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Tag: 2024 election

  • Biden To Join UAW Strike in Michigan as Trump Demands Union Endorsement

    Biden To Join UAW Strike in Michigan as Trump Demands Union Endorsement

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    President Joe Biden will be traveling to Michigan next week to meet with striking United Automobile Workers, he said on Friday afternoon.

    “Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create,” the president wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    The visit would likely make Biden the first sitting president to join a picket line in at least a century, The Washington Post reported. “This president takes seriously his role as the most pro-union president in history,” Seth Harris, a former top labor policy advisor to Biden, told The New York Times. “Sometimes that means breaking precedent.”

    The announcement came as the UAW expanded its work stoppage to 38 more locations nationwide. Auto workers have been striking at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis plants since September 15.

    UAW president Shaun Fain publicly invited Biden to the picket line earlier Friday morning. “We invite and encourage everyone who supports our cause to join us on the picket lines, from our friends and family all the way to the president of the United States,” Fain said in a speech streamed online.

    Unlike several other unions, Fain has declined to endorse the president’s re-election campaign, even as Biden has made soliciting support from labor a centerpiece of his 2024 bid. Last week, Fain told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that a UAW endorsement needs “to be earned” and that the union expects “actions, not words.” Fain reiterated the message after offering the invitation on Friday. “We’re going to make endorsements with people that are there for us, and that’s shown through your actions, not through words,” he said.

    The UAW and the Biden administration have been at odds this year over the White House’s investment in electric vehicle production, which requires fewer workers. When Biden announced a $9.2 billion loan to Ford in June, Fain accused him of “facilitating this corporate greed with taxpayer money” and failing to ensure that EV jobs are well-paid and unionized.

    Biden will visit one day before former president Donald Trump gives a primetime speech in Detroit instead of appearing at the second GOP debate. The former president has refused to pick sides in the labor dispute, and has said that Fain is “not doing a good job in representing his union.” But he has repeatedly argued that Biden’s electric car investments are hurting auto workers.

    “Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday night in response to Biden’s announced visit. “This wasn’t Biden’s idea, he can’t put two sentences together. It was the idea of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, & Communists who control him and who, in so doing, are DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY! Within 3 years, all of these cars will be made in China.”

    Trump added that if “UAW ‘leadership’ doesn’t ENDORSE me, and if I don’t win the Election, the Autoworkers are ‘toast.’”

    After Trump announced his Detroit speech last week, Fain told CNN that “every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • DeSantis Says Humanity ‘Safer Than Ever’ From Climate Change… Weeks After Major Hurricane

    DeSantis Says Humanity ‘Safer Than Ever’ From Climate Change… Weeks After Major Hurricane

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    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said humans are “safer than ever” from the threat of climate change, and he blasted the Biden administration’s effort to address the phenomenon as he unveiled an oil- and gas-first energy plan on Wednesday.

    DeSantis, who is vying for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, made the comments during a speech in Midland, Texas. He pledged to enact a slew of policies to roll back efforts to address climate change, including proposals to make electric vehicles more expensive, ramp up domestic production of fossil fuels and remove the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement.

    “We’ve seen a concerted effort to ramp up the fear when it comes to things like global warming and climate change,” he said Wednesday, claiming Democrats were trying to “circumscribe your ambitions.”

    “They are even telling our younger generations to have fewer children, or not to even have children, on the grounds that somehow children are going to make our climate and planet unlivable — and that’s wrong to say.”

    DeSantis’ comments come just weeks after a Category 3 hurricane slammed into Florida, bringing record-high floodwaters and warnings from scientists that climate change is fueling more dangerous and more frequent storms. The secretary-general of the United Nations warned this week that humanity has “opened the gates to hell” and that even under current commitments, has not done nearly enough to limit planet-warming emissions.

    The Florida governor seemed to reject scientists’ concern on Wednesday, saying that although the climate had “clearly” changed, his policies to increase energy production were in fact a “practical way to reduce global emissions.” Warnings about a future of climate-related disasters, he said, were merely “fear tactics.”

    “We deal with hurricanes in Florida,” the governor said. “We deal with fires, too, in Florida, but what I would say is when… Joe Biden says that he’s more worried, like in 10 years, with the climate than a nuclear war, I mean, I’m sorry, that’s just not true.”

    The lectern in front of the governor held a sign reading “$2 in 2025,” pointing to his campaign promise to lower gas prices to $2 a gallon should he be elected to the White House. The Biden campaign took umbrage with DeSantis’ attacks, calling his plans “deeply unserious and impractical” and “chock-full of the climate denialism that defines the MAGA Republican Party.”

    In an Aug. 30 satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Hurricane Idalia is shown over Florida and crossing into Georgia while Hurricane Franklin, to the right, moves along off the East Coast.

    NOAA via Associated Press

    “Voters need look no further than DeSantis’s own state — where his agenda is leading to skyrocketing energy costs for his constituents and natural disasters are causing tens of billions of dollars in damages — to know what DeSantis’s plan would mean for the country,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Biden’s reelection campaign, told The New York Times.

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  • Donald Trump, Notorious Bigot, Thinks His Legal Woes Are Endearing Him to Black Voters

    Donald Trump, Notorious Bigot, Thinks His Legal Woes Are Endearing Him to Black Voters

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    In the 2016 and 2020 elections, Donald Trump won a comically small percentage of the Black vote, with just 6% filling in the bubble next to his name the first time around and a similarly paltry 8% the second time. Obviously, there is not a section for comments on ballots, but if there were, the ones from many members of the Black community might as well have read, “Trump Sucks.” In 2024, though, the ex-president—a notorious bigot who tried to steal the last election by disenfranchising thousands of Black voters—thinks his fortunes are going to change. Why? Because according to the former guy, he and Black people now have something in common that they can bond over: They’re both victims of an unfair criminal justice system. 

    Yes, as Axios noted on Tuesday, Trump is “pushing his mug shot, arrests and criminal charges to try to claim new solidarity with Black voters…latch[ing] on to a narrative…that his arrests could boost his standing among African Americans who believe the criminal justice system is unfair.” Obviously, the criminal justice system is unfair, and it’s been deeply unfair to the Black community. Trump, on the other hand, has spent literal decades benefiting from a two-tiered justice system that let him escape any and all consequences for his actions, and he does not like that, suddenly, for the first time in his 77 years on earth, he’s being held accountable. Naturally he’s now trying to exploit the situation, and per Axios, “his team believes he can make inroads with Black voters by pushing an I-am-a-victim-just-like-you storyline.” For instance, earlier this month, Trump claimed in an interview that his poll numbers with Black voters “have gone up four and five times” since his Georgia mug shot was released, which CNN subsequently reported was not true at all. (While it’s true that Trump is polling historically higher with Black voters, it is absolutely not by four or five times.)

    Why might the Black community not want to vote for Trump in 2024, aside from his cynical attempt to claim his four indictments—for paying hush money to a porn star, allegedly mishandling classified documents, and attempting to overturn a free and fair election—have anything to do with their treatment by the criminal justice system? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that just a teeny, tiny list of examples of his long history of being a huge bigot toward Black people includes: 

    • Calling for the execution of five wrongly convicted Black and Latino teenagers;
    • Spearheading an entire movement around the lie that the country’s first Black president wasn’t born in the United States;
    • Telling four congresswoman of color to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” despite the fact that three quarters of those women “came from” the US;
    • Describing Baltimore, whose population is majority Black, as a “disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess” where “no human being” would “want to live”;
    • Pardoning a guy a US Department of Justice expert said oversaw the worst pattern of racial profiling by a law enforcement agency in US history;
    • Throwing an absolute shit fit over the removal of a statue of a Confederate general who thought Black people should be white people’s property, and insisting said general was one of the greatest military leaders of all time;
    • This anecdote from Maggie Haberman’s book, Confidence Man, via CNN: “In the late 1990s, after Trump divorced Marla Maples, he had a relationship with a model, Kara Young, who was the daughter of a Black mother and white father. Haberman writes that after meeting Young’s parents, Trump told her she had gotten her beauty from her mother and intelligence ‘from her dad, the white side.’ Trump laughed as he said it, Haberman writes. Young told him it wasn’t something to joke about.”

    Meanwhile, as Axios notes, Trump’s indictment in Fulton County “stem[s] from an alleged conspiracy in which Trump’s team sought to invalidate votes in heavily Black urban areas across the country after the election.” So, not exactly the friend to the Black community he claims to be.

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    Republicans have found their new Benghazi

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    Bess Levin

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  • ‘This Is A Mess’: Former Prosecutor Rips Trump Over New Classified Docs Bombshell

    ‘This Is A Mess’: Former Prosecutor Rips Trump Over New Classified Docs Bombshell

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    The aide, Molly Michael, told federal investigators the cards had visible classification markings and had been used during the former president’s administration to brief him on international matters, according to the report.

    “This is a mess,” former prosecutor Charles Coleman Jr., a legal analyst for MSNBC, responded to the development.

    “He wasn’t trying to recycle paper? He wasn’t trying to keep it green?” asked “The 11th Hour” anchor Stephanie Ruhle.

    “No, this is not someone who is a conservationist by any stretch,” Coleman Jr. replied.

    The report could doom Trump and “be used against him” because it would demonstrate his total contempt for U.S. national secrets, said Coleman Jr.

    Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

    Trump is charged under the Espionage Act with mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after leaving the White House. He has pleaded not guilty.

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  • The Media Is Giving Us 2016 Flashbacks

    The Media Is Giving Us 2016 Flashbacks

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    Seven years ago, a competent Democratic presidential candidate ran against someone who was largely considered to be a joke. Pundits and major media outlets criticized Hillary Clinton for being “overprepared” against Donald Trump while obsessing over a controversy stemming from her use of a private email server. The word “email” dominated the political discourse when there was plenty to say about Trump’s hostility toward democratic norms, his failed businesses, and his love of the Russian cutout WikiLeaks. Trump was treated as an amusing distraction and Clinton was treated as a fait accompli. But that was two impeachments, four indictments, one superseding indictment, and an armed insurrection ago. Surely, you’d think, the mainstream media has learned from its mistakes.

    And boy, would you be wrong. On Sunday, in a rare, hour-plus sit-down with the former president, NBC’s Kristen Welker proved once again that interviewing the 45th president is an impossible task—even for a sharp journalist like her. Sure, she may have fact-checked Trump’s lies in real time and peppered him with well-deserved criticism. But, as we’ve repeatedly seen in the past, good-faith pushback does nothing to stop the ex-president’s falsehoods. Like the house in a casino, Trump always wins—and the mainstream media just keeps making bets, seemingly desperate to turn 2024 into 2016.

    What is a bit different from the lead-up to 2016 is that Trump, despite his tumultuous absence from government, is now the de facto leader of the Republican Party. And for the most part, the GOP primary contest appears to be a pathetic competition for the vice presidency. (Chris Christie, at least, has the self-respect to openly condemn Trump.)

    As for the Democrats, well, the party has an incumbent president—which, in a normal world, would mean no chance of a primary. However, some in the mainstream media have bemoaned the lack of challengers to Joe Biden, even while expressing uncertainty around the idea. Jonathan Chait, in a piece arguing that Biden should be primaried, admitted that “there are four examples of incumbent presidents facing serious primary challengers, and none of those presidents went on to win reelection.” And David Ignatius, in calling for Biden to drop out, conceded that “right now, there’s no clear alternative to Biden—no screamingly obvious replacement waiting in the wings.”

    Then exactly why, you ask, should Biden drop out?

    Well, we’re told he’s too old. And while Biden may be two and a half years Trump’s senior, you wouldn’t know it by the looks of a recent AP-NORC poll, which noted that the president is “widely seen as too old for office”—even if “Trump has problems of his own.” Problems of his own? Is that the multiple indictments or the civil charges? Google searching “Is Biden too old?” bears countless results. Meanwhile, search “Trump is too old,” and you’ll get stories about Biden’s age. Which raises the question: How much does writing about something make it real in the eyes of the electorate? If Hillary lost the 2016 election to “but her emails,” could Biden lose 2024 to “but his age”?

    Age aside, you’ll also hear that Biden is still just plain old unpopular. A lot of this comes from editorials and “news analyses” that are based on polling. But if you’ll remember from November, it was polling that put Clinton ahead of Trump by one to seven percentage points in the popular vote. It was polling that told us there would be a “red wave” in 2022, whose nonexistence was summed up by the New York Times postmortem: “The skewed red-wave surveys polluted polling averages, which are relied upon by campaigns, donors, voters and the news media.” And it was polling that told us, even as far back as 1995, that Bob Dole would wipe the presidential floor with Bill Clinton. But nearly 30 years later, like Lucy and the football, we are yet again treating junk polls as gospel.

    Take, for example, a recent CNN poll, which consisted of 1,503 respondents who reflected “an oversample of…898 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.” This poll was used as the basis of a New York Times story, which proclaimed, “Party leaders have rallied behind the president’s re-election bid, but as one top Democratic strategist put it, ‘The voters don’t want this, and that’s in poll after poll after poll.’”

    Now, it’s worth asking how a poll like this even makes it into the paper of record. Well, it’s simple: Republicans work the refs. By pushing the narrative that the mainstream media is left-leaning, they prompt anxiety-induced overcorrections from the press, which is utterly paranoid about the appearance of bias. That’s why, as former top Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer writes, we end up with a situation where false equivalencies are used: “In a desperate attempt at balance, the media is equating Biden’s age with Donald Trump’s criminal behavior emanating from stealing classified documents and trying to overturn an election.”

    But the most effective way Republicans work the refs is by leveraging their own opinion-based news. Fox News, which effectively functions as the propaganda arm of the GOP, picks up stories that Republicans don’t like and tries to bully their authors—like Taylor Lorenz, Brandy Zadrozny, and Lauren Duca—into silence. Journalists of color are especially vulnerable: For example, Fox News’ website has more than 3,000 hits for “Joy Reid,” many of them involving supposed controversies like “Joy Reid admits she was ‘hesitant’ of COVID vaccine under Trump.” The goal here is clear: to remove the friction that Republican candidates face by silencing a Black female host with a highly rated prime-time show.

    This week, we can all expect Welker to go through the same media meat grinder for facing off with Trump. But to what end? Giving the public a “better understanding” of the terrifying autocrat we’ve all been watching for the past eight years? Trump, who has been lying for years about the last presidential election, no longer deserves to get the benefit of the doubt heading into the next one. And there is no reason for the media to give it to him.

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    Molly Jong-Fast

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  • Trump To Republicans: Abortion Bans With No Exceptions Are A Losing Strategy

    Trump To Republicans: Abortion Bans With No Exceptions Are A Losing Strategy

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    Donald Trump danced around the topic of reproductive rights in a new interview, saying that hard-line Republican demands on the issue are a losing strategy and falsely accusing Democrats of being in favor of abortions “after birth.”

    The former president tried to distance himself from the GOP’s most vehement opponents of abortion during a wide-ranging interview on this week’s episode of “Meet the Press,” where he said the idea of a federal abortion ban with “no exceptions” is unrealistic and unpopular.

    “I think the Republicans speak very inarticulately about this subject,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in the segment, which aired Sunday. “I watch some of them without the exceptions, et cetera, et cetera.”

    “Other than certain parts of the country, you can’t — you’re not going to win on this issue,” he said. “But you will win on this issue when you come up with the right number of weeks.”

    Trump did not suggest a specific number, and repeatedly accused Democrats of supporting abortions well into the third trimester of pregnancy or even “after birth.”

    In reality, late-term abortions are exceedingly rare. According to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than 1% of abortions happen after the 21-week mark.

    Although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis falsely claimed in July that “some liberal states actually have post-birth abortions,” researcher Dr. Katherine White debunked his claim with Politifact, telling the site there is “no such thing as a post-birth abortion.”

    When Welker asked Trump whether the issue should be decided at the federal or the state level, Trump said: “It could be state, or it could be federal. I don’t frankly care.”

    Former President Donald Trump speaks during the Pray Vote Stand summit in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15, 2023.

    ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS via Getty Images

    Trump seemed to suggest he could help Republicans and Democrats broker an agreement, telling Welker: “We’re going to agree to a number of weeks or months or however you want to define it.”

    “Both sides are going to come together and both sides — both sides, and this is a big statement — both sides will come together,” he said. “And for the first time in 52 years, you’ll have an issue that we can put behind us.”

    Trump also discussed his Republican presidential primary opponents and their approach to reproductive rights. He said DeSantis’ six-week abortion ban in Florida is “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake,” and claimed that he’d swayed former Vice President Mike Pence to soften his “no exceptions” stance on the issue.

    Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, ending federal protections for abortion, Republicans have been trying to contend with how they should handle the issue electorally in a post-Roe world.

    In April, Trump was chastised by the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes abortion rights, for suggesting the issue should be decided at the state level, a position that the group called “morally indefensible.”

    Trump responded by taking credit for the Supreme Court’s decision in last year’s landmark Dobbs v. Jackson case.

    “Republicans have been trying to get this done for 50 years, but were unable to do so,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told the New York Post. “President Trump, who is considered the most pro-life President in history, got it done.”

    Watch Trump’s full interview on “Meet the Press” and read the transcript here.

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  • Donald Trump’s GOP Rivals Try To Attract Social Conservatives In Iowa At An Event He Skipped

    Donald Trump’s GOP Rivals Try To Attract Social Conservatives In Iowa At An Event He Skipped

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    DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Hoping to cut into Donald Trump’s support at a major Iowa gathering of evangelical Christians, several of his top rivals on Saturday mostly avoided direct criticism of him on abortion and other issues key to social conservatives.

    The Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s annual banquet is traditionally a marquee event on the Republican primary calendar. But the former president skipped it, leaving a mostly muted crowd of more than 1,000 pastors and activists to instead hear from several candidates running far behind Trump.

    The primary field’s split on abortion was once again on display, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis saying restrictions on the procedure should be left to the stages — a position similar to Trump’s — while former Vice President Mike Pence referred to Trump as his “former running mate” and said he was wrong to oppose a national abortion ban.

    Republican presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence, right, shakes the hand of Faith & Freedom Coalition founder and chairman Ralph Reed before speaking at the organizations’ fall banquet, Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Bryon Houlgrave)

    While the audience was overwhelmingly anti-abortion, Pence’s push for a 15-week ban got only tepid applause, reflecting some national Republicans’ concerns that Democrats are winning on abortion rights issues after last year’s Supreme Court ruling overturning the Roe v. Wade decision.

    DeSantis, who has struggled to solidify himself as the GOP primary’s No. 2 behind Trump, declined to say he’d back a federal abortion ban. Instead, he said, states have done more on the issue.

    “Congress has really struggled to make an impact over the years,” DeSantis said.

    That’s similar to Trump, who recently has refused to back a federal ban, arguing that the issue should be left up to the states. The former president also has also previously cautioned top Republicans from championing abortion positions that are outside the political mainstream.

    Pence said he disagreed with Trump and argued all Republican presidential candidates should back a federal abortion ban at a minimum of 15 weeks of pregnancy.

    “I believe it’s an idea whose time has come,” Pence said. “We need to stand for the unborn all across America.”

    A Trump attack came from former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is a frequent critic of the former president. He said “there’s another candidate, that I respect, but who is not here tonight” before slamming Trump for saying he wants “to make both sides happy” on abortion.

    Hutchinson said that unlike Trump, “both sides aren’t going to like me. This is going to be a fight for life.”

    Unlike other high-profile events, no one in the audience booed that or any other comment Saturday. That might have been because Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, admonished the audience before things started: “Let’s conduct ourselves in a way that honors these candidates but honors our lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

    Those criticizing Trump didn’t agree on everything. Hutchinson suggested that a House Republican push to open an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden might be premature given the facts that have been uncovered so far. Pence said he supported that effort.

    The event featured many devout and well-connected social conservatives who can play a decisive role in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses in January. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz used strong appeals to evangelical Republicans to win the GOP’s 2016 caucuses.

    This time, however, Trump’s rivals face a much tougher task because he has built a large early GOP primary lead. The former president has also remained popular with evangelical Christians and social conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere who were delighted to see his three Supreme Court picks vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

    Saturday’s banquet is the last scheduled opportunity for a large group of Iowa evangelical conservatives have the chance to see the candidates side-by-side, meaning they won’t see Trump. He skipped similar events with crowds of thousands in Iowa in April and June.

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a longtime bachelor, was asked about reports that he has a girlfriend who hasn’t been publicly identified. On Saturday, he called her a “lovely Christian girl” and asked the crowd, “Can we just pray together for me?”

    He added, “I just say praise the living God,” seemingly joking about the Lord’s work in finally ensuring he has a girlfriend.

    DeSantis was asked specifically to talk about his personal faith and deeply held Catholic beliefs. He noted that when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, he was thankful for “the amount of prayers we received. It lifted my wife’s spirits up.” He said prayer was a key reason she was now cancer-free.

    Candidates discussing their personal faith has been a hallmark of successful Iowa caucus candidates for decades — including George W. Bush who in 1999 famously said, when asked to identify his favorite political philosopher, named Jesus Christ “because he changed my heart.”

    Robin Star of Waukee, just west of Des Moines, attended DeSantis’ address at the church and said she was glad the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — but that Trump doesn’t deserve all the credit. Star said she’d nonetheless vote for Trump if he’s the Republican nominee, but fears he cannot unify the Republican Party enough heading into the general election against Biden.

    “We’ve got to win,” Star said. “We’ve just got to win.”

    Her husband, Jerry Star, was more definitive, saying “I believe it’s time for new leadership.”

    A retired Air Force officer, Jerry Star said he was very supportive of most of Trump’s time in the White House until Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of the former president’s supporters overran the U.S. Capitol.

    “He did a heck of a job in his four years, but he knocked it all down that day,” he said. “It’s time for someone else.”

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  • Republicans Are Putting Democracy on Life Support

    Republicans Are Putting Democracy on Life Support

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    On Inside the Hive, host Brian Stelter discusses the Republican Party’s antidemocracy trajectory with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard professors and coauthors of the new book Tyranny of the Minority. The authors, who warned of backsliding in their acclaimed 2018 book, How Democracies Die, address Donald Trump and his GOP allies’ refusal to accept the 2020 election results, the violence of January 6, and ongoing threats.

    “When you don’t have a peaceful transition of power, an uncontested transition of power, that should really set off alarm bells, because most democracies, fully consolidated democracies, don’t have trouble with that kind of thing,” says Ziblatt. 

    “There must be something,” Ziblatt adds. “This is not just a blip. This is not just a kind of momentary detour. It could happen again in 2024, could happen again. And we need to try to understand why we’re vulnerable. We need to give ourselves a really hard look in the mirror and say, okay, what, what’s going on here? What’s happening in America that leaves us in this position?”

    In addition to issuing warnings, Levitsky and Ziblatt propose changes, from abolishing the Electoral College to placing limits on the tenure of Supreme Court justices, in hopes of keeping the United States on the path toward multiracial democracy.

    “Compared to other countries, we had a pretty progressive democratic constitution in 1789,” Levitsky says. “Other countries, over the course of 200-plus years, have gradually reformed their constitutions to make it more democratic. They expanded suffrage. In some cases, they eliminated or they weakened their senates or upper chambers. They established term limits on judiciaries. They created more, more majoritarian systems. And we did that too, to an extent…but we’ve done it a lot less than other democracies. And over the last half century, we just stopped. We stopped doing the work of making ourselves more democratic.”

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    Brian Stelter

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  • Retired Judge Explains Why Trump Is ‘Really Afraid’ Of Judge In Election Case

    Retired Judge Explains Why Trump Is ‘Really Afraid’ Of Judge In Election Case

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    Former California Superior Court Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, appearing on CNN’s “The Source” on Monday, argued it wasn’t really because they feared Chutkan would be impartial or unfair on Trump, which Trump’s team has argued because of the harsh sentences she’s already handed down to Jan. 6 rioters and for a comment she made about Trump remaining free.

    After all, Cordell noted, it would be a jury deciding Trump’s innocence or guilt.

    Instead, Cordell said Trump’s legal team was “really afraid” that “if he’s convicted, that she will be the sentencing judge, and they’ve seen how she has responded, to those, who have been convicted, of their involvement.”

    Cordell doubted Chutkan would recuse herself, however.

    “My view, given her history, already in this case, and other cases, she can absolutely be fair, in this case. So, they’re really grasping for straws,” she said in a video shared online by Mediaite.

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  • Georgia Sheriff Recalls ‘Heartbreaking’ Realization During Trump Booking

    Georgia Sheriff Recalls ‘Heartbreaking’ Realization During Trump Booking

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    “On a personal level, it was heartbreaking to see someone of that stature who represents our country in that fashion having to go through this,” Labat told CNN’s Erin Burnett in his first interview since Trump was booked last month at Fulton County Jail in the racketeering case over his alleged bid to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election result.

    Labat said Trump was “very stoic” and “pretty silent” as his mug shot and fingerprints were taken at the jail, which Labat oversees.

    Trump’s bond paperwork was “brought to the motorcade so that we could get him in and off the premises as quickly as possible,” Labat added.

    One thing stuck out to Labat, though.

    “Having been in law enforcement for 32 years, having been in a jail environment equally as long, it was eerily quiet when you have that many security protocols in place,” he said.

    Watch the full interview here:

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  • Trump Is Extremely Touchy About Voters Saying He Is Not “Mentally Up for the Job” of Being President

    Trump Is Extremely Touchy About Voters Saying He Is Not “Mentally Up for the Job” of Being President

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    Last week, The Wall Street Journal released a poll showing that 49% of registered voters believe that Donald Trump is not “mentally up for the job” of being president. How did the former guy take the news? We’ll give you two guesses, but you will definitely only need one.

    On Sunday, after apparently having gotten around to reading or having the article read to him, Trump raged on Truth Social that the whole thing was was clearly a plot on Journal owner Rupert Murdoch’s part to make Joe Biden look good. “In a phony and probably rigged Wall Street Journal poll, coming out of nowhere to softened the mental incompetence blow that is so obvious with Crooked Joe Biden, they ask about my age and mentality,” he wrote. “Where did that come from? A few years ago I was the only one to agree to a mental acuity test, & ACED IT. Now that the Globalists at Fox & the WSJ have failed to push their 3rd tier candidate to success, they do this. Well, I hereby challenge Rupert Murdoch & Sons, Biden, WSJ heads, to acuity tests!”

    So, just a few things to note: One, it’s pretty unlikely that Murdoch, whose properties were basically state-run TV when Trump was president—and whose New York Post leads the field in obsessive Hunter Biden coverage—wants to do Joe Biden any favors. Two, as others have noted, Trump has never taken a “mental acuity test”; he took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment in 2020, which is used to test for signs of dementia. (In other words, having “ACED IT” is not something to brag about.)

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    And then, of course, there’s the hilarious “challenge” to Murdoch, Murdoch’s sons, Biden, and various Wall Street Journal brass—the terms of which Trump stipulated in a second post, writing: “I will name the place and the test, and it will be a tough one. Nobody will come even close to me! We can also throw some physical activity into it. I just won the Senior Club Championship at a big golf club, with many very good players. To do so you need strength, accuracy, touch and, above all, mental toughness. Ask Bret Baier (Fox), a very good golfer.”

    Ah, yes, nothing says, I’m confident in my abilities, quite like, I determine the test and the ground rules. Also, “I just won the Senior Club Championship at a big golf club” sounds less impressive when you know he has a reputation for cheating at golf.

    Anyway, this challenge comes just a few months after Trump declared that everyone running for president should have to take a “mental competency test.” So we can probably expect the former guy to soon require any voters questioning his presidential potential to take an IQ test as well.

    If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

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    Bess Levin

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  • MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin Says 1 Republican To Blame For Latest ‘Ridiculous Farce’

    MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin Says 1 Republican To Blame For Latest ‘Ridiculous Farce’

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    Republicans could appear to be “on a different planet” right now with their warped priorities, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin suggested on Sunday.

    Instead of tackling a “bloated” and “urgent” to-do list on their return to Washington ― from debating additional funding to Ukraine to averting a government shutdown ― they are instead focused on impeaching President Joe Biden, he argued.

    And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is to blame after he “sold his soul” to far-right Republicans such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in his bid to become the speaker and now has to pay it back.

    “McCarthy enabled the rodeo but now doesn’t seem able to contain it,” said Mohyeldin.

    Watch Mohyeldin’s full analysis here:

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  • Trump and DeSantis Play Offense During Iowa Football Rivalry

    Trump and DeSantis Play Offense During Iowa Football Rivalry

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    The Iowa-Iowa State college football game wasn’t the only hotly contested rivalry on display in the Hawkeye state on Saturday, as former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made some defensive moves ahead of the first GOP primary in January 2024.

    Throughout the day, Trump “drew far more eager and excited onlookers who appeared unbothered that he faces criminal charges in four separate cases,” the Des Moines Register reported.

    But the former president’s reception wasn’t universally positive and met with audible boos and obscene gestures throughout the day, including a plane flying a “Where’s Melania?” banner. The flyover was a dig at Trump’s third wife, who is seldom seen with her husband and has reportedly rebuffed his multiple requests to join him on the campaign trail.

    Game day attendees were also met by two inflatable figures resembling Trump and Anthony Fauci, the former White House medical advisor, wielding an inflatable syringe to represent the COVID-19 vaccine. It’s unclear who sponsored the stunt, but in July, the Iowa political director of the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down super PAC oversaw an identical set of costumed characters who followed Trump to several campaign stops.

    On Saturday, Never Back Down released an ad designed to reach digital devices around the stadium that criticized the former president for allowing transgender women to compete in Miss America pageants and promised to “end the insanity.”

    While Trump took in the game in box seats, DeSantis watched in the stands with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who has appeared with DeSantis and his wife, Casey, numerous times. In July, DeSantis said he’d consider tapping Reynolds as his running mate, and is seeking to exploit a rift between the Iowa governor and Trump. Reynolds reportedly did not interact with Trump “in any way” on Saturday.

    The event comes as Trump dominates the GOP primary with seemingly little effort. A mid-August Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll showed the former president as the top choice of 42% of likely GOP Iowa caucusgoers. DeSantis notched less than half that number with 19%, and U.S. Senator Tim Scott came in third at 9%. Overall, Trump leads the primary field by nearly 40 points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s compilation of recent polls.

    In addition to Trump and DeSantis, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum attended game day events Saturday, to much less fanfare.

    Since the former president’s last visit to Iowa, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis hit Trump with his fourth criminal indictment and charged him with attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The multiple state and federal allegations have drained Trump’s campaign coffers, preventing him from funding the kinds of massive rallies that he so relished during previous races and forcing him to rely on events hosted by state Republican parties. His visit to Iowa Saturday was only his seventh during the campaign; DeSantis, by contrast, has claimed to have visited over half of Iowa’s 99 counties.

    DeSantis indirectly addressed Trump’s sprawling criminal indictments during the game. “Iowans don’t want the campaign to be about the past or to be about the candidates’ issues,” he told The New York Times. “They want it to be about their future and the future of this country. And that’s what I represent.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • The DeSantis Campaign Is Already Lowering Iowa Expectations: “A Strong Second-Place Showing”

    The DeSantis Campaign Is Already Lowering Iowa Expectations: “A Strong Second-Place Showing”

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    A floundering Ron DeSantis campaign is managing expectations for the Iowa caucuses set for January 2024. As polls continue to show former president Donald Trump as the first choice for most GOP primary voters in the Hawkeye State, a top DeSantis campaign official told Politico that the campaign is hoping for a “strong second-place finish.”

    “Our goal is to get this down to a two-person race on the ballot, especially as we head into South Carolina and beyond into March,” the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the campaign’s strategy, said. “A strong second-place showing gives us an opportunity to go in[to] New Hampshire and show success.”

    The comments come as the Florida governor is more than halfway through a tour of Iowa’s 99 counties. The itinerary has come to be known as the “full Grassley,” named for one of the state’s two senators, who has visited each of Iowa’s counties every year for four decades. DeSantis has reportedly recruited organizing chairs in every county. Trump, meanwhile, has visited the state a grand total of six times. Both candidates are in Des Moines for Saturday’s Iowa-Iowa State college football game.

    The DeSantis official’s expectation-setting lowers the bar from just a few weeks ago, when the head of DeSantis’s mammoth super PAC, Never Back Down, was predicting a big win in the first GOP primary. “Iowa is a real state for us because of its education — it’s a highly educated state — because of income, because of Bible reading,” Never Back Down lead strategist Jeff Roe told a gathering of donors before the August 23 GOP debate in Milwaukee. “[Donald Trump is] going to lose the first two states. We’re going to beat him in Iowa.” A post-debate poll of Iowa caucus-goers found a slight increase in DeSantis’s favorability, but still showed him 20 points behind the former president.

    As the campaign continues to fail to close the gap, Roe and the official DeSantis campaign are playing the blame game, Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman reported Friday. “Ron is telling everyone that the biggest mistake he ever made was hiring Jeff Roe,” a prominent Republican close to the campaign told Sherman.

    But Never Back Down is still blanketing Iowa, and is hosting DeSantis this weekend on a bus tour through the state. The PAC, which has set up five offices that employ 20 people in the state, is also sponsoring an air-wave blitz and door-knocking operation.

    DeSantis’s deputy campaign manager, David Polyansky, told Politico that the amount of DeSantis facetime Iowa voters will have gotten by January will pay dividends. “On caucus night, every Republican caucus goer will have had the chance to meet the governor and probably the first lady at least once, and that’s a big advantage,” he said.

    The campaign also hopes that Trump’s relative lack of presence in the state and his multi-tentacled state and federal legal issues will help close the gap by January. “I think that former President Trump is not coming and mobilizing the people who support him,” Iowa state Senate President Amy Sinclair, a DeSantis supporter, told NBC News on Friday. “Will they even show up to a caucus? I think he’s making a bad choice.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • Donald Trump’s First Post-Mugshot Rally Doesn’t Disappoint: “I’m Being Indicted For You”

    Donald Trump’s First Post-Mugshot Rally Doesn’t Disappoint: “I’m Being Indicted For You”

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    Facing a grand total of 91 charges across four criminal cases, former president Donald Trump was in South Dakota Friday for his first big event after having his mugshot taken in Georgia. “They’re just destroying our country,” Trump said to a crowd of about 7,000 gathered in Rapid City. “And if we don’t take it back — if we don’t take it back in ’24, I really believe we’re not going to have a country left.”

    “I’m being indicted for you,” Trump added. “That’s not part of the job description.”

    Trump spent parts of his rambling, 110-minute speech singling out competitors in the 2024 presidential race. “You know a guy who was very disloyal ’cause I got him elected, so I call him Ron DeSanctimonious,” he said, non-sequitur style, of his chief rival for the GOP nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. President Joe Biden, Trump’s likely counterpart in the general election, was both “grossly incompetent and very dangerous”—a puzzling combination of attributes—and “the most crooked president in history.”

    Trump bragged that he is the “only person in the history of politics who has been indicted whose poll numbers went up.” While it’s certainly true that Trump’s stranglehold on the GOP primary has only grown stronger in the last six months despite two federal indictments and two state indictments, polling about his criminal cases is more of a mixed bag. Most Americans believe the criminal cases brought against him are warranted, and Trump’s conduct in the criminal cases is rated far less favorably than that of Biden and DOJ officials.

    Trump was also in South Dakota Friday to accept the endorsement of the state’s governor, Kristi Noem, who has long been a staunch Trump ally. “I will do everything I can to help him win and save this country,” Noem said before the former president took the stage. She added that other GOP candidates, including Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, had been invited to Friday’s event, but “all of them told us that they had better things to do.” Noem’s endorsement makes her just one of a handful of the country’s 26 Republican governors who have endorsed so far.

    The early endorsement is stirring more speculation that Noem is angling to be Trump’s running mate. Several rally attendees sitting behind Trump held up Trump/Noem 2024 signs, and a Trump/Noem graphic momentarily appeared on the screen behind the stage during Noem’s address.

    Two Republican insiders familiar with Noem’s thinking told the Associated Press she planned the event to increase face-time with Trump as he considers potential running mate and cabinet picks. The clock is ticking for Noem, who will be term-limited in 2026 and is eyeing her next move to maintain prominence in the GOP.

    Trump continues to spend less time campaigning in early-voting states than most of his rivals, according to AP. But he will return to Iowa, the first state on the GOP nomination calendar, on Saturday to attend the college football game between Iowa and Iowa State.

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    Jack McCordick

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  • ‘Time To Move On’: Gavin Newsom Quiets Speculation About 2024 Presidential Run

    ‘Time To Move On’: Gavin Newsom Quiets Speculation About 2024 Presidential Run

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    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said it’s time for people to get past whether he’ll run for president in 2024. (You can check out his remarks in the clip below)

    The Democratic governor, in an interview with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd, pointed to Vice President Kamala Harris when asked why Americans shouldn’t consider him as a “likely candidate” if President Joe Biden later decides against running for a second term.

    “Well, I think the vice president is naturally the one lined up and the filing deadlines are quickly coming to pass and I think we need to move past this notion that he’s not going to run,” said Newsom in a clip shared to the “Today” show.

    The California governor has previously dismissed talk of challenging Biden or making a run at the White House despite speculation otherwise.

    Newsom’s remarks arrive after a newly-released CNN poll found 76% of Americans saying they’re “seriously concerned” that Biden’s age of 80 may negatively impact his ability to serve a full second term as president.

    Another poll recently shared in the Wall Street Journal saw 73% of registered voters describing Biden as “too old” to run for president.

    Biden joked about concerns over his age earlier this week, telling a Philadelphia crowd that “the only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom.”

    Newsom told Todd that Biden is going to run in 2024, adding that he’s “looking forward to getting him reelected.”

    “I think there’s been so much wallowing in the last few months and hand wringing in this respect. But we’re gearing up for the campaign. We’re looking forward to it,” he said.

    Todd proceeded to press the California governor, asking him what he’d tell donors who are “wallowing” in the matter.

    “Time to move on. Let’s go,” said Newsom.

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  • Chris Christie Slams ‘Coward’ Trump For ‘Ridiculous’ Meghan Markle Comments

    Chris Christie Slams ‘Coward’ Trump For ‘Ridiculous’ Meghan Markle Comments

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    “Look, he says so many ridiculous things,” Christie told CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday.

    “I think there is absolutely no interest in either Donald Trump or Meghan Markle debating about anything. And if people really want to have the real issues that are concerning their lives, like inflation, our role around the world, our troubled education system, crime and law and order in our cities debated, we need to have serious candidates on that [debate] stage.”

    “And the only thing I think that might draw an audience that even approaches that would be if you were to sit down with the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. They don’t like you much. Would you do that for the ratings?” Hewitt asked Trump.

    “Oh, if you want to set it up, let’s set it up. Let’s go do something. I’d love to debate her. I would love it. I disagree so much with what they’re doing,” replied Trump, who claimed the pair treated the late Queen Elizabeth II “with great disrespect.”

    The former New Jersey governor shared a clip from his interview with Bash on X (formerly Twitter), writing: “Donald Trump wants to debate Meghan Markle but not his opponents? What a joke. I’m sure they’d have a great debate on Spotify. Keep me on the stage for when the coward finally shows up to debate me.”

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  • Ron DeSantis’s 2024 Team Is Coming Apart at the Seams

    Ron DeSantis’s 2024 Team Is Coming Apart at the Seams

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    When Jeff Roe signed on as an adviser to the main pro–Ron DeSantis super PAC in March, it appeared that the Florida governor, fresh off a 19-point reelection victory, was the future of the Republican Party. Roe was the hottest operative in GOP politics, having steered Glenn Youngkin to an upset victory in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, and his decision to join the Never Back Down PAC was validation that DeSantis had the best chance to wrest the party’s 2024 nomination from Donald Trump. But six months later, DeSantis’s national poll numbers are down about 50%, and his struggling presidential bid is being buffeted by layoffs, infighting, and embarrassing leaks.

    According to sources, Roe and the DeSantis campaign are blaming each other for DeSantis’s faltering candidacy. In June, I reported that Roe had complained to people about how the campaign wasn’t getting more press coverage. “Trump defined the election conversation while DeSantis focused on policy,” a GOP operative said, explaining how DeSantis followed an outdated campaign playbook instead of giving GOP voters red meat. Sources say Roe was frustrated that DeSantis waited until early August to replace campaign manager Generra Peck. Peck is a talented operative who gained DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis’s support for having overseen the governor’s decisive 2022 reelection campaign. But she had never worked at the presidential level, and a source says Roe blamed her for overspending too early in the race. Peck declined to comment.

    Sources say Roe has also expressed frustration over the fact that DeSantis is relying so heavily on his wife for strategy advice. According to the GOP operative, Casey, a former local newscaster, told people that the Republican Party was ready to move on from Trump. The operative recalled the infamous campaign ad Casey tweeted last fall that showed black-and-white photos of her husband as a narrator intoned: “God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.” “We can revise that now. God chose Ron to get his ass kicked by Trump,” the operative said.

    Roe denied making disparaging comments about Casey DeSantis. “That is absolute flat bullshit,” Roe told me. “Even if I thought it, I wouldn’t say it. And I don’t think it.”

    After I spoke to Roe, a spokesperson for Never Back Down sent a statement from Never Back Down chairman Adam Laxalt: “There has literally been leaked audio of Jeff praising the first lady and saying what an asset she is to the campaign and the country. Anonymous sources saying otherwise are doing nothing more than waging a smear campaign against the effort to get Ron DeSantis elected president.”

    DeSantis, meanwhile, was reportedly angry after a firm associated with Never Back Down, and owned by Roe, posted an embarrassing debate strategy memo online just ahead of the first GOP debate last month. (Because of campaign finance rules, super PACs are barred from coordinating with campaigns. Posting the memo online might have been a way to communicate without running afoul of the law.) Among the memo’s condescending suggestions: DeSantis should “attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times”; “defend Donald Trump”; and “invoke a personal anecdote story about family, kids, Casey, showing emotion.” “The governor was furious when the memo was released,” a major donor to the super PAC and campaign told me. “He was apoplectic, as any candidate would be. It made him look like a puppet of Jeff’s, which is as far away from reality as possible.” A prominent Republican close to the DeSantis campaign said: “Ron is telling everyone that the biggest mistake he ever made was hiring Jeff Roe.” (It was the PAC that formally hired Roe while DeSantis was considering his run.)

    The Never Back Down spokesperson provided a statement from the PAC’s CEO, Chris Jankowski: “As we move past preseason and get closer to the Iowa caucus, our opponents are desperate to make up as many nonsensical process stories as they can. It won’t work. Along with Jeff and our senior leadership team, we will continue to build out the best operation in the field and fight for Ron and Casey DeSantis every day.”

    The DeSantis campaign pushed back against claims that Roe had badmouthed Casey DeSantis. “This is totally false,” communications director Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “We are thrilled with the work Never Back Down has done to create a historic multistate field program that no other campaign will come close to matching, provide robust paid media air cover to help introduce Ron DeSantis to voters in the early states, and help the governor to have already visited 53 of Iowa’s 99 counties through their special guest invitations.” Romeo added that “it’s no surprise anonymous sources who feel threatened by Ron DeSantis continue to try to smear him with lies in the corporate media.”

    It’s common for there to be tension between a presidential campaign and a super PAC. But the mistrust between the DeSantis campaign and its super PAC has reached dysfunctional levels. For example, a source close to Never Back Down accused Roe’s enemies inside the campaign of tipping off The New York Times to the campaign memo posted online.

    In recent days, Roe has been embroiled in more controversies. NBC News recently reported that Never Back Down had ended voter outreach efforts in Nevada and Super Tuesday states, a further sign that the Iowa caucus is make or break for DeSantis. Politico reported on leaked audio of Roe bragging to donors that Never Back Down was behind negative press about Vivek Ramaswamy. The New York Times obtained a recording of Roe begging donors for $50 million to shore up the super PAC’s funding. “It’s the fatal character flaw in Jeff Roe. He makes it all about Jeff Roe. There’s a lot of donor concern about the Roe-and-Jankowski–led super PAC,” the major donor to the super PAC and campaign told me.

    Embarrassing leaks are signs of a campaign in serious trouble. But in many ways, DeSantis’s travails shouldn’t be surprising. The case for his campaign hinged on the theory that the Republican base was abandoning Trump and looking for an alternative. But that didn’t happen. Trump’s enduring support, even amid four criminal indictments, has effectively put DeSantis in a box. He can’t attack Trump because that would alienate his supporters, but he can’t ignore him either. Furthermore, as I reported in my profile of DeSantis about a year ago, many former DeSantis staffers said the robotic and famously thin-skinned candidate would crash on the national stage. “DeSantis is a distressed stock,” a second GOP operative recently told me. “Reality is hitting. He is a bad candidate,” added a third operative.

    On Wednesday, Politico reported that many of the biggest donors to DeSantis’s gubernatorial reelection campaign are not financially backing his presidential bid or are also placing bets on other candidates. Roe told me that the path to the nomination remains wide open and that Never Back Down, which reported having nearly $97 million in the bank in its most recent filing, has the resources to stay in the fight. The PAC is also embarking on a $25 million ad blitz targeting Iowa and New Hampshire this month through October. “The campaign is doing great. He had a great debate performance. He handled the hurricane like he always does, with steady leadership,” Roe said. “We’re going to win.”

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    Gabriel Sherman

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  • Trump Hosts $100,000-A-Plate Fundraiser For Cash-Strapped Giuliani’s Legal Bills

    Trump Hosts $100,000-A-Plate Fundraiser For Cash-Strapped Giuliani’s Legal Bills

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump hosted a $100,000-a-plate fundraiser for disgraced former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Thursday night as Giuliani struggles to pay his mounting legal bills.

    Giuliani, a longtime Trump ally who also served as his lawyer, is facing a barrage of legal fees, fines, sanctions and damages related to his work helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election and other cases.

    He was indicted last month along with Trump and 17 others in Georgia for what Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has described as a wide-ranging conspiracy to subvert the will of the voters after Trump lost to Biden in 2020.

    Rudy Giuliani faces a barrage of legal fees, fines, sanctions and damages related to his work helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election and other cases.

    Giuliani’s son, Andrew, said in a radio interview Thursday morning that the event was expected to raise more than $1 million for his father and that Trump had committed to hosting a second event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida later in the fall or early winter.

    “So that will be very helpful,” he said on WABC radio. Still, he said, “It won’t be enough to get through this.”

    He has created a committee, the Giuliani Defense PAC, to raise funds for his father. Allies have also been soliciting checks for what they have called The Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund.

    Brian Tevis, who is representing Giuliani in Georgia, said on CNN Thursday night that he assumed the former mayor was trying to raise “as much as possible,” adding, “And I think that they’re going to need it.”

    Rudy Giuliani's booking photo in the Georgia election case.
    Rudy Giuliani’s booking photo in the Georgia election case.

    Giuliani was held liable last month by a federal judge in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud.

    A trial could result in Giuliani being ordered to pay significant damages to the women, in addition to the tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees he’s already being directed to pay.

    To generate cash, he’s hawked autographed 9/11 shirts and pitched sandals sold by election denier Mike Lindell. He’s also joined Cameo, a service where celebrities record short videos for profit.

    In July, he put his Manhattan apartment up for sale for $6.5 million.

    Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump, pictured in 1999.
    Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump, pictured in 1999.

    MATT CAMPBELL via Getty Images

    Last year, a judge threatened Giuliani with jail in a dispute over money owed to his third ex-wife. Giuliani said he was making progress paying the debt, which she said totaled more than $260,000.

    In May, a woman who says she worked for Giuliani sued him, alleging that he owed her nearly $2 million in unpaid wages and that he had coerced her into sex. Giuliani denied the allegations.

    His lawyers have repeatedly cited his financial troubles in court filings.

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  • Ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich Lists 9 Ways To Stop Trump From Winning

    Ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich Lists 9 Ways To Stop Trump From Winning

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    The stakes are “terrifyingly” high and the “polls are too close for comfort” in the 2024 election, Robert Reich warned in a new op-ed for The Guardian published Wednesday.

    The Clinton-era labor secretary listed nine things voters “need to do to stop” the likely GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, from winning back the White House and destroying American democracy.

    Reich acknowledged that President Joe Biden and his administration had to promote more his accomplishments and vision.

    But citizens must also “do everything” within their power ― such as countering lies with truth, not tolerating bigotry and hate and organizing people to vote instead of just demonstrating or wasting time commiserating with likeminded people ― to dump Trump.

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