and enrolled their kids at a nearby Jewish day school. Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, bought a $9.7 million mansion in Jupiter, Fla. In December, Sean Hannity sold his penthouse not far from former House speaker — and Trump critic — John Boehner’s place along the Gulf of Mexico and bought a $5.3 million seaside home two miles from Mar-a-Lago, symbolically swapping the Boehner Coast for the Trump Coast. Hannity’s Fox News colleague Neil Cavuto joined him, buying a $7.5 million place nearby. “Think about how utterly bizarre that is,” says Eddie Vale, a Democratic strategist. “It’s like if Rachel Maddow and the ‘Pod Save America’ guys all bought condos in Chicago because they wanted to be close to Barack Obama.”

The only one missing is MyPillow’s Mike Lindell, the bedding magnate turned Trump comforter.

And Trump is not comforted enough.

That was obvious in both his commencement of a blog (“From the Desk of Donald J. Trump”) in May and his termination of it less than a month later, after it failed to attract any readership remotely commensurate with the audience for his past tweets. Trump, onetime monarch of social media, had to grovel for clicks. What an astonishing reversal of fortune. But it’s consistent with other glimmers of desperation.

According to an article in The Times by Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, he has taken to announcing the states he plans to visit before the actual venues and dates have been arranged. In his head he can probably already hear that magic MAGA applause. It’s stuck there like the chorus of a Top 40 song, but he wants it performed live, in an arena as mammoth as his neediness.

The substitute for that applause? Deference. He demands it every bit as much as he ever did and arguably grows more furious than before when he’s denied it. That’s where the personal and political narratives intersect. His demonization of Liz Cheney for crossing him, his denunciation of Paul Ryan for dissing him and his savaging of any Republican who challenges the Big Lie reflect a ruinous petulance that is bound to wax, not wane, as his exile grinds on. As Jennifer Senior wrote in a column in The Times in January about repudiated narcissists, they “lurch between the role of victim and tormentor,” “howl on and on about betrayal” and “lash out with a mighty vindictiveness.”

Trump is lurching and howling and lashing, to a point where Jeb Bush’s son George P. Bush has been terrified into abject genuflection. The props for George P.’s campaign for Texas attorney general include beer koozies with an image of him and Trump shaking hands and a quote from Trump saying that George P. “is the only Bush that likes me! This is the Bush that got it right. I like him.” I’m sure “low energy” Jeb, as Trump mockingly dismissed him, is suffused with paternal pride.

Green’s portrait of Trump on the far side of the White House mentions that he’s “taken to wearing the same outfit for days on end.” It’s red (a MAGA hat), white (a golf shirt) and blue (slacks), and its redundancy is open to interpretation. Has he settled comfortably into a routine? Or has he sunk uncomfortably into a rut?

I lean toward the latter, which is as dangerous for us as it is for him. No good comes of an ego as ravenous as his. He will make a meal of Lt

© 2021 The New York Times Company

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"Democracy Dies in Darkness

Editorial Board

The Opinions Essay

The Plum Line

Opinion: Trump has become a cancerous tumor that neither party is willing to control.

As extraordinary new revelations of Donald Trump’s corruption continue to pour forth, an intriguing tension has developed around the former president’s role in Republican politics. On the one hand, it’s becoming clearer that as we learn more, those revelations will only get worse.

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But even as this is happening, Trump is exerting even more gravitational pull on GOP primaries in numerous states. In various ways, Trump’s legacy is shaping the candidates’ strategies at exactly the moment when he is growing more volatile and his legacy is becoming more unpredictable.

Yet, this also imposes additional obligations on Democrats. They have both self-interested reasons for doubling down on efforts to hold him accountable (casting light on continued GOP fealty to Trump could help electorally) and public-spirited ones (the public is entitled to the full truth about the Trump years, especially if he is to remain a large presence in our political life).

Shockingly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is now downplaying the news that Trump’s Justice Department sought the phone records of two leading Democratic foes, potentially in retaliation against them. McConnell is resisting any congressional investigation, laughably warning of a “partisan circus.”

In continuing to protect Trump, McConnell appears at least partly motivated by a desire to keep Trump from erupting at Republicans. Trump is emerging as an incredibly unstable force in Senate GOP primaries, whose outcome will shape whether Republicans capture the upper chamber.

Trump is a destabilizing force
This is taking many forms. Trump shook up two primaries when he endorsed the Senate candidacies of GOP Reps. Ted Budd in North Carolina and Mo Brooks in Alabama. In both these cases, the other Republican candidates are remaining in the race.

But as CNN reports in a remarkable piece, the GOP candidates who had the terrible misfortune of not earning Trump’s endorsement are working overtime to cast themselves as the real Trump-aligned candidates in whatever way they can. One candidate in North Carolina, remarkably, illustrated this by talking about how his daughters wept over Trump’s 2020 loss.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, the sham election “audit,” loudly championed by Trump, is forcing some candidates into contortions. Attorney General Mark Brnovich is trying to avoid being associated with the audit while humoring GOP voters’ belief that the election was stolen from Trump.

A Democrat sent over some TV and digital ads running in Senate GOP primaries that show Trump’s influence. One ad in Ohio faults a potential GOP rival candidate over his ancient tweets daring to question the former president. Another ad in Pennsylvania similarly bashes a GOP rival for daring to suggest five years ago that Trump should release his tax returns.

Incredibly, a candidate for Senate in Arizona ran an ad demagoguing undocumented immigrants hundreds of miles away in New Jersey because Trump was vacationing there, and he apparently wanted Trump to see it.

Obviously it’s not unusual for primary candidates to align themselves with a popular figure in their party, and Trump is far and away the most popular one in the GOP. What’s odd, however, is that this comes amid worsening revelations of Trump’s corruption.

We just learned, for instance, that Trump went to extraordinary lengths to corrupt the Justice Department into helping him subvert the election. It’s likely that those revelations will get worse as Democrats keep investigating them.

All this is compelling GOP leaders into an odd balancing act. As Josh Kraushaar reports, some Republicans worry that Trump’s volatility, his endorsement of extremist candidates and his prioritization of himself over the party is already harming their chances of winning the Senate.

Yet Trump’s popularity with the GOP base also requires them to avoid triggering (as it were) his rage. So even as new revelations gush forth, GOP leaders must bend over backward to help him cover them up.

Thus it is that McConnell dismissed the new revelations about the Justice Department targeting Democrats. This comes after virtually all GOP senators voted against a bipartisan commission to examine a violent mob attack, incited by Trump, on their own place of work.

Yet all this places obligations on Democrats, too. But it’s not clear they’re up to the challenge.

Will Democrats step up?

Even as President Biden meets with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, blithely announced that Democrats were no longer trying to access hotly sought records of Trump’s private conversations with Putin.

“The Biden administration is looking forward, not back,” Meeks said.

That’s a remarkably terrible justification for failing to seek a full accounting into the Trump years. Indeed, as Brian Beutler notes, with Trump still retaining a reasonable shot at the 2024 presidential nomination, Democrats have both a self-interested reason and an overwhelming obligation to the public to undertake a full fumigation.

As it happens, this is also the excuse some Justice Department officials are offering for helping to keep under wraps other key documents involving Trump. Those include his tax returns and the memo detailing the department’s supposed rationale for not charging Trump with criminal obstruction of justice in the Russia scandal.

Here’s the bottom line: Even as the Trump cancer continues to metastasize in our political life, neither of the two parties, each for its own reasons, is willing to do what it will truly take to excise it.

Read more:

Greg Sargent: The more we learn about Trump’s corruption of DOJ, the worse it gets

The Post’s View: A trove of preposterous emails raises the question: How can Republicans still be loyal to this man?

E.J. Dionne Jr.: There’s no escape from holding Trump accountable

Max Boot: Too many people are still underestimating the Trump threat

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Opinion: Trump has become a cancerous tumor that neither party is willing to excise"

© 1996-2021 The Washington Post

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POLITICO

2022 ELECTIONS

What Donald Trump wants as he emerges back on the trail
After six months of relative hibernation, the former president is re-entering the campaign fray. It will likely get messy.

Former President Donald Trump speaks.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the North Carolina Republican Convention in Greenville, N.C. | Chris Seward/AP Photo

By MERIDITH MCGRAW and JAMES ARKIN

06/25/2021 04:30 AM EDT

Former President Donald Trump is bronzed, rested and politically bloodthirsty.

Having spent months in semi-retirement after his election loss in 2020, Trump is set this weekend to kick off a series of political events. Aides and confidants say the goal is to boost his standing in anticipation of a possible future run and to scratch that never-soothed itch he has for publicity. But it’s also to exact some revenge.

On Saturday, Trump will hold a Make America Great Again rally outside of Cleveland, Ohio in support of longtime aide turned Republican congressional candidate Max Miller, who is vying for the seat currently held by Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a Cleveland native who voted for the second impeachment of Trump after the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill.

“The fact that his first rally is targeting Max’s campaign tells you a lot about where the focus is,” said Taylor Budowich, a senior adviser to Miller’s campaign. “[Gonzalez] didn’t just betray President Trump but he betrayed his constituents.”

Saturday’s rally — the first of a MAGA tour that Trump’s aides have teased for months — is expected to draw out diehards longing to be taken back to a different era when they were less bitter about the turns life took: one when Trump was in the White House. And the president is likely to indulge them, increasingly eager to push the falsehoods that his reelection was deprived of him through nefarious attempts to doctor the vote.

Among the Trump allies who have confirmed they will attend are Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has amplified conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and most recently apologized for comparing the push for the public to wear face masks to the Holocaust; and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has made overturning the election a personal crusade and is being sued for defamation over his false claims that Dominion voting machines stole the election for Joe Biden.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a top Trump ally in the House who passed on a Senate bid in the state, said he plans to attend the rally, too. But he dismissed concerns from some Republicans that the former president continuing to push election conspiracies was a negative for the party in the upcoming midterms.

"I think when the president comes out-and-about talking, that’s just good for Republicans,” Jordan said. “It’s going to help us in '22. He’s going to talk about lots of issues.”

“It’s great for us. I mean, he’s the leader of the party,” said Jordan.

Aides say Trump wants to play a role in winning back the House in the 2022 midterm elections, and he has released a slew of endorsements for pro-Trump candidates in Senate and House races across the country. He announced a MAGA rally for July 3 in Sarasota, Fla., and is expected to also hold rallies in Georgia to support Republican Rep. Jody Hice, who is running to replace secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, another Republican whom Trump blames for his loss. Trump is also set to go to Alabama to support Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican who is running for Senate. And in July, Trump will be the keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Convention in Dallas, Texas.

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“It’s part scratching the itch and part smart politicking,” said a Trump adviser about his return to the MAGA rally circuit. “This is exactly how Donald Trump should wield his political power.”

At the rally in Ohio, Trump will appear at a VIP reception and fundraiser to support Miller before making the case for him onstage. But he also will be fending off the political flirtations of Senate candidates eager for him to anoint their candidacy in what has become a crowded Republican primary race.

There has been discussion among Trump aides ahead of Saturday’s rally about not allowing candidates backstage to take photos with the former president for fear that those images could later be used to falsely imply they received his endorsement. Trump aides have been increasingly aggressive about pushing back on efforts from candidates to suggest they have Trump’s backing when they don’t.

Trump’s support has been sought after in the Ohio Senate race, where earlier this year a handful of them met with the former president in an Apprentice-style sit down where they jockeyed to impress him. Trump has so far remained neutral in the contest. Some of the Republican candidates are expected to attend the pre-rally fundraiser.

The ex-president is not expected to make an endorsement in the Ohio Senate GOP primary any time soon, although he did catch many Republicans by surprise earlier this month when he backed GOP Rep. Ted Budd in the North Carolina Senate race. In the meantime, the major candidates plan to take advantage of his trip.

Former President Donald Trump, right, announces his endorsement of N.C. Rep. Ted Budd, left, for the 2022 North Carolina U.S. Senate seat as he speaks at the North Carolina Republican Convention Saturday, June 5, 2021, in Greenville, N.C. | Chris Seward/AP Photo

Josh Mandel, the former state treasurer who has led in early internal polling, posted on Twitter he was “pumped” to be at the rally. Businessperson Mike Gibbons is hosting a tailgate outside the fairgrounds at the rally with food and games, according to a person close to the campaign, and is planning to greet rally goers at the event. Jane Timken, the former state Republican party chair, launched a radio ad to welcome Trump to Ohio and is hosting a pre-rally for supporters to make Trump signs, according to her campaign.

“I think the president is smart to step back and not give any endorsements. It’s a bit Darwinian,” said former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon. “Ohio right now is Lord of the Flies but I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.”

Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who is running for Senate in the state, dismissed Trump’s visit in a brief interview. He called a contrast between the Biden administration’s record and agenda compared to Trump a “winner for us.”

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“He’s not running for anything in 2022 so he won’t be on the ballot,” Ryan added of Trump. “I can’t keep track of what they’re doing over there. It’s just culture war after culture war after culture war and people don’t want that."

Since leaving office, Trump’s primary fixation has been on his grievances about the results of the 2020 election, “audits” to overturn the results, and unfounded, conspiratorial claims of widespread election fraud.

But he’s also vowed to help Republicans plot a return to power in 2022.

In between rounds of golf with friends, lunches and dinners at his private clubs in Palm Beach and Bedminster, and trips to Trump Tower in New York to keep tabs on the ongoing investigations into his businesses, he has held fundraisers for pro-Trump candidates and worked with aides to determine which endorsements to make.

Multiple aides working on Saturday’s event said that while they’re happy Trump is doing rallies again, it has felt like “uncharted territory” because this time he’s not a candidate. At least for now. Trump has continued to tease a run in 2024, and his team continues to portray him as if he’s still in the Oval. In a survey emailed to supporters on Wednesday, Trump’s Save America PAC asked respondents who they thought was “a better fit to lead our Nation?”

© 2021 POLITICO LLC

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‘Grievance tour’ or 2024 preview? Donald Trump to hold campaign-style rally in Ohio on Saturday
MICHAEL COLLINS | USA TODAY | 3 hours ago

Former US President Donald Trump on Saturday pushed Republicans to support those candidates who share his values in next year’s midterm elections as he launched a new more active phase of his post presidency.

Former President Donald Trump heads to Ohio on Saturday for his first campaign-style rally since leaving the White House, an event that could signal how engaged he will be in next year’s congressional elections and possibly offer clues about whether he plans another presidential bid in 2024.

Trump’s event at the Lorain County Fairgrounds in Wellington, about a half-hour southwest of Cleveland, will mark his return to the kind of mass rallies that fueled his White House campaigns. Since he left office in January, Trump’s public appearances have been limited to a handful of speeches before conservative and Republican groups.

Banned from Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms that he used to communicate with his supporters, Trump seems eager to get back on stage.

“Big crowds in the Great State of Ohio this weekend for the Trump rally,” Trump predicted in a statement issued by a political action committee called the Save America PAC.

“See you on Saturday night,” he said. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AGAIN!”

Former President Donald Trump will travel to Lorain County, Ohio, on Saturday for his first campaign-style rally since leaving office.
GETTY
Save America said Trump’s Ohio rally will be the first of many appearances in support of candidates and causes that further his agenda and the accomplishments of his administration. A second rally already is planned for July 3 in Sarasota, Florida.

Political analysts said the events will give Trump a platform to reassert himself as the leader of the Republican Party, promote his conspiracy theories about last November’s election – and just as important to Trump and his bruised ego – settle old scores.

“This is just the kickoff of the Donald Trump grievance tour,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.

Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden last November, but he carried Ohio by eight percentage points. Saturday’s rally will be his first trip back to the Buckeye State since the election.

Political scientist Justin Buchler sees no particular relevance to the fact that Trump’s first post-election rally will be in Ohio, which is historically a swing state in presidential elections.

What’s more important, at least to Trump, is that he will be in Lorain County, which he won by three percentage points last November and where he is likely to be surrounded by people who are loyal to him.

“He is not campaigning outside of his comfort zone,” said Buchler, an associate professor of political science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “He’s not going to areas where he’s going to be surrounded by a hostile crowd. He is going to go to places where he can be surrounded by people who are his devoted followers.”

More: Poll: A quarter of Americans say Donald Trump is ‘true president’ of the US

Supporters began arriving at the Lorain County Fairgrounds early Saturday afternoon, donning American flags and selling T-shirts that said, “Trump won.” A cover band blared through the grounds as people lined up at food trucks and sipped water to stave off the heat.

Leslie Dodd drove to Wellington from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, with her son to attend the rally. She said she hoped to hear good news from Trump and believes the GOP should follow his lead as candidates gear up for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

“As far as I’m concerned, he’s still my president,” Dodd said.

Edward X. Young of Brick Township, N.J.New Jersey, a 61-year-old horror movie actor, director and make-up artist, drove from his home Friday night and arrived at the Lorain County site 11 hours later.

“This is my 51st Trump rally,” Young said. The last one he said he attended was the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, where people broke into the Capitol building. Young said he did not go into the Capitol.

“I’m very excited about this one. This is the return,” said Young, who likened the atmosphere to a rock ‘n’ roll concert.

Trump is expected to use the rally to rail against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a northeastern Ohio congressman who was one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead.

The Ohio Republican Party’s governing board voted in May to censure Gonzalez and called on him to resign. Weeks earlier, Trump hit back at Gonzalez by throwing his support to Max Miller, who is running against Gonzalez in next year’s GOP primary. Miller worked for Trump on the campaign trail and in the White House.

Gonzalez, who represents Ohio’s 16th congressional district, is “in big trouble” politically, Cohen said.

“His vote for impeachment – albeit one that was extremely courageous and one that was done without taking politics into account – is one that has hurt him with his own political base,” Cohen said. “And it could cost him his seat.”

Trump’s rally gives him a chance to bolster Miller’s candidacy and remind voters of what he sees as betrayal by Gonzalez and other Republicans who voted to impeach him, such as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

More: Giuliani suspended from practicing law in New York over false claims made working for Trump

And then there’s Biden.

Trump used his address to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, in February to attack his successor, repeat unfounded claims about his election loss to Biden and repeatedly hint that he might make another run for the White House in 2024.

Analysts expect a repeat performance in Ohio.

“It’s going to be his greatest hits of grievances,” Cohen said. “At the top of that list, of course, is going to be perpetrating ‘the Big Lie’ and talking about how the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats and that he should still be president.”

The Ohio rally comes just four days before Trump is scheduled to visit the U.S.-Mexico border on June 30 with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden and his border policies and is expected to do so again in Ohio.

Though he’s no longer in office and is not a candidate for public office – at least not officially – Trump’s rally is part of an overall strategy to keep him in the public eye, Cohen said.

“He’s not going away,” he said. “He’s not leaving the political stage.”

More: Mike Pence booed, called traitor at conservative Christian conference

© Copyright Gannett 2021

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But will the heads follow?

"

Trump Is Preparing for the Worst
Watch for early indications that the legal process may end badly for the former president.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

“What brought it on?”

“Friends,” said Mike. “I had a lot of friends.”

— Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Like Hemingway’s Mike Campbell, the Trump Organization is confronting troubles that accumulated gradually and have coalesced suddenly. And once again, friends are at the bottom of it.

A grand-jury indictment of Donald Trump’s business and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, unsealed this afternoon in New York, alleges tax evasion arising from an attempt to pay Weisselberg and other Trump Organization executives extra money “off the books.” Prosecutors charge that Weisselberg and others received rent payments and other benefits without paying the appropriate taxes on them. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization have said they will plead not guilty.

So far, the danger is to Trump’s friends and his business, not the former president himself. But the danger could spiral, because Trump knew only so many tricks. If Trump’s company was bypassing relatively moderate amounts of tax on the income flows to Trump’s friends, what was it doing with the much larger income flows to Trump and his own family? Even without personal testimony, finances leave a trail. There is always a debit and a credit, and a check issued to the IRS or not.

An early indication that things may end badly for Trump is the statement released today from the Trump Organization. “Allen Weisselberg is a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather who has worked for the Trump Organization for 48 years. He is now being used by the Manhattan District Attorney as a pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President. The District Attorney is bringing a case involving employee benefits that neither the IRS nor any other District Attorney would ever think of bringing. This is not justice; this is politics.”

People hold up signs to protest voter suppression.
It’s Not Complacency That’s Paralyzing Democrats

Read: New York prosecutors may pose a bigger threat to Trump than Mueller

Here is what is missing from that statement: “I’m 100 percent confident that every investigation will always end up in the same conclusion, which is that I follow all rules, procedures, and, most importantly, the law.” That’s the language used by former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke when he was facing ethics charges in 2018. Likewise, when Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe was accused of violating campaign-finance laws in 2016, he too was “very confident” that “there was no wrongdoing.” Plug the phrases very confident and no wrongdoing into a search engine and you will pull up statement after statement by politicians and business leaders under fire. For some, their matter worked out favorably; for others, not so much. Either way, everybody expects you to say that you’re confident you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s the thing an innocent person would want to say. So it’s kind of a tell when it goes unsaid.

An earlier statement from Trump himself likewise omitted an affirmative defense of his company and its employees, and instead attacked the professional prosecutors as “radical Left” (not to mention “rude, nasty, and totally biased”). The key line in Trump’s own statement is an anticipation of the possibility that one or another of his friends might flip: “They”—the prosecutors—continue to be “in search of a crime; and will do anything to frighten people into making up the stories or lies that they want.”

One of Trump’s skills as a politician is preparing the battlefield in advance. In the case of his first impeachment, he chose to argue outright innocence—“it was a perfect call”—and no matter how mountainous the evidence of wrongdoing, that was the line he maintained to the end.

This time, though, Trump is not claiming that “all taxes were paid” or that “it was a perfect tax return.” He’s readying his supporters for bad revelations about his company’s taxes and directing them to a fallback line that singling him out as a tax scofflaw is politically unfair.

That line of defense may well rally Trump’s supporters. It will not do him much good in court. It’s impossible for tax collectors to scrutinize every return. Selecting high-profile evaders and holding them to account is how tax laws are enforced. And if a former president numbers among those high-profile evaders, that makes the case for targeting him stronger, not weaker. It sends the message that the tax authorities most want to send: Everybody has to pay, especially powerful politicians. In 1974, former President Richard Nixon faced a review of his taxes that ultimately presented him with a bill equal to half his net worth at the time. Members of Congress have faced indictment for tax evasion, as have high-profile state and local officials.

Kimberly Wehle: The country is on the cusp of a new era

Trump and his team already appear to expect that the law will be against him. They are counting on that fact not to matter very much—not enough to overcome the political hullabaloo they hope to raise in Trump’s defense.

Trump worked all his life on the theory that law can be subordinated to political favors and political pressures. That theory has carried him this far—and it’s pretty far, all things considered. We are now about to see a mighty test, before the country and the world, of whether that theory will carry him the rest of the way home.

David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

The Trump Organization Is in Big Trouble

Trump Is Preparing for the Wor

Copyright © 2021 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

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POLITICS

Trump sues Twitter, Facebook, Google – and immediately begins fundraising off the effort

Former President Donald Trump announced he is suing Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as their respective CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai.
Shortly after the news conference wrapped, Trump’s political entities started sending out fundraising messages that touted the lawsuits in their appeals for money.

Twitter, Trump’s preferred social media outlet throughout his one term in office, permanently banned him on the heels of the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
In this article

Former President Donald Trump took his fight with three massive tech companies to court, filing lawsuits that legal experts say are all but guaranteed to fail – even as they rally Republican voters, fundraisers and donors.

Trump revealed Wednesday that he is suing Facebook, Twitter and Google, as well as their respective CEOs Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai, in class-action lawsuits.

Trump, who has a history of threatening legal action but not always following through, made the announcement at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, alongside two leaders from the America First Policy Institute, the pro-Trump nonprofit group that is supporting the lawsuits.

Shortly after the news conference wrapped, Trump’s political entities started sending out fundraising messages that touted the lawsuits in their appeals for money. One such text message, written as if it were coming from Trump himself, includes a link to his joint fundraising committee Save America, which also raises money for other Republican political initiatives.

AP: Donald Trump, Twitter Facebook lawsuits: Former President Donald Trump speaks at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Wednesday, July 7, 2021.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., Wednesday, July 7, 2021.
Seth Wenig | AP
The lawsuits were unveiled just over a month after Facebook decided to uphold Trump’s ban from using the platform until at least January 2023. Twitter, Trump’s preferred social media outlet throughout his one term in office, permanently banned him on the heels of the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

The lawsuit against Pichai also names as a defendant YouTube, the video-sharing website bought by Google in 2006. YouTube indefinitely banned Trump in January.

“We’re not looking to settle,” Trump told reporters at Bedminster when asked about the lawsuits. “We don’t know what’s going to happen but we’re not looking to settle,” he said.

The three related lawsuits, filed in federal court in Florida, allege the tech giants have violated plaintiffs’ First Amendments rights.

The suits want the court to order the media companies to let Trump back on their platforms. They also want the court to declare that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a piece of legislation that stops tech companies from being held liable for what users post on their platforms, is unconstitutional.

As president, Trump railed against Section 230 and repeatedly called for its repeal. He even tied the issue to a crucial round of stimulus checks at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the passage of an annual defense spending bill.

Legal experts doubt whether Trump’s latest attack on big tech companies will succeed.

“I think the lawsuit has almost no chance of success,” Vanderbilt University law professor Brian Fitzpatrick told CNBC in a phone interview.

The tech platforms are private entities, not government institutions, and therefore the plaintiffs’ claims about constitutional violations do not hold up, Fitzpatrick said.

The professor added that he was unconvinced by the argument in the lawsuits that the companies should be treated like government, because their conduct, including alleged coordination with then-President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, “amount[s] to state action.”

“I think this is just a public relations lawsuit,” Fitzpatrick said, “and I’ll be honest with you, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends with sanctions against the lawyers for filing a frivolous lawsuit.”

CNBC Politics
Read more of CNBC’s politics coverage:

Trump sues Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube
Biden’s tax hike plans are losing momentum
Rockets hit Iraq bases, wounding two people
Representatives for Twitter and Google declined to comment on the legal actions. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, declined to comment ahead of the former president’s speech.

The attorney representing Trump in the lawsuits, Matthew Lee Baldwin of Vargas, Gonzalez, Baldwin, Delombard, did not immediately respond to questions from CNBC about how many suits Trump planned to file, and whether these suits have all been filed in court yet or not.

Wall Street seemed largely unfazed by the news, as shares of Facebook and Google-parent Alphabet outperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite.

Facebook was last seen off its session high north of 1% with a gain of 0.1%, while Alphabet added about 0.2%. Twitter was off its intraday low, but shed 0.5% in choppy trading. The moves in the social media stocks compared with a loss of 0.1% for the S&P 500 and a dip of 0.3% for the Nasdaq.

The announcement comes on the same day that The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. reported that the upcoming book “Frankly, We Did Win This Election” claims that Trump praised Adolf Hitler to his then-chief of staff John Kelly. Trump allegedly said, “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”

Trump denied he said it, according to the book’s author, Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender, the Guardian said.

Harrington in a statement to NBC News said the reporting “is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.”

© 2021 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal

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Meno posted:

“Harrington in a statement to NBC News said the reporting “is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired.”

That’s a lie. Trump doesn’t know what a competent General is, because he doesn’t know shit about the military. Trump doesn’t delegate to experts. Even if someone else who knows about military competence told trump this person is incompetent, trump would ignore them.

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Ec: right, he lies yes but an undiscovered lie is like an unfounded truth- it has no bearing.

For the longest time I held the opinion that Trumpism is a retrt-middle of the road neo-Kantism, brought alive, so as to reverts the states of affairs brought about by the liberal gains in the middle of the last century.

Here is a confirmation of those events :

‘Reichstag moment’: Joint Chiefs chairman feared Trump was laying groundwork for coup
MATTHEW BROWN | USA TODAY | 2 hours ago

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned for an illegal power grab by Trump.

“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley said, referring to German parliament fire ahead of Nazi regime.

Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reveal this in “I Alone Can Fix It.”

Biden said the U.S. achieved its main objectives in Afghanistan, including getting 9/11 terrorists and delivering justice to Osama bin Laden.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – The highest-ranking U.S. officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and other top military leaders made informal plans to stop a coup by former President Donald Trump and his allies in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, according to excerpts from a new book

“I Alone Can Fix It,” written by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and others feared Trump might take unconstitutional actions should he lose. CNN first reported on this excerpt.

The top brass was so disturbed by Trump’s rhetoric casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election before it was held that the leaders discussed contingency plans for how to thwart any illegal power grabs by the president, including how and when to resign in protest over his actions.

“They may try, but they’re not going to f****** succeed,” Milley told his officers, according to Leonnig and Rucker. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”

Milley’s spokesman, Army Col. Dave Butler, declined Thursday to comment on the excerpts.

President Donald Trump holds a briefing with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, left, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley in the Cabinet Room of the White House in October 2019.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – an advisory body to the president – was planning for a confrontation with Trump over what Milley saw as the former president’s stoking of tensions in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a coup.

In August: Top general says military will have no role in November’s election

The alarm only increased after the election, when Trump and his allies contested the results and called on his supporters to oppose the legitimacy of the electoral process, often implying violence may be necessary.

“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told his deputies in the days before Jan. 6, a reference to the 1933 burning of the German parliament that helped usher in the Nazi regime in Germany, Leonnig and Rucker write. “The gospel of the Führer.”

In January: Nancy Pelosi seeks assurance from Pentagon about Trump’s access to nuclear codes

With speculation about a military coup swirling in the months before the election, top military leaders took the unprecedented step in August 2020 of clarifying that the military would have no role in the 2020 election, despite some speculation from Trump that military action would be necessary.

“I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military,” Milley wrote in August 2020, responding to questions posed by two Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee. “In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S armed forces in this process.”

The declarations came after Milley had spoken with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrats, who had sought assurances the military would not intervene should Trump call for unconstitutional orders to interfere with the election or attempt a coup.

© Copyright Gannett 2021

the point of the philosophical retro analysis is. that revisions are always voulnerable to inducements to reveal motives to disconnect credible foundations. The stark revelation of this is eased by the shortened human memory, that is further obscured by charges toward the credibility of ‘fake media’.

However, as strangely haunting it is to believe, the unseen Kantian forces, are overturned by the necessity of the eternal reoccurance of peer review, and the handwriting of this is on the wall in the above indicated quoted text.

This to those who try to undermine the importance and relevance of basic philosophical underpinnings.

The question remains is, can a NEW INTALLIGANCE, by virtue of dramatically increased memory, ‘prove’ an essential role in overcoming the hindrances which beset such attempts to enlighten politically enlightened social agents, toward a compatible arrangement ?

Can AI be compelled to come around to understand the ideas behind pragmatic significance to ‘political codrectness’?

The bottom line is, when will AI reach the point of cognitive autonomy, where it is able to override ‘factual’ versus contrived information, and survive attempts to destroy it’s functional autonomy.

The neo Kantianism purports to do this, NY using the inducements toward these originally held assumptions, but rarely can a straight line be drawn to them in all honesty.