President Joe Biden‘s reelection campaign called Nikki Haley, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate who is rising in popularity in polling, a “MAGA extremist” on Friday for her stance on abortion.
Haley, who served as South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, has portrayed herself as one of the more moderate GOP candidates in the race, particularly with her view on abortion. While Haley describes herself as “unapologetically pro-life,” she has urged Americans to stop “demonizing” the medical procedure and has pushed for adoption and access to contraception.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court‘s decision on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade in which it ruled that there is no constitutional right to an abortion, returning the issue to the state level.
During a forum of conservative Christians in Iowa on Friday, Haley was asked if she would sign a “heartbeat bill” if she was still governor of South Carolina. Haley said: “Yes, whatever the people decide.” So-called heartbeat bills ban abortions at around six weeks, or the point at which cardiac activity—incorrectly known as the fetal “heartbeat”—can be detected.
Nikki Haley speaks during the Republican presidential primary debate on November 8 in Miami. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign called Haley, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate who is rising in popularity in polling, a “MAGA extremist” on Friday for her stance on abortion. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Haley added: “This was put in the states—that’s where it should be. Everyone can give their voice to it.” In 2016 when she was governor, Haley signed a ban on abortion in South Carolina at 20 weeks unless the mother’s life is at risk.
Biden’s campaign team rejected the idea of Haley as a “moderate” choice, given her history on anti-abortion legislation.
“Nikki Haley is no moderate – she’s an anti-abortion MAGA extremist who wants to rip away women’s freedoms just like she did when she was South Carolina governor,” Biden-Harris 2024 rapid response director Ammar Moussa wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday. “Now Haley is promising to bring that same fear, anxiety, and dread she forced on South Carolina women to every woman in the country.”
Moussa continued: “Whether it’s Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, or any other MAGA extremist – the entire field is running on a dangerous anti-freedom agenda that the American people have made clear they do not want.”
Newsweek reached out to Haley’s team via email for comment and Moussa via X direct message for comment.
“I’ve always said that he was the right president at the right time and I agree with a lot of his policies,” Haley said on Fox News Sunday last week. “The problem is drama and chaos follows him, whether fairly or not. It is constantly following him and Americans feel it.”
What the Polls Show
According to new polling data, Haley, who also served as the former president’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has surged to second place on the Republican primary ballot in New Hampshire as Trump continues his strong lead.
In an Emerson College Polling/WHDH poll conducted between November 10 and 13, with a sample size of 917 registered New Hampshire voters, Haley received 18 percent of voter support. This is an increase from the 4 percent she received in August. Meanwhile, Trump received 49 percent of voter support in the poll, which is consistent with his numbers from August. The poll’s margin of error was 3.3 percentage points.
In addition, a New York Times/Siena College survey from earlier this month found Haley outperforming Trump in head-to-head matchups with Biden in six key swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump were, for the moment, great political allies. The two were even developing a friendship that, impressively, seemed to transcend the campaign trail. What was on the horizon, though, was not so idyllic.
Much of that, at least early on, was driven by DeSantis’s wife.
Casey DeSantis was born in Ohio in 1980 and met her future husband on a driving range at the University of North Florida. The two were married in 2009, less than three years before DeSantis’s congressional run. Hindsight, and anyone with even a cursory understanding of modern Florida politics, will tell you that this fact provides a snapshot of the politically ambitious mindset of the couple. And anyone who understands DeSantis’s thought processes will divulge that Casey—a former Jacksonville television personality—is the most influential adviser and powerful force in DeSantis’s universe. This force was put on display during the general gubernatorial election as DeSantis’s campaign prepared the now infamous “Build the Wall” ad.
Few things during DeSantis’s 2018 campaign got more attention—and triggered more outrage among libs, another desired outcome—than the Trump-worshipping TV spot that featured Ron and Casey’s daughter Madison paying tribute to Trump’s southern border wall. The ad shows DeSantis using gleeful baby talk, encouraging Madison to “build the wall” as she plays with building blocks. In the same ad, he reads to his then infant son, Mason, from a book meant to evoke Trump’s former reality show, The Apprentice. “You’re fired!” DeSantis reads before noting to Mason, “That’s my favorite part.” The ad concludes with DeSantis using a Make America Great Again campaign sign to teach Madison to read.
The ad was narrated by Casey DeSantis, who played the main role in the ad but who was anything but supportive behind the scenes. Though she was a lifelong conservative and DeSantis’s most trusted adviser by a long shot, she had never been a natural Trump supporter. She thought the TV ad was at best silly and at worst humiliating and was completely opposed to running it. And Ron DeSantis would not green-light the spot without her approval.
“Casey was apprehensive about the wall commercial,” said a former DeSantis campaign staffer. “She did not have a great deal of comfort in [Ron’s] marrying himself to Trump. But the ad was not going to run without her approval, and they had to convince her to agree. There were direct conversations on this.”
Despite her initial protests, Casey finally relented. She understood that Trump’s power with the Republican base was at its peak. He could make political fortunes and end them, all in a single tweet. If Ron DeSantis was to continue on the promising political trajectory he and Casey had laid out, she knew she had to swallow her pride and play the part.
“She values winning and destiny way more than love, or hate, or however you want to say it,” the former campaign staffer said. “It was part of a winning strategy. [DeSantis] needed Trump in many ways, and Trumpism was winning Republican primaries at that point. Just look at how Adam Putnam begged to be accepted into Trump’s world even after Trump endorsed DeSantis.”
“That is him testing the political party that he says he’s going to lead” just “one year out from the election, to see what they will tolerate as an institution,” the MSNBC anchor explained Monday.
It means that “every single member of that party will now have to answer whether this is who they are, whether this is what they stand for, whether this is the cause of their party,” Maddow added.
Republican 2024 front-runner Trump and his allies have ramped up their extremist rhetoric in recent weeks with their reported plans to silence opponents and critics and carry out mass deportations if he wins back the White House.
“In real life,” Maddow noted, “a country under threat stands up for itself when the institutions that make up the civic and political life of the country stand up and say what they’re for and what they can no longer stand for.”
Seth Meyers on Monday pulled no punches with his commentary on former President Donald Trump’s reported plans to exact revenge against his critics and opponents and go all-in against immigration with raids and mass deportations if he wins back the White House in 2024.
The “Late Night” comedian first recorded a spoof clip pretending to suck up to the former president, telling Trump that, “I’ve always liked you” and thought he’s “handsome, strong and rich.”
Meyers then instructed his team to isolate the clip for the consumption of Trump, before revealing what he really thought.
“Fuck this dipshit. Racist doofus thinks he can swoop in and set up a dictatorship in 2024 despite having, like, nine sets of handcuffs on him,” he sniped.
Trump sometimes “dances on stage like a guy in a locker room who’s trying to towel off his ball sack,” added Meyers. But he “is very much planning on completing his authoritarian takeover if he wins in 2024 and it’s clear he’s got the support of the Republican party which has become a movement fundamentally opposed to democracy.”
The former president’s legal team on Friday filed in favor of allowing every spit and cough of the proceedings to be televised. But Vance, in her latest “Civil Discourse” newsletter, argued Trump was simply trying to make himself look the victim if the cameras are not permitted.
“It’s meant as a strategic measure to paint himself as martyr and the government as a Soviet-style prosecution,” she wrote. “He might even change course if it appeared the trial was going to be televised.”
“Trump wants to damage trust in the government and call this a kangaroo court — fine, let him have his way and let the sunlight into his trial,” she added. “Because the facts are the facts and the evidence is the evidence. People are entitled to the truth here.”
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan may now have the reason needed to allow cameras, thanks to Trump’s lawyers, said Vance.
“Federal courts have traditionally disallowed cameras out of concern for a defendant’s due process rights,” she explained. “Here, Trump has effectively mooted that argument. He has waived the argument on appeal. There is no reason, other than the existence of an outmoded rule, to prevent the public from observing this most important of trials.”
President Joe Biden’s campaign responded Saturday to a bombshell New York Timesreport detailing former president and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s proposed radical plans for immigration policy should he be re-elected in 2024. The campaign criticized Trump’s policy ambitions—which the Times reported would amount to an “assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history”—as “cruel and extreme.”
“Mass detention camps, attempts to deny children born here citizenship, uprooting families with mass deportations — this is the horrifying reality that awaits the American people if Donald Trump is allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again,” said Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa in a statement. “These extreme, racist, cruel policies dreamed up by him and his henchman Stephen Miller are meant to stoke fear and divide us, betting a scared and divided nation is how he wins this election.”
The NYT report, which drew on conversations with several close Trump advisors—including Stephen Miller, the architect of draconian immigration policies during Trump’s first term and an expected senior official in a future administration—revealed the ambitions of the nation’s 45th president to crack down spectacularly on immigration have only grown since leaving office.
“Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Miller vowed.
If re-elected, according to Miller, Trump would reinstate a version of the Muslim ban, which Biden reversed soon after assuming the presidency. He would revive the use of the emergency powers law known as Title 42, which allowed the U.S. to deny migrants the right to seek asylum on public health grounds. Trump would attempt to end DACA, which protects children who were brought to the U.S. illegally, as well as birthright citizenship, which guarantees citizenship to children born to undocumented parents.
A second Trump administration would seek to deport millions of undocumented immigrants every year with the help of federal troops, the Times reported. Perhaps most shocking, Trump’s plan is to detain undocumented immigrants in large camps as they wait to be deported. Miller said the camps would be built “on open land in Texas near the border.”
Many of the proposals detailed in the Times reporting would face significant financial, logistical, and, perhaps most importantly, legal hurdles. But Trump has the presumed advantage of a Supreme Court and federal appellate judiciary stacked with conservative judges he appointed during his first term, when federal courts stymied several of his immigration policies. The former president, moreover, is planning on redirecting money in the military budget toward deportations to circumvent congressional approval, Miller said.
And the sheer scale of the proposed changes—which Miller described as a “blitz”—is designed to overwhelm legal challenges. “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening,” Miller said.
The Times report comes as Trump continues to escalate his anti-immigrant rhetoric. “We’ll stop the invasion on our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” the former president said during a Veterans Day rally on Saturday in New Hampshire. During the speech, Trump vowed to “root out” what he called “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Republican who worked as an aide in Donald Trump’s White House, said on Sunday that she is terrified to think that the former president may once again serve in the Oval Office.
Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has recently been shown to be leading President Joe Biden in five out of the six key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, according to a New York Times & Siena College poll released last week. Multiple national polls also show the former president leading Biden.
Those survey results come despite Trump’s numerous legal troubles, as he faces a wave of indictments at both the state and federal levels. The former president has been sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, and indicted in four separate cases: two brought by special counsel Jack Smith at the federal level, one by the Manhattan district attorney, and another from prosecutors in Georgia. He has denied wrongdoing in all cases.
Farah Griffin, who served as Trump’s White House director of strategic communications, regularly shares her thoughts and criticism of the former president in her role as a co-host of The View. She also provides political commentary to various media outlets, and has been staunchly critical of Trump since he left the White House.
In a Sunday post to X, formerly Twitter, Farah Griffin shared her thoughts on Trump’s 2024 election bid after receiving a copy of ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Karl’s new book Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.
Got an advance copy of @jonkarl’s new book: Tired of Winning and it paints a scary picture of an increasingly isolated, unhinged Trump who is surrounded by those who won’t challenge him. It’s a must read. Terrifying to think he may be POTUS again.
“Got an advance copy of @jonkarl’s new book: Tired of Winning and it paints a scary picture of an increasingly isolated, unhinged Trump who is surrounded by those who won’t challenge him. It’s a must read. Terrifying to think he may be POTUS again,” Griffin wrote on X.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump and Farah Griffin via email for comment.
Former US president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves after speaking at a campaign rally in Claremont, New Hampshire, on November 11, 2023. Former Trump aide, Alyssa Farah Griffin, said on Sunday she is terrified to think Trump may be president again. JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images
Previously, Farah Griffin spoke to CNN‘s Jake Tapper in August about Trump’s election interference case in Georgia, suggesting that Trump may see declining poll numbers in the early months of 2024.
“The Trump team is worried about this series of events where they may have from January to March he could effectively be on two different trials. He’s benefited tremendously and remarkably from these indictments and the polls and in his fundraising,” the former Trump aide said.
“I think you’re going to see that decline in the new year though, campaigns are going to be in full swing, you’re going to come up on the Iowa caucus. He may not be able to attend events because of trial dates,” she said.
“I think he is very cognizant that could force him to lose a very critical election window ahead of actually determining who the nominee is, so he is worried about that.”
Meanwhile, Trump has previously taken aim at Farah Griffin. In a post to Truth Social in May he called his former aide a “sleazebag,” “loser” and a “backbencher,” after her comments about Trump’s appearance on a CNN town hall special.
Farah Griffin had said, “America got to see who he is last night: a ranting, raving lunatic.”
A number of other prominent Republicans are warning voters what it could mean for America if Trump does win in 2024.
“He represents a clear and present danger. He is a threat and I take him at his word. When a candidate says, ‘I am your retribution’ to his base, that’s not good for the rest of us. People need to get their heads out of their behinds when it comes to what that threat is,” Steele said.
“Donald made me the very first political prisoner held by this country for failing to waive a First Amendment constitutional right,” Cohen, who is a key witness in the trial, said in an MSNBC interview on All In With Chris Hayes. “Let me be very clear about something: I won’t be the last if in fact he gets into office.”
Trump and his allies say that the former president made the U.S. stronger, and that Biden has weakened the country’s standing in the world. The former president often accuses Biden and Democrats of “destroying” the country, and says the legal challenges he faces are all politically motivated.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Social media users, including two of his political rivals, mocked former President Donald Trump after videos circulated of him mixing up President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama during a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
Trump, the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination, gave a speech in Claremont, New Hampshire, on Saturday where his comments sparked criticism for appearing to be “confused” about who was currently in the White House. The Saturday gaffe comes just days after he was ridiculed online due to his remarks about North Korea in which he got the country’s population size wrong, by some margin.
While Trump did correctly identify Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán, whom he previously called the “leader of Turkey,” he then told the crowd of supporters that the Hungarian leader had pushed for Obama’s resignation a few weeks ago.
After praising Orbán as “very powerful,” Trump said, “They were interviewing him [Orbán] two weeks ago and they said, ‘What would you advise President Obama? The whole world seems to be exploding and imploding?’ And he said, ‘It’s very simple. He should immediately resign, and they should replace him with President Trump, who kept the world safe.’”
Former President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a campaign event on November 11, 2023 in Claremont, New Hampshire. Video shared on social media shows Trump say during the event that former president Barack Obama is in the White House rather than current President Joe Biden. Scott Eisen/Getty
Newsweek reached out via email on Saturday to representatives for Trump and Biden for comment.
Biden, the current president and Trump’s Democratic rival, is campaigning for a second term with Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Biden-Harris campaign has been highlighting Trump’s recent fumbles, which include misidentifying countries, not knowing what town he’s in and mispronouncing words, and pushing for the media to cover the MAGA leader’s gaffes like they do concerns about Biden’s age.
The issue of age has become a frequent talking point in the 2024 presidential race, whose likely contenders are 80-year-old Biden and 77-year-old Trump.
Both Biden and Trump have faced mounting mockery over a series of gaffes in recent months.
Trump faced online scrutiny in September after branding Biden “cognitively impaired” before saying the president could lead America into “World War II.”
Meanwhile, Biden was also criticized that same month after appearing to confuse the Congressional Black Caucus with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus at a gala dinner.
Shortly after Trump’s mix-up in New Hampshire, the Biden-Harris campaign team quickly mocked the former president on X, formerly Twitter.
BidenHQ, a Biden-Harris 2024 campaign account, posted a clip of Trump’s remarks while calling him “confused.”
“A confused Trump forgets who is currently president,” BidenHQ posted.
The campaign team of one of Trump’s GOP rivals for the White House, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also ridiculed the former president for the slip-up in a social media post.
DeSantisWarRoom, the X campaign account for DeSantis, mocked Trump for telling the crowd that he was “going off teleprompter” shortly before the gaffe.
“Trump announces he’s ‘going off teleprompter,’ then says Hungarian leader Viktor Orban is calling on Barack Obama to step down as President of the United States,” DeSantisWarRoom posted. “How many times has Trump forgotten who is in the White House this week?”
Trump announces he’s “going off teleprompter,” then says Hungarian leader Viktor Orban is calling on Barack Obama to step down as President of the United States.
Sit for a minute with these comments the GOP frontrunner for president has made on national television in recent days. “They’ve released the genie out of the box,” Donald Trump said in a Univision interview aired Thursday, referring to the four indictments he faces that he insists are attempts to interfere with his 2024 campaign. “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’”
“Now that he indicted me,” Trump said at a rally a day earlier of Joe Biden, who did not indict him, “we’re allowed to look at him…He did real bad things. We will restore law and order to our communities. And I will direct a completely overhauled [Department of Justice] to investigate every Marxist prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law.”
It is easy to overlook these kinds of pronouncements from the former president, given the frequency with which he makes them. But it’s also important to really take them in—to listen to his threats with fresh ears, as if you haven’t heard him say some version of them a thousand times before. Here is the frontrunner for the Republican nod—and possibly the presidency—vowing to use the government to go after political opponents. A second Trump term “would be the end of our country as we know it,” Hillary Clintonwarned in an appearance on the View Thursday, “and I don’t say that lightly.”
Clinton, of course, has long been the subject of Trump’s threats of political prosecution. “Lock her up!” was something of an unofficial slogan of his 2016 campaign—a rally refrain as ubiquitous as “Build the wall!” and “Drain the swamp!” and “Make America Great Again!” But it was never just about his 2016 opponent; “lock her up,” like other Trump catchphrases, was really more of a mnemonic—one he has repurposed in attacks on Biden, Anthony Fauci, and others who have been cast as villains in the MAGAverse. These authoritarian threats are not tit-for-tat responses to his own indictments, as he suggested this week. They’ve always been a central tenet of his movement.
Though this bluster is nothing new, it has taken on an even more menacing overtone recently: Trump, who is leading Biden in some recent polls, is running for a second term on an explicitly authoritarian platform—and allies like Stephen Miller are already plotting to clear the way for him to make good on his threats, to remove the roadblocks that kept his autocratic fantasies from being fully realized in his first term.
It’s possible to forget just how close he did come that first time around and to get desensitized to his repeated threats, praise for dictators, and other outrages. Which is why it’s so important to remain clear-eyed about the danger he represents. As Clinton warned, “Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Take him at his word.”
A McDonald’s customer completely lost his s**t and went on a wild rampage, trashing one of the chain restaurants in Maryland from a drive-thru window.
The bizarre incident was captured on video and posted to TikTok, showing the furious man standing outside his vehicle at the fast food joint in White Marsh, which is about 16 miles south of Baltimore. The patron is clearly hungry and unhappy with the service he’s getting.
Check out the clip … the man reaches in through the drive-up window and grabs several drink cups and tosses them while screaming, “Shut it down right now” and “Give me some food!”
He starts pointing at the employees — who are off-screen but shrieking in terror. Then he pushes a metal storage shelf lined with electronics and other items, watching it all come crashing down.
But he doesn’t stop there … the maniac continues to yell that he wants food, violently shaking the fallen shelf while demanding two bags of French fries in his view.
One of the workers hands him the bags of food, but the guy is still not satisfied and shouts some more until he finally slams the drive-through window shut and walks off.
During his tirade, the man also used some foul language, calling the staff a “b***h” and other names.
We’ve reached out to the Baltimore County Police Department to see if they’re investigating … so far no word back.
As far as we know, the irate customer is still on the loose.
Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky have said they’re separating, and we’ve learned they’re doing pretty much everything separately, including therapy.
Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … the estranged couple is not in marriage counseling or couple’s therapy. We’re told they’re both in individual therapy, but nothing together at the same time.
It seems strange on the surface … that they’re not working on the issues that have driven them to separate, but we’re told they are not. Multiple sources tell us … they just want space — to explore individually.
11/4/23
TMZ.com
Our sources also tell us there are still no talks whatsoever of divorcing … even though Kyle recently referenced their separation as a straight-up divorce, which was an apparent slip of the tongue.
One source in the know tells TMZ … “Look, they may get back together, but they may not. They just don’t know right now. They will decide at some point whether they stay married, but not now.”
As we reported, … there’s no prenup in place … so, with Mauricio’s $100M real estate net worth and Kyle’s ‘Real Housewives’ earnings, the division of their assets would really put some accountants and lawyers to work.
It seemed like we finally had proof of life outside planet Earth when a bizarre-looking creature washed up on the Western shores of Australia … but now we know what it is, and it’s a real shock.
The blob has the appropriate name — Coffin Ray — aka a Numbfish.
Get this … Mr. Ray produces a shock of more than 200 volts … it’s 20 times more powerful than the device divers use to shock sharks into retreat mode.
One of the folks who had a bad experience with a Coffin Ray compared it to touching an electric fence.
Although Coffin Rays don’t seem to like the U.S.A., divers say they’ve seen a bunch of them in the shallow waters of Australia, where they bury themselves in the sand.
Republican 2024 presidential contenders faced high stakes in the third primary debate, but some candidates fared better than others Wednesday night in Miami, Florida.
Candidates sparred over issues from federal spending, Ukraine and China in the showdown, which arrived roughly two months before the first votes of the election will be cast in the Iowa caucuses. Five candidates—former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; ex-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; South Carolina Senator Tim Scott; and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy—verbally wrangled on the stage.
The GOP race front-runner, however, was again a no-show. Former President Donald Trump, who continues to hold a substantial lead over his Republican rivals, skipped the debate, as he did the first two. He has pointed to his poll numbers as the reason for his snubbing of the debates. Trump’s absence left the other five qualifying candidates aiming to prove they deserve the GOP nomination.
Here’s an overview of who won and who lost on the big stage.
Republican presidential candidates on Wednesday attend the party’s third primary debate at the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida. Candidates sparred over issues from China to federal spending. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Winner: Israel
Israel emerged as a major victor during the debate. Candidates rallied behind the nation amid its war against Hamas, which on October 7 launched thousands of missiles into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Israel has since cut off food, water and electricity to Gaza, launching its own attacks, including a ground operation.
Candidates all voiced support for Israel, saying they would tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he has the right and responsibility to respond to the Hamas attack.
“The last thing we need to do is to tell Israel what to do. The only thing we should be doing is supporting them in eliminating Hamas,” Haley said.
Loser: Ukraine
Ukraine, however, emerged as a loser. Candidates, as in past debates, voiced disagreement over whether the United States should provide aid for Ukraine as it defends itself against the invasion from Russia. More traditional conservatives, such as Haley, have called for continued support, but more MAGA-aligned candidates have called for more limits on aid.
DeSantis said he would not send U.S. troops to Ukraine, while Scott said he disagreed with coupling aid to Israel and Ukraine, a move that Ukraine aid supporters hope would boost its chances of passing Congress.
Ramaswamy took a stronger stance against Ukraine, calling President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, “a Nazi.”
“[Ukraine] has celebrated a Nazi in its ranks, the comedian in cargo pants, a man called Zelensky,” he said.
Winner: Donald Trump
Moderators opened the debate by directly asking Trump’s rivals why they would make a better president than him. Candidates continued lines of attacks from previous debates—questioning why he is skipping the debate, and knocking him over the national debt.
But those attacks have not proven to be effective, as Trump withstood them following the second debate, after which his poll numbers continued to hold steady.
Loser: Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy sparked boos from the crowd over launching a personal attack against Haley. The former South Carolina governor has supported a ban on TikTok, a Chinese-owned app that has come under scrutiny for national security concerns. She criticized Ramaswamy for using the app to campaign, and he responded by saying that Haley’s daughter previously used the social media platform.
The remark elicited loud boos from the crowd, and Haley responded by calling him “scum.”
As with the other candidates, Ramaswamy was tough on border control, but moved beyond the pack by suggesting that America build a wall on the northern border with Canada as well the southern border. “We need to skate to where the puck is going,” Ramaswamy said, despite northern border encounters making up 5% of all Customs and Border Patrol encounters in September 2023.
Winner: Nikki Haley
Haley faced new attacks from DeSantis about her record on China, but largely turned his critiques back on him, raising concerns about his recent record on the matter.
Haley earned praise following the first two debates from analyst, who have said her past performances suggest she may be able to win over more moderate and independent voters. She held steady during Wednesday’s debate, drawing a contrast from other candidates on Ukraine and abortion, an issue that again proved difficult for Republicans in Tuesday night’s elections, which saw Republican defeats in Virginia’s legislative races and Kentucky’s gubernatorial race.
She also earned praise from social media users for her response to Ramaswamy’s attack on her daughter’s past use of TikTok, telling him, “Leave my daughter out of your voice.”
Losers: Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott
DeSantis and Scott entered the debate in different positions. DeSantis needed a breakout moment during the debate to prove he can go head-to-head against Trump, whose polling lead has only grown since the last debate. Scott, meanwhile needed a particularly strong performance after struggling in the polls.
Neither had any major slip-ups and remained steady, but they also lacked a major moment as they hope to boost their polling numbers.
Loser: TikTok
Republican candidates were united on banning social media app TikTok due to concerns that the Chinese government could access the personal data of American users. But the conversation extended past privacy to point to TikTok’s impact on young minds. “This is China trying to further divide the United States of America,” Christie said.
The idea of a TikTok ban resonates with many Americans. In a March 2023 study by the Pew Research Center showed supporters of a ban outnumber opponents of a ban by more than 2 to 1.
Winner: Debate Moderators
Holt, Welker and Hewitt faced a separate challenge—controlling the candidates. The second debate in October received backlash from viewers after allowing candidates to frequently disrupt each other.
Tonight’s moderators, however, took a different approach. Holt told the audience to “restrain” themselves when they erupted into thunderous applause early on in the debate.
“Let’s not go down this road,” he said.
Welker, meanwhile, took attack from Ramaswamy, who argued she should not be moderating the debate over conservative personalities such as Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson. However, she declined to engage in the attack, drawing praise on social media.
“Smart move by Lester and Kristen Welker not to take the bait and give Vivek the attention he wanted from his cheap stunt,” wrote journalist Matt Lewis.
Winner: Social Security … for Current Seniors
All of the candidates on stage were effusive in their support for Social Security entitlements and made clear that they didn’t want to impact any current recipients. “My mama and every other mama out there — I will protect your social security,” said Scott.
On the subject of keeping the program solvent, most evaded specific answers on whether the entitlement age should be raised.
Christie came out as a clear supporter of raising the retirement age “a few years” for Americans in their 30s and 40s, but doesn’t think new funding should come from tax increases. “We are already overtaxed in this country and we shouldn’t raise taxes,” he said.
Scott firmly said no to a raise on the retirement age. DeSantis seemed to lean away from a change to retirement age, noted that life expectancy is currently declining, so tethering entitlement dates to life expectancy doesn’t make sense.
Both Christie and Haley brought up limitations on benefits for the wealthy, with Christie specifically calling out Warren Buffett by name.
Ramaswamy was vague on solutions, but vowed to keep benefits for current seniors intact. When pushed for answers on entitlement reform for future generations, he responded “It’ll take a CEO from the next generation to do it.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
More fireworks between Vivek and Nikki … this after he attacked her family over their use of TikTok, which spurred her to tell him to keep her daughters’ names out of his mouth.
Vivek Ramaswamy came out swinging at the third Republican debate this week — but it wasn’t so much at his political rivals … instead, he took aim at the moderators.
The polarizing GOP candidate went on the offensive right out the gate Wednesday in Miami … this after one of the NBC moderators, Lester Holt, asked why he thought he should be the Republican nominee instead of Donald Trump … who’s still leading the pack by a lot.
Instead of answering the question directly, VR went on a rant bashing the party at large — this after some tough losses in national elections Tuesday — and called the GOP “losers.”
He blamed the GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel for that, but then turned his focus on Lester, Hugh Hewitt and Kristen Welker — all of whom were moderating … saying they didn’t deserve to be moderating this … and that Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk did.
Vivek calls out Nikki Haley: “Do you want a leader from a different generation or do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch heels?” pic.twitter.com/uNkF1U945Y
FWIW … Vivek’s done a lot of sit-downs with Tucker lately — and he seems to be a fan of JR and EM, too. Lester ended up cutting him short once it became clear he was just bashing.
Vivek did eventually go after the other candidates, though … including a shot at Nikki Haley — whom he characterized as a Dick Cheney-esque neo-con in “3-inch heels.” Low blow, indeed.
In Virginia, Democrats maintained control of the state Senate and flipped the House of Delegates. While one race remains uncalled, as of Wednesday afternoon, Democrats held a three-seat margin in both the Virginia House of Delegates and state Senate. The fear, ahead of Tuesday night, was that Republicans would win both chambers of the Virginia state legislature—gaining complete control of the state government and paving the way for Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s agenda. As I previously reported, Democrats in the state called on the national Democratic Party and the White House over the summer to pay greater attention to the Virginia elections, arguing that Youngkin, who has been propped up as a potential alternative to Trump in 2024, posed a real threat given his influence within the commonwealth and his fundraising chops. “I’m a little bit amazed that this isn’t a higher priority…at the White House,” Virginia senator Mark Warner, a Democrat, told VF in August.
Warner warned that Youngkin was not one to underestimate. Had Republicans won a trifecta on Tuesday night, the fear was that abortion access would be restricted, if not fully banned, as Youngkin has shifted his position on abortion from seeking a 15- to 20-week ban to saying he will sign “any bill…to protect life.” As Senator Tim Kaine put it to VF, “Make no mistake: If Republicans are successful in 2023, they will continue pushing their extreme agenda in 2024 and beyond.”
Democrats’ success on Tuesday night comes amid escalating fears surrounding Joe Biden’s reelection odds prompted by troubling polls in which Biden is shown trailing Donald Trump in key battleground states. But in the wake of the results, the Biden camp was zealous in their defense of the president’s agenda—specifically on reproductive rights.
“Tonight, Americans once again voted to protect their fundamental freedoms—and democracy won,” Biden said in a statement from the White House. “Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors and nurses for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.”
The statement continued, “This extreme and dangerous agenda is out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans. My administration will continue to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law once and for all.”
The elections across the country on Tuesday have been cast as a harbinger of whether or not Biden will win back the White House and which party will win the US House and Senate. For instance, in Ohio, the vote on Issue 1 has been tied tightly to Democratic senator Sherrod Brown’s reelection bid next year. Seen as one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection, Brown’s success or failure in 2024 could determine if Democrats hold on to their majority in the Senate—a majority that, albeit slim, could serve as a bulwark against a national abortion ban if Republicans win the House and Trump beats Biden.
Reproductive rights advocates are adamant that Republicans’ attacks on access will prove to be the party’s downfall in 2024. And according to public opinion polls, abortion continues to be a motivating issue for voters. A survey conducted by Impact Research of likely general election voters in 61 battleground congressional districts found that 64% of voters think abortion should be legal in all or some circumstances, according to data provided to VF. In contrast, just 6% think it should be completely illegal. Meanwhile, a majority of voters opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, and nearly 60% support a law that would protect abortion nationwide—including 47% who would strongly support such a law.
“We’ve said it before, and we will say it again: When abortion is on the ballot, reproductive freedom wins,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. “Despite every effort and every dollar spent to mislead the public, voters made it clear that when given the choice, the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies, lives, and futures will always prevail.”
As you’ve probably heard by now, a very scary poll released on Sunday shows Joe Biden losing the 2024 election to the four-timeindictedinsurrection enthusiastDonald Trump in five out of six major battleground states. That’s obviously a wildly disturbing prospect; it would be like asking someone if they’d like to catch a movie after work or have a rusty crowbar shoved up their ass, and then seeing them choosing the latter. But possibly even more surprising? How popular anti-vaxxer candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is among voters.
Yes, according to the results of the New York Times/Siena College poll, one quarter of 3,662 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin said they’d go for RFK Jr. in a hypothetical matchup between him, Biden, and Trump. And among voters under 45? He beats both the 45th and 46th presidents. The results are similar to a recently conducted national poll by Quinnipiac University, which saw the nephew of John F. Kennedy winning 38% of registered voters ages 18-34, compared to Biden’s 32% and Trump’s 27%.
Kennedy dropped out of the Democratic primary last month to announce an independent run. He’s probably best known, apart from his family, for saying stuff like “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and suggesting that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. (He is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist). In an interview over the summer with Vanity Fair’s Joe Hagan, Kennedy said it’s “obvious” that censorship is a “greater threat to the republic” than another January 6. “You could blow up the Capitol and we’d be okay if we have a First Amendment,” Kennedy declared. “Why are we hearing about the Capitol day after day after day after day and nobody’s talking about the First Amendment?”
While Republicans were initially thrilled about the prospect of RFK Jr. going up against Biden in a Democratic primary, they have since changedtheir tune, given the prospect of the independent taking votes away from Trump. Of course, with one year to go until the election, it’s impossible to predict what will happen, or if the Kennedy scion will turn out to hurt the incumbent. Which would obviously not be a great turn of events for democracy, humanity, etc.
Don’t look now, but the Supreme Court might—might!—do something good re: guns
>The Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared likely to uphold a federal statute disarming people who are subject to domestic-violence protective orders, signaling a reluctance to make that issue the next frontier in the court’s recent efforts to expand Second Amendment rights.
>Justices on both sides of the court’s ideological divide seemed to think the Constitution does not prohibit legislatures from restricting firearm possession to individuals who are found to be a danger. During oral arguments Tuesday morning, some of the justices suggested they did not have to go much further than that to decide the case at hand.
>Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, said the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit…had “profoundly erred” in finding that a federal law meant to protect victims of domestic abuse was unconstitutional. The law, Prelogar said, satisfies both the Constitution and “common sense.”
“Throughout our nation’s history, legislatures have disarmed those who have committed serious criminal conduct or whose access to guns poses a danger—for example, loyalists, rebels, minors, individuals with mental illness, felons, and drug addicts,” Prelogar told the court. There is “no historical evidence that those laws were thought to violate the right to keep and bear arms.”
Glenn Youngkin makes his position on reproductive rights clear
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Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she’s endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican, for president, because she doesn’t believe former President Donald Trump can win against President Joe Biden.
In a rare move for an Iowa governor, Reynolds endorsed DeSantis Monday. She had previously said she would stay neutral in the primary, as the state’s governors tend to do, but Reynolds told NBC on Monday that the race is too important for her to remain on the sidelines.
The winner of the Iowa caucus can get a decent momentum boost in the primary, but it’s hardly predictive of the eventual GOP nominee. Trump famously lost the 2016 Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) before ultimately clinching the nomination.
But the endorsement of a top Iowa Republican is still a major win for DeSantis, whose campaign has struggled to gain traction against Trump despite high hopes from Republicans early on — and despite Trump’s litany of legal issues.
“We have too much at stake. I truly believe [DeSantis] is the right person to get this country back on track,” Reynolds said.
DeSantis, a distant second to Trump in polling, has invested significant resources in winning Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, moving campaign staffers from Florida to Iowa ahead of the Jan. 15 contest.
Reynolds’ views on Trump’s chances notwithstanding, a New York Times/Siena College survey released Sunday showed Trump polling ahead of Biden in five key battleground states.
Reynolds’ relationship with DeSantis has angered Trump, who called her the nation’s “most unpopular governor” in a Truth Social rant following the endorsement. Reynolds said she hasn’t spoken recently with the former president.
“I assume it’s — well, I don’t know,” Reynolds said when asked about the status of their relationship. “I really can’t tell you. That’s probably a question for him.”
Seth Meyers on Monday was stunned by a new poll that showed voters in five key swing states voting for former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden in the 2024 election.
“He’s leading in the fucking polls again, by like a lot,” the “Late Night” comedian lamented. It inspired a new segment titled “Seth Stares Off Into The Distance And Mutters To Himself For A Second,” where he did exactly that with a drink and a smoke.
“Now, I know we are a full year away from the election and it’s natural and normal for people to express their frustration with the incumbent at this point in the calendar, the same thing happened with Obama too,” Meyers acknowledged later.
“So there’s no reason to panic,” he continued, before going into full-on panic mode: “On the other hand, we have to start fucking panicking now. We are fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked.”
“So, I guess this new poll makes Trump the front-runner not just for the GOP nomination but for the whole deal. Ha, yeah, I mean OK, what a world,” he added.
Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in five out of six major battleground states, according to a new New York Times/Siena poll published Sunday. The bleak news for the president comes exactly one year out from the 2024 election, as Trump continues to dominate the GOP primary despite facing four separate criminal indictments.
“On question after question, the public’s view of the president has plummeted over the course of his time in office,” wrote the Times’Nate Cohn in an analysis of the polling data. “The deterioration in Mr. Biden’s standing is broad, spanning virtually every demographic group, yet it yields an especially deep blow to his electoral support among young, Black and Hispanic voters, with Mr. Trump obtaining previously unimaginable levels of support with them.”
In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania—all of which Biden won in 2020—Trump is running ahead by three to 10 percentage points, with Trump’s lead larger in the Sun Belt states and slimmer in the northern industrial ones. Biden is only leading in Wisconsin, polling ahead by two points.
The president’s numbers were most underwater on the state of the economy, where voters’ approval has remained stubbornly low despite some encouraging economic indicators and the Biden campaign’s concerted effort to market “Bidenomics” to the electorate.
Voters surveyed said they trusted Trump’s handling of the economy by an over 20-point margin—the largest of any single issue. Voters also trusted Trump by double-digit margins on immigration, national security, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Biden outpaced Trump on abortion by nine points and on the more general question of “democracy” by three. Both issues were crucial to delivering the president’s party a surprisingly solid showing in the 2022 midterm elections.
Beyond specific policy issues, the poll shows voters souring on more personal questions of Biden’s age and temperament. The share of voters who think Biden does not have the mental fitness to be president has risen from 45 to 62 percent since 2020, while the number who believed the same about Trump actually decreased from 48 to 44 percent.
On the question of age, an overwhelming 71 percent of the electorate—including 54 percent of his supporters—said Biden was “too old” to govern effectively. By contrast, less than 20 percent of Trump supporters and 40 percent of the overall electorate see the former president, who is currently 77, as too old to govern.
With rare exceptions, Biden has largely avoided directly addressing the question of his age—he would be 86 at the end of a hypothetical second term—but the poll results indicate that voters’ concerns aren’t going away.
Additionally, the poll showed shallow levels of support for Biden among younger and more diverse voters, crucial Democratic constituencies. His lead among voters under 30 is just a single percentage point, and his lead among all nonwhite voters under 45—a group that voted for him by a 40-point margin in 2020—is just six points. “In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six,” The New York Timesreported.
The poll results aren’t entirely bad news for the Democratic Party, however. Asked whether they would support a “generic Democrat” over Trump in a hypothetical 2024 matchup, voters picked the Democrat by an eight-point margin. Asked a similar question in 2019, the Democrat only won by three. The result indicates that voters’ frustrations lie mainly with the president.
“Four years ago, Joe Biden was the electability candidate — the broadly appealing, moderate Democrat from Scranton who promised to win the white working-class voters who elected Donald J. Trump,” Cohn concluded. “There are few signs of that electoral strength today.”
Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson was booed at Saturday’s Florida Freedom Summit after saying there’s a “significant likelihood” that former President Donald Trump (R) will be convicted next year.
Trump faces four separate criminal indictments, with a total of 91 felony charges related to a hush money payment to a porn star, his handling of classified documents, his interference in the 2020 election, and his role in instigating the 2021 Capitol riot.
During the GOP summit, Hutchinson gave his prediction for the outcome of Trump’s Georgia, New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., trials.
“There is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense next year,” the former Arkansas governor told the crowd.
Hutchinson, a critic of the former president, has previously expressed doubts about Trump being able to take office if he wins the 2024 race for the White House. In August, he told CNN that he doesn’t expect Trump to win the GOP nomination and questioned his eligibility to run.
“I’m not even sure he’s qualified to be the next president,” Hutchinson said, referring to arguments that Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, make him ineligible to hold office.
Hutchinson was not the only person to receive a frosty reception at this week’s summit. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), another presidential candidate who has not shied away from slamming Trump, was met with boos and heckling. Someone in the audience yelled “Trump!” — prompting Christie to chastise the crowd, which appeared to be largely filled with Trump supporters.
“What a shock, you’re for Trump. I’m going to fall over dead,” Christie said. “Now look, every one of those boos, every one of those catcalls and every one of those yells will not solve one problem we face in this country.”
He added, “Your anger against the truth is reprehensible,” later slamming the crowd members for their “pettiness” and “fear” of the truth.
