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  • Trump seeks to steer attention away from first 2024 GOP debate as rivals make final preparations for Milwaukee | CNN Politics

    Trump seeks to steer attention away from first 2024 GOP debate as rivals make final preparations for Milwaukee | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination is not only skipping the first presidential primary debate of the season – he’s also attempting to wrest the spotlight away from the stage in Milwaukee.

    With the Republican National Committee’s window to meet fundraising and polling requirements having closed Monday night, the debate stage is set, and the GOP contenders vying to become the party’s top alternative to former President Donald Trump are making their final preparations ahead of what will be among the most-watched moments in many of their political careers. As his rivals prepare for the two-hour showdown on Fox News, Trump’s campaign is attempting to counter-program the debate.

    The first debate, a key moment in any presidential primary, is also taking place in the middle of a week in which Trump’s legal troubles will once again take center stage.

    Trump has already taped an interview with Tucker Carlson, the fired former Fox News host, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN Monday. It is unclear what platform the interview with Carlson will be published on. The sources said that it would be released around the time of the debate Wednesday night.

    The former president, who on Sunday said he will skip the first debate and could skip others, is expected to spend Wednesday evening at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

    But Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and other surrogates planned to travel to Milwaukee, where they would have had opportunities to weigh in on national broadcasts before and after the debate in the spin room.

    However, Fox News informed the Trump campaign on Monday that they will no longer provide credentials to some surrogates of the former president to attend the spin room at the debate since the former president is not participating in the debate, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN.

    Some of Trump’s surrogates are credentialed through outside media groups and will not be impacted. Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Reps. Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz of Florida and other Republicans are slated to attend the debate.

    Members of Trump’s campaign, including his senior advisers Jason Miller, Steven Cheung and Chris LaCivita, were also planning on being in the spin room.

    While Fox News is in charge of credentials for the spin room, the RNC manages credentials for the actual debate, and sources said those tickets are still expected be honored.

    Members of Trump’s teams and his surrogates, however, are still planning on traveling to Milwaukee and are working on a resolution with the network as well as the RNC, two Trump advisers told CNN.

    Fox News did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Ahead of the debate, some candidates are offering previews of their lines of attack – including criticizing Trump for choosing not to participate.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday said Trump “owes it to people” to debate, arguing voters – even those who appreciate the former president’s record – will be angry over his decision to skip the the first showdown.

    “I don’t think they’re going to look kindly on somebody that thinks they don’t have to earn it,” DeSantis said on Fox News.

    Trump, though, is poised to once again seize headlines this week with new developments in his legal troubles stemming from the former president’s efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election.

    In an election subversion case in Georgia, Trump has agreed to a $200,000 bond and other release conditions after his lawyers met with the Fulton County district attorney’s office on Monday, according to court documents reviewed by CNN.

    Trump will turn himself in Thursday in Fulton County, the former president announced on his social media platform Monday.

    With Trump out, DeSantis – who has consistently polled in second place nationally and in early-voting states – could be positioned to face the sharpest scrutiny Wednesday night, as other contenders seek to replace him as the party’s top alternative to Trump.

    “We’ll be ready,” DeSantis said Monday. “I think that with Donald Trump not being there, I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m going to be probably the guy that people are going to come after.”

    The Florida governor also continued to distance himself from a memo from the super PAC Never Back Down, which last week advised him to “hammer” entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and defend Trump if he is attacked by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

    “That’s a separate entity. I had nothing to do with it. It’s not something that I’ve read, and it’s not, not reflective of my strategy,” DeSantis said Monday.

    However, DeSantis has unusually close ties with the super PAC. He has outsourced many typical campaign functions, including early-state organizing, to the super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited sums. DeSantis frequently appears at events as a “special guest” of the super PAC.

    Other candidates plot their strategies

    Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur who has risen in polling in recent weeks, appears to have become a significant factor in the race in his rivals’ eyes.

    Another contender, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, attacked Ramaswamy on Monday, in a potential preview of a debate-stage showdown.

    Haley said Ramaswamy is “completely wrong” for his call to reduce US military aid to Israel. During an interview with Russell Brand on Rumble last week, Ramaswamy claimed he would cut off additional aid to Israel in 2028, after the current $38 billion US aid package expires.

    “This is part of a pattern with Vivek—his foreign policies have a common theme: they make America less safe,” Haley said on Twitter.

    Ramaswamy, for his part, tweeted a video of himself, shirtless, practicing tennis. “Three hours of solid debate prep this morning,” he said.

    One key wild card Wednesday night is Christie. He is the only contender on stage who has run against Trump before, and has proven lethal on the debate stage previously: In February 2016, he effectively stymied all momentum of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio when he mocked Rubio for delivering memorized, pre-planned lines.

    Since launching his 2024 bid, Christie has focused most of his attacks on Trump. But as he campaigned in Miami last week, he also criticized DeSantis, pointing to the super PAC memo.

    “The only way to beat someone is to beat them. If [DeSantis] thinks he’s gonna get on the stage and defend Donald Trump on Wednesday night, then he should do Donald Trump a favor and do our party a favor, come back to Tallahassee, endorse Donald Trump, and get the hell out of the race,” Christie said.

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a strong fundraiser who many within the GOP see as an increasing factor in the race, has largely stuck to a positive and optimistic message, making Wednesday night a test of whether and how he is willing to mix it up with his rivals.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has emphasized his conservative positions on ideological issues like abortion. But he had also looked for a debate-stage clash with Trump, his former running mate. On Sunday, he criticized the former president on ABC for skipping the first debate.

    “Every one of us who have qualified for that debate stage ought to be on the stage willing to square off and answer those tough questions,” Pence said.

    As the first debate approaches, polls of likely Republican voters nationally and of those in the early-voting states – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada – have consistently shown Trump well ahead of his rivals at this stage of the race.

    Trump held a clear lead over his rivals in a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll of likely Iowa GOP caucusgoers released Monday, though just over half say they are not locked in to their choice and could be persuaded to support someone else.

    Overall, 42% say Trump is their first choice, followed by 19% supporting DeSantis. No other candidate reaches double digits. Behind them, 9% back Scott, 6% each back Haley and Pence, 5% support Christie, 4% back Ramaswamy, 2% back North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and 1% support former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, with the rest of the field tested landing below 1%.

    About two-thirds say they have favorable impressions of DeSantis (66%) and Trump (65%), with majorities also expressing positive views of Scott (59%) and Haley (53%). Views of Christie (60% unfavorable to 28% favorable) and Pence (53% unfavorable to 42% favorable) break negative. Many of the other candidates have low name recognition, with four in 10 or more not sure about them.

    About half, 52%, of likely caucusgoers say they could be persuaded to support someone other than their first choice candidate, while 40% say their minds are made up. Trump’s supporters are more likely to be locked in (66% say so), yet a third say they could be persuaded to back someone else (34%). Among those backing a candidate other than Trump, 69% say they could be persuaded to support someone else, and 31% say that their mind is made up.

    The poll was conducted by Selzer and Co. August 13-17 among a random sample of 406 likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

    New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who considered his own presidential run before passing earlier this year, said Monday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that the GOP primary field needs to narrow before the race reaches the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.

    He said candidates who are mired in the low-single digits in the polls by early December should drop out.

    “By New Hampshire you need three or four candidates in the race to really make it, you know, a real opportunity and an option for the Republican voter,” he said.

    And Sununu dismissed Trump’s steady national polling leads, saying that his lead would fall “as we get around to Christmas,” while pointing to early state polls, where the former president still leads, though by a smaller margin.

    “Trump is really dominating the national media airwaves. It’s not shocking that he’s there,” he said. “But as the debates start, as people get more and more into that conversation in October, November, as we get around to Christmas, I think nationally his numbers come back down to what you see in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

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  • America’s political turmoil hampers its capacity to lead through yet another global crisis | CNN Politics

    America’s political turmoil hampers its capacity to lead through yet another global crisis | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A weekend of terror in Israel has sharpened already grave questions about the capacity of the politically fractured United States to lay out a unified and coherent response to a world spinning out of its control.

    When the House of Representatives descended into chaos last week, many Republicans, Democrats and independent experts warned that anarchy raging in US politics sent a dangerous message to the outside world. But no one could foresee just how quickly the paralysis in Washington would test the country’s reaction to a major global crisis.

    The horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, which have killed hundreds of people and shattered the country’s sense of security, thrust the Middle East to the precipice of a new era of violence and instability. This followed a period of relative calm and after US presidents spent years trying to extricate American forces from the region.

    Israel’s response to the carnage caused by a major Iranian proxy raises the possibility of a wider regional war that would further destabilize the global order already rocked by the war in Ukraine and China’s flagrant challenges to Western power.

    A situation this dangerous requires a calm, united and thoughtful US response, supported across the political spectrum. But the turmoil in America’s politics – plagued by internal extremism, threats to democracy and the hyperpoliticization of foreign policy – means it will be an impossible task to bring the country together at a perilous moment.

    Swift efforts by lawmakers to quickly register support for Israel and to rush extra aid to its government could be hampered by the collapse of the Republican Party’s ability to govern in the House after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week by his party’s extreme elements.

    And the US is also facing an unprecedented election season. A president with low approval ratings confronting questions about his advanced age could go up against a potential Republican nominee who could be an indicted felon by Election Day. This means, at best, the United States will spend the coming months preoccupied by its own political plight. At worst, the world’s superpower guarantor of democracy could actually worsen global disruption and instability.

    Republican front-runner Donald Trump rushed to exploit the crisis for his political gain, accusing President Joe Biden of causing the conflict because of “weakness.”

    “Joe Biden betrayed Israel, he betrayed our country. As president, I will once again stand with Israel,” Trump said.

    Foreign policy issues rarely decide US elections. But the danger for Biden and the opening for Trump is that yet another crisis abroad could foment an idea that the world is in turmoil, American power is weakening and Biden is hapless. At home and abroad, chaos is Trump’s friend as he seeks to foment the classic conditions that benefit aspiring autocrats promising strongman rule.

    Fractured American governance doesn’t simply pose a material issue for Israel and for Ukraine, whose US lifeline as it battles Russia’s unprovoked invasion is now in extreme jeopardy due to far-right Republicans. The spectacle also suggests to US enemies – including Iran, the main supporter of Hamas, and Russia and China – that the US is hopelessly divided and may struggle to wield power to safeguard its interests.

    “It wasn’t my idea to oust the speaker. I thought it was dangerous,” Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I look at the world and all the threats that are out there, and what kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern, when we’re dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a speaker of the House?

    “How does Chairman Xi in China look at that when he says democracy doesn’t work?” the Texas Republican added. “How does the Ayatollah look at this, knowing that we cannot function properly? And I think it sends a terrible message.”

    US sends a message of chaos and weakness

    The shuttered House created a particularly damaging symbol of the US – and the democratic system of governance it promotes around the world – in disarray. The Biden administration has the capacity to send immediate military aid to Israel, whose government has asked Washington for JDAM precision-guided munition kits and more interceptors for the Iron Dome air defense system as Hamas rockets rain down on Israeli cities. But any delay in seating a new speaker and creating a functioning majority in the House could have serious consequence.

    Republican Rep. Michael Lawler, who faces a tough reelection in a New York district that Biden would have carried in 2020 under its new lines, warned that the chaos in the House needs to end. “Given the situation in the Middle East with one of our closest allies in the world, it is critical that we bring this to a close expeditiously,” Lawler told CNN’s Dana Bash. “And so, I think it is imperative, frankly, that this nonsense stop, that Kevin McCarthy be reinstated as speaker,” Lawler added.

    Republicans left town after ousting McCarthy last week, and are expected to try to choose between Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who has the backing of Trump, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise this week. But given the demands of extremists in the GOP conference, the complications of a tiny majority and the fact it took McCarthy a marathon 15 rounds of balloting to win the job in January, there is no guarantee that strong, new Republican leadership will quickly emerge.

    While there is crossparty consensus over supporting Israel in the House, the US response to another murderous assault on a vulnerable democracy – Ukraine – threatens to be derailed by America’s viciously polarized politics in a way that could seriously erode Washington’s global leadership.

    Right-wing Republicans who back Trump are echoing the former president’s opposition to further US aid and ammunition to Ukraine. While there is still a majority in favor of such measures in the House and the Senate, any future Republican speaker will likely have to pass aid packages with the help of Democratic votes – the very scenario that caused McCarthy’s fall as he tried to head off a damaging government shutdown (even though that stopgap funding bill did not include Ukraine aid, as the White House had wanted).

    Already, the political showdown over Ukraine is causing deep concern in Kyiv that it will be unable to continue its fight against Russia in the current form without the more than $20 billion in assistance that the Biden administration has requested.

    In a broader sense, the possibility that a populist, nationalist wing of the Republican Party under Trump could desert a democracy under attack from Russia – and therefore reward the aggression of an autocrat who shaped his worldview as a member of the KGB – threatens to not just shatter the logic of decades of US foreign policy, but to fundamentally change the US’ role in the world and the values on which its allies believed they could depend.

    The politicization of global crises is not just confined to Israel or Ukraine. A Chinese spy balloon that wafted over US soil this year caused an extraordinary outburst of Republican fury toward Biden, which threatened to tie the president’s hands when managing the critical issue of US relations with the Pacific superpower.

    A growing sense abroad that America’s political problems are limiting its ability to lead globally could also have a devastating effect on its power. This can only play into the hands of enemies in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, who have all sought to influence US elections, according to US intelligence agencies, and all have strong geopolitical incentives in seeing American democracy fail.

    The extraordinary and sudden Hamas attack on Israel – which has been compared to the September 11 attacks in the United States, and in terms of per capita casualties was far more bloody – falls into the category of tragedies that could change the world.

    Aside from the awful human toll – now also being felt by Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where hundreds have perished in the initial Israel reprisal attacks on the infrastructure of Hamas – the onslaught will have far-reaching strategic consequences that will be felt in the US.

    If evidence is found that Iran directly plotted the attack with Hamas, there will be huge pressure on the Israelis to respond by directly confronting the Islamic Republic, at the risk of sparking a wider regional conflagration that could draw in the United States.

    The attacks and their fallout are also almost certain to disrupt the effort, in which the US is a key player, to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and allied Arab states. Such an agreement would fundamentally reshape the region and further isolate Iran – a logical reason why it could have had an interest in perpetrating the Hamas assault. US officials are still trying to establish how, if at all, Iran was involved.

    The horror in Israel presents Biden with another fearsome foreign policy crisis as he contemplates his reelection bid – alongside the war in Ukraine and a rising confrontation with China.

    It comes at a moment of political vulnerability for the administration as it seeks to explain why it made a deal to release US prisoners from Iran that resulted in the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds. The Iranian government can use the funds only to buy humanitarian and medical supplies. The deal took place far too recently for such money to be used to finance this attack. But such subtleties don’t count for much in an election year, as multiple Republican presidential candidates accused the president of funding Iranian terror.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday tried to defuse the political impact of the agreement. “Not a single dollar has been spent from that account. And, again, the account is closely regulated by the US Treasury Department, so it can only be used for things like food, medicine, medical equipment,” he insisted on “State of the Union.”

    But, in a political sense, it only matters that enough Americans believe what the Republicans are saying is true.

    GOP hopeful Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, for instance, implied Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that funds that Iran may not have to spend on medicine because of the hostage deal could now be spent on terror.

    “Secretary Blinken is just wrong to imply that this money is not being moved around as we speak,” Haley said, although her argument is undercut by the fact that Iran’s clerical regime has rarely seemed to prioritize the humanitarian needs of its people while building up a huge state military complex.

    Another 2024 candidate, GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, went even further, accusing Biden – who has been one of the strongest Washington supporters of Israel in half a century in politics – of being “complicit” in the attacks.

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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces independent run for president, ending Democratic primary challenge to Biden | CNN Politics

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces independent run for president, ending Democratic primary challenge to Biden | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Environmental lawyer and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Monday his independent candidacy for president, officially ending his effort to defeat President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary in favor of a long-shot general election bid.

    “I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Kennedy said in remarks in Philadelphia.

    Kennedy’s announcement comes after several weeks of speculation about his future in the 2024 field. CNN previously reported Kennedy met with the chair of the Libertarian Party earlier this year to discuss their common beliefs. And last week, a super PAC supporting Kennedy’s presidential campaign released the results of a poll they conducted testing Kennedy’s strength in a hypothetical three-way race between Biden and former President Donald Trump.

    The campaign will host a series of events in Texas, Florida and Georgia later this month, a campaign official told CNN, pledging to travel “everywhere” in the lead-up to next year’s general election. The official said the campaign is confident they’ll gain ballot access in every state ahead of November 2024.

    Independent and third-party candidates have struggled in the past to garner substantial support in presidential elections. In 1992, Texas businessman Ross Perot mounted one of the most successful independent presidential candidacies in recent history, which ended with him receiving 8% of the vote in the general election that was ultimately won by Bill Clinton.

    On Monday, Kennedy acknowledged the unsuccessful history of independent presidential campaigns but said he’s optimistic about his chances.

    “Today, we turn a new page in American politics. There have been independent candidates in this country before, but this time it’s going to be different. Because this time, the independent is gonna win,” he said.

    Mark Gorton, co-founder of American Values 2024, the super PAC supporting Kennedy’s campaign, said the candidate will need to prove viability to voters by consistently increasing his support in the polls in order to have a realistic chance of winning the election. He feels they’ve “got a shot” to pull off a historic upset.

    “I think it’s very important that Bobby a year from now be polling at the very least in the mid-to-high 30s in order to be seen as viable as anyone,” Gorton told CNN. “We need to be getting 1%, 1.5% of the electorate each month, but that’s a doable task.”

    Kennedy’s campaign as an independent could further complicate a general election race that’s already expected to be closely contested. A Reuters/Ipsos poll of a hypothetical three-way race between Biden, Trump and Kennedy conducted last week among likely voters found 14% of voters supported Kennedy, with 40% supporting Trump and 38% supporting Biden. With over a year until the general election, it’s unclear whether the Kennedy campaign can translate that level of support into votes in November 2024. Kennedy said he hopes to win the election by pulling in both Biden and Trump supporters.

    “They say my impact is only going to draw votes from the other candidates. The Democrats are frightened that I’m gonna spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I’m gonna spoil it for President Trump,” he said. “The truth is, they’re both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.”

    “Voters should not be deceived by anyone who pretends to have conservative values. The fact is that RFK has a disturbing background steeped in radical, liberal positions,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that criticized Kennedy over his positions on China, guns, the environment and abortion. “… A RFK candidacy is nothing more than a vanity project for a liberal Kennedy looking to cash in on his family’s name.”

    Trump’s allies and advisers have been building opposition research against Kennedy, intending to go on the offensive and paint Kennedy as a “liberal parading in conservative’s clothing,” one adviser told CNN, pointing to his past record as an environmental activist.

    Kennedy first launched his campaign to defeat Biden in the Democratic primary in April and frequently visited early primary states like New Hampshire and South Carolina. But his efforts did little to sway Democratic primary voters, with just 9% of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire expressing support for Kennedy in a CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released in September.

    The Republican National Committee issued a statement just prior to Kennedy’s announcement, characterizing him as “just another radical, far-left Democrat.”

    Kennedy is the son of former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. Some of his siblings issued a joint statement on Monday, calling his decision to run against Biden in a general election “dangerous to our country.”

    “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment. Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us. We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country, ” Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Joseph P Kennedy II and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said in a statement.

    A lifelong Democrat prior to announcing his run as an independent, Kennedy acknowledged his and his family’s long history with the Democratic Party and called the decision to disavow the party “very painful.” But he said he wants to fight against the two-party system, which he says has failed to provide Americans with viable options for the presidency. He criticized Biden’s age and competency as well as Trump’s ongoing legal troubles as a symptom of a corrupt political process.

    “That’s what two-party politics has given us, and that’s why we need to pry loose from the hammerlock of the corrupt powers in Washington, DC, and make this nation ours again.”

    The crowd of supporters in Philadelphia received Kennedy warmly, particularly when he discussed his plans to create a “tamper-proof election system” while expanding voting rights and called for the US “to pull our nation back from the brink of war with Russia.” A staunch anti-war advocate, Kennedy notably did not address the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas over the weekend. Prior to Kennedy’s remarks, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a friend and informal adviser to Kennedy, spoke about the war and called for a moment of silence for victims in Israel.

    When asked by CNN following the event about Kennedy not mentioning Israel and Hamas in his remarks, Boteach dismissed the oversight and said his involvement in the event spoke loudly about Kennedy’s stance toward Israel.

    “I think that was very brave of him and showed tremendous solidarity that he asked a rabbi who’s his close friend. You know, he moved away from the political figures who could have introduced him and endorsed him,” Boteach said. “The fact that I’m the one that introduced him, I think said it all.”

    Kennedy’s lack of mention of Israel’s war with Hamas comes after he received criticism from Jewish groups in July after he falsely claimed during a dinner in New York City that “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people are “most immune” to Covid-19. Kennedy strongly pushed back against the accusations of antisemitism from those groups.

    Kennedy has never held public office but has inspired a small contingent of supporters drawn to his advocacy against public health mandates and the influence of money on decisions made by government and private corporations. Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense, an organization that regularly spreads anti-vaccine misinformation, and has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories at campaign events.

    Attendees at Monday’s event spanned the ideological spectrum, with conservatives, liberals and independents all gathering in Philadelphia for the announcement.

    Walter Rodriguez, a teacher from New Jersey who identifies as an independent, said he plans to support Kennedy if he’s on the ballot in his home state. Otherwise, he said, he doesn’t plan to vote at all.

    “I’m excited about the energy they bring to the table as a candidate, and I think some of the things that he’s talking about are things that I identify with,” Rodriguez said. “Not relying so much on central control of everything, pharmaceuticals, politics. So the fact that he’s declaring himself as independent today, that is the right way to go.”

    Karl Hagstrom came to Philadelphia from Westchester County, New York. He said he supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, but said he plans to support Kennedy in 2024. He said he’s drawn to Kennedy because he feels the political outsider can bring unity to the country, unlike Trump, who he said has been too divisive.

    “Just the constant insanity, the tweeting, the negativity, the just out-of-left field reactions to things. It’s not sustainable, it’s not something that can bring people together,” Hagstrom said.

    Sarah Shulman drove to the event with a group of supporters from the Boston area. A practicing pediatrician, Shulman attended Kennedy’s Democratic campaign launch event in Boston in April and said Kennedy’s anti-corruption message and his position on vaccines inspired her to support him. She said she voted for Biden in 2020 and has never considered supporting a Republican but has felt disconnected from Biden’s message since he took office.

    “He’s speaking our language,” Shulman said of Kennedy. “A Democrat, somebody in the liberal mind that’s compassionate, caring, who also is making sense.”

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • DeSantis faces new leadership test as Hurricane Idalia barrels toward Florida | CNN Politics

    DeSantis faces new leadership test as Hurricane Idalia barrels toward Florida | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    With the eyes of the country on Hurricane Idalia as it spins toward Florida’s Gulf Coast, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential ambitions are also under the spotlight as he puts his campaign on hold to manage the crisis at home.

    DeSantis flew back to Tallahassee from Iowa on Saturday night and has since appeared regularly on Florida televisions with updates on Idalia’s path and state efforts to prepare for the approaching storm. From behind a lectern with the state seal, the Republican governor has matter-of-factly shared logistics and warnings.

    The coming days will present a range of tests for DeSantis to navigate during a critical juncture in his governorship and White House bid. His stewardship of the hurricane response and recovery efforts will be closely scrutinized by his political opponents and Republican voters, watching whether he can lead through difficult moments, comfort the aggrieved and learn from the lessons of past storms.

    It is not clear when DeSantis will return to the campaign trail. In a text message to supporters, his campaign said it would go dark for a few days, adding: “Before we sign off, can we ask you to chip in any amount you can to support our end-of-month fundraising push?”

    For his part, DeSantis said he will be in Florida for as long as necessary.

    “You do what you need to do,” DeSantis said Tuesday. “So that’s what we’re doing. It’s going to be no different than what we did during Hurricane Ian [last year]. I’m hoping that this storm is not as catastrophic as Hurricane Ian was, but we’re gonna do what we need to do because it’s just something that’s important.”

    While no Florida executive would publicly suggest a hurricane is an opportunity to showcase leadership chops, past storms have certainly tested governors and forged their legacies. DeSantis’ predecessor, Republican Rick Scott, dealt with Hurricane Michael just weeks before the 2018 election, when he was running for US Senate against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Scott leaned into managing the crisis with gusto and ultimately won his race in a recount.

    Perhaps no one did more to solidify their standing among Floridians during such disasters as former GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, whose handling of eight hurricanes during a deadly two-year stretch of tropical weather is still remembered by those who experienced the devastation. One of those hurricanes, Katrina, forever altered perceptions of the presidency of Bush’s older brother, George W. Bush, showcasing how storms can also plunge an executive into crisis.

    Those past Florida governors, though, were not running for president. Rarely have incumbent state executives faced a disaster of Idalia’s potential magnitude in the throes of a White House bid.

    The most notable recent exception is Republican Chris Christie, who as New Jersey governor in 2016 returned to his home state to manage a blizzard amid criticism for putting the presidential race ahead of his elected duties. At the time, Christie was campaigning in New Hampshire, which was just weeks away from holding the first-in-the-nation primary. Christie is once again running for the GOP nomination.

    “I don’t think any presidential candidate wants to be taken off the campaign trail. But you can’t ignore your day job,” said Alex Conant, a senior adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Insufficient responses to storms have ended political careers. Every governor takes the threat of a hurricane seriously because if the response is mishandled, not only are lives at stake, but there’s political fallout.”

    In the past 24 hours, DeSantis’ team has signaled it would not shy away from showcasing the governor’s storm response to Republican voters. His aides have shared posts on social media of people praising DeSantis’ activity so far, with his office press secretary writing on X, “Find you a leader that shows up like @GovRonDeSantis.” In a memo sent Tuesday, DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo wrote that DeSantis is “now at the helm of Florida’s hurricane response and is working with local officials across the state to do everything necessary to ensure Florida is fully prepared.”

    “This is the strong leadership in times of crisis that Americans can expect from a President DeSantis,” Romeo added.

    Just as he did last year, when Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida amid his race for reelection, DeSantis has vowed to put partisan politics aside for the time being. Though a regular critic of President Joe Biden – including over the Democrat’s response to the Maui wildfires – DeSantis said he has spoken with the president and expects the two administrations to work in concert toward Florida’s recovery.

    “There’s time and a place to have political season, but then there’s a time and a place to say that this is something that’s life-threatening. This is something that could potentially cost somebody their life, it could cost them their livelihood, and we have responsibility as Americans to come together,” DeSantis said Monday.

    (Coming off the devastation in Hawaii, Biden is facing a separate range of questions about his administration’s response to yet another natural catastrophe.)

    DeSantis’ departure from the campaign trail comes just days after the first GOP presidential debate at a moment when his team believes voters are starting to tune into the race. He is trailing Donald Trump in GOP primary polling but is aggressively challenging the former president in early nominating states.

    The Florida governor is also staving off a field of GOP contenders, who must now also balance sensitivities around Hurricane Idalia with their attempts to overcome DeSantis in the polls.

    “DeSantis is going to get a breather in terms of attacks,” said Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University and author of “The Post-Heroic Presidency.”

    “This is similar to what we see in the rally-around-the-flag phenomena,” Belt said. “When there’s something that affects the country more generally, the other party ceases attacks on the incumbent party. It helps in the polls, at least temporarily. It would look really bad for other Republicans to criticize DeSantis during this time, and the question is how long will they wait? It’s worth noting that Florida is an extremely important electoral state.”

    Storm response has already become part of DeSantis’ pitch to voters. On the campaign trail, he has often shared the story of the swift reopening of two bridges destroyed by Hurricane Ian as evidence of his executive management. DeSantis has also asserted that he could send his “Florida people” to the southern border to build a wall.

    “Come on, Joe (Biden),” he said earlier this year. “Let us get it done. We’ll do it.”

    But Ian also generated some negative attention for DeSantis. Images of the governor wearing white rain boots and campaign gear as he surveyed storm-ravaged regions provided fodder for his political detractors and were spread widely on social media by Democrats and Trump supporters.

    DeSantis was also forced to defend the late local evacuation orders last year that left many coastal residents in Lee County unprepared for Ian’s deadly turn, despite the persistent threat of cataclysmic storm surge.

    Though DeSantis said this week that the state has not changed its evacuation protocols, he and state officials have emphasized that Idalia could bring dangerous storm surge all along Florida’s west coast, even outside the projected path of the storm. This year, he has spent time warning residents who are outside the forecasted “cone” – or the probable track of the center of the storm.

    Idalia is forecast to make landfall near Florida’s Big Bend area as a Category 3 hurricane or stronger, potentially bringing record storm surge to a part of the state’s west coast that has not experienced a storm of this magnitude in more than 150 years.

    While the storm is perhaps an opportunity for DeSantis to show strength in mobilizing his administration to respond to a storm, the expected devastation also has the potential to challenge DeSantis’ limitations as a consoler in chief, a role Biden has embraced during national tragedies.

    DeSantis’ capacity for compassion has already come under fire this week following his rushed response to Saturday’s killing of three Black people by a White gunman in Jacksonville. His office on Saturday shared a video statement from DeSantis that seemed hastily shot in front of white vinyl siding in Iowa, during which he called the racially targeted attack “totally unacceptable.” The next day he attended a vigil for the victims where he called the shooter a “major league scumbag.”

    The tone of his remarks and his appearance at the vigil drew criticism from those who wanted DeSantis to acknowledge efforts by his administration to alter how Florida students learn about race and the lived experience of Black Americans.

    “A white man in his early twenties specifically went to kill BLACK PEOPLE,” Democratic state Rep. Angie Nixon, who represents Jacksonville and was photographed next to DeSantis at the vigil wearing a “Stand with Black Women” shirt, posted on X. “The governor of our state of Florida has created an environment ripe for this.”

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  • Francis Suarez ends campaign for Republican presidential nomination | CNN Politics

    Francis Suarez ends campaign for Republican presidential nomination | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced Tuesday that he was ending his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, becoming the first major candidate to do so.

    “While I have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to making this a better nation for every American remains,” Suarez said in a statement.

    Suarez’s move comes after he failed to fully meet the requirements set by the Republican National Committee to make the first presidential debate in Milwaukee last week. He had told CNN prior to the debate that candidates who do not make the stage should drop out – even if that included himself.

    “I look forward to keeping in touch with the other Republican presidential candidates and doing what I can to make sure our party puts forward a strong nominee who can inspire and unify the country, renew Americans’ trust in our institutions and in each other, and win,” Suarez said Tuesday.

    Suarez launched his long-shot bid for the presidency just over two months ago, in mid-June, urging Republicans to unify and evoking Ronald Reagan’s call for the party to rebuild its “big tent” coalition.

    The son of Cuban immigrants, Suarez was the lone major Hispanic candidate in the Republican primary, which includes two higher-profile fellow Floridians: former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    “I will continue to amplify the voices of the Hispanic community – the fastest-growing voting group in our country. The Left has taken Hispanics for granted for far too long, and it is no surprise that so many are finding a home in America’s conservative movement,” he said Tuesday.

    Over his short-lived campaign, Suarez acknowledged he did not have the same name recognition as many of his GOP rivals.

    “My opponents have been national figures for many years. I’ve been a national figure for 60 days. So, you know, I’m competing from behind,” Suarez said earlier this month at the Iowa State Fair.

    He ultimately did not meet the polling criteria set by the RNC to make the Milwaukee debate stage, his campaign said. Candidates had to register at least 1% support in three national polls or in two national and two early-state polls that met the RNC’s criteria.

    Suarez said he had met the 40,000 individual donor threshold to qualify for the debate. His campaign employed some unconventional methods to meet that goal, including accepting bitcoin donations, offering $20 gift cards and raffling off tickets for soccer superstar Lionel Messi’s debut at Major League Soccer club Inter Miami. The pro-Suarez super PAC, SOS America, also offered a chance to win a free year of college with a $1 donation.

    Shortly after launching his campaign, Suarez stumbled in an interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, indicating that he was unfamiliar with the plight of the Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority in China, whose treatment has been the subject of worldwide condemnation for years.

    The conservative talk radio host asked Suarez if he would be “talking about the Uyghurs in your campaign?”

    Suarez responded, “The what?”

    “The Uyghurs,” Hewitt said, prompting the candidate to ask, “What’s a Uyghur?”

    At the end of the interview, Suarez told Hewitt, “You gave me homework, Hugh. I’ll look at – what was it? What’d you call it, a weeble?”

    In a later statement to CNN, Suarez denied that he had been unaware of the Uyghur situation and the accusations against China of human rights abuses.

    “Of course, I am well aware of the suffering of the Uyghurs in China. They are being enslaved because of their faith. China has a deplorable record on human rights and all people of faith suffer there. I didn’t recognize the pronunciation my friend Hugh Hewitt used,” he said.

    China denies the allegations of human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • 2024 Presidential Debates Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    2024 Presidential Debates Fast Facts | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the 2024 presidential debates.

    Event Type: Republican Debate
    Location: Fiserv Forum Milwaukee, WI
    Hosts: Fox News, Young America’s Foundation and Rumble
    Moderators: Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum
    Participants: Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott
    Transcript

    Event Type: Republican Debate
    Location: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Simi Valley, CA
    Hosts: FOX Business, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, Rumble and Univision
    Moderators: Ilia Calderón, Dana Perino and Stuart Varney
    Participants: Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott

    Event Type: Republican Debate
    Location: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County Miami, FL
    Hosts: NBC News, Salem Radio Network, Republican Jewish Coalition and Rumble
    Moderators: Hugh Hewitt, Lester Holt and Kristen Welker
    Participants: Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott

    Event Type: Republican Debate
    Location: Tuscaloosa, Alabama
    Hosts: NewsNation, The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM, the Washington Free Beacon and Rumble
    Moderators: Eliana Johnson, Megyn Kelly and Elizabeth Vargas

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  • DeSantis pushes back on man who blamed him for Jacksonville shooting deaths: ‘That is nonsense’ | CNN Politics

    DeSantis pushes back on man who blamed him for Jacksonville shooting deaths: ‘That is nonsense’ | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis aggressively pushed back Thursday against a man who blamed him for the deaths in a racially motivated attack in Jacksonville last month.

    “I did not allow anything with that,” DeSantis – also a 2024 Republican presidential candidate – said to the man. “I’m not gonna let you accuse me of committing criminal activity. I’m not gonna take that.”

    DeSantis was taking questions Thursday morning following a news conference focused on his anti-Covid-19 mandate policies in light of an uptick in new cases. The man, who first thanked DeSantis for his military service, quickly moved to criticize him, saying the governor “allowed people to hunt people like me.”

    It is unclear from the taping of the news conference who the man is and if he represents any particular outlet or group.

    The Florida governor has eased gun restrictions in his state, including signing a bill that allows the carry of concealed weapons without a permit. And as he looks to secure the GOP presidential nomination next year, DeSantis has positioned himself as a more conservative alternative to Donald Trump on the issue of guns.

    The Jacksonville community is still reeling from the deadly rampage late last month that killed three Black people. On August 26, a White gunman first went to a historically Black university before open firing at a Dollar General a few minutes later using two, legally purchased firearms, CNN previously reported.

    DeSantis condemned the attack at a vigil the following day, adding, “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.” He pledged state funds to the community and the university.

    But the man pointed to the state’s relaxed gun policies, telling the Florida governor that he is “one of the Americans who does not agree” with all of the policies he’s enacted and that he has “allowed weapons to be put on the streets” that led to people’s deaths including the recent Jacksonville shooting.

    “That is nonsense, that is such nonsense,” DeSantis said animatedly. “We’ve done more to support law enforcement in this state than anybody throughout the United States.”

    “The notion that we’re not supportive of safety is absurd,” he added.

    As the large pool of GOP presidential hopefuls look to ramp up their campaign following Labor Day, DeSantis is nearly 30 percentage points behind Trump and the governor’s backing has dipped by 8 points since June, a recent CNN poll showed.

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  • Trump and team seek to destroy credibility of his election subversion trial before a date is even set | CNN Politics

    Trump and team seek to destroy credibility of his election subversion trial before a date is even set | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump and his legal team are escalating efforts to discredit and delay a trial over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as his fight to avert criminal convictions becomes ever more indistinguishable from his presidential campaign.

    The former president’s attorney Sunday vowed to petition to relocate the trial from Washington, DC, claiming that a local jury won’t reflect the “characteristics” of the American people. And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election.

    Trump demanded the judge set to hear the case recuse herself in a flurry of assaults on the process that may fail legally, but will play into his campaign narrative that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration designed to thwart a White House comeback.

    Trump pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned in Washington last week – his third such plea in a criminal case in the past four months. But his new efforts to tarnish an eventual trial in this case mirror his long-term strategy of seeking to delegitimize any institution – including the courts, the Justice Department, US intelligence agencies and the press – that contradicts his narrative or challenges his power.

    They unfolded as the precarious nature of his position after his third indictment began to sink in and the ramifications for the 2024 election widened.

    Mike Pence, speaking on CNN this weekend, did not rule out providing testimony in a Trump trial if compelled, which would be a staggering potential scenario for a vice president to provide evidence against his ex-running mate.

    Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, dismissed one of the arguments the ex-president and his allies have turned to – that he was simply exercising his right to freedom of speech in seeking to reverse the election result in 2020. Barr, who told Trump there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during his final weeks in office, also said Sunday that “of course” he would appear as a witness at the trial if asked.

    Trump’s status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination has left his rivals with a painful political tightrope walk as they seek to take advantage of his plight while avoiding alienating GOP primary voters. But several candidates stiffened their criticism of the former president over the issue this weekend as campaigning heated up.

    Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that in the tense days ahead of Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s election, Trump asked him to put loyalty to him above his oath to the Constitution and halt the process. “I’m running for president in part because I think anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence told Dana Bash.

    And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went a tiny bit further in his criticism of Trump, while still arguing that the Biden administration is weaponizing justice against the former president. On a campaign swing through Iowa on Friday, DeSantis – who is battling to preserve his tottering status as the No. 2 Republican in primary polls – said Trump’s false claims about election fraud were “unsubstantiated.”

    In a subsequent interview with NBC, DeSantis added: “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20 every four years is the winner.”

    “Of course, he lost,” DeSantis said. “Joe Biden’s the president.” The Florida governor also, however, chastised people in the media and elsewhere for acting like “this was the perfect election.”

    The fast-moving developments since Trump’s indictment last week are offering a preview of one of the most monumental criminal trials in American political history. They also suggest this case, and two others in which Trump has pleaded not guilty – to mishandling of classified documents and to charges arising out of a hush money payment to an adult film actress – are certain to deepen a corrosive national political estrangement.

    Defense teams have the right to use every courtroom mechanism within legal bounds to their client’s best advantage. Attempts to delay trials with pre-trial litigation are not unusual and prosecutors and defense lawyers often differ over matters of procedure and evidence. But Trump’s case is unique, given the visibility of the accused, the fact that he’s a former president running for another White House term, and that he is using his power and fame to mount a vitriolic campaign outside the courtroom to drain public confidence in the justice system. It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no distinction between his legal strategy and his political one in an election that is now consumed by his criminal exposure and the possibility of convictions.

    In posts on his Truth Social network that highlighted a furious state of mind, Trump on Sunday demanded the recusal of Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who is presiding over the case, and a venue change out of the capital. He blasted special counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and claimed that the US was being “destroyed.” On Saturday night, in a speech in South Carolina, Trump demanded that Senate Republicans do more to protect him.

    His threatening rhetoric is already having a direct impact on pre-trial preparations as both parties shadow box ahead of a decision by the judge on a trial date.

    Smith’s prosecutors asked the court late Friday to impose strict limits on how Trump can publicize evidence that will be handed over as part of the discovery process. Trump’s team sought an extension of a Monday afternoon deadline to file on the matter, but Chutkan refused their request. Prosecutors want the judge to impose a protective order limiting how Trump could use such evidence because of his previous public statements about witnesses, judges, attorneys and others. In their filing, they included a screenshot of a Truth Social post in which Trump warned: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”

    Trump’s lawyer John Lauro argued on “State of the Union” Sunday that the special counsel was seeking to withhold evidence about the case from the press and the American people that “may speak to the innocence of President Trump.”

    Trump is seeking to delay and prolong the trial so that the country won’t have a final answer on his alleged culpability until after the election. If Trump wins the White House in November 2024, he will again gain access to executive powers and status that could freeze federal prosecutions against him or mitigate any guilty verdicts.

    Lauro said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he had not known any similar case go to trial within two or three years of an indictment. He also said on other talk show appearances that he planned to relitigate the 2020 election, which he said had never been drawn out in court, as a way of challenging Smith’s charges. Trump, however, made multiple attempts to have the 2020 result overturned in court, and judges repeatedly threw out his claims of voter fraud as having no merit.

    Lauro also further revealed his hand on defense strategy by arguing that despite being told multiple times by officials and campaign advisers that he lost the election, Trump’s actions were not criminal since he was convinced he won.

    “The defense is quite simple. Donald Trump … believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And as any American citizen, he had a right to speak out under the First Amendment. He had a right to petition governments around the country, state governments, based on his grievances that election irregularities had occurred.”

    But Barr, a conservative Republican who had been a staunch Trump defender until the very end of his administration, said that while Smith’s case was certainly “challenging,” he didn’t think it “runs afoul of the First Amendment.”

    Trump’s prospective defense raises the possibility that any future politician could create an alternative reality that bears no relation to the facts of an election outcome, and then take actions designed to retain power.

    Barr sought to clear up what he said was confusion about the case. “This involved a situation where the states had already made the official and authoritative determination as to who won in those states, and they sent the votes and certified them to Congress,” Barr said on “Face the Nation.”

    “The allegation, essentially, by the government is that, at that point, the president conspired, entered into a plan, a scheme that involved a lot of deceit, the object of which was to erase those votes, to nullify those lawful votes.”

    Another claim by Trump’s team being amplified on conservative media is that the former president cannot get a fair trial in Washington, where he won only 5% of the vote in the 2020 election. Lauro instead suggested one of the most pro-Trump states in the union, where the ex-president racked up nearly 70% of votes cast in the last election. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue to try this case,” he said on CBS.

    Most legal experts think a change of venue is unlikely. Such a step would implicitly strike at the heart of the legal system since it would suggest that verdicts and juries in one jurisdiction are more valid than those elsewhere and could set a precedent that politicians could choose juries in politically advantageous regions.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of the handful of Republicans running for the 2024 nomination on an explicitly anti-Trump platform, insisted that Trump could get a fair trial in the nation’s capital.

    “I believe jurors can be fair. I believe in the American people,” Christie said on “State of the Union.”

    Christie: I believe DC jurors can be fair to Trump

    Christie, a former federal prosecutor in a blue state, also rejected the argument that Trump’s post-election conduct is protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. He argued that proof of Trump’s culpability lies in his failure to immediately seek to stop the ransacking of the US Capitol by his supporters during the certification of Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.

    “He didn’t do that. He sat, ate his overdone hamburger in the White House Dining Room he has off the Oval Office and enjoyed watching what was going on,” Christie said.

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  • Harris allies and key Democrats rally around vice president amid party handwringing | CNN Politics

    Harris allies and key Democrats rally around vice president amid party handwringing | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats are sending a clear message to their fellow party members who speculate that she should be replaced as President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2024: It’s time to stop it.

    “It’s not only a distraction, it’s offensive,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore told CNN in an interview.

    The vice president has faced renewed calls from some pundits and columnists to be dropped from the ticket amid heightened concerns about the president’s age and doubts over her ability to lead if Biden were no longer able.

    It’s at least the second major go-around of questioning whether Harris’ rightful place is by Biden’s side for the 2024 contentious race, leaving her office tired of the fraught conversation, according to a person familiar with the dynamic.

    “Everybody’s sort of over it,” the person said.

    The feeling is shared across most of the Democratic spectrum, who hope the party turns their sights on former President Donald Trump or whomever the Republican presidential nominee will be, instead of handwringing about themselves.

    A source close to the Biden campaign told CNN: “People need to get on board and recognize every time they undermine the vice president, they undermine the campaign. We cannot afford to lose to these Republicans. So, get on board.”

    There have both been private and public efforts to deliver this message.

    Privately, according to a person familiar with campaign operations, the Biden campaign contacted both former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, after neither directly answer repeated questions from CNN about whether Harris was the best running mate for Biden on the 2024 ticket. The campaign asked Pelosi and Raskin to clarify their comments and both lawmakers later cleaned up their remarks to offer direct messages of support.

    Raskin told CNN in a follow-up statement Friday that “Vice President Harris has excelled in perhaps the most ambiguous and challenging job in our constitutional system and she is unquestionably the best running mate for President Biden in 2024.”

    Pelosi’s office offered no additional statement but pointed CNN to the praise Pelosi heaped on Harris in her interview, saying she’s “very politically astute, I don’t think people give her enough credit.”

    Discussions on how best to shepherd the party along are also happening among groups like the Congressional Black Caucus, who are actively talking about how to combat the replacement chatter and other attacks against the vice president, according to a source familiar with the effort.

    “Some of us need to say that they are acting in many ways like agents for the MAGA crowd,” Rev. Al Sharpton told CNN. He plans to call on Democrats to stop during CBC weekend in Washington, DC. “I can only think that they are either politically stupid or working for the opposition.”

    And according to conversations with more than a dozen Democratic strategists, elected officials and people close to the vice president, many will join Sharpton in urging Democrats to stop their groaning over the Biden-Harris ticket and end the chatter of potentially replacing the vice president.

    Publicly, key Democrats have come out to support Harris, casting the lingering doubt as harmful to Biden and his 2024 chances.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom said “of course” Harris should be the Democratic 2024 vice presidential nominee. Newsom and Harris are old friends – and sometimes frenemies.

    “I mean, by definition, if I think this administration last two, two-and-a-half years, has been one of the most outstanding administrations the last few decades. And she’s a member of that administration, she gets to lay and claim credit to a lot of that success. The answer is absolutely,” he said in an interview to CNN earlier this week.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and a former rival who was once iced out by the vice president for her lukewarm support, said Thursday she was proud to support Harris’ campaign with Biden.

    “Vice President Harris is a passionate, clear, unyielding advocate for Americans’ freedoms, leading the administration’s efforts to protect reproductive freedom and strengthen voting rights,” Warren said in a statement. “I am proud to support her campaign with President Biden and I’m confident that the Administration’s record of delivering for American families will lead them to victory in 2024.”

    Many who CNN spoke to believe the origins of the doubt come from a place of misogyny, racism or jealousy from other Democrats who wish they were in the vice president’s spot. Harris is the first woman and first Black and South Asian person in her role.

    “There’s a lot of people in Washington who would love that job,” said Jim Messina, a Democratic operative who ran Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. “I think that a lot of the criticism at the at the vice president is borderline misogynistic and there’s a lot of people who judge her harder than they would judge a male politician (in) that role.”

    Moore, the only Black governor in the US, said, “The attacks on her, they hit different – they hit our ears differently. And I think people should remember that.”

    But others cite Harris’ low poll numbers and history of gaffes as reasons to take a second look at her position. Three prominent political columnists collectively suggested politicians like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia as possibilities to replace Harris.

    Contacted by CNN, each Democrat rejected the notion.

    “I absolutely do not think Vice President Harris should be dropped,” Raimondo told CNN directly. “I fully support Vice President Harris on the ticket. I think she is doing an incredible job as vice president and is a strong leader for our country.”

    “Gov. Whitmer supports President Biden and Vice President Harris,” a spokesperson for the Michigan governor responded.

    “‘I’ve seen the vice president up close and in action in my state, and you couldn’t contain the excitement in the room. I’m hard-pressed to imagine a better partner for President Biden,” Warnock told CNN.

    “Kamala Harris is a tremendous leader. I was proud to introduce the Momnibus with her and am pleased we can continue to work together to end disparities in maternal health. I am on team Biden-Harris and enthusiastically support their re-election in 2024,” Underwood said in a statement.

    “Any assertion that there is anyone better qualified to run on the Democratic ticket other than President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is absolutely ludicrous. I am excited to do my part to ensure that they are both re-elected so that we can continue delivering for the people of this country,” Bass said in a statement.

    It’s unclear whether the latest round of coalescing behind the vice president will be enough to stop all the handwringing.

    Harris and the Biden administration have spent the last several months trying to build up her public profile, bolstering her public schedule to include stops focused on the hot 2024 issue of abortion as well as being the first-in-line responder to GOP attacks on freedom. On Thursday, the White House announced she would serve as the head a newly launched, first-of-its kind White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, the latest step in the Biden administration’s efforts to enact meaningful gun control against the backdrop of a deadlocked Congress.

    Harris has also beefed up her fundraising efforts, a key signal of her expanded role in the campaign.

    Biden aides see their path to victory next year embedded firmly in their ability to secure Black voters, women, young people and other groups that tend to respond warmly to Harris.

    But this most recent round of speculation comes as Republicans have frequently made Harris a central figure in their campaign trail attacks, with some – such as former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley – insinuating that this upcoming election is really about the vice president due to Biden’s age.

    Asked earlier this month about her reaction to constant critiques, Harris said in an interview that it was “not new.”

    “They feel the need to attack because they’re scared that we will win based on the merit of the work that Joe Biden and I, and our administration, has done,” she added.

    More recently, during a conversation at a Pennsylvania community college on voting rights, Harris did not directly reference the rumbles over her place on the ticket. But in a thinly veiled moment, Harris called those who once doubted her and then-candidate Biden’s 2020 bid, “haters.”

    “So, when people turned out in 2020 – even though they were the doubters. I would say, some of the haters. Let’s keep it real,” Harris said, with some laughter.

    There was “record turnout, and it’s because you voted that Joe Biden’s president of the United States and I’m vice president of the United States,” she added to a crowd of younger voters.

    It was reflective of what appears to be her office’s larger “say nothing” stance, at least publicly.

    “They’ve been in the mode of, they’re ignoring it,” one source familiar with Harris’ office told CNN.

    And those close to Harris say, though she’s generally “very aware of what people are saying,” it’s unlikely she’ll proactively address the calls for her to leave the ticket. Instead, she’ll work through it.

    “I think she keeps her head down and keep working,” Sharpton told CNN.

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  • John King is going all over the map in 2024. What he’s learned so far | CNN Politics

    John King is going all over the map in 2024. What he’s learned so far | CNN Politics

    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    You’re more likely to read about people in the aggregate in this newsletter – how groups are affected by something the government is doing and how polls suggest those groups feel about it.

    CNN’s John King is looking at the 2024 presidential race from the other side in his new “All Over the Map” project. Building relationships with individuals in key states, he plans to chart how their opinions shift over the course of the campaign.

    He’s filed reports from Iowa and New Hampshire so far:

    I talked to King to hear what he’s learned so far. Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for length, is below.

    WOLF: What are you finding when you talk to people out in the country?

    KING: This is how I started covering politics 106 million years ago. It’s just at this moment in the country where you have this weird combination of polarization and disaffection and a lot of people who are in the middle who would be moderate Republicans or true independents or centrist Democrats are just disgusted and they’re sitting out.

    The people who are sitting out are empowering the extremes, and they know it, but they just can’t stomach national politics. So they vote for mayor and they vote for governor and sometimes they vote for Senate and Congress, but even that pisses them off. So it’s just a weird time.

    WOLF: What I really like in these reports is the nuance of people’s opinions. They don’t fit into the buckets that we create for them here in Washington. How do you find people who will talk to you? I’ve talked to other reporters who have trouble doing that.

    KING: It can be hard sometimes. We’re doing this a number of ways. Some of these are through people I know. The fishermen in New Hampshire we found through a woman I met years ago who’s part of an advocacy group for these independent small fishermen …

    They’re interesting because they’re young, they’re Republican-leaning, they’re really hardworking, blue-collar people. People that when I started doing this – 35 years ago was my first campaign – they were Democrats.

    Michael Dukakis only won 10 states in 1988, but he won West Virginia and Iowa. Farmers and coal miners and fishermen and people who work with their hands were Democrats then. And they are more and more Republicans now.

    The idea here is to build relationships with them all the way through next November and hopefully beyond. But in the 2024 campaign context, we’re not going in to get people at a rally to say, “Are you for (former President Donald) Trump or are you for (President Joe) Biden? Are you for (former South Carolina Gov. Nikki) Haley or are you for (Florida Gov. Ron) DeSantis?”

    We care about that, but I care much more about how they got there. Have they always been there? And again, in all caps in boldface to me is the question: why?

    WOLF: You talk to a solar panel salesman who backs Trump and a commercial fisherman, who you just mentioned, who says Republicans are for the working man. What motivates people whose livelihoods are directly related to climate change to back Republicans who are largely opposed to having any government involvement with doing anything about it?

    KING: That part’s fascinating. Chris Mudd is the solar panel guy in Iowa and Andrew Konchek is one of the fishermen in New Hampshire. And to your point, our business makes the mistake – and the candidates, the politicians and the parties way too often make the mistake – of trying to put people in their lanes and in their boxes. And guess what, everybody is different. It’s a cliche, but it’s true.

    So Chris Mudd – his family has an advertising business that employs just shy of 100 people in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It’s an anchor of the community, especially in a part of the country where you’ve had a lot of economic turmoil in the last 25 years, manufacturing disappearing. These guys are heroes in their communities. They are employers.

    Then he started the spinoff solar installation business, and he admits straight up his business benefits – and quite significantly – from the Biden green energy tax credits. And yet, he says, he would take his chances without them because he thinks that money should be redirected to the border wall. That Trump should finish his border wall.

    It’s not just immigration. It’s American sovereignty and the border. And so he’s willing to take an economic hit for his business. He thinks it would survive, but he would take a hit because immigration, American security, comes first to him.

    The fisherman, on the other hand, wants to stay on the water. He came to Trump in 2016 because Trump was a newcomer, he was the insurgent. He loves the policies. In Andrew’s case, he does not like the tweets. He does not like the chaos. Prefers Trump would talk more about the future, not the past.

    But his industry is in decline. And he says Trump is for less regulation – so they won’t be regulating the fishing industry as much – and he knows Trump hates wind energy farms, and he thinks the biggest immediate threat to his job, two or three years down the road, is a plan to build all these wind turbine farms off the coast of New Hampshire and off the coast of Maine.

    And he thinks they’re gonna kill his business. So he’s for Trump because he wants to pay his mortgage.

    WOLF: You talk to another guy in New Hampshire who’s switching from Trump to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The conventional wisdom would be that Kennedy would pull from Biden’s support because he is, at least technically, a Democrat. What is happening there?

    KING: So that to me is fascinating on a couple levels. No. 1, Lucas was a Trump 2016 primary voter in New Hampshire. He quickly got turned off by the chaos. He was not for Trump in 2020. He went third party. But he’s a Republican-leaning guy who likes Trump’s policies. Does not like the Trump performance art, I’ll call it.

    You would think he’d be looking for another Republican in this campaign, but he gets all the way over to Robert Kennedy.

    A buddy of his, a crew mate, gave him a Joe Rogan podcast with Bobby Kennedy on it. And Kennedy is talking about how years ago, he helped these fishermen who were being hurt by industrial pollution when he was at the National Resources Defense Council.

    So what was he thinking here? They don’t trust politicians. Politicians promised to help them all the time, and in their view, they never do. So here’s a guy who’s running for president, who actually helped people who do what he does. Done. That’s it. Right?

    Yes, he knows there’s a lot of other controversy about Robert Kennedy. He says there’s going to be controversy about any politician. Here’s a guy who has helped people just like him.

    WOLF: You talked about a couple of people just now who don’t like the Trump noise or chaos, but CNN ‘s latest polling – we just had one in New Hampshire. Trump leads there. He leads in Iowa, according to polling there. What does your reporting on the ground suggest is behind the fact that none of these many Trump challengers have caught on?

    KING: Well, one of the issues is just that there are so many of them. The numbers are part of it, without a doubt. But a lot of these Republicans also view Trump as kind of an incumbent. And to a degree, he also benefits from the cynical effort to convince so many Republicans that he didn’t lose last time, even though we all know he did.

    If you look at our New Hampshire poll, even a lot of Republicans who support the other candidates think Trump is the strongest general election candidate. That’s helping him. I think the bigger part there is just that the base is loyal to him.

    He can be beat. Six in 10 Republicans in New Hampshire want somebody else, but there are 10 other people running and the support is fractured. Until you have a singular alternative, there’s no way to beat Trump.

    The only thing I would add to that is what several Trump voters in New Hampshire (told us). They’re planning to vote for him, make no mistake, but they say it’s not as exciting. It’s not the same as it was in 2015 and 2016, when he was new, when that hostile takeover was so dramatic and to many Republicans so exciting.

    The establishment didn’t think so, but a lot of Republican voters found it very exciting. Trump is not the new guy anymore. And in some ways, he’s the new establishment. That doesn’t mean his people aren’t loyal, but in the back of their mind, there does seem to be a little bit of, “I’m open to some change.”

    WOLF: Joe Biden didn’t win either Iowa or New Hampshire in the 2020 primaries. And for a complicated and very strange Democratic reason, he may not take part in those contests this year. His nomination is probably a foregone conclusion, but what did you hear from Democrats in those states?

    KING: I want to be a little careful here because we haven’t spent a ton of time with Democrats. The project’s going to expand over the next 13, 14 months, through the election.

    The biggest question right now is can Trump be stopped and who is the Republican nominee going to be? So that’s where we have put 75, 80% of our energy and focus. Doesn’t mean when we go into the states, we’re not meeting and talking to Democrats, but I would be more careful about taking the anecdotal reporting we get from six, eight, 10, 12 voters and projecting it out.

    I will say that a number of Democrats ask us, “Do you think there’s any chance he doesn’t run still?” Or they will share their own worries that there will be some event that will force him to not run again.

    The age thing is a nagging thought for Democrats. Age, or is he up to the job might be a better way to put it. Does he have the stamina for another term? That’s lingering.

    You don’t see any evidence that there’s anybody – no Democrat is running who has a serious chance or anything like that. We’re going get to the swing states as we go forward. I have a number of questions about whether key pieces of the Biden coalition are energized for any number of reasons.

    Sometimes you hear this age, stamina, up-to-the-job question. Other times you hear, if you talk to organizers and activists, that some of the people absolutely critical to the Democratic coalition – blue-collar Black workers, blue-collar Latino workers – are still feeling it from inflation, don’t feel like the economy’s bounced back.

    Those are things to cover as we go forward. I would not make any big sweeping findings in my reporting on the Democrats so far. I’ve got more questions than I have answers.

    WOLF: Let me tweak that a little bit. Separating you from these reporting trips, as somebody who’s covered so many presidential elections, what could be the potential effect of the president not taking part in the first two contests?

    KING: New Hampshire is very parochial. There are a lot of Democrats there who are, forgive my language, but pissed off at him. I think he could be “embarrassed” in New Hampshire.

    Now, does it have any lasting meaning? Let’s see what happens.

    The president did something, actually, that’s pretty courageous. I do not remember one cycle where there hasn’t been at least a conversation about, “Is it time to change this Iowa and New Hampshire thing?”

    The Iowa electorate is 90% White. The New Hampshire electorate is 90% White. The numbers are even higher than that if you look at the Republican electorate. They’re overwhelmingly White states. They do not reflect the diversity, both from an ethnic perspective and even an economic perspective, of the Democratic Party.

    This conversation comes up every four years in both parties. Are you gonna change it? Biden had the guts to do it. The cynic would say he did it for the reasons you mentioned – that he lost Iowa and New Hampshire, and he’s lost them before. That wasn’t the first time and so he wanted a new way. He wanted the Biden way.

    Of course that’s one of the reasons he did it. Because he has more success in South Carolina. He has a history. So he has tilted the Democratic playing field to his favor. A bad number in New Hampshire might be embarrassing, but I think they’ve actually more protected themselves than exposed themselves by doing it this way.

    My bigger question is does the way they’ve changed the Democratic (process) actually mask weaknesses? If there’s a weakness in Democratic enthusiasm, if there’s a turnout problem, they need to get a handle on that as soon as possible.

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  • Here’s what DeSantis, Christie and other Trump 2024 rivals are saying about the Georgia indictment | CNN Politics

    Here’s what DeSantis, Christie and other Trump 2024 rivals are saying about the Georgia indictment | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s biggest detractors in the 2024 Republican presidential race offered mixed reactions Tuesday to the former president’s indictment by a Georgia grand jury.

    Trump has remained defiant in the face of the new charges against him and 18 others stemming from their efforts to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat. He now faces four separate indictments at the same time that he’s running for president as the front-runner for the GOP nomination.

    Two rivals argued that the charges Trump faces in Fulton County are similar to the election interference charges brought by federal special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, and said the federal case should take precedence.

    Here’s what Trump’s 2024 GOP opponents are saying about the latest indictment:

    Christie told Fox News that he is “uncomfortable” with what he views as an “unnecessary” indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

    “I think that this conduct is essentially covered by the federal indictment,” he said. “I would have less of a problem with this if she decided, ‘OK, I’m not going to charge Donald Trump here, because he has been charged for, essentially this conduct, by Jack Smith.’”

    However, Christie said the Fulton County prosecution of Trump’s close allies, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was “more defensible” because they “have not been charged at the federal level” like Trump has.

    Christie defended the timing of Willis’ indictment, saying that Trump’s decision to run in 2024 was “not an excuse” for the justice system to stop operating.

    “I think all of these judges in the end will make decisions based upon the reasonable availability of all the witnesses and everyone else,” he said.

    Later, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Christie was asked whether Willis might have brought charges against Trump because he wouldn’t be able to shut down the state case and pardon himself if he is elected president again in 2024, Christie said, “I don’t think that’s the prosecutor’s job. The prosecutor’s job is to look at how do you administer justice in this case.”

    He said Republican voters should ask themselves, “Is someone out on bail in four jurisdictions really our best chance to beat Joe Biden?”

    “Are we really going to continue to act as if this is normal conduct? It’s not,” he said.

    Hutchinson, who has long called for Trump to drop out of the race because of his conduct, said the latest indictment further strengthens his belief that the former president should not be seeking the 2024 GOP nomination.

    But much like Christie, he said he believes Willis may be stepping outside her jurisdiction, given the federal charges Trump faces.

    “Generally, state cases are deferential to the federal cases that have been brought, and I think you can make the case that Georgia should have been deferential because there’s overlap there as well, but it is what it is,” Hutchinson said.

    Another strident Trump critic, Hurd said in a statement that Trump’s latest indictment was “another example of how the former president’s baggage will hand Joe Biden reelection if Trump is the Republican nominee.”

    “This is further evidence that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election and was ready to do anything it took to cling to power,” Hurd said. “It’s time we move beyond dealing with the former president’s baggage. The Republican Party needs a leader who isn’t afraid of bullies like Trump.”

    The tech entrepreneur was sharply critical of the charges Trump faces in Georgia.

    At a NewsNation town hall Monday night, Ramaswamy said he hadn’t read the details of the indictments but painted the multiple investigations into Trump in multiple jurisdictions as an effort to negatively impact the former president’s chances of winning the 2024 election.

    “These are politicized persecutions through prosecution,” Ramaswamy said. “It would be a lot easier for me if Donald Trump were not in this primary, but that is not how I want to win this election. The way we do elections in the United States of America is that we the people – you all – get to decide who governs, not the federal police state.”

    DeSantis, Trump’s top-polling primary rival who has criticized the prosecution of the former president, told New England reporters Tuesday that the Georgia indictment is an example of the “criminalization of politics.”

    “They’re now doing an inordinate amount of resources to try to shoehorn this contest over the 2020 election into a RICO statute, which was really designed to be able to go after organized crime, not necessarily to go after political activity,” the governor told WMUR at a news conference, referring to a racketeering charge brought against Trump. “And so, I think it’s an example of this criminalization of politics. I don’t think that this is something that is good for the country.”

    DeSantis later told reporters in New Hampshire that he thinks Trump is currently leading in the 2024 GOP primary in polls in part because of how Republican voters have responded to the indictments.

    “Clearly, there’s been a change in some of the polling since the Alvin Bragg case was brought,” DeSantis said in reference to the indictment brought by the Manhattan district attorney against Trump related to an alleged hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. “I think that’s just irrefutable.”

    Much like DeSantis, Scott, rather than criticizing Trump’s actions, lambasted the prosecution of the former president.

    “We see the legal system being weaponized against political opponents,” the senator told reporters Tuesday at the Iowa State Fair. “That is un-American and unacceptable.”

    Scott said he hopes to “restore confidence and integrity” to the legal system if he were to become president.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Takeaways from the second Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from the second Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The second 2024 Republican presidential primary debate ended just as it began: with former President Donald Trump – who hasn’t yet appeared alongside his rivals onstage – as the party’s dominant front-runner.

    The seven GOP contenders in Wednesday night’s showdown at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California provided a handful of memorable moments, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley unloading what often seemed like the entire field’s pent-up frustration with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

    “Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” she said to him at one point.

    Two candidates criticized Trump’s absence, as well. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was “missing in action.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the former president “Donald Duck” and said he “hides behind his golf clubs” rather than defending his record on stage.

    Chris Christie takes up debate time to send Trump a clear message

    The GOP field also took early shots at President Joe Biden. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said Biden, rather than joining the striking auto workers’ union on the picket line Tuesday in Michigan, should be on the southern border. Former Vice President Mike Pence said Biden should be “on the unemployment line.” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said Biden was interfering with “free markets.”

    However, what played out in the debate, hosted by Fox Business Network and Univision, is unlikely to change the trajectory of a GOP race in which Trump has remained dominant in national and early-state polling.

    And the frequently messy, hard-to-track crosstalk could have led many viewers to tune out entirely.

    Here are takeaways from the second GOP primary debate:

    Trump might have played it safe by skipping the debates and taking a running-as-an-incumbent approach to the 2024 GOP primary.

    It’s hard to see, though, how he would pay a significant price in the eyes of the party’s voters for missing Wednesday night’s messy engagement.

    Trump’s rivals took a few shots at him. DeSantis knocked him for deficit spending. Christie mocked him during the night’s early moments, calling him “Donald Duck” for skipping the debate and then in his final comments said he would vote Trump off the GOP island.

    “This guy has not only divided our party – he’s divided families all over this country. He’s divided friends all over this country,” Christie said. “He needs to be voted off the island and he needs to be taken out of this process.”

    However, Trump largely escaped serious scrutiny of his four years in the Oval Office from a field of rivals courting voters who have largely positive views of his presidency.

    “Tonight’s GOP debate was as boring and inconsequential as the first debate, and nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

    The second GOP primary debate was beset by interruptions, crosstalk and protracted squabbles between the candidates and moderators over speaking time.

    That’s tough for viewers trying to make sense of it all but even worse for these candidates as they attempted to stand out as viable alternatives to the absentee Trump.

    Further complicating the matter, some of the highest polling candidates after Trump – DeSantis and Haley – were among those least willing to dive into the muck, especially during the crucial first hour. The moderators repeatedly tried to clear the road for the Florida governor, at least in the beginning. But he was all but absent from the proceedings for the first 15 minutes.

    Ramaswamy fared somewhat better, speaking louder – and faster – than most of his rivals. But he was bogged down repeatedly when caught between his own talking points and cross-volleys of criticisms from frustrated candidates like Scott.

    The moderator group will likely get criticism for losing control of the room within the first half-hour, but even a messy debate tells voters something about the people taking part.

    All night, Scott seemed like he was looking for a fight with somebody and he finally got that when he set his sights on fellow South Carolinian Haley.

    He began his line of attack – which Haley interjected with a “Bring it” – by accusing her of spending $50,000 on curtains in a $15 million subsidized location during her time as the US ambassador to the United Nations.

    What ensued was the two Republicans going back and forth about the curtains. “Do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those curtains,” Haley said, while Scott repeated, “Did you send them back? Did you send them back?” Haley then responded: “Did you send them back? You’re the one who works in Congress.”

    It wasn’t the most acrimonious moment of the night, but it was up there. The feuding between the two South Carolina natives seemed deep, but it’s worth remembering that about a decade ago, when Haley was governor, she appointed Scott to the Senate seat he currently holds after Republican Jim DeMint stepped down. That confidence in Scott seems to have dissolved in this presidential race.

    Confronted by his Republican competitors for the first time in earnest, DeSantis delivered an uneven performance from the center of the stage – a spot that is considerably less secure than it was heading into the first debate in Milwaukee.

    Despite rules that allowed candidates to respond if they were invoked, DeSantis let Fox slip to commercial break when Pence seemed to blame the governor for a jury decision to award a life sentence, not the death penalty, to the mass murderer in the Parkland high school shooting. (DeSantis opposed the decision and championed a law that made Florida the state with the lowest threshold to put someone on death row going forward.) Nor did he respond when Pence accused DeSantis of inflating Florida’s budget by 30% during his tenure.

    He later let Scott get the last word on Florida’s Black history curriculum standards and struggled to defend himself when Haley – accurately – pointed out that he took steps to block fracking in Florida on his second day in office.

    Before the first debate in Milwaukee, a top strategist for a pro-DeSantis super PAC told donors that “79% of the people tonight are going to watch the debate and turn it off after 19 minutes.”

    By that measure, the Florida governor managed to first speak Wednesday night just in the nick of time – 16 minutes into the debate. And when he finally spoke, he continued the sharper attacks on the GOP front-runner that he has previewed in recent weeks.

    DeSantis equated Trump’s absence in California to Biden, who DeSantis said was “completely missing in action for leadership” on the economy, blaming him for inflation and the autoworkers strike.

    “And you know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing in action,” DeSantis said. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.”

    But DeSantis then largely pulled back from further targeting Trump – until a post-debate Fox News appearance when he challenged the former president to a one-on-one face-off.

    DeSantis ended the debate on a strong note. He took charge by rejecting moderator Dana Perino’s attempts to get the candidates to vote one of their competitors “off the island.” He ended his night forcefully dismissing a suggestion that Trump’s lead in the polls held meaning in September.

    “Polls don’t elect presidents, voters elect presidents,” he said, before pointing a finger at Trump for Republicans’ electoral underperformance in the last three elections.

    But as the super PAC strategist previously pointed out: By then, who was watching?

    In the final minutes of the debate, co-host Ilia Calderón of Univision asked Pence how he would reach out to those Latino voters who felt the Republican Party was hostile or didn’t care about them.

    “I’m incredibly proud of the tax cut and tax reform bill,” he said, referring to Republicans’ sweeping 2017 tax law. He also cited low unemployment rates for Hispanic Americans recorded during the Trump-Pence administration.

    Scott, faced with the same question, said it was important to lead by example. “My chief of staff is the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate,” he said. “I hired her because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.”

    Calderón focused much of her time on a series of policy questions that highlighted the candidates’ records on immigration and gun violence. At times, some of them struggled to respond directly.

    She asked Pence if he would work with Congress to find a permanent solution for people who were brought to the country illegally as children. The Trump-Pence administration ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gave those young people protected status. She repeated the question after Pence focused his answer on his work securing the border. He then talked about his time in Congress.

    “Let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer,” he said. “But you know, something I’ve done different than everybody on this stage is I’ve actually secured reform in Congress.”

    The candidates – and moderators – shy away from abortion talk

    It took more than a 100 minutes on Wednesday night for the first question on abortion to be asked.

    About five minutes later, the conversation had moved on. What is potentially the most potent driver (or flipper) of votes in the coming election was afforded less time than TikTok.

    Tellingly, no one onstage seemed to mind.

    Perino introduced the subject by asking DeSantis whether some Republicans were right to worry that the electoral backlash to abortion bans – or the prospect of their passage – would handicap the eventual GOP nominee.

    DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in April, dismissed those concerns, pointing to his success in traditionally liberal parts of Florida on his way to winning a second term in 2022. Then he swiped at Trump for calling the new laws “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

    Christie took a similar path, arguing that his two terms as governor of New Jersey, a traditionally blue state, showed it was possible for anti-abortion leaders to win in a environments supportive of abortion rights.

    And with that, the abortion “debate” in Simi Valley ended abruptly. No more questions and no attempts by the rest of the candidates to interject or otherwise join the chat.

    Candidates pile on Ramaswamy

    Some of the candidates onstage didn’t want to have a repeat of the first debate, in which Ramaswamy managed to stand out as a formidable debater and showman.

    Early in Wednesday’s debate, Scott went after the tech entrepreneur, saying his business record included ties to the Chinese Communist Party and money going to Hunter Biden. The visibly annoyed Ramaswamy shifted gears from praising all the other candidates onstage to defending his business record. But Scott and Ramaswamy ended up talking over each other.

    A little later on Pence began an answer with a knock on Ramaswamy, saying, “I’m glad Vivek pulled out of his business deal in China.” At another point after Ramaswamy had responded to a question about his use of TikTok, Haley jumped in, saying, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber from what you say” and then going on to say, “We can’t trust you. We can’t trust you.” As Ramaswamy tried to readopt his unity tone, Scott could be heard trying to interrupt him.

    Despite the efforts of moderators to pin them down, DeSantis and Pence struggled to respond when challenged on their respective records on health care.

    Asked about the Trump administration’s failure to end the Affordable Care Act as promised, Pence opted instead to answer a previous question about mass gun violence. When Perino pushed Pence one more time to explain why Obamacare remains not just intact but popular, the former vice president once again demurred.

    Fox’s Stuart Varney similarly pressed DeSantis to explain why 2.5 million Floridians don’t have health insurance.

    DeSantis found a familiar foil for Republicans in California: inflation. Varney, though, said it didn’t explain why Florida has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the country, to which DeSantis had little response.

    “Our state’s a dynamic state,” DeSantis said, before pointing to Florida’s population boom and the low level of welfare benefits offered there.

    Haley, though, appeared ready to debate health care, arguing for transparency in prices to lessen the power of insurance companies and providers and overhauling lawsuit rules to make it harder to sue doctors.

    “How can we be the best country in the world and have the most expensive health care in the world?” Haley said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • GOP megadonor and Anthony Scaramucci among early donors to Chris Christie super PAC | CNN Politics

    GOP megadonor and Anthony Scaramucci among early donors to Chris Christie super PAC | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Anthony Scaramucci and a GOP megadonor who paid for luxury trips for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas are among the donors to the super PAC supporting former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s 2024 presidential bid.

    The Tell It Like It Is PAC reported receiving nearly $5.9 million in the first half of 2023, according to a report it filed Monday with Federal Election Commission. It only reported receiving contributions between May 30 and June 30 in this filing. Christie formally announced his presidential campaign on June 6.

    Harlan Crow, a Republican real estate magnate, contributed $100,000 to Christie’s PAC. Crow has made headlines recently for providing luxury travel for and engaging in private real-estate deals with Thomas.

    Another noteworthy donor is Scaramucci, who served briefly as Trump’s White House communications director. He also donated $100,000 to the pro-Christie PAC, the new filing shows.

    Super PACs can accept donations of any size from a wide array of sources, including corporations, but are barred from coordinating their spending decisions with the candidates they back.

    The single largest donation was $1 million from a limited liability company called SHBT LLC that was established last year in Texas. A spokesman for Christie’s super PAC did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the donor.

    Two of the PAC’s largest donors are Richard Saker, the CEO of ShopRite supermarkets in New Jersey, and Walter Buckley Jr., a political megadonor. The two donors each gave $500,000.

    Billionaire Jeff Yass, the cofounder of one of Wall Street’s largest trading firms and TikTok investor, gave the pro-Christie PAC $250,000. Yass also donated $10 million in June to the political committee associated with the anti-tax Club for Growth. An arm of the Club has blistered former President Donald Trump with attack ads.

    Another notable donor is Murray Kushner, the uncle of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has donated to Christie’s campaigns before and he’s contributed to several Democrats. In this round, Murray Kushner gave the pro-Christie PAC $10,000.

    The presidential hopeful has a long history with the Kushner family. In the early 2000s, Christie prosecuted Charles Kushner – Jared Kushner’s father and Murray Kushner’s brother. Charles and Murray Kushner have feuded over business and are reportedly estranged.

    Charles Kushner went on to spend more than a year in prison. Trump pardoned Charles Kushner in December 2020.

    The super PAC spent less than half a million dollars – nearly $430,000 – in its month of reported expenses and ended the first half of the year with nearly $5.5 million in available cash.

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  • Trump shows in Iowa he still rules the GOP — despite his deepening criminal peril | CNN Politics

    Trump shows in Iowa he still rules the GOP — despite his deepening criminal peril | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump only needed 10 minutes to show why his growing pile of criminal charges is not yet loosening his grip on the Republican presidential race and why his opponents will find him so hard to beat.

    The ex-president’s growing legal peril hung Friday over the first showcase featuring all poll-leading GOP candidates on the same stage – an American Idol-style audition in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

    But his closest rivals didn’t dare bring up a legal quagmire that threatens to be a liability in a general election if Trump is the nominee for fear of alienating his still-massive support in the grassroots. Minor candidates with much less to lose did take on the stampeding elephants in the room – but were rewarded with silence or a torrent of boos.

    Still, Trump couldn’t escape the reality of a campaign in which he seems to be running as much to recapture the powers of the presidency to sweep away his criminal exposure, as to implement an agenda likely to be even more extreme and disruptive than that of his first term. Every candidate walked out to the Brooks & Dunn hit “Only in America.” But when Trump arrived, the lyrics echoed his uncertain future: “One kid dreams of fame and fortune. One kid helps pay the rent. One could end up going to prison. One just might be president.”

    Trump was making his first major public appearance since special counsel Jack Smith slapped him with new charges Thursday over his hoarding of classified documents at his Florida home after leaving office.

    But Trump, the only one of 13 Republican hopefuls to get a standing ovation before he even spoke, largely ignored a flurry of cases that could force him to split time between court rooms and the campaign trail next year. He did lash out at the Biden administration for what he claimed was the political weaponization of justice.

    “If I weren’t running, I would have nobody coming after me. Or if I was losing by a lot, I would have nobody coming after me,” said Trump, who has tried to turn his precarious position into a campaign trail virtue by portraying himself as a victim of political persecution.

    As well as the classified documents case, Trump has said he expects to be indicted in another special counsel investigation – into his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and his behavior in the run-up to the mob attack on the US Capitol by his supporters. He is also due to go on trial in March in a case in Manhattan relating to a hush money payment made to an adult film actress.

    But such is his strength in Iowa – where he has a huge lead in the polls – and nationally in the GOP that his major opponents avoided risking their own reception at Friday’s dinner and their chances in January by raising the new charges.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did stiffen his criticism of Trump’s legal situation – but did so offstage.

    “If the election becomes a referendum on what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, we are not going to win,” DeSantis told ABC News. “We can’t have distractions.”

    Former Vice President Mike Pence implicitly raised questions about Trump’s suitability for future office but also avoided openly criticizing his former White House partner.

    “The allegations, including yesterday’s allegations against the president in that indictment are very serious,” Pence told Fox News with the caveat that Trump was entitled to his day in court. “But I’m never going to downplay the importance of handling our nation’s secrets. It literally goes straight to the security of this country.”

    Only candidates who are so far behind that they so far look to have little chance to win in Iowa or anywhere else directly took on Trump.

    Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson went there – but it didn’t do him any good.

    “As it stands right now, you will be voting in Iowa, while multiple criminal cases are pending against former President Trump,” Hutchinson said. “We are a party of individual responsibility, accountability and support for the rule of law. We must not abandon that.” His comment drew a single clap in an otherwise silent ballroom.

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, an ex-CIA officer, left his stinging criticism of the former president for the end of his speech.

    “Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020,” Hurd said to loud boos. “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison,” he said as jeers started to crescendo.

    “I know, I know. I know. I know. I know. Listen, I know the truth. The truth is hard,” Hurd said, adding, “If we (nominate) Donald Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House, and America can’t handle that.”

    But judging by the snaking lines to shake Trump’s hand in his post-dinner reception and the much-smaller crowds at events hosted by his rivals, Trump remains the darling of his party. Much can change in the months before the caucuses, and it’s possible the sheer weight of legal threats could begin to weigh down Trump and convince some voters that, despite his hero status, another Republican might be a better bet. But if Trump is to be stopped, there is no sign so far that it will happen in Iowa.

    Unlike some of the other GOP candidates, Trump is not using the dinner to also hold multiple Iowa campaign stops. On Saturday, he heads to Erie, Pennsylvania, for a campaign rally before what is likely to be an even friendlier audience.

    Friday’s dinner in Des Moines, the state capital, was a rare occasion when the major GOP candidates appeared in the same place, even if they delivered 10-minute speeches one by one and never clashed onstage. Trump has warned he may skip the first Republican presidential debate on Fox News next month – a decision that might make sense given the size of his polling lead. The format of such events makes it hard for any candidate to break out. But it’s not impossible. In 2007, Sen. Barack Obama delivered a stemwinder that rescued his dawdling campaign at the equivalent Democratic event – then known as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. A few months later, victory in the Iowa caucuses put him on the road to the 2008 Democratic nomination and the White House.

    On Friday night, the former president’s strength meant that every other candidate was battling to become the Trump alternative, with a strong showing in Iowa that might set them up for a long duel with the front-runner deep into primary season.

    The field came to Iowa with added incentive because of the wobbles of DeSantis, long seen as the top rival to Trump but who was forced to slash campaign staff amid concerns by donors about his profligate spending and his performance on the trail. DeSantis is now running a classic grassroots campaign in the Hawkeye State, holding small events and looking voters in the eye.

    Polling is sparse so far as the Iowa campaign speeds up ahead of the caucuses in January, but Trump led in a Fox Business survey this month with 46%. DeSantis had 16%, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott had 11%. No other candidate was in double figures.

    Despite the indictments hanging over his head, Trump made the most impressive 10-minute presentation. Showing rare discipline in sticking to the script, he demonstrated how he will use the legacy of a presidency that remains hugely popular among activists to disadvantage his rivals. Unlike most of the other candidates, he also tailored his message to the Hawkeye State.

    “Hello Iowa, I’m here to deliver a simple message – there’s never been a better friend for Iowa in the White House than President Donald J. Trump,” the ex-president said, before rattling off a list of economic and other benefits, real and exaggerated, that Iowa enjoyed when he was in office. Trump also said that without him, the state would have lost its position as the first to hold a presidential nominating contest. Democrats have already decided that the mostly White, rural state does not represent the diversity of the rest of America and have changed the order of their primary calendar.

    “Without me, you would not be first in the nation right now,” Trump said.

    After a grim week filled with stories about chaos in his campaign and panic among donors about his performance, the DeSantis camp will likely be cheered by the Florida governor’s reception, and he won one of the few standing ovations of the evening after his remarks.

    He defiantly vowed to visit every Iowa county and to chase every vote, in a message to those wondering whether soaring expectations ahead of the campaign were misplaced. DeSantis turned the focus from his own plight to the Democrats, arguing that his record in Florida would translate to 2024 success.

    “I’m not budging an inch. We are going to fight back against these people, and we are not letting them take over our schools any longer. We are going to get this right as a nation,” he said.

    “Everything I promised people I would do, we did.”

    Scott, who is spoken of warmly by many Republican voters in Iowa and is seen as a bright new voice, also slammed Biden in his remarks.

    “He is tearing down every rung of the ladder that helped me climb. I was a kid trapped in poverty, who did not believe that in America all things are possible,” the Senate’s only Black Republican said.

    While most other candidates were heard politely, none appeared to boost their fortunes significantly. And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is planting his flag in New Hampshire, didn’t even show up.

    To paraphrase Trump’s opening line, there was one message from Iowa on Friday night. The ex-president is going to be tough to beat, in the adoring world of the GOP primary – however many more indictments come raining down from the special counsel or elsewhere.

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  • What reset? DeSantis defiant while campaign braces for reality of his struggles | CNN Politics

    What reset? DeSantis defiant while campaign braces for reality of his struggles | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday evening stepped in front of a suburban South Carolina crowd eager to hear the Republican presidential candidate respond to a weekend of hand wringing over his early performance and headlines about staff cuts and financial troubles.

    “Are you ready to help me send Joe Biden to his basement in Delaware?” DeSantis began, tossing out a line that has kicked off most of his speeches in some form since he formally announced his presidential candidacy in May.

    For all the talk of a DeSantis “reset” in recent days – including privately from those close to the Republican’s political operation – there’s little coming from the candidate himself that would suggest change is afoot. DeSantis’ remarks Monday in Tega Cay, South Carolina, were a near carbon copy of the speech he has delivered at campaign stops for weeks. The next morning, he unveiled another priority targeting “wokeness” in society, this time aimed at the military.

    Later in the day, a prime opportunity for the governor to kickstart a reboot – a highly anticipated interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, his first sit down outside of conservative media – was overshadowed by the latest developments in Donald Trump’s legal saga. Instead of stepping out against the former president to signal a new phase in his campaign, DeSantis remained deferential, saving his criticism for federal investigators and not the actions of his top rival for the 2024 Republican nomination. Any admonishment for Trump was shrouded in subtlety.

    “If I’m the nominee, we’ll be able to focus on President Biden’s failures, and I’ll be able to articulate a positive vision for the future,” DeSantis told Tapper. “I don’t think it serves us good to have a presidential election focused on what happened four years ago.”

    The unflappable outward appearances of its candidate belies a campaign in flux. His team has started cutting expenses less than two months after launching, a sign of a political operation that perhaps expanded too quickly out of the gate. Over the weekend, a spokesperson for DeSantis’ campaign confirmed to CNN it let go of some staffers, after Politico reported that “fewer than 10 staffers” in event planning were cut on Thursday. The large security presence that previously guarded DeSantis events – often administered by a handful of burly men who checked every guest with handheld metal detectors and surveyed their personal effects – was noticeably absent from his South Carolina campaign stops this week.

    The trimming comes even as DeSantis raised $20 million in the first six weeks after jumping into the GOP primary – a strong showing at first glance that nevertheless fell short of lofty goals set in the run-up to his campaign. Other worrying markers include a reliance on large donations, which can suggest underwhelming grassroots support. Additionally, about $3 million of his haul came in the form of donations that cannot be spent until a general election.

    His campaign has also burned through cash at a high rate. Over six weeks, DeSantis had spent $686,000 on travel including expenses for private jets, according to campaign finance records, and his payroll topped $1 million.

    With his poll numbers stalled and less money available than anticipated, it is expected that DeSantis will refocus his campaign efforts on Iowa, which is increasingly viewed within his political orbit as a must-win state for the Florida governor. DeSantis visited Iowa earlier this month for a multi-county tour and to speak to the state’s influential evangelical voters at an event Trump notably skipped. His super PAC this week began airing a new ad highlighting the former president’s recent jabs at popular Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds that included a fake replica of Trump’s voice generated through controversial new AI technology.

    “We’re just going to keep building that momentum,” DeSantis said. “It’s a state-by-state process and doing well in those states makes a huge difference by the time you get to South Carolina.”

    DeSantis has expressed confidence in the strategy that has gotten him this far, which, for now, leaves him well ahead of the rest of the field but firmly behind Trump. This weekend, DeSantis will travel to Utah, where he is expected to meet with Republican state lawmakers, a group that has become key to his efforts to build local support. His top fundraisers will also meet in Park City, Utah, for a previously scheduled summit that has gained new urgency amid concerns some GOP donors are considering other candidates.

    Talking to reporters Tuesday after submitting paperwork to qualify for South Carolina’s primary ballot, DeSantis characterized his campaign’s spending as “investments” to win early nominating states and dismissed suggestions of financial trouble.

    “You hear some of these narratives and you’re like, good lord, how do you spin?” DeSantis said moments after handing in paperwork to officially qualify for the ballot in South Carolina. “In the second quarter, we were a candidate for about five and a half weeks, our campaign raised $20.1 million dollars. Joe Biden is the sitting president of the United States. In his campaign committee, not the DNC, he raised $19.9 (million), Donald Trump raised $17.7 million and Trump spent more than we did.”

    The remarks echoed frustrations among his supporters with the narrative emerging about DeSantis given his enviable financial position. In addition to his campaign’s haul, a supportive super PAC, Never Back Down, announced it had raised $130 million since launching in March, about $83 million of which was transferred from DeSantis’ former state political committee.

    But they also acknowledge DeSantis has run a campaign that is far from perfect, beginning with the technical woes that plagued his planned candidacy announcement on Twitter. And he has faced new headwinds, including from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which is no longer featuring the Republican leader with fawning coverage as it has for much of the past two years. With Fox News no longer fully friendly, his campaign has lately warmed to more mainstream national outlets that DeSantis had previously marginalized and denigrated over the years.

    Some supporters have also bemoaned DeSantis’ hard pivot right and high-profile battles with Disney for turning off Republican donors who might otherwise be sympathetic to his insurgent campaign against Trump.

    DeSantis, though, has shrugged off these concerns. Speaking to Tapper on Tuesday, he pointed to his 19-point victory last fall in a one-time swing state as evidence that his agenda can appeal to voters in swing states who may determine the outcome of the GOP primary and the presidential election.

    “Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms,” he said. “We’re leading a big movement for parents’ rights, to have the parents be involved in education, school choice, get the indoctrination outta schools.”

    Republican voters attending his events appear receptive to his message. Lu Aiken, a member of Republican Women Rising in South Carolina, said she was undecided but DeSantis was at the top of her list.

    “I’m all for youth,” she told CNN outside of DeSantis’ Tega Cay event. “I think we’ve had too many old presidents. I’m sorry, I’m ready for a young president, and I’m old. But still, I think it’s time for somebody young and energetic. I worked real hard to get Trump elected last time, and I feel like he kind of let us down by talking so much and some of the things he did.”

    Still, even his supporters are aware of the challenge DeSantis faces trying to overcome an unconventional front runner in Trump.

    “The only thing going against Ron is that he’s not Trump,” Jonathan Sievers, a real estate agent from Weddington, South Carolina, said while waiting to hear DeSantis speak on Monday. “So, I think a lot more Trump supporters would be on his train if Trump wasn’t in the race.”

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  • DeSantis fundraising slowed after initial campaign launch, filing shows | CNN Politics

    DeSantis fundraising slowed after initial campaign launch, filing shows | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is relying on larger donors to fuel his campaign and saw the pace of contributions slow after his initial announcement, a new report detailing his fundraising for the quarter ended June 30 shows.

    His campaign also confirmed to CNN on Saturday that it had recently let some staffers go.

    “Defeating Joe Biden and the $72 million behind him will require a nimble and candidate driven campaign, and we are building a movement to go the distance,” DeSantis’ campaign spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in a statement.

    Politico reported Saturday that “fewer than 10 staffers” in event planning were cut on Thursday. DeSantis’ latest FEC fiiling shows that about 90 people were on his campaign payroll during the second quarter. Two veterans of his political operation are also departing the campaign to work with an outside group that will focus on boosting his presidential bid.

    DeSantis’s camp has been working to reassure his benefactors that he has a path to the GOP nomination, even as he continues to trail former President Donald Trump in the polls.

    DeSantis, whose campaign posted a strong second-quarter haul of $20 million, saw his fundraising surge after launching his White House bid on May 24, but it quickly fell off in the weeks that followed, a CNN review shows. Among individuals giving more than $200, DeSantis raised more than $5 million in the opening days of his campaign – roughly 30% of the total he raised from those donors in the quarter.

    Candidates are only required to disclose details on contributions that exceed $200, including the date they were received.

    And DeSantis’ filing with federal regulators shows that a relatively small share – roughly 15% – of his individual contributions came in amounts of $200 or less. Donors who contribute in small amounts are valuable to campaigns because they can be tapped repeatedly for contributions before they hit donation limits. Robust small-dollar donations can also be a sign of grassroots momentum behind a campaign.

    About $3 million of the $20 million DeSantis reported raising in the second quarter cannot be touched in the battle for the 2024 GOP nomination because it is designated for the general election and cannot be used unless he becomes his party’s standard-bearer.

    Trump has traditionally relied on legions of grassroots donors to sustain his campaigns. Candidates still were filing their reports with the FEC on Saturday night as the midnight deadline to disclose their fundraising and spending details for the April to June period approached.

    The filings offer a snapshot of which Republican candidates are struggling to gain early traction with donors and those who have jumped to early leads.

    DeSantis has significant resources behind his campaign. A super PAC supporting his candidacy, Never Back Down, has previously announced taking in $130 million since it launched in March. But nearly two-thirds of that sum came from a state political committee tied to DeSantis’ 2022 reelection campaign in Florida, as CNN has previously reported.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Why Trump’s Republican rivals should focus on New Hampshire, not Iowa | CNN Politics

    Why Trump’s Republican rivals should focus on New Hampshire, not Iowa | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump continues to be the clear favorite to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

    Most of his rivals – from South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott to former Vice President Mike Pence – have a game plan to slow down the Trump train: Compete hard in the first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican caucuses, now scheduled for January 15.

    The idea makes sense on its face. These candidates have to beat Trump somewhere, so why not do it in the first contest where they can potentially change the narrative.

    There are just a few problems with this proposition. First, a Trump loss in Iowa is by no means a guarantee of anything for the non-Trump Republicans based on history. Second, the polling suggests the voters among whom Trump is most vulnerable are more plentiful in the state with the second-in-the-nation contest: New Hampshire.

    Republican presidential candidates are currently flocking to Iowa as they have every four to eight years in modern memory. They go to fairs, eat corn and pizza, and ask Iowans for their vote.

    Many hope to upend the national front-runner at the Iowa caucuses, as Mike Huckabee (2008), Rick Santorum (2012) and Ted Cruz (2016) have done before.

    All those candidates, however, then proceeded to lose the New Hampshire primary and the party nomination.

    Iowa, it turns out, has not been very good at picking Republican nominees for president. In primary seasons since 1980 that didn’t feature a GOP incumbent, the Iowa winner went on to win the nomination two times. Both times, that candidate had been the national front-runner prior to his Iowa win (Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000). Five other Iowa winners did not become the nominee.

    One reason Iowa hasn’t done nearly as well at predicting nominees is that socially conservative candidates often appeal to the state’s religious conservative base. Religious conservatives tend to have an outsize influence in the Hawkeye State compared with other states.

    New Hampshire has had a significantly better track record. Republican primary voters there have picked the eventual nominee in five out of seven elections since 1980 without an incumbent GOP president. This includes the last three primary seasons without an incumbent, while Iowa, at the same time, has gone 0 for 3.

    Of course, 2024 could end up being like 1996 or 2000, when Iowa went with the eventual nominee while New Hampshire did not. We have a limited historical sample size.

    That said, there are also a few characteristics about New Hampshire Republicans that indicate they may be more open to a Trump challenger than Iowa Republicans this time around.

    We have seen, for example, ideology play a major role in how Republicans view Trump. Polling has consistently shown the former president to be far weaker in the center of the GOP political spectrum than he has been on the right – which is a change from 2016 when Trump was weakest among “very conservative” voters.

    Trump’s national polling lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in last month’s Quinnipiac poll, for example, dropped from 41 points among the very conservative to 31 points among those who were somewhat conservative to 14 points among moderate and liberal potential Republican primary voters.

    New Hampshire GOP primary voters are usually more moderate than their counterparts in Iowa. In 2016, 40% of Iowa Republican caucusgoers described themselves as very conservative, according to the entrance polls before voting began. Only 26% of New Hampshire Republican primary voters identified the same way. The percentage who called themselves moderate or liberal in New Hampshire (29%) was nearly double that in Iowa (15%).

    Trump has also been weaker among demographic groups who make up a larger share of the New Hampshire Republican electorate.

    Income, which was not too much of a predictor of primary voting patterns in 2016, seems to be playing a bigger role this year.

    Our most recent CNN/SSRS poll found, for example, that Trump had a 27-point lead over DeSantis among potential Republican primary voters with a household income of less than $100,000. His advantage over DeSantis among those making $100,000 or more was a mere 3 points.

    Although the 2016 Iowa entrance poll did not ask about income, the 2020 general election exit poll did. Among self-identified Republicans in Iowa, 26% had a total family income of $100,000 or more. Among self-identified Republicans in New Hampshire, 48% of them did.

    (Note: Household and family income are somewhat different measures, but I’m merely demonstrating that New Hampshire Republicans are, on the whole, wealthier than Iowa Republicans.)

    Perhaps, it should come as no surprise that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie seems to be the rare Republican basing his campaign in New Hampshire and not Iowa. Christie is by far the most anti-Trump candidate registering in the polls at all.

    His chance of winning the nomination is slight, but he seems to have the right idea.

    If Trump is going to get tripped up in the 2024 primary, the numbers suggest his opponents would be wiser to focus more on New Hampshire than on Iowa.

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  • Pence tries wooing Iowans, one Pizza Ranch slice at a time | CNN Politics

    Pence tries wooing Iowans, one Pizza Ranch slice at a time | CNN Politics


    Sioux City, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    In a crowded Pizza Ranch on Wednesday night, former Vice President Mike Pence found himself confronted about his role on January 6, 2021, by an Iowan who blamed him for President Joe Biden being elected president.

    “If it wasn’t for your vote, we would not have Joe Biden in the White House. … Do you ever second guess yourself?” Luann Bertrand asked.

    Pence, who was on the last stop of his day on a nearly weeklong Iowa swing, listened patiently to Bertrand’s question. “Let me be very respectful of the question,” the former vice president began, as he turned to explaining his role under the Constitution in certifying the 2020 US election results.

    The episode encapsulated Pence’s challenge as he runs for the 2024 GOP nomination against former President Donald Trump, who’d wanted him to overturn Biden’s victory and has convinced many of his followers, falsely, that Pence had the power to do so. But the exchange at this intimate campaign stop also revealed what the former vice president hopes will be his winning strategy in the first-in-the-nation caucus state – namely allowing Iowans to question him and see him up close and personal.

    For nearly five minutes, he directly answered Bertrand’s question, using the word “respect” and “deep affection” as he weaved in constitutional law and an admonishment of Trump, who’s the front-runner for the nomination.

    “I’m sorry, ma’am. But that’s actually what the Constitution says. No vice president in American history ever asserted the authority that you have been convinced that I had. But I want to tell you, with all due respect, I said before, I said when I announced, President Trump was wrong about my authority that day and he’s still wrong,” he said.

    When Pence finished his answer, the room of several dozen broke into applause.

    For the Pence campaign, visiting all of Iowa’s 99 counties isn’t just a campaign promise – it is central to carving a path for taking on the historic challenge of running against a president he once served.

    It may also be the best, and only, chance for a Pence campaign to take off.

    “If you want to win the Iowa caucus, it’s a 50-person Pizza Ranch meeting,” Chip Saltsman, national campaign chairman for the Pence campaign and veteran Republican consultant, told CNN.

    “Everybody that came here tonight, I guarantee the one thing they have in common – they’re all going to caucus. You’re looking for people that are willing to come out on a cold night, spend an hour and a half listening to everybody else talk, and then vote for your person.”

    “The way you build those relationships are in meetings of 50, not rallies of 5,000,” he said, referring to Trump, who has drawn large crowds in his 2024 bid for the White House.

    In the 2008 presidential campaign, Saltsman was the campaign manager for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, when he concocted what he calls the “Pizza Ranch strategy” – hitting the chain’s 71 locations throughout Iowa, which have private rooms and dining areas conducive to a small town’s biggest events.

    “We were at 1% [in the polls] when we announced,” said Saltsman, reflecting on the Huckabee campaign. “We worked really hard for about three months and then we went from 1% to asterisk. So we had to start back over. That’s when the Pizza Ranch strategy started.”

    With the Huckabee campaign lacking money and name recognition, Saltsman realized that “for the price of a pizza, you got the meeting room” of the town’s Pizza Ranch – and that Huckabee had an automatic crowd if he showed up around lunch or dinner. “It was more out of necessity than some deep strategy,” he said.

    The Huckabee team upscaled this plan to all 99 counties, focusing on finding the Iowa Republicans they needed to convince to caucus for their candidate. Huckabee came from behind to win the 2008 Iowa caucuses, although he ultimately fell well short of the nomination.

    Pence is deploying a similar strategy, focusing on intimate settings where he will spend two hours face-to-face with Iowans, even if the crowd is fewer than 100 people. The Pence team is betting on the multiplying effect of these one-on-one encounters – that the voter will feel a kinship with Pence and bring others to caucus for him.

    At an ice cream shop in Le Mars, Mavis Luther had just listened to Pence speak and answer questions for 90 minutes. The event was small enough that Luther could take a picture with Pence and chat with him. “It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed after she met him. “It’s the only way to have a chance to really know how they feel and answer questions at your level – of the community, country and our state.”

    Pence, a former Indiana governor and congressman, shares the Midwest sensibilities of Iowa, as well as the campaigning style the caucus state is accustomed to. At the July Fourth parade in Urbandale, Pence often broke into a run to greet people along the parade route.

    “I came to the conclusion over the last few years that I’m well known, but we’re not known well,” said Pence. “We’re going to be able to take our story, take our case, and take our whole record, and the story of our family, to the people of Iowa to great success.”

    Matt Thacker, who was watching the parade in his lawn chair, had this to say about Pence’s handshake-to-handshake campaigning – “it matters.”

    “The personal touch is very important,” Thacker said. “I think it makes a lot of difference. And recognizing the country isn’t the coasts. It’s the heartland.”

    Bertrand, the woman in the Sioux City Pizza Ranch, walked away from the event open to Pence, but unconvinced by the facts he laid out about January 6.

    “I believe he’s a good man,” Bertrand told CNN. “I love the fact that he is strengthened by his faith. But I really do feel like he altered history.”

    Bertrand said she would consider supporting Pence in the caucuses. “But,” she said, “he has that one hiccup.”

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  • Trump pressured Arizona governor after 2020 election to help overturn his defeat | CNN Politics

    Trump pressured Arizona governor after 2020 election to help overturn his defeat | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Following his defeat in the 2020 election, President Donald Trump spoke to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to discuss the results, a source familiar with the call told CNN.

    Publicly, Ducey said at the time that the two Republican leaders had spoken, though he did not describe what they had talked about. Behind closed doors, Ducey said that the former president was pressuring him to find fraud in the presidential election in Arizona that would help him overturn his loss in the state, a source with knowledge said. Trump narrowly lost Arizona to Joe Biden by less than 11,000 votes.

    There was no recording made of the call between Trump and Ducey, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    Trump also repeatedly pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to help him find evidence of fraud and overturn the 2020 election results. Pence told the governor that if there was hard evidence of voter fraud to report it appropriately, one of the sources said.

    Pence rebukes Trump: ‘I had no right to overturn election’

    Pence spoke to Ducey multiple times about the election, though he did not pressure the governor as he was asked, sources familiar with the calls said.

    A spokesperson for Pence declined to comment.

    The Washington Post first reported on Trump pressuring Ducey on overturning the election results.

    Trump publicly attacked Ducey, a former ally, over the state’s certification of the results. As Ducey was certifying the election results in November 2020, Trump appeared to call the governor – with a “Hail to the Chief” ringtone heard playing on Ducey’s phone. Ducey did not take that call but later said he spoke with Trump, though he did not describe the specifics of the conversation.

    A spokesman for Ducey told CNN earlier this week that the former governor had not been contacted by the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 elections.

    Those efforts include outreach to various state officials, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Smith has interviewed. In January 2021, Trump told Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the state, a call that’s at the center of the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into attempts to overturn the election in Georgia.

    The special counsel’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    A Ducey spokesman said Saturday that the former governor “stands by his action to certify the election and considers the issue to be in the rear view mirror – it’s time to move on.”

    “This is nothing more than a ‘copy and paste’ of a compilation of articles from the past two years, disguised as something new and relying on shaky and questionable sourcing,” spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in a statement. “Frankly, nothing here is new nor is it news to anyone following this issue the last two years. Governor Ducey defended the results of Arizona’s 2020 election, he certified the election, and he made it clear that the certification provided a trigger for credible complaints backed by evidence to be brought forward. None were ever brought forward.”

    Trump is currently seen as the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination as he seeks a return to the White House.

    A Trump spokesperson said in a statement: “These witch-hunts are designed to interfere and meddle in the 2024 election in an attempt to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House to make this country great again. They will fail and President Trump will be re-elected.”

    Before his fallout with Trump, Ducey had been seen as a formidable candidate for Senate in 2022, but he ultimately ruled out a bid to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who won reelection last year over a Trump-endorsed GOP nominee.

    Ducey, who was term-limited as governor last year, endorsed Karrin Taylor Robson, a former member of the Arizona Board of Regents, in the race to succeed him. However, Taylor Robson lost the primary to Trump’s pick, Kari Lake, a former television anchor who said she would not have certified Biden’s 2020 win had she been governor. Lake ended up losing the general election to Democrat Katie Hobbs and has continued to promote election falsehoods, including about her own race.

    Ducey, a former CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, served a term as Arizona treasurer before winning two elections for governor.

    He announced last month he would be leading Citizens for Free Enterprise, which describes itself as a “new national effort to promote and protect free enterprise.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Ad wars heat up in the 2024 presidential race as spending nears $70 million | CNN Politics

    Ad wars heat up in the 2024 presidential race as spending nears $70 million | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump is dominating cable airwaves, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is betting on Iowa and South Carolina, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is blanketing New Hampshire as candidates tailor their ad spending with the 2024 presidential race heating up.

    Spending data from AdImpact shows how the various White House contenders have different strategies for the early primary map, investing resources in the states and messages they hope can serve as launching pads to the nomination – spending nearly $70 million along the way.

    Allies of Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, have taken a unique approach among the crowded field, devoting more than three-quarters of their ad spending dollars to national cable advertising campaign.

    MAGA Inc., the super PAC backing his campaign, has spent $15.7 million on national cable advertising out of a total of nearly $20 million in ad spending so far. The pro-Trump group has split the rest of its spending, a little more than $4 million, between Iowa and New Hampshire.

    Reflecting that strategy, in the last month, MAGA Inc. spent $1.6 million on an ad running in major media markets (Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia) which criticizes the former president’s indictment in the classified documents case. The super PAC has also kept ads attacking DeSantis in rotation in the early primary states.

    There are also hints at the strategy of DeSantis’ camp in the ad spending of a super PAC backing his campaign, Never Back Down. The group has spent a total of about $15.5 million on advertising so far, directing $4.3 million to Iowa and $3.7 million to South Carolina. On Tuesday, the group launched a new TV spot in Iowa proclaiming that DeSantis was “waging a war on woke and winning.”

    By contrast, the group has spent just $1.3 million in New Hampshire so far. Notably, Never Back Down has spent about $630,000 in Nevada, another early voting state, making it the only GOP group with a significant presence on the airwaves there. The group has also spent about $5 million on national cable advertising.

    South Carolina Sen Tim. Scott – another top advertiser in the early going of the White House race – has taken a traditional approach to ad budgeting, splitting his advertising between Iowa, where he’s spent about $3.5 million, and New Hampshire, where he’s spent about $2 million. In both states, he’s been a steady presence on the air, running ads that tout his “conservative values” and feature clips from the campaign trail.

    And the super PAC allied with Scott has followed a similar pattern, spending about $3.1 million in Iowa and $1.9 million in New Hampshire. Unlike the Trump and DeSantis super PACs, Scott and his camp have spent little on national advertising campaigns.

    Meanwhile, North Dakota’s Burgum has emerged as the top advertiser in New Hampshire so far, spending more than $2.1 million in the state as the independently wealthy candidate works to raise his profile among voters.

    Burgum has also spent $2 million advertising in Iowa. Excluding outside groups, only Scott has spent more on campaign advertising – and even including the super PACs, Burgum is the fifth biggest advertiser in the race so far.

    A look at who has spent money so far on 2024 ads

  • MAGA Inc.: $19,922,815
  • Never Back Down: $15,511,532
  • Scott for President $5,679,567
  • Trust in the Mission PAC $5,605,080
  • Burgum for President: $4,220,175
  • Perry Johnson for President: $2,119,553
  • Future Forward USA Action: $2,063,400
  • Biden Victory Fund: $2,022,898
  • Democratic National Committee/Biden: $1,636,147
  • Ramaswamy for President: $1,409,095
  • American Action Network: $1,219,358
  • Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee: $877,800
  • Binkley for President: $857,445
  • SOS America PAC: $827,280
  • Defending Democracy Together: $786,377
  • DeSantis for President: $763,910
  • Biden for President: $758,026
  • Trump for President: $682,998

Overall, since the start of 2023, all campaigns and outside groups have combined to spend nearly $70 million on advertising for the presidential race already. That amount is nearly double what had been spent at this point in the last presidential cycle – during a competitive Democratic primary – when all candidates and groups had spent about $35 million in the first six months of 2019.

This year, Trump’s super PAC, DeSantis’ super PAC, Scott and his super PAC, and Burgum account for over half that total, combining to spend just over $50 million.

Only two other candidates have spent more than $1 million on ads so far: Vivek Ramaswamy and Perry Johnson, both of whom are independently wealthy businessmen self-funding their campaigns.

And while candidates have taken different approaches to investing their resources, the traditional early voting states are continuing to draw the lion’s share of the ad dollars. Candidates and groups have spent about $17.4 million in Iowa, $10.9 million in New Hampshire, $3.9 million in South Carolina, and $830,000 in Nevada.

The ad wars are heating up as candidates in the crowded GOP field are scrambling to qualify for the first presidential debate in August.

Several long-shot Republican presidential candidates, with smaller budgets for TV advertising, have been appealing to donors online to help them make the debate stage after the Republican National Committee released the qualification requirements, which include both polling and fundraising thresholds.

As he seeks to nab the 40,000 individual donors required to be on stage, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is up with Facebook ads that read, “I am running for President to bring out the best in America. From securing the border to creating a robust economy, I have the experience to deliver. Chip in $3, $5, or $10 today to help me get on the debate stage and move our nation forward.”

Ramaswamy – who is self-funding his campaign – is also urging supporters to help him qualify. “To secure a prime spot on the debate stage, we need solid polling numbers AND unique grassroots donors. Can you chip in just $1 today to help get to the debate stage?,” one of Ramaswamy’s ads says.

And Johnson, the wealthy Michigan businessman, is making similar appeals. “Even though I’m self-funding, the RNC is requiring that I get 40,000 donors to make the debate stage. Can you donate $1 NOW to ensure that I make the cut to share my plan to stop inflation and balance the budget?,” reads one of his ads.

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