A man was arrested outside former President Trump’s rally in Riverside County on Saturday and charged with illegal possession of a shotgun, handgun and high-capacity magazine, sheriff’s officials said.
Vem Miller, 49, of Las Vegas was arrested and booked at the John J. Benoit Detention Center in Indio on charges of possessing loaded firearms, Riverside County sheriff’s officials said in a news release.
Deputies found the guns and magazine after searching Miller’s black SUV at a checkpoint at Avenue 52 and Celebration Drive in Coachella about 5 p.m., authorities said.
The arrest “did not impact the safety of former President Trump or attendees of the event,” sheriff’s officials said. No other information about Miller or the incident was immediately available.
Trump narrowly avoided an assassination attempt in July at a rally in Butler, Pa. A bullet grazed his ear before snipers assigned to his Secret Service detail killed the gunman, Thomas Crooks, who had opened fire from the roof of a nearby building. A rally attendee, Corey Comperatore, was killed shielding his family from the gunfire.
In September, police arrested a man near Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. They suspect that Ryan Routh intended to shoot the former president with an SKS rifle while hiding in the shrubbery lining the golf club.
Prosecutors say Routh possessed a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump was expected to appear.
Routh is charged with attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, assaulting a federal officer), possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon, and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
With just 23 days left until election day and voters already casting ballots, former President Trump rallied supporters in the California desert while railing against the state’s Democratic leadership, notably his presidential rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump blasted California as having “the highest inflation, the highest taxes, the highest gas prices, the highest cost of living, the most regulations, the most expensive utilities, the most homelessness, the most crime, the most decay and the most illegal aliens.”
“Other than that, you’re doing quite well, actually,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let Kamala Harris do to America what she did to California.”
Trump painted California as a lawless, dystopian state, and at times correctly touched on the economic struggles faced by many residents. But his comments also were peppered with distortions and falsehoods, including his claim that California has brownouts and blackouts “every day,” presumably because of power shortages.
The former president spoke shortly after 5 p.m. on a polo field at Calhoun Ranch, just outside the city of Coachella, but supporters lined up hours earlier in the scorching desert heat to attend.
Trump stands before supporters at the rally at Calhoun Ranch.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
As they spent hours in temperatures that reached 100 degrees, they sought shade in the few spots they could, and large tanks of ice quickly emptied as attendees grabbed fistfuls of cubes to put under their hats or fill water bottles. Multiple medical emergencies occurred during the rally.
“Welcome to Trumpchella!” said state GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, one of the warm-up speakers for Trump.
Trump’s visit to the home state of Harris offers him another chance to bash the liberal policies of the Bay Area native as well as California itself — one of his favorite refrains on the campaign trail. Harris served as San Francisco’s district attorney before she was elected as California’s attorney general and to the U.S. Senate.
And the Coachella Valley, home to a thriving agricultural industry and a large population of Latino farmworkers, provides a backdrop for Trump to highlight the region’s water and agricultural needs, as well as immigration. Latinos constitute almost 98% of Coachella, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Deriding California as a “sanctuary state” for immigrants as he spoke to thousands of supporters, Trump said, “The people of California are not going to take it any longer.”
He repeatedly tied immigrants — many of whom, he said, come from “dungeons of the Third World” — to criminal activity, though studies show that immigrants commit crimes at lower levels than U.S.-born residents. He blasted Harris, whom President Biden tasked with addressing the root causes of immigration from three nations in Central America, as a failed “border czar.”
“Kamala Harris got you into this mess and only Trump will get you out of it,” he said.
Trump criticized California as being horribly mismanaged, primarily blaming Harris and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, especially when it comes to crime, the high cost of living and water policy. The former president also threatened to cut off federal disaster aid for the state’s devastating wildfires if California’s leaders don’t make more water available to farmers and homeowners.
“We’re going to take care of your water situation, force it down his throat, and we’ll say: Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have,” Trump said.
Donning his red “Make America Great Again” hat to guard against the beating desert sun, Trump encouraged the crowd to vote in large numbers, to make the election “too big to rig.” He has repeatedly denied losing the 2020 election. “They are good at one thing. Which one thing?” he asked the crowd. “Cheating!” the crowd roared back.
Trump also turned his ire against Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the front-runner in California’s U.S. Senate race who led a successful House impeachment of Trump, before the Senate acquitted him. Trump called him “one of the least attractive human beings” and insulted the size of Schiff’s neck and head.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) said that the “Coachella Valley is known for being a presidential playground,” noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaigned in the valley, former President Obama came to golf, and Presidents Ford and Eisenhower retired in the region. Still, he called Trump’s decision to visit Coachella — in one of the bluest states in the country — “baffling.”
Trump addresses the crowd Saturday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“We are familiar with having presidents come and leave a mark here, and we respect and love them. … But ex-President Trump is different,” Ruiz said on a call from Coachella Valley, where he was spending the day talking to reporters. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of respect for the demographics that live here — not just in his vile rhetoric but also in his policies.”
The rally venue is just outside the 41st Congressional District, where Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, is challenging Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who spoke at the rally. The race will be crucial in determining which party wins control of the House.
“Welcome Trump,” Calvert told the rally crowd. “Show him some sanity still exists in California, and it’s right here in Riverside County.”
Other speakers included Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, an ardent Trump ally, and Dennis Quaid, the actor who recently portrayed President Reagan in his namesake movie.
Mary and Pete Venegas drove more than an hour from their Hemet home to see Trump, for whom they both plan to vote for the first time in November.
Mary Venegas, a former Democrat who sat out the 2020 election because she was unenthusiastic about Biden, said Trump deserves “a second chance.” Wearing a red Trump T-shirt, she said she is now a registered Republican.
“He made me do it,” she said, laughing, as she poked her husband, who runs a construction and landscaping business and said he supports Trump because of his business acumen.
The visit marks Trump’s second trip to the Golden State in a month, after making a stop to talk to reporters at his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course in September sandwiched between two high-dollar fundraisers in Beverly Hills and the Bay Area.
California GOP strategists granted anonymity to discuss the former president’s motivation said it included the notion that he wanted to increase his share of the popular vote — and despite California’s Democratic tilt, it is home to more than 5 million registered Republicans.
Trump has announced that he will hold an Oct. 27 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, another deeply Democratic state.
At Saturday’s rally, mentions of Harris and Newsom from Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who was a delegate at the Republican National Committee, drew boos from the audience.
“The downfall of public safety in California began over a decade ago with Gavin Newsom’s policies, and ideas under the watch of Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris,” Bianco said, mentioning Proposition 47, a state ballot initiative that reduced certain thefts and crimes to misdemeanors.
Though Proposition 47 was put in place under Harris’ watch, she declined to wade into the political debate as attorney general. California voters will decide whether to roll back some of the 2014 measure when voting on Proposition 36 next month.
Trump held a rally in Aurora, Colo., on Friday — a state he lost by more than 13 points in 2020. He has falsely claimed that Aurora had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members. He also paid a visit Friday night to Nevada.
Trump acknowledges supporters’ cheers.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
During Saturday’s rally, Trump mentioned a new immigration policy, dubbed “Operation Aurora,” that he announced during Friday’s visit to expedite deportation of immigrant gang members. He also called for the death penalty for any immigrant who kills an American citizen or law enforcement officer, a proposal that drew chants of “USA!” from the audience.
On Thursday, while speaking at the Detroit Economic Club, he insulted the city and warned that the situation in Detroit foreshadowed what would happen to the nation if Harris is elected president.
“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s elected president,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let her do that to this country. We’re not gonna let it happen.”
Democrats in Michigan — one of the states likely to determine which party wins the White House — were apoplectic.
“Detroit is the epitome of ‘grit,’ defined by winners willing to get their hands dirty to build up their city and create their communities — something Donald Trump could never understand,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “So keep Detroit out of your mouth. And you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.”
Republicans from the state were stunned by Trump’s remarks as well.
“Michiganders haven’t been this proud of the city of Detroit since Henry Ford put the world on wheels. The Lions and Tigers are flying high, the city has come back to life, and in comes Donald Trump to crap all over that progress,” said an exasperated GOP strategist who reached out to a Times reporter after hearing the remarks, and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I think he shouldn’t be surprised when they reward his comments by giving Kamala Harris their votes. And it won’t just be Detroit residents. It will be hundreds of thousands of voters who are deeply proud of their city.”
Trump exits the stage after the rally.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Harris said Trump’s remarks about Detroit represent a trend.
“My opponent, Donald Trump, yet again, has trashed another great American city when he was in Detroit, which is just a further piece of evidence on a very long list of why he is unfit to be president of the United States,” Harris told reporters Thursday in Las Vegas.
Trump similarly criticized Milwaukee in a meeting with House Republicans shortly before the Republican National Convention was held there, in the battleground state of Wisconsin, earlier this year. He has also disparaged Philadelphia and Atlanta, both of which are in states that will determine which party wins the White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new poll finds neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump has a decisive edge with the public on the economy, turning an issue that was once a clear strength for Trump into the equivalent of a political jump ball.
The new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds about 4 in 10 registered voters say Trump would do a better job handling the economy, while a similar number say that about Harris.
The finding is a warning sign for Trump, who has tried to link Harris to President Joe Biden’s economic track record.
It suggests Harris may be escaping some of the president’s baggage on the issue, undercutting what was one of Trump’s major advantages.
Standing on his golf course less than a mile from the Rancho Palos Verdes landslide zone where hundreds of homes are without gas and electricity, former President Trump on Friday called his property “very solid” and called on the government to help the troubled city.
“It’s a very wealthy area, but you also have people living here that are elderly and have fixed incomes and have houses that are gonna be, ya know, shoved into the Pacific Ocean if something’s not done,” the former president said.
Trump spoke to reporters at a campaign-related news conference at his seaside Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, which he bought from bankrupted developers in 2002 after the 18th hole slid into the ocean.
The landslide-prone city is under a state of emergency issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom this month because of extreme land movement triggered by back-to-back rainy winters. Neighborhoods near the golf course are under a city-issued evacuation warning, with the land moving about nine to 12 inches a week.
Before he began his lengthy remarks at an outdoor lectern — the Pacific Ocean behind him with Catalina Island visible after the morning fog cleared — Trump invited Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank to speak.
“Obviously, I’m a tiny bit nervous. This is a very big deal,” Cruikshank said as he held a red “Make America Great Again” hat in his hands.
Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank holds a “Make America Great Again” hat while listening to former President Trump speak at a news conference at Trump National Golf Course on Friday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Cruikshank told the Times on Thursday that he had, for several days, been trying to get on the Republican presidential nominee’s schedule. He had hoped to talk to Trump about the landslide before the news conference and had not expected to speak.
At the lectern, Cruikshank pleaded for help for the city of 40,000 people.
“We believe we can solve the problem, but we really need the assistance of the state of California and the federal government,” he said. “We have solutions out there for that, but the problem is bigger than the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.”
Trump, who is actively pursuing long-held plans to build up to 23 homes on the property, has struggled over the years to get city approvals for development, in large part because of the area’s instability.
The original owners of the property, then called the Ocean Trails Golf Club, went bankrupt after the 18th hole fell into the Pacific during a 1999 landslide while the course was still under construction. Trump bought the property in 2002 for $27 million.
He brought up the club Friday while attacking the leaders of San Francisco, who he said have allowed the city to decline. Trump compared costs at his club with an infamous $1.7-million public toilet that opened this year in San Francisco.
“They built a toilet for $1.7 million, and it’s not even nice. I saw pictures of it. I built this whole thing for less than that,” he said, sweeping his hand in reference to his property.
As for landslides, Trump said they “are something that can be taken care of.”
“This area’s very solid,” he said of his property. “But if you go down, a couple miles down, you’ll see something that’s pretty amazing. The mountain is moving, and it can be stopped, but they need some help from the government. So, I hope they get the help.”
Trump did not indicate if he was referring to the state government or federal government.
City officials say the golf club is about a half-mile from the active slide area.
Trump repeatedly trashed the Golden State but praised his club, saying he never has to advertise because “it’s always loaded up with golfers” and is “one of the best courses in the world.”
He added: “I have the ocean. Pebble Beach has the bay. The ocean’s better than the bay.”
In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, President Biden cut short his weekend trip to Delaware and returned to Washington, D.C., preparing for a private law enforcement briefing. The White House confirmed Biden spoke with Trump by phone hours after the attack.”There’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick. It’s sick. It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country,” Biden said in an emergency briefing following the attack. “We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot condone this.”Meanwhile, a new video overnight showed Trump flanked by security as he landed in New Jersey to spend the night at his private golf club. Hours earlier, Trump had been speaking at a campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania when shots rang out. One bullet, according to the former president, pierced the upper part of his right ear. A bloodied Trump was surrounded by Secret Service and rushed to his SUV as he pumped his fist in the air. Law enforcement says at least one bystander was killed and another two were injured. The shooter was also killed.Condemnation for the attack crossed party lines in the immediate aftermath. The messages of concern also came with a mix of finger-pointing and accusations from some lawmakers blaming Biden for the attack, with at least one Republican calling for the criminal cases against Trump to be dropped.In all, lawmakers, including Democratic leadership, expressed a mix of shock and relief. “I am horrified by what happened at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania and relieved that former President Trump is safe,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “Political violence has no place in our country.”My thoughts and prayers are with former President Trump…I am thankful for the decisive law enforcement response,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote. “America is a democracy. Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.”Republicans also joined in.”All Americans are grateful that President Trump appears to be fine after a despicable attack on a peaceful rally,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote. “Violence has no place in our politics. We appreciate the swift work of the Secret Service and other law enforcement.”And from House Speaker Mike Johnson:”The House will conduct a full investigation of the tragic events today. The American people deserve to know the truth,” he said. “We will have Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other appropriate officials from DHS and the FBI appear for a hearing before our committees ASAP.”Republicans are vowing swift action in the aftermath of the attack. Overnight, Republican Rep. James Comer invited Director Cheatle to testify before the House Oversight Committee, claiming that “Americans demand answers.”Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Senator Josh Hawley also suggested the Senate hold similar hearings.
WASHINGTON —
In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump,
President Biden cut short his weekend trip to Delaware and returned to Washington, D.C., preparing for a private law enforcement briefing. The White House confirmed Biden spoke with Trump by phone hours after the attack.
“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence. It’s sick. It’s sick. It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country,” Biden said in an emergency briefing following the attack. “We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot condone this.”
Meanwhile, a new video overnight showed Trump flanked by security as he landed in New Jersey to spend the night at his private golf club.
Hours earlier, Trump had been speaking at a campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania when shots rang out. One bullet, according to the former president, pierced the upper part of his right ear. A bloodied Trump was surrounded by Secret Service and rushed to his SUV as he pumped his fist in the air. Law enforcement says at least one bystander was killed and another two were injured. The shooter was also killed.
Condemnation for the attack crossed party lines in the immediate aftermath.
The messages of concern also came with a mix of finger-pointing and accusations from some lawmakers blaming Biden for the attack, with at least one Republican calling for the criminal cases against Trump to be dropped.
In all, lawmakers, including Democratic leadership, expressed a mix of shock and relief.
“I am horrified by what happened at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania and relieved that former President Trump is safe,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “Political violence has no place in our country.
“My thoughts and prayers are with former President Trump…I am thankful for the decisive law enforcement response,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote. “America is a democracy. Political violence of any kind is never acceptable.”
Republicans also joined in.
“All Americans are grateful that President Trump appears to be fine after a despicable attack on a peaceful rally,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote. “Violence has no place in our politics. We appreciate the swift work of the Secret Service and other law enforcement.”
And from House Speaker Mike Johnson:
“The House will conduct a full investigation of the tragic events today. The American people deserve to know the truth,” he said. “We will have Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other appropriate officials from DHS and the FBI appear for a hearing before our committees ASAP.”
Republicans are vowing swift action in the aftermath of the attack. Overnight, Republican Rep. James Comer invited Director Cheatle to testify before the House Oversight Committee, claiming that “Americans demand answers.”
Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Senator Josh Hawley also suggested the Senate hold similar hearings.
That’s my take after watching the presidential debate, but I didn’t watch alone. I enlisted three experts on aging to share their observations. I was focused on a single question while watching President Biden debate former President Trump. At their advanced ages — Biden at 81, Trump at 78 — is either up to the task of running the country?
This has been a hot topic for months, with many people convinced that Biden has lost his mental sharpness. (Not that Trump’s mental state hasn’t come into question.) I asked my three experts not to do a political analysis, or to make a medical diagnosis, because as I’ve written more than once, that’s a complicated process that can’t be performed from a distance.
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
What I wanted was their take on command, coherence, competence, composure, reason and skills of communication and articulation. Aging takes a toll, physical and mental, but you can be an old 60-year-old and a young 85-year-old because everyone ages differently.
Biden froze up early on. He failed to come up with a word he was fumbling for while speaking about the national debt, and he looked lost.
One of my experts, Dr. Zaldy Tan, director of the Memory and Aging Program at Cedars-Sinai, emailed to say a televised debate can be like a “cognitive stress test” and is “bound to bring about subtle, albeit normal, age-related changes in one’s mental agility.”
It seemed to me, however, that with a scratchy, weak voice and a sometimes-vacant look in his eyes, Biden might be in trouble.
He and Trump both seemed pretty agile though during one exchange in which they took off the gloves and went bare-knuckle.
“You have the morals of an alley cat,” Biden said, staring down his foe while listing a few of Trump’s many transgressions.
“I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” Trump insisted, and if there’s a political campaign button with that claim on it, I’d like to buy a bushel of them.
The candidates took turns accusing each other of being criminals, which made me think back on another low point in American politics, when Richard Nixon insisted, as his presidency was in flames, “I am not a crook.”
Former President Trump and President Biden took turns accusing each other of being criminals during the debate.
(Gerald Herbert / Associated Press)
Another of my debate watchers was Dr. Myron Shapero, an urgent care physician in Beverly Hills. I wanted his perspective because he’s older than either Biden or Trump by a good stretch. Shapero is 90, and he thought Biden did not have a good night.
“I think it’s obvious that Biden is not Biden anymore,” said Shapero. “What Trump needed was someone sharp, sure, strong, who could counterpunch … and Joe always had that capacity.” On Thursday, “he didn’t have it.”
Shapero said the word that came to mind, as the night wore on and he studied Biden’s performance, was “flustered.”
“It’s the aging process, and everyone handles it differently,” said Shapero. “He was vacant. He was not fully present, and it was painful to see.”
Dr. Tan was more forgiving in his assessment.
“Besides the speech impediment,” he said, referencing a longtime Biden affliction, “it is possible that he experienced mind wandering, more commonly referred to as losing one’s train of thought. The tendency to mind wander increases with higher stress levels, sleep deprivation and taking certain medications.”
Caroline Cicero, an associate professor in the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at USC, said she saw a sitting president who was not at his best.
“Viewers surely noticed that President Biden did not command confidence in his performance,” Cicero said. “His blank stares left me wondering if his strategy was not to react and to stay stone-faced, so that he didn’t appear to be a grumpy old man.”
Cicero said she wondered why Biden at times did not respond “more directly” to Trump attacks. “Reaction times do slow with age,” she said.
Tanzella Young, left, Crystal Blakley and Jason Sanford watch the presidential debate at the M Lounge in the South Loop neighborhood of Chicago.
(Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press)
Early in the debate, when Biden trailed off, Trump said: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
Trump went in for the kill, as Dr. Shapero saw it.
“Smelling blood made him nastier and more pathological,” Shapero said. “I feel that substance-wise, [Trump] was filled with lies, but stylistically, I think he came off stronger because he was less maniacal” than he usually is.
One can ask whether Trump, a man aggressively removed from truth and civility, is fit for office. And Biden scored some points in exposing his opponent’s many barnacles, including the fact that he’s a convicted felon.
But what I saw in Biden was a decent man and career public servant who is past his prime.
What I saw in Trump was the usual boast and bluster, with no apparent ability or desire to control his own worst instincts.
They ended the debate arguing about who had the better golf handicap.
President Biden raised millions of dollars for his reelection bid in Silicon Valley on Friday as he poked at former President Trump and argued that his campaign was being underestimated.
“The press doesn’t want to write about it, but the momentum is clearly in our favor, with polls moving toward us and away from Trump,” he said, noting that 1.6 million people have donated to the campaign, nearly all less than $200 each. He said his campaign has opened 150 offices in battleground states “and Trump has opened zero offices. And it’s not just because he’s on trial.”
California donors bankroll presidential campaigns on both sides of the aisle, and Biden and Trump have both raised more in the state for their reelection bids than anywhere else, according to the Federal Election Commission. The president is expected to return to Southern California for a fundraiser in June.
Biden’s Friday trip to California was his first since a February fundraiser at the Beverly Park estate of media mogul Haim Saban. The Israeli American billionaire prompted scrutiny this week because of an email he sent to senior Biden aides criticizing the administration’s decision to put a shipment of weapons to Israel on hold because they could be used in an offensive against a densely populated city in southern Gaza.
Biden encountered protesters on both sides of the issue in the Bay Area, as well as in Seattle, where he flew after the California visit. As the president’s motorcade drove to a Palo Alto fundraiser hosted by Marissa Mayer, the former chief executive of Yahoo, it encountered people holding Palestinian flags and signs that said “Defund Israel” as well as another group waving Israeli flags.
Biden did not address the issue at three fundraisers in California and Washington on Friday, including the event hosted by Mayer, where tickets cost up to $50,000, according to the news website Puck. An earlier fundraiser Biden headlined at the Portola Valley home of Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, cost up to $100,000. The two events were expected to raise $4 million.
California First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom attended the Mayer event. Biden called the two women a source of inspiration and noted his efforts to create a diverse administration. “These two ladies here in my view — and I mean this sincerely — are emblematic of how America is changing,” the president said. “They’re incredibly competent and they’re incredibly capable and they’re changing the whole emotion of what constitutes success and what can be done.”
Silicon Valley has grown into a fundraising juggernaut for political candidates and overwhelmingly favors Democrats.
In the 2024 presidential election, Biden and associated groups backing his campaign have raised $17.1 million from the communications and electronics industry, which includes tech companies, according to an analysis of FEC data released April 22 by the nonpartisan nonprofit Open Secrets, which tracks electoral finances. Trump has raised $1.7 million.
Trump did receive the backing of some notable tech leaders in his successful 2016 campaign, such as billionaire Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder who made history that year who said from the podium of the Republican National Convention that he is gay before Trump was nominated as the GOP candidate.
Thiel and some other tech leaders backed away from Trump after the tumult of his presidency and in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that attempted to halt the certification of the 2020 election results.
In the 2024 Republican primary, some backed other GOP candidates but have reportedly returned to the fold since Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee.
“President Trump is building a historic and unified political movement to make America great again, receiving more than 90% approval from Republican voters, winning Independents by double digits, and picking up historic gains with longtime Democrat constituencies,” campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“Anyone who believes in securing the border, rebuilding the economy, restoring American energy dominance, and ending the wars Joe Biden has created around the world is welcome to join President Trump’s movement to make America great again,” Leavitt said.
National GOP leaders predicted Biden would lose in November dispute his fundraising prowess.
“Everyone is worse off under Joe Biden, but instead of correcting his failed Bidenomics agenda or securing the border, Biden is rubbing elbows with donors to save his flailing campaign,” Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement. “It won’t work — voters know that Biden is wrong on the issues, and they’ll vote President Trump back in to the White House on November 5.”
First Lady Jill Biden was also in California raising money for her husband’s reelection campaign — in Marin County on Thursday and in Beverly Hills on Friday at the home of John Emerson, the U.S. ambassador to Germany under President Obama, and Kimberly Marteau Emerson, the spokesperson for the U.S. Information Agency under President Clinton.
The event raised more than $450,000, John Emerson told attendees, who included media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-chair of Biden’s reelection campaign.
After recounting how Biden proposed marriage five times, Jill Biden laced into Trump.
“Donald Trump is dangerous to our families and to our country,” she said. “We are the first generation in half a century to give our daughters a country with fewer rights than we had. We simply cannot let him win.”
The president, speaking in Portola Valley, repeated jokes he has previously made about the former president.
“Not everyone is feeling the enthusiasm these days. The other day this guy walked up, said I’m in real trouble, short on cash, I don’t know what to do. I said, ‘Donald, I can’t help you,’” Biden said.
NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors have urged a judge to start Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial April 15, saying defense requests for further delays or dismissal of the case because of a last-minute evidence dump are a “red herring.”
Prosecutors said Thursday the majority of evidence the Republican ex-president’s lawyers received recently was “entirely immaterial, duplicative or substantially duplicative” of evidence they’d already been given.
Judge Juan M. Merchan last week postponed the trial’s start from this coming Monday until mid-April after Trump’s lawyers complained the late arrival of evidence from a previous federal investigation was hindering their preparations.
The judge will hold a hearing to address the evidence issue.
FILE – Former President Donald Trump leaves Manhattan criminal court, Feb. 15, 2024, in New York. Prosecutors said Thursday, March 14, that they’re open to delaying the start of Trump’s New York hush-money criminal trial to give the former president’s lawyers time to review evidence that was only recently turned over. Jury selection in the trial is scheduled to begin March 25. The judge has yet to rule on the request. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The infamous “Access Hollywood” video in which Donald Trump bragged about grabbing women sexually without asking permission will not be shown to jurors at the former president’s hush-money criminal trial, a New York judge ruled Monday.
Judge Juan M. Merchan said prosecutors can still question witnesses about the tape, which was made public in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 White House campaign. But “it is not necessary that the tape itself be introduced into evidence or that it be played for the jury,” the judge said.
Merchan issued rulings on the “Access Hollywood” tape and other issues even after deciding last Friday to postpone the trial until at least mid-April to deal with a last-minute evidence dump that Trump’s lawyers said has hampered their ability to prepare their defense.
Merchan scheduled a hearing for March 25, the trial’s original start date, to address that issue.
Trump’s lawyers complained that they only recently started receiving more than 100,000 pages of documents from a previous federal investigation into the matter. They’ve asked for a three-month delay and for the case to be thrown out.
The hush money case centers on allegations that Trump falsified his company’s records to hide the true nature of payments to his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, who paid porn actor Stormy Daniels $130,000 during the 2016 presidential campaign to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and has denied having a sexual encounter with Daniels. His lawyers argue the payments to Cohen were legitimate legal expenses and were not part of any cover-up.
In other rulings Monday, Merchan denied a defense bid to bar Cohen, Daniels and other key prosecution witnesses from testifying.
He also again rejected the defense’s request that prosecutors be barred from arguing that Trump was seeking to improperly influence the 2016 election with the alleged hush-money scheme or that the National Enquirer supermarket tabloid aided in suppressing negative stories about him in a practice known as “catch and kill.”
Prosecutors contend the release of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” footage, followed by a flurry of women coming forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault, hastened his efforts to keep negative stories out of the press, leading to the hush-money arrangement with Daniels.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the “Access Hollywood” video “contains inflammatory and unduly prejudicial evidence that has no place at this trial about documents and accounting practices.”
Merchan said he would reconsider allowing prosecutors to show the tape if Trump’s lawyers were to “open the door” during the trial.
The judge said he would rule later, after further study, on the prosecution’s request to present evidence about the sexual assault allegations that surfaced after the tape was made public.
Before he rules, Merchan said prosecutors will be required to make additional arguments about the evidence’s admissibility so he can better analyze it pursuant to rules governing testimony about so-called “prior bad acts.”
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York judge ruled Friday against Donald Trump, imposing a $364 million penalty over what the judge ruled was a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated the former president’s wealth.
Trump also was barred from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years.
Judge Arthur Engoron issued his decision after a 2½-month trial that saw the Republican presidential front-runner bristling under oath that he was the victim of a rigged legal system.
The stiff penalty was a victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, who sued Trump over what she said was not just harmless bragging but years of deceptive practices as he built the multinational collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that catapulted him to wealth, fame and the White House.
Trump’s lawyers had said even before the verdict that they would appeal.
James sued Trump in 2022 under a state law that authorizes her to investigate persistent fraud in business dealings.
The suit accused Trump and his co-defendants of routinely puffing up his financial statements to create an illusion his properties were more valuable than they really were. State lawyers said Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion one year.
By making himself seem richer, Trump qualified for better loan terms, saved on interest and was able to complete projects he might otherwise not have finished, state lawyers said.
Even before the trial began, Engoron ruled that James had proven Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent. The judge ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. An appeals court put that decision on hold.
In that earlier ruling, the judge found that, among other tricks, Trump’s financial statements had wrongly claimed his Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size and overvalued his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, based on the idea that the property could be developed for residential use, even though he had surrendered rights to develop it for any uses but a club.
Trump, one of 40 witnesses to testify at the trial, said his financial statements actually understated his net worth and that banks did their own research and were happy with his business.
“There was no victim. There was no anything,” Trump testified in November.
During the trial, Trump called the judge “extremely hostile” and the attorney general “a political hack.” In a six-minute diatribe during closing arguments in January, Trump proclaimed “I am an innocent man” and called the case a “fraud on me.”
Trump and his lawyers have said the outside accountants that helped prepare the statements should’ve flagged any discrepancies and that the documents came with disclaimers that shielded him from liability. They also argued that some of the allegations were barred by the statute of limitations.
The suit is one of many legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns for a return to the White House. He has been indicted four times in the last year — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels on his behalf.
On Thursday, a judge confirmed Trump’s hush-money trial will start on March 25 and a judge in Atlanta heard arguments on whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his Georgia election interference case because she had a personal relationship with a special prosecutor she hired.
Those criminal accusations haven’t appeared to undermine his march toward the Republican presidential nomination, but civil litigation has threatened him financially.
On Jan. 26, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. That’s on top of the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll in a related trial last year.
In 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud and fined $1.6 million in an unrelated criminal case for helping executives dodge taxes on extravagant perks such as Manhattan apartments and luxury cars.
James had asked the judge to impose a penalty of at least $370 million.
Engoron decided the case because neither side sought a jury and state law doesn’t allow for juries for this type of lawsuit.
Because it was civil, not criminal in nature, the case did not carry the potential of prison time.
James, who campaigned for office as a Trump critic and watchdog, started scrutinizing his business practices in March 2019 after his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump exaggerated his wealth on financial statements provided to Deutsche Bank while trying to obtain financing to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.
James’ office previously sued Trump for misusing his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests. Trump was ordered to pay $2 million to an array of charities as a fine and the charity, the Trump Foundation, was shut down.
Trump incorporated the Trump Organization in New York in 1981. He still owns it, but he put his assets into a revocable trust and gave up his positions as the company’s director, president and chairman when he became president, leaving management of the company to sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.
Trump did not return to a stated leadership position upon leaving the White House in 2021, but his sons testified he’s been involved in some decision making.
Engoron had already appointed a monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, to keep an eye on the company.
Univision has found itself at the center of a growing controversy after a recent interview with former President Trump that critics have blasted as too friendly.
The interview that aired Nov. 9was noticeably warm, and Trump received little pushback as he gave false or misleading statements on border security and immigration policies he instituted as president.
Backlash from certain corners of the Latino community was swift, including calls for more balanced reporting and an outright boycott of the television network ahead of the 2024 election.
Latinos are considered a crucial voting bloc — and largely up for grabs — in next year’s election, likely to be a rematch between Trump and President Biden. Although Latino voters have historically favored Democrats, the Republican Party in recent years has made significant progress in courting their votes.
The exclusive interview with Trump therefore raised significant alarms within the Democratic Party and its allies that the leading Republican candidate was making unchecked claims to important swing voters.
Actor John Leguizamo posted a video to his 1 million Instagram followers Thursday criticizing the Spanish-language media company for “softballing Trump” and reportedly canceling ads for Biden. He said the television network has become “MAGA-vision.”
He implored fellow entertainers, athletes, activists and politicians to join him in boycotting the network until it reinstated “parity, and equality and equity” between the presidential candidates. The television network has also requested an interview with Biden, according to the Washington Post.
The more-than-hourlong interview with Trump was conducted by Enrique Acevedo, an anchor from Mexican network Televisa who is not a Univision journalist. The two media groups merged last year. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly helped organize the interview.
“All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision,” Trump said in the first few minutes of the interview when asked about Latino voters and recent polls showing him defeating Biden in 2024. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people, and they like me.”
“They want to see security,” Trump added. “They want to have a border.”
During the interview, Trump made questionable claims that the partial wall built along the southern border was made possible by Mexico providing thousands of soldiers “free of charge,” and that former President Obama laid the groundwork for the controversial policy at the border to deter illegal crossings that became known as the family-separation crisis. Acevedo did not push back on either claim.
“It wasn’t just a friendly interview. It was an embarrassing 1-hour puff-piece with lots of smiles and no pushback with a guy who relished in attacking, belittling and otherizing Latinos and Latin American immigrants,” Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a prominent Nicaraguan American political strategist and commentator, said on the platform X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
León Krauze, a veteran news anchor for Univision, has since resigned from the network. He did not provide a reason for his departure.
State Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), a member of the California Latino Legislative Caucus who is running for Congress, said she knew many other Latino leaders who were “personally upset” about the interview.
Rubio said she was “appalled” at how the former president “was allowed to just continue to spew lies and go unchecked” during the conversation. She called the interview “an insult to our entire Latino community.”
The network is “absolutely influential” in households like hers, she said, describing it as a news source she and her Spanish-speaking parents view as trusted and unbiased.
“Our community relies on this information to be truthful. They rely on this source that has been trusted by the Latino community for many, many generations,” she said. “They should have done a better job of making sure that our community is not lied to.”
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus plans to send a letter to the television network requesting a meeting with its chief executive, Wade Davis, and calling for stronger guardrails against disinformation, according to a draft copy of the letter reviewed by The Times.
More than 70 organizations — including prominent Latino groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, America’s Voice and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights — signed an open letter to Davis and other TelevisaUnivision executives, sharply criticizing the interview.
The letter, first reported by the Post, asks that the network “conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” according to a copy reviewed by The Times.
The controversy is more complicated than what it seems, said Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who has a forthcoming book called “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Shaping Our Democracy.”
Madrid, who is a vocal critic of Trump, said the objections to the interview are reflective of how the Democratic Party and other left-leaning organizations have taken Latino voters for granted — and relied on the television network to promote their candidates and policies for decades.
Since the late 1980s, Democrats have banked on Latino voters to win elections, Madrid said. But over the last decade, Democrats have begun “hemorrhaging” second- and third-generation Latino voters who are U.S.-born and English-dominant speakers.
Madrid doesn’t dispute that the interview with Trump may have been biased or too cozy, but he said it demonstrates the media company’s shift toward the middle and, therefore, a new Latino audience.
“Where were they for the past 30 years when the Democratic Party was getting softball interviews? The Democrats have taken this base vote for granted. They assumed it was there and Univision would always be in their corner, would always be championing them and advocating for their candidates and policies,” he said. “When you’ve been the beneficiary of media bias, objectivity sounds like betrayal. That’s what’s going on.”
Instead of promoting a boycott of the network, which Madrid called “absolute madness,” Democrats should adjust their strategy and start courting Latino voters on a variety of issues, such as the economy and jobs, rather than just immigration.
“The Democrats have to figure this out very quick that going to war is not in their best interest,” he said. “They are going to have to learn to fight for this vote, when they haven’t for decades. … And they have less than a year to figure this out.”
Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.
