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Takeaways from the second Republican presidential debate | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

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CNN
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The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is holding its first hearing Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden – and Republicans on the committee have made a series of false and misleading claims, as well as some other claims that have left out critical context.

Below is a CNN fact check. This article will be updated as additional fact checks are completed.

Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the money went to the “associates” – Hunter Biden’s business partners – not even Biden’s family itself.

So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family – almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)

A Republican aide for the House Oversight Committee disputed the Post’s analysis on Thursday, saying that bank records obtained by the panel actually show that, of $24 million in payments between 2014 and 2019, $15 million went to members of the Biden family and $9 million went to associates. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment; the committee has not publicly released the underlying bank records that would definitively show the breakdown in payments.

The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.

Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

“Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.

Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”

When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”

When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”

Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.

A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.

Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.

“We learned yesterday, in the search warrant…examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.”

Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department.

The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board.

The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”

Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.

Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”

Facts First: This lacks important context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”

“This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in the statement. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”

White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”

Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.

Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.”

According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim.

Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.

Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, falsely claimed that Hunter Biden never paid taxes on his foreign income.

He said Hunter Biden “failed to pay any taxes” on the millions of dollars he got from Ukrainian companies, and that this shows how “the Biden family doesn’t have to” pay taxes.

“Who’s going to write the check for the money Hunter Biden didn’t pay?” Burchett asked, adding that “hardworking Americans” would end up footing the bill.

Facts First: This is false. Hunter Biden repeatedly missed IRS deadlines, and his conduct was so egregious that federal investigators believe it was criminal, but he eventually belatedly paid all of his back taxes, plus interest and penalties, to the tune of about $2 million.

Documents from Hunter Biden’s criminal cases indicate that he repeatedly missed tax deadlines, even though he had the funds and was repeatedly warned by his accountant and business partners. He was prepared to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in July, for failing to pay taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, before the plea deal collapsed.

But there’s a difference between failing to pay taxes on time and failing to pay taxes at all. In 2021, while the criminal investigation was still underway and before any charges were filed, Hunter Biden paid roughly $2 million to the IRS to cover all the back taxes, plus penalties and interest.

Hunter Biden was able to make the massive payment thanks to a roughly $2 million loan from a friend and attorney who has been supporting him during his legal troubles, according to court filings.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused a Republican member of the committee, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, of cutting out “critical context” from an image of a purported text message that Donalds displayed earlier in the Thursday hearing. Ocasio-Cortez also said that Donalds had displayed a “fabricated image.”

The dispute was over an image Donalds showed of a purported 2018 text message from the president’s brother James Biden to the president’s son Hunter Biden – provided by IRS whistleblowers and released by House Republicans on Wednesday – in which James Biden purportedly wrote, “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father [sic] alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”

After showing the image, Donalds asked a witness at the committee, “If you saw a text message like this between the president’s brother and the president’s son, wouldn’t you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings?”

Facts First: Donalds didn’t invent the James Biden text message, but Ocasio-Cortez was correct that Donalds left out critical context – specifically, context that showed there was no sign that the purported text exchange between James Biden and Hunter Biden was about business dealings. The information released by House Republicans this week appeared to show that James Biden’s purported text about getting “help” from Joe Biden came in direct response to a purported Hunter Biden text saying he could not afford alimony, school tuition for his children, food and gas “w/o [without] Dad.” Donalds did not display this purported Hunter Biden text at the Thursday hearing.

In other words, when James Biden purportedly mentioned the possibility of several months of help from Joe Biden, he gave no indication he was referring to some sort of business transaction, much less the foreign transactions that House Republicans have been focused on in their investigations into the president. But Donalds didn’t make that clear.

With that said, Ocasio-Cortez herself could have been clearer about what she meant when she claimed the image Donalds showed was “fabricated.”

The contents of the purported James Biden text Donalds displayed were not made up, according to the IRS whistleblowers. What appeared to be novel was the graphic Donalds used; he showed the text in a form that made it look like a screenshot from an iPhone text conversation, with white words over a blue background bubble. The House Republican spreadsheet that the words were taken from did not include any such graphics, and, again, it did include the preceding purported Hunter Biden message that Donalds didn’t show.

Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said at the Thursday hearing, “In an interview back in 2019 with The New Yorker, even Hunter admitted that he talked to his dad about business, specifically Burisma.”

Facts First: This needs context. The 2019 New Yorker article in question reported that Hunter Biden said he recalled Joe Biden discussing Burisma with him “just once” in a brief exchange that consisted of this: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’”

It’s fair for Fallon to say that this counts as Joe Biden discussing business with his son, but Fallon did not mention how brief and limited Hunter Biden said the purported discussion was.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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August 2, 2023
Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Donald Trump’s wealth, power and fame acted like a magnet for new associates keen to enter his orbit. But now, key figures who sought a share of his reflected glory are turning against him to save themselves.

The ex-president absorbed a trio of blows Tuesday that worsened his legal peril and underscored how the 2024 election – in which he is the front-runner for the GOP nomination – will play out in the courts rather than traditional voting battlegrounds.

In the most significant development, ABC News reported that Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had met federal prosecutors multiple times and had categorically undermined the ex-president’s narrative about a stolen election. Meadows was the gatekeeper to the Oval Office in the critical days when Trump was allegedly plotting to steal the 2020 election after voters rejected his bid for a second term. CNN has reached out to Meadows’ attorney for comment.

In another damaging twist, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, who blanketed television networks after President Joe Biden’s victory to falsely claim he was elected because of fraud, reached a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors. Ellis on Tuesday tearfully confessed to the felony of aiding and abetting false statements that she and other lawyers told Peach State lawmakers. She was the third former Trump acolyte to agree to testify against the ex-president and others this week. The election subversion prosecution brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now following the classic playbook of a racketeering case wherein smaller fish are peeled away for reduced sentences to secure their testimony against the alleged kingpin.

“If I knew then what I knew now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges. I look back on this experience with deep remorse,” Ellis said.

Ellis was a comparatively junior figure in Trump’s schemes to overthrow the election, although there is reason to believe she was in critical meetings of interest to prosecutors. Her guilty plea also looks like terrible news for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also served as a Trump lawyer after the election and with whom Ellis worked closely.

Her repudiation of her own behavior marks an ominous omen for Trump because it shows that while falsehoods about election fraud are still a potent political force in the GOP and conservative media, it’s the truth that matters in court. Under the legal system, the former president could face a level of accountability that the US political system, which is still buckling under his influence, can’t match.

One of Trump’s former associates was feeling no remorse when he arrived in court in New York on Tuesday seeking to undermine another Trump legal defense. The former president’s longtime fixer, Michael Cohen, came face to face with his ex-boss for the first time in five years when he took the stand in a civil trial in which prosecutors are seeking to end Trump’s ability to do business in the state. Cohen has already gone to jail for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and campaign finance violations – some of which were linked to his work for Trump before he launched his political career. Cohen once vowed to take a bullet for his former boss but has left no doubt that he’s been itching to testify against him for many months. While his own conviction raises credibility issues about his testimony, Cohen implicated Trump on Tuesday, saying his former boss directed him to inflate his net worth on financial statements.

“Heck of a reunion,” Cohen told reporters after testifying under Trump’s gaze.

Each of Tuesday’s legal dramas threatened to undermine Trump’s position in separate cases, to which he has pleaded not guilty, and emphasized how the Republican front-runner’s bid to recapture the White House will be shadowed by his criminal liability.

And for someone who has the exaggerated sense of loyalty harbored by Trump – albeit one that mostly goes one way – the spectacle of three former associates turning against him will be especially irksome.

While the crush of legal cases bearing down on him hasn’t diminished his dominance in the GOP presidential race, there are increasing signs that the courtroom pressure is beginning to grate on a former president who, in a lifetime of business, personal and political scrapes, has made an art form of dodging accountability.

In a rage-filled stream of consciousness on his Truth Social network on Tuesday night, Trump lashed out at the ABC report about Meadows.

“I don’t think Mark Meadows would lie about the Rigged and Stollen 2020 Presidential Election merely for getting IMMUNITY against Prosecution (PERSECUTION!),” the former president wrote.

“Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards, and so bad for the future our Failing Nation. I don’t think that Mark Meadows is one of them, but who really knows? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

This came only a day after Trump absurdly compared himself to Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison – much of it in a tiny cell on Robben Island – enduring forced labor in a quarry for opposing the racist apartheid system in South Africa. After his release, the Nobel Peace Prize winner remade his divided nation as president and became a symbol of unity, humility, racial healing and forgiveness – qualities rarely shown by Trump.

“I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela, because I’m doing it for a reason,” the ex-president told supporters in New Hampshire.

Trump’s persecution complex is revealing, however. The former president is portraying himself as a bulwark against a government that he claims is weaponized against him and his supporters. The idea that he is a political martyr who is being unfairly targeted by the Biden administration – despite 91 charges across his four criminal indictments – may be his only credible campaign tactic. After all, he may be a convicted felon by Election Day in less than 13 months. While that prospect doesn’t seem to faze Republican primary voters, it may be a serious vulnerability among a broader electorate.

Legal watchers in Washington have speculated for months about the activity of Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman who became the last chief of staff of Trump’s turbulent White House term.

During his testimony before a federal grand jury, Meadows was also asked about efforts to overturn the election as well as Trump’s handling of classified documents, CNN previously reported.

But if, as ABC News has reported, he has been granted immunity by special counsel Jack Smith and met federal prosecutors multiple times, that qualifies for the over-used term of “bombshell.”

Haberman on why latest news on Mark Meadows feels ‘different’

Meadows is also a key figure in the Fulton County, Georgia, probe, where he made a failed effort to have his case elevated to federal court after unsuccessfully arguing his actions at the behest of Trump’s election thwarting effort fell under his official duties.

Meadows, who met Smith’s team at least three times this year, told investigators he did not believe the election was stolen and that Trump was being “dishonest” in claiming victory shortly after polls closed in 2020, according to ABC.

The agreement is the first publicly known in the special counsel’s investigation into the events around January 6, 2021. The exact terms of Meadows’ deal with prosecutors are not clear, but often such agreements allow a person with valuable information about an investigation immunity from prosecution in exchange for fully cooperating.

The reported details of Meadows’ testimony could be hugely damaging for Trump because a fundamental plank of the ex-president’s defense relies on the notion that he sincerely believed that the election was stolen and that his actions were not therefore criminal because they were an exercise of his right to free speech.

It has long been the case that while those around Trump in business and politics often find themselves slipping deep into legal trouble, he skips free. The apparent decisions of Meadows, Ellis and Cohen – together with the mass of legal threats now facing the former president – suggest that charmed life is about to meet its biggest challenge yet.

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August 2, 2023
What happened this week and what’s next in Trump legal world | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Donald Trump’s legal schedule is getting fuller by the day as the political season heats up, with the former president facing multiple criminal charges with more possibly on the way.

This week, Trump was indicted on charges of leading a conspiracy to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat and had to travel to Washington, DC, to plead not guilty in federal court.

Now comes a flurry of legal filings and the possibility of yet another indictment, this time in Georgia, where a grand jury is looking at efforts to flip his defeat in the Peach State.

READ: Tracking the criminal indictments in one place

Here’s what happened this week and what’s next:

Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the hammer against Trump on Tuesday, charging the former president with conspiracy and attempting to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. That effort ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“(F)or more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false,” it adds, referring to Trump. “But the defendant disseminated them anyway – to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

READ: CNN’s annotation of the indictment

Trump took the short trip from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club to appear in federal court on Thursday to enter a not guilty plea to all charges.

The arraignment was at a courthouse that’s been central to the efforts to hold people accountable for the January 6 riot. Over 1,000 people charged in Capitol riot cases have made a similar appearance as Trump’s – the building is located within sight of the Capitol and judges there have overseen trials or sentencing of the rioters.

One of the next major issues in the Trump case will be when to set a trial date. Judge Tanya Chutkan – who has sentenced multiple rioters – appears to be moving quickly on that front.

The Trump team signaled Thursday that it doesn’t think this case can be sent to trial in the normal timeline as dictated under a federal law known the Speedy Trial Act that allows for exemptions in certain circumstance. The special counsel’s office disagrees.

Trump has until Tuesday to file a motion that would pause the clock under the Speedy Trial Act, which would help to slow the pace down, and prosecutors have until August 13 to issue any objection to the request.

Another critical filing will be next Thursday, when the special counsel must propose a trial date and say how long it will likely take them to put on their case before the jury. Trump must respond by August 17.

The next hearing – the first before Chutkan – will be August 28. Trump does not have to appear in person.

Meanwhile, the first Republican primary debate is August 23, though it’s unclear if Trump will participate.

Meanwhile, Smith’s indictment cites six unnamed co-conspirators who allegedly worked with Trump to support his efforts. CNN can identify five of the six.

“Co-Conspirator 1” is former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “2” is former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who masterminded the plan to appoint false electors and is now facing disbarment proceedings in California. “3” is former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who worked with Giuliani in court. “4” is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump at one point hoped to install as acting attorney general to help him overturn the election. “5” is pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who sent an email to Giuliani about the fake electors plot.

The identity of “6” is unclear. The indictment says this person is a political consultant who is tied to the fake elector slate in Pennsylvania.

The next moment in the criminal case against Trump is Thursday, August 10, when a magistrate judge in Florida will hear the plea of Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira, who allegedly attempted to delete security camera footage at the former president’s resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it.

Trump, via court filing Friday, pleaded not guilty to the charges recently added to the case and indicated to the court that he would not be physically present for the arraignment.

Lawyers for co-defendant Walt Nauta will be present to enter their client’s plea to the new counts.

READ: Mar-a-lago indictment annotated

A grand jury hearing evidence in Smith’s investigation returned the superseding indictment in late July against Trump, who had already faced 37 criminal charges, charging the former president with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Also next week, Trump’s lawyers will have a chance to respond to claims by prosecutors that he is unwilling to travel to a secured facility to access classified documents being turned over to the defense for the case. By August 10, Trump will have to respond to Smith’s proposal for a protective order restricting access to classified discovery in the case, and in the filings with the proposal, prosecutors have said that Trump has requested to view the documents in Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster – a request Smith’s team opposes.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to ask a grand jury to file charges by September 1 in her probe into efforts by Trump and allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

Security at the Fulton County courthouse has notably increased in anticipation of Willis’ actions.

READ: Timeline of Trump’s efforts in Georgia to overturn the election

A federal judge last week dismissed a $475 million defamation lawsuit Trump brought against CNN that accused the network of defaming him by using the phrase “the big lie” and allegedly comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

District Judge Raag Singhal, a 2019 appointee of Trump’s, said that use of the phrase or similar statements are opinion that don’t meet the standard for defamation.

“CNN’s use of the phrase ‘the Big Lie’ in connection with Trump’s election challenges does not give rise to a plausible inference that Trump advocates the persecution and genocide of Jews or any other group of people. No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference,” Singhal wrote.

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August 2, 2023
Biden previews 2024 message by warning that Trump’s movement is a threat to American democracy | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden issued blunt new warnings about ongoing existential threats to US democracy in a major address Thursday, sharpening the central argument in his potential rematch with Donald Trump and asking voters to prioritize the health of American institutions.

“There’s something dangerous happening in America now,” Biden said during his speech in Arizona, where he was also honoring his friend, the late Republican Sen. John McCain. “There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy: The MAGA movement.”

“There’s no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists,” he said, using the acronym for Trump’s political movement. “Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”

The stark message was Biden’s most forceful attempt at calling out Trump’s antidemocratic behavior since the former president was criminally charged for his attempts to subvert the 2020 election results. It offered a taste of Biden’s forthcoming reelection message, one centered on Trump’s own words and actions as threats to democracy. Biden said his predecessor was guided not by the Constitution or decency, but by “vengeance and vindictiveness.”

As indictments and arrests of the former president piled up over the summer, Biden remained mostly silent on his predecessor, wary of appearing to intervene in Justice Department business. His most substantive comment on Trump’s myriad legal issues was a sarcastic remark about his mugshot in the Fulton County, Georgia, case.

But as Trump’s prohibitive lead in the Republican primary remains unchanged – and as Biden’s own standing remains mired in low approval – the president is sharpening his attacks on his most likely 2024 rival as a danger to democracy. Thursday’s speech served as yet another sign that the days of trying to keep Trump at an arm’s length are long gone.

“Trump says the Constitution gave him the right to do whatever he wants as president,” Biden said, referencing his most likely GOP challenger by name. “I’ve never heard presidents say that in jest.”

He alluded to Trump’s recent suggestion that Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could be executed, and said Republican silence on the comment was “deafening.”

Stopping the erosion of democratic institutions and values was central to Biden’s decision to run for president in 2020, it will again be core to his reelection campaign, officials said, as he looks to energize voters and donors who have otherwise appeared lukewarm about a rematch between the two men.

“We should all remember: Democracies don’t have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up,” Biden said.

Senior Biden advisers had mulled over the timing and location of Thursday’s speech for weeks. Previously, Biden has sought to harness the symbolic settings of Independence Hall and Gettysburg to issue warnings about the state of American democracy.

Advisers eyed similar sites pegged to American history on the East Coast before settling on Tempe, Arizona, in part as a way to honor the late Republican Sen. John McCain, whom Biden was friends with for decades and referred to as a “brother.” Biden announced funding to construct the McCain Library, honoring his longtime friend.

Arizona was also a center of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and a state where voters rejected candidates who denied the results two years later. That effort loomed large in the president’s message.

“I believe in free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power. I believe there’s no place in America – none, none, none – for political violence,” Biden said.

Biden’s advisers also selected the day after the second Republican primary debate, hoping to insert Biden into a news cycle otherwise dominated by the GOP contest. Trump skipped the debate, delivering a speech in Michigan instead as he looks to cut into Biden’s support among union workers.

The speech came at a moment of political uncertainty for Biden, as he faces persistent questions about his age, disapproval of his handling of the job and an indictment of his son, Hunter. House Republicans held their first hearing in an impeachment inquiry into Biden on Thursday.

Many senior Democrats believe once voters come to see the 2024 election as a contest between Biden and Trump, the stakes will be clearer and the current president’s standing will improve.

At one point in his speech, Biden was interrupted by climate activists as he urged the audience to “put partisanship aside, put country first.” Kai Newkirk, one of the protesters, had stood up and called on Biden to take further action to address fossil fuels.

“I tell you what, if you shush up, I’ll meet with you immediately after this,” Biden said, before resuming remarks.

“Democracy is never easy – as we just demonstrated,” he joked.

Newkirk added in a statement later Thursday that he did not hear the president’s offer to meet with him but that he would have “gladly” accepted.

“I worked hard to elect President Biden, and conscience compelled me to interrupt his speech today to ask why he has yet to declare a climate emergency,” he said in a post on X.

Top Biden donors, many of whom have agitated for more forceful attacks on Trump at this early stage in the campaign, were informed of the plans for Thursday’s speech by senior Biden advisers during a fundraising retreat in Chicago earlier this month. Biden began previewing his address to donors behind closed doors last week.

In those remarks, Biden debuted new warnings about his predecessor’s potential return to the White House, testing the material off-camera as he and his team were preparing for Thursday’s address.

“Let there be no question: Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy. And I will always defend, protect, and fight for our democracy. That’s why I running,” he said at a Broadway theater last week.

Two days later, he amplified his warnings to a group of lawyers – and said he was confident he could defeat Trump for a second time.

“I’m now running again. Because guess what? I think that it’s likely to be the same fellow, and it’s likely that I think I can beat him again,” he said.

Defending democracy is an issue Biden allies believe remains deeply resonant with voters, almost three years after the 2020 contest. The video announcing his reelection opened with footage of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, Biden delivered a resounding message in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, warning of “MAGA forces” that “tried everything last time to nullify the votes of 81 million people.” Ahead of the speech, Biden convened his communications staff with a group of academics and historians – including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham, who has helped draft his highest-profile addresses – to reflect on the fragile state of the union and compile ideas.

The White House remains in touch with several of those historians to continue generating ideas, according to officials.

Democrats say the message worked. The administration and national Democrats have touted the results of the 2022 midterm elections, and the fact that a so-called red wave never materialized as many had predicted, as proof the president’s focus on themes like defending democracy struck a chord.

Thursday’s remarks were billed by the White House as the president’s fourth major speech on the theme of democracy – Biden spoke to the issue last year to mark the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, as well as days before the midterm elections.

By also honoring McCain during his speech Thursday, Biden hoped to harken to an era of bipartisanship in Washington that has disappeared in recent years. The comparison is amplified given the current battle over government funding, which appears destined to result in a government shutdown by the end of the week.

He was joined at the speech by McCain’s widow Cindy, other members of the McCain family and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs.

However, one of the state’s senators, Kyrsten Sinema – who was a Democrat until she left the party last year to become an independent – said Biden should use his visit to Arizona to observe the situation at the southern border.

“It’s well past time for President Biden to see the border crisis first hand and for the administration to do its job, secure the border, and keep Arizona safe. While he’s in Arizona, I’m calling on him to visit the border to actually understand how our communities shoulder the burden of his administration’s failure to address this crisis,” she said in a statement.

McCain’s death was deeply personal and painful for Biden for a number of reasons, including the fact that McCain had been diagnosed with the same cancer that took the life of Biden’s son, Beau. After laying a wreath near the site where McCain’s plane was shot down in Hanoi this month, Biden said he missed his former Senate colleague.

“He was a good friend,” Biden said.

In his eulogy for McCain in the summer of 2018, Biden described his friend as having “lived by a different code – an ancient, antiquated code where honor, courage, integrity, duty were alive.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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August 2, 2023
Why Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis are both itching to debate each other | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Joe Biden’s aides and Sean Hannity agree on this: They both would like to see Gavin Newsom debate Ron DeSantis.

Everyone involved knows how odd it would be to have the California governor, who is seen as a potential future Democratic presidential candidate but is very adamantly not one currently, debating the Florida governor, who launched his Republican presidential run in the spring with the air of a front-runner but has seen his campaign stall through the summer months.

DeSantis has gone from starting out as a worrisome contrast for some Biden aides to a monthlong campaign reboot, with his own advisers fretting they may not be able to turn his political fortunes around and looking for high-profile opportunities for him to stand out. Newsom has gone from inspiring eye rolls and suspicion from many in and around the White House a year ago to coordinating with Biden aides as he attempts to goad the Republican into more problems.

The debate, which Newsom agreed to almost on a lark after the Fox News host pressed him, and later DeSantis, on camera to agree to an event he would host – has the two governors with very different interpersonal styles fencing over debate rules and logistics, dates and locations.

“Boy,” Newsom said in an exclusive interview with CNN as he embraced his trolling of his Florida counterpart, “if I was running his campaign, I would be quietly asking, ‘What did you just do, Gov. DeSantis? Why did you agree to this? We have other things we should be doing, more important things, than debating this guy out there in California.’”

Responding to the DeSantis team’s proposal for a live debate audience and to substitute a two-minute-long video for opening statements, Newsom said he was not impressed.

“No notes, no holds barred, no parameters. Just make sure we both have equal time and see where it goes, see where it takes us. No games, no shows, no videos, no cheering sections. Just an honest back-and-forth comparing, contrasting visions,” the California governor said. “And he can defend his rhetoric and record and vision, and I’ll do my best to defend mine and promote Joe Biden.”

A topic Newsom said he is ready to discuss includes what he called the “ruthlessness” of Republicans attacking presidential son Hunter Biden, a friend of his for years and now the subject of a special counsel investigation.

“Some of the stuff that the way the right has mocked someone with substance abuse, addictions and other demons, it sickens me to my core as a father,” Newsom said. “They’re having a difficult time debating the success of this administration, as well as the CHIPS and the infrastructure bills, the investments that are coming in, the unemployment rate dropping.”

Newsom said he was surprised when DeSantis told Hannity in an interview that he would accept the debate.

DeSantis was not surprised. A person close to the Republican’s campaign told CNN that the governor had fully expected the topic to come up in the interview.

The day after the interview aired, DeSantis’ campaign emailed donors a short memo touting its eagerness for the debate, pointing to statistics about crime rates and population growth and insisting that “California embodies American decline, while Florida is the blueprint for the Great American Comeback.”

“Ron DeSantis is debating Gavin Newsom to highlight the choice facing American voters next year. The left wants America to follow the path of California’s decline – Ron DeSantis wants to reignite the American Dream, restore sanity, and ensure our nation’s best days are ahead,” reads the memo, obtained by CNN.

A DeSantis aide pointed to the candidate telling NBC that he thought “it would be a good debate” and that he was eager to lay out a “very different approach to crime, very different approach to illegal immigration, and very different approach to taxes, government regulation.”

The DeSantis campaign declined to comment further on the matter.

Newsom knows he makes the perfect boogeyman for Republicans – the high-taxing, gun-banning, Covid lockdown-proselytizing California governor with the slicked-back hair, who first got famous in 2004 for going against state law and issuing gay marriage licenses when he was mayor of San Francisco.

For Newsom, the whole point of the debate proposal is the asymmetric warfare. He isn’t running for president. He doesn’t have to worry about how this comes off to voters in Iowa or New Hampshire or anywhere else. He’s catering to a Democratic base and social media ecosystem that throws money and adds followers whenever a punch is thrown – like the $85,000 that went into the Biden campaign off an email Newsom sent to his email list announcing that DeSantis had accepted the debate.

And if the debate does happen, all Newsom sees is upside. Best case: He embarrasses DeSantis, adding to the doubts over whether his presidential campaign can survive. Worst case: He is the one who gets embarrassed, and DeSantis gets his moment – but against someone who isn’t running for president and can absorb blows that otherwise might have landed on Biden.

The day before DeSantis accepted the Newsom debate, for example, Vice President Kamala Harris dismissed his invitation for a public session head-to-head over the new Florida middle-school curriculum, which includes a mention of slaves developing certain skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” A spokesperson for Harris did not respond to a question about what she thought of Newsom’s actions, but, at a fundraiser on Saturday, she said, “Let us not be distracted by an undebatable point, such as whether the enslaved people benefited from slavery.”

Or Newsom could just keep poking DeSantis for not agreeing to a debate.

Being “the reelected, term limited governor of California, he feels an enormous degree of freedom to go out and fight these fights, because someone’s got to do it,” said a Newsom adviser.

DeSantis had wanted his big debate moment to be about taking on Donald Trump, not Newsom.

But the governor has been unable so far to coalesce support from Republicans as Trump’s poll numbers continue to rise – a fact he’ll be reminded of later this month when he is joined on a Milwaukee debate stage by at least six other candidates, with Trump in the midst of a weekslong will-he-or-won’t-he tease about whether he will participate.

DeSantis’ campaign also severely underestimated how Trump’s multiple indictments would galvanize Republicans and overshadow the GOP race, leaving other contenders straining for attention.

Rather than entering the fall in a position of strength, DeSantis has limped through the summer. His team now acknowledges internally it botched a chance to consolidate support at a time when Trump has barely campaigned. Support has stalled, several donors have publicly expressed concern and withheld additional resources for now, and the campaign has frantically shed expenses after overextending on payroll and event costs. Last week, in the latest overhaul, he replaced his embattled campaign manager with his gubernatorial office chief of staff, who had already been a key adviser.

What, in any other context, would have likely been an unimaginable sideshow, the debate with Newsom started looking like the rare chance for a breakout, a high-upside gamble for DeSantis, according to the source close to the campaign. If nothing else, it would put DeSantis in front of Fox News’ audience of Republican primary voters without Trump or anyone else in the field.

“Right now, Trump is dominating the news, and this is a way to get in front of Republicans,” the source said. “With Trump sucking up so much oxygen, this is a way to get back some of the oxygen.”

Last July, Newsom flew to Washington largely so he could tell then-White House chief of staff Ron Klain and first lady Jill Biden that he really meant what he had first said publicly to CNN: He was not going to run against the president despite his talk about how Democrats needed to be fighting harder than Biden appeared to be doing and despite breezing across the White House driveway with his suit jacket tossed over his shoulder as concerns circulated about the president’s age.

When Klain, long a Newsom booster, walked him around the West Wing to introduce him to other aides, several did not do much to mask their disinterest.

But after

Biden made his reelection plans clear, it became easier for his loyalists to warm to the governor. Some still see Newsom as mugging for attention, but they have stayed in close contact, including giving the green light when Newsom’s team alerted them that he wanted to do a one-on-one interview with Hannity and push for the debate with DeSantis.

If it happens, a Biden campaign aide said, “from our perspective, we’ve got one of our most high-profile surrogates going on Fox for 90 minutes, advocating not for his own policies and not for his own candidacy, but for the president. That’s a net positive.”

Asked about the turnaround, Klain – now an informal outside adviser to Biden’s reelection campaign – told CNN that “the president and his team are grateful for all the things the governor does to advance their shared agenda.”

A Newsom aide told CNN the coordination – between emails he has put his name on and in-person events – has produced almost $3 million in fundraising for Biden since April, which makes up about 4% of the reelection campaign’s total fundraising to date. Emails with Newsom’s name on them generate some of the highest response rates, according to people familiar with the fundraising. The Biden campaign declined comment on the fundraising.

Newsom said he knows that many people will see his actions as an attempt to stay relevant. Advisers say he clams up even privately when talk turns to a possible future presidential run, and the governor told CNN that positioning for 2028 is a “trivial consideration.”

He said he is driven by not wanting to have any regrets about not being involved – and if that means an ongoing series of debates with other Republicans after DeSantis, he’d be ready.

“To the extent these presidential candidates want a debate, I’m happy to debate them,” Newsom said. “And if that’s where they feel they can get their best bang for the buck as they run for president, fine by me, and I’ll have the president’s back.”

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August 2, 2023
House Judiciary Committee expected to launch inquiry into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis | CNN Politics

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The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

“I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

As their target list on behalf of Trump grows, House Republicans are also cranking up the heat on their own investigations into the Biden family.

Just this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy vowed to move ahead with an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden after the House returns from August recess if the Biden administration does not turn over more documents and information related to the Republican led investigations related to Hunter Biden – the strongest sign yet that House Republicans are poised to launch an impeachment inquiry of the president.

A McCarthy spokesperson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment to elaborate on the speaker’s remark that opening an impeachment inquiry hinged on whether committees received the “bank statements, the credit card statements and other” documents they were asking for.

House Oversight chair James Comer has subpoenaed six banks for information regarding specific Biden family business associates, received testimony from Hunter Biden’s associates and reviewed hundreds of suspicious activity reports related to the Biden family at the Treasury Department. The Kentucky Republican has not yet subpoenaed bank records from Biden family members themselves. He boasted in June on Fox Business that “every subpoena that I have signed as chairman of the House Oversight Committee over the last five months, we’ve gotten 100% of what we’ve requested, whether it’s with the FBI, or with banks, or with Treasury.”

The House Judiciary chair, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, just subpoenaed four individuals involved in the Hunter Biden criminal probe and has requested a number of documents and interviews pertaining to special counsel David Weiss’ ongoing criminal investigation.

There is still some skepticism among more moderate Republicans, however, about whether they should be trying to intervene in ongoing investigations and whether an impeachment inquiry is warranted.

Behind the scenes, members of the House Judiciary panel, who would help oversee an impeachment inquiry, have recently been discussing how all signs are pointing towards the House launching one in short order.

“We had even some of our more moderate members saying that the oversight wasn’t serious if the next step wasn’t an impeachment inquiry,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a top Trump surrogate and Judiciary panel member, told CNN about a recent committee call. “There was great interest among my Judiciary colleagues to really include and involve everyone in the conference. There’s a real desire to get everyone on board and go through the evidence with those who might remain skeptical.”

Trump’s allies have called for Congress to expunge Trump’s two previous impeachments, a move that has sparked pushback by many even among House Republicans.

Greene, who spoke with McCarthy on Tuesday, said she doesn’t think the votes are there yet for expunging Trump’s previous two impeachments, even as the former president continues to promote the idea on Truth Social. But she said, “I think the impeachment inquiry looks very, very good.”

“He is spending the recess talking about it constantly,” Greene added of McCarthy. “I really feel strongly that that’s something that’s going to happen.”

Even before Trump’s indictment in Fulton County his congressional allies were laying the groundwork to take aim at Willis and broader election laws.

GOP Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina introduced a longshot bill earlier this year to give current and former presidents and vice presidents the ability to move their civil or criminal cases from a state court to a federal court as the investigation in Fulton County was ongoing. Fry introduced the bill shortly after Trump was indicted by Bragg on more than 30 counts related to business fraud.

The Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fry’s bill, is examining ways to move this bill forward and schedule a markup, two sources familiar with the process told CNN.

Fry, who tweeted shortly after the Fulton County indictment that the outcome underscores the need for his bill, said in a statement to CNN, “these rogue prosecutors shouldn’t be able to wield unwarranted power and target our nation’s top leaders for their political agendas.”

Separately, the House Committee on Administration has been working on a conservative election integrity package that Republicans are calling “transformative,” but Democrats frame as “designed to appease extremist election deniers.”

Republicans argue the bill gives states the tools to strengthen voter integrity, implement selection reforms in Washington, DC, and protects conservatives’ political speech. Democrats, meanwhile, contest the legislation attacks the freedom to vote, burdens election workers and creates less transparency in elections.

One of the nine hearings that Republicans held on the bill, which recently passed out of committee and is ready for a floor vote in the House, was held last month in Atlanta.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, accused Republicans of playing defense for Trump through the field hearing, which Republicans have said was not the case.

“One might ask, why are we here in Georgia? The answer is simple. We’re here because in 2020, Joe Biden won and Donald Trump lost. There was no widespread voter fraud in Georgia, there were no suitcases full of fake ballots, no voting machines changed any votes. In fact, we know of only one possible crime that took place, because it was recorded on tape,” Morelle said.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have also accused their Republican counterparts of coinciding the release of key interview transcripts with days consumed by Trump’s legal woes, according to a recent memo released by Democratic committee staff.

An Oversight Committee spokesperson said in a statement to CNN, “to be clear, there was absolutely no connection between the transcript releases and anything else covered in the news.”

The types of moves Republicans made on behalf of Trump in the wake of the Fulton County indictment are not necessarily new. After Trump was indicted by the Department of Justice in two separate cases, Greene called for Congress to defund Smith’s office, who is overseeing the two federal indictment cases, and House Freedom Caucus members issued a statement Monday that they would not support even a short-term government spending bill that does not address what they see as the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

Gaetz recently introduced a resolution to censure and condemn the judge presiding over Trump’s federal indictment in the 2020 election subversion case.

Despite the partisan back and forth, Trump’s Capitol Hill allies remain unfazed. But, not all Republicans have bought into the Trump defensive strategy.

“Nobody is paying attention other than the people who are obsessed with Trump,” a senior Republican lawmaker told CNN.

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August 2, 2023
DeSantis pushes back on man who blamed him for Jacksonville shooting deaths: ‘That is nonsense’ | CNN Politics

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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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August 2, 2023
Chris Christie Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here’s a look at the life of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Birth date: September 6, 1962

Birth place: Newark, New Jersey

Birth name: Christopher James Christie

Father: Wilbur “Bill” Christie, an accountant

Mother: Sondra (Grasso) Christie

Marriage: Mary Pat (Foster) Christie (1986-present)

Children: Bridget, Patrick, Sarah and Andrew

Education: University of Delaware, B.A., 1984; Seton Hall University, J.D., 1987

Religion: Roman Catholic

While serving as the US attorney for New Jersey, Christie prosecuted more than 130 public officials for corruption.

A fan of Bruce Springsteen, Christie claims to have attended more than 100 of the New Jersey rocker’s performances.

1977 – Volunteers for Republican Tom Kean’s gubernatorial campaign.

1987-2002 – Attorney at the law firm of Dughi and Hewit, later named Dughi, Hewit & Palatucci PC.

1992 – Co-coordinates the New Jersey reelection efforts of US President George H.W. Bush.

1993 – Becomes a partner at Dughi and Hewit.

1995-1997 – Member of the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders.

1997 – Director of the Freeholder Board.

2002-2008 – US attorney for New Jersey. Earns a reputation for being tough on corruption.

November 3, 2009 – Defeats Democrat Jon Corzine, winning the election for governor.

January 19, 2010-January 16, 2018 – Republican Governor of New Jersey.

October 31, 2012 – Two days after Hurricane Sandy hits New Jersey, President Barack Obama visits the Garden State and tours devastated beach towns with Christie.

February 4, 2013 – During an appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” Christie pulls a doughnut out of his pocket and begins eating it mid-interview. Christie’s weight has often been commented on in the media and mocked by comedians.

May 7, 2013 – Christie reveals to the New York Post that he secretly underwent lap-band surgery for the sake of his wife and kids.

November 5, 2013 – Wins reelection.

November 21, 2013 – Becomes the 2014 chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

January 8, 2014 – Emails emerge from Christie’s top aides bolstering suggestions that George Washington Bridge lane closures last year that tied up traffic stemmed from a political vendetta and not bureaucratic incompetence as his administration claimed. The scandal is dubbed Bridgegate.

June 30, 2015 – Formally announces he is running for the Republican presidential nomination during a speech in Livingston, New Jersey. On February 10, 2016, announces that he is suspending his campaign.

February 26, 2016 – Endorses Donald Trump for president of the United States.

May 9, 2016 – Trump announces that Christie will lead his presidential transition team, serving as chairman of the group tasked with finding candidates for jobs in a potential Trump administration.

August 10, 2016 – In a text message, a Christie aide declares the governor “flat out lied” during a 2013 Bridgegate press conference, according to court documents filed in the criminal case against two Christie staffers accused of plotting to create a traffic jam in Fort Lee.

November 11, 2016 – After Trump wins the election, he shakes up his transition team, demoting Christie to a supporting role and selecting Vice President-elect Mike Pence to take Christie’s place as chair.

December 6, 2016 – A Quinnipiac University Poll indicates that 19% of voters approve of Christie’s job performance as governor and 77% disapprove. That’s the lowest score for a governor in 20 years of Quinnipiac’s polls of 11 different states.

January 27, 2017 – The Bergen County prosecutor’s office says it won’t pursue charges of official misconduct against Christie in the Bridgegate case.

February 16, 2017 – A Bergen County municipal judge rules that a misconduct case against Christie, stemming from a citizen’s complaint related to Bridgegate, can proceed in court.

March 29, 2017 – Trump announces that Christie has been tapped to chair a commission that will seek ways to address the opioid crisis. On the same day, Christie’s former staffers, Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly are sentenced for their roles in the Bridgegate scandal. Baroni is sentenced to two years in prison while Kelly is initially sentenced to 18 months behind bars.

July 1, 2017 – Due to a dispute over a Christie-backed bill that would allow the state to control how Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield spends its cash reserve funds, the legislature fails to break an impasse during budget talks. As a result, Christie orders a government shutdown, closing state parks, courts, motor vehicle commission offices and unemployment offices statewide. Christie says the Democrats in the legislature created the crisis.

July 2, 2017 – As the government shutdown continues, Christie and his family vacation at one of the state parks that is closed during the holiday weekend. Island Beach State Park has a private governor’s residence, where Christie, his wife and other family members soak up sun on an empty beach. During the afternoon, the governor travels via state helicopter to Trenton to hold a news conference and denies that he has been enjoying the beach amid the crisis. Photos published by NJ Advance Media show that Christie was sitting on a beach chair earlier in the day.

July 3-4, 2017 – The state legislature reaches a deal to reopen the government and Christie signs the budget into law. During a press conference, Christie says that the backlash over the beach photos was unwarranted. He says that he was transparent about his plans to visit the oceanfront residence during the weekend and questions the news value of the pictures.

January 16, 2018 – Christie leaves office after two terms, and turns control of New Jersey’s state government over to Democrats for the first time in eight years.

January 29, 2019 – Christie’s memoir “Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics” is published.

April 24, 2019 – Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former chief of staff, is sentenced to 13 months in prison for her involvement in the “Bridgegate” scandal. She was previously sentenced to 18 months but appealed her conviction. Following her sentencing, Kelly makes a statement: “Mr. Christie, you are a bully and the days of you calling me a liar and destroying my life are over.”

May 7, 2020 – The US Supreme Court throws out fraud convictions against Kelly and Baroni, who were involved in the “Bridgegate” political scandal. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan says the move “jeopardized the safety of the town’s residents,” but concludes that “not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime.”

October 3, 2020 – Christie tells CNN he checked himself into a hospital as a precautionary measure after announcing earlier in the day that he had tested positive for Covid-19. Christie was among a group of senior Trump campaign staffers who were tested following news of the President’s positive diagnosis.

October 15, 2020 – In a statement, Christie says he spent seven days in an intensive care unit before recovering from Covid-19.

October 21, 2020 – In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “I Should Have Worn a Mask,” Christie writes that mask wearing is not a “partisan or cultural symbol,” and that he was “wrong” not to wear a mask at the Supreme Court nomination ceremony of Judge Amy Coney Barrett and during debate prep with Trump.

December 16, 2020 – In an ad paid for by the COVID Collaborative, Christie says that he regrets not wearing a mask while visiting the White House, a choice he acknowledges led to him contracting the coronavirus and spending a week in the ICU.

November 16, 2021 – Christie’s book “Republican Rescue: Saving the Party From Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden” is published.

June 6, 2023 – Announces that he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination at a New Hampshire town hall event. Christie suspends his campaign on January 10, 2024.

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August 2, 2023
What to know about the Georgia probe into Trump’s 2020 election subversion | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former President Donald Trump is facing a potential fourth indictment, this time in Georgia, where state prosecutors may soon bring charges over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results there.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, launched the probe in early 2021 and has investigated Trump’s attempts to pressure Georgia officials into interfering with the vote tally, the “fake electors” scheme to subvert the Electoral College and other efforts to undo the will of the voters.

Many of these incidents also factored into Trump’s federal indictment on charges related to the 2020 election aftermath. (Trump pleaded not guilty last week to four federal charges in that case.) That probe, led by special counsel Jack Smith, is separate from the state-level inquiry in Georgia.

Willis is expected to spend one or two days presenting her case before a grand jury next week, likely starting Monday. At least two witnesses have publicly confirmed that they were called to testify in front of the grand jury Tuesday.

Trump has vehemently denied wrongdoing, as have his allies who are also under scrutiny in the probe. The former president has lashed out at Willis, who is Black, calling her “racist” and a “lunatic Marxist.”

Here’s what to know about the investigation.

Candidate Joe Biden beat Trump in Georgia by 11,779 votes, or about 0.23% of nearly 5 million ballots cast. Biden’s razor-thin victory was confirmed by two recounts and certified by Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans.

Instead of conceding, Trump launched a multi-pronged effort to overturn the results, including a pressure campaign targeting key state officials. Trump wanted them to abuse their powers to “find” enough votes to flip the results, or to block Biden’s victory from being certified. They refused.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump said in a phone call to Raffensperger on January 2, 2021.

When these efforts failed, Trump urged Georgia lawmakers to convene a special session of the GOP-run legislature so they could overturn Biden’s victory. Trump allies, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani, presented bogus fraud claims to the state House and Senate at hearings in December 2020. The Trump campaign, with outside lawyers who supported their cause, filed meritless lawsuits that tried to overturn the Georgia results.

Trump’s campaign also recruited a group of GOP activists in Georgia to serve as fake electors, who were part of a seven-state scheme to undermine the Electoral College. These fake slates of electors played a key role in Trump’s ill-fated plot to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021.

At the same time, Trump tried to weaponize the Justice Department to help him intervene in Georgia and elsewhere. He tried to cajole top Justice Department officials and federal prosecutors in Atlanta into falsely announcing that the election was “corrupt” and that Biden’s win was tainted by massive fraud.

There were also efforts by Trump supporters to breach a voting system in rural Coffee County, Georgia, in hopes of proving that the election was rigged. CNN reported on Sunday that Willis’ investigators have obtained text messages connecting the Coffee County breach to Trump’s legal team.

Some Trump supporters also allegedly tried to intimidate a Fulton County election worker into falsely admitting she was part of a massive anti-Trump fraud scheme in 2020.

Trump is obviously at the center of the probe. The foreperson of the special grand jury that previously heard evidence in the case suggested in a series of interviews that the panel recommended charges against Trump, and that there was a long list of potential co-defendants. CNN recently reported that Willis is expected to seek more than a dozen indictments.

Prosecutors have notified some key players that they are targets of the investigation. This includes Giuliani, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s federal indictment on 2020-related charges.

The 16 Republican activists who served as fake electors, including the chair of the Georgia Republican Party, also got target letters, though some decided to cooperate with prosecutors.

Earlier in the investigation, Willis said her team was investigating a wide array of potential crimes. This included solicitation of election fraud, making false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of an oath-of-office, and involvement in election-related threats.

CNN reported in March that prosecutors were eying racketeering and conspiracy charges. Willis has previously used Georgia’s state RICO laws – which stands for “racketeer influenced and corrupt organizations” – to prosecute gangs and even public school officials who oversaw a cheating scheme.

Willis’ team is expected to spend one or two days presenting their case before the grand jury. To secure an indictment in the Trump investigation, 16 of the 23 voting grand jury members would need to be present. Once that quorum is established, 12 votes would be needed to hand up an indictment.

CNN has previously reported that some key witnesses were recently subpoenaed to appear, presumably as part of Willis’ upcoming presentation. This includes former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who is now a CNN political contributor, and former state Sen. Jen Jordan, a Democrat.

Duncan told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday that he had received a notice to testify in front of the grand jury Tuesday. Shortly after, independent journalist George Chidi, who had also been subpoenaed, shared on social media that he had also received a similar notice.

When a grand jury approves an indictment, a prosecutor and court officials typically walk the paperwork to the courtroom of the presiding Superior Court judge. That group then usually presents the stack of papers to the presiding judge, who reviews and signs them, and hands back the signed papers. The group then walks the signed indictments to the clerk’s office, where case numbers are assigned.

Willis was elected Fulton County district attorney in November 2020 after defeating her former boss, a six-term incumbent, in the Democratic primary earlier that year. She was sworn in on January 1, 2021, just one day before Trump’s infamous call with Raffensperger.

She is the first woman to hold the post in Fulton County, which is home to most of Atlanta, and includes some of the nearby suburbs. (Biden won approximately 73% of the vote in Fulton County in 2020.) She is up for reelection next year, so she might be leading an historic trial while also campaigning for votes.

Asked by CNN in 2022 about potentially prosecuting a former president, she said, “What I could envision is that we actually live in a society where Lady Justice is blind, and that it doesn’t matter if you’re rich poor, Black, White, Democrat or Republican. If you violated the law, you’re going to be charged.”

Trump has hammered Willis throughout the process, accusing her of partisan bias and claiming she is only pursuing the probe to fuel her future political ambitions. His critiques are largely unsupported, though Willis made a significant misstep last year, when she hosted a fundraiser for the Democratic opponent of one of the people she was investigating, Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Republican.

Jones – who was one of the fake electors in Georgia – successfully sought a court order blocking Willis from further investigating him. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who issued the order, said it was a “‘what are you thinking moment” for Willis and that “the optics are horrific.”

But McBurney, who presided over the special grand jury and related matters, has also praised Willis’ handling of the investigation. In a recent ruling in a related case, he contrasted her professional conduct with the “stream of personal invective flowing from” Trump and his lawyers.

“Put differently, the District Attorney’s Office has been doing a fairly routine – and legally unobjectionable – job of public relations in a case that is anything but routine,” McBurney wrote.

The federal election-subversion charges against Trump overlap with the Georgia probe in a big way, but the investigations are separate. If Trump is charged in Georgia, some procedural and logistical challenges may arise, such as deconflicting the schedule of the state case with the federal case.

If Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, he could order the Justice Department to drop the cases and could pardon himself.

But the Georgia case – a state-level prosecution – might still move forward.

Trump has responded to the Georgia investigation with a steady stream of attacks against prosecutors, and by resurrecting many of his debunked lies that the 2020 election was rigged.

He has also repeatedly invoked race in his public rants against Willis. At a campaign rally Tuesday, Trump called Willis “a young woman, a young racist” and baselessly claimed she has ties to gang members.

Trump’s lawyers tried to essentially neuter the probe – by filing a motion with the judge who oversaw the special grand jury, and by separately asking the Georgia Supreme Court to intervene. They wanted a court order to block Willis from using the evidence she gathered in any future criminal or civil case. These legal moves were seen as a long shot, and they were rejected in the past few weeks.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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August 2, 2023
North Carolina governor vetoes election overhaul bill | CNN Politics

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CNN
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North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday vetoed an election overhaul bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature last week.

The Democratic governor called the legislation dangerous.

“Right now, legislative Republicans in North Carolina are pushing an all-out assault on the right to vote, using the advice of Trump’s hand-picked election denier, Cleta Mitchell, who was on the call trying to help him overturn the election in Georgia,” Cooper said at the start of a video posted on his official social media accounts announcing his veto. “This attack has nothing to do with election security, and everything to do with keeping and gaining power.”

Senate Bill 747 would overhaul the existing election laws of the Tar Heel State, adding new restrictions and deadlines and further empowering partisan poll watchers, among other changes. The measure would also change current same-day registration rules during the early voting period. Under the new legislation, same-day registrants would have to use a “retrievable ballot” that can be discarded if the county board of elections cannot verify their address.

Cooper also promised to veto another election-related bill still working through the legislature, Senate Bill 749, if it eventually makes it to his desk.

Republicans have a supermajority in both the state House and Senate and have successfully overridden more than a dozen vetoes by Cooper this session. In addition to holding a veto-proof majority in the legislature, Republicans now also hold a majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court, raising the prospect that they could prevail in any court fights over the election overhaul measure.

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August 2, 2023
Ben Carson Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Here is a look at the life of former US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and a former presidential candidate.

Birth date: September 18, 1951

Birth place: Detroit, Michigan

Birth name: Benjamin Solomon Carson

Father: Robert Carson, auto factory worker

Mother: Sonya (Copeland) Carson, domestic worker

Marriage: Lacena “Candy” (Rustin) Carson (July 1975-present)

Children: Murray, Benjamin Jr and Rhoeyce

Education: Yale University, B.A. in Psychology, 1973; University of Michigan School of Medicine, M.D., 1977

Religion: Seventh Day Adventist

When Carson became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins at age 33, he was the youngest person to head a major division in the hospital’s history.

His parents separated when he was 8, after it was revealed his father was a bigamist. He and his brother were raised by their mother.

Carson admits that he had a violent temper in his youth, and says one of the defining moments of his life occurred when he was 14. Carson attempted to stab a schoolmate, but luckily the boy’s belt buckle blocked the knife. After praying for three hours, Carson “came to an understanding that to lash out at people is not a sign of strength, it was a sign of weakness.”

Known for offering provocative commentary on a wide range of issues, including comparing the modern American government to Nazi Germany in a March 2014 interview with Breitbart, and at the 2013 Values Voters Summit, saying that Obamacare is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

1977-1978 – Intern in general surgery at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

1978-1982 – Completes his neurosurgery residency at Johns Hopkins.

1982-1983 – Chief neurosurgery resident at Johns Hopkins.

1983-1984 – Senior registrar in neurosurgery at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia.

1984-2013 – Director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

1987 – Primary neurosurgeon on team that performs the first successful surgery to separate conjoined twins connected at the back of the head (occipital craniopagus twins).

1990 – Carson’s best-selling autobiography, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” is published.

1994 – Founds the Carson Scholars Fund with his wife, which facilitates leisure reading for children and funds college scholarships for students with strong academics and humanitarian achievement.

1997 – Primary neurosurgeon on the team that performs the first fully successful surgery to separate Type 2 vertical craniopagus twins (joined at the top of the head and facing opposite directions), where both twins survive and are neurologically normal.

2002 – Co-founds the Benevolent Endowment Network (BEN) Fund, which provides financial support for the medical expenses of pediatric neurosurgery patients.

August 2002 – Undergoes surgery for prostate cancer. He is later declared cancer-free.

2004 – Named by President George W. Bush to the President’s Council on Bioethics.

June 19, 2008 – Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush.

February 7, 2009 – Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Carson in the made-for-television movie, “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.”

February 7, 2013 – Gains national attention after he criticizes Democratic policies on taxes and healthcare during his keynote address at the National Prayer Breakfast.

July 1, 2013 – Retires from Johns Hopkins as director of pediatric neurosurgery, professor and co-director of the Craniofacial Center.

October 2013-November 2014 – Contributor for Fox News.

November 2014 – Officially switches his party affiliation from registered Independent to Republican, a move he later acknowledges was spurred on by a possible presidential run.

March 4, 2015 – On CNN’s “New Day,” Carson asserts that homosexuality is a choice because people “go into prison straight – and when they come out, they’re gay.” He later apologizes for his comments, but says that the science is still murky on the issue.

May 4, 2015 – Formally announces his candidacy for US president in his hometown of Detroit.

March 2, 2016 – After a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday, Carson announces he doesn’t “see a political path forward” in the Republican presidential nomination process, and will not attend the upcoming GOP presidential debate in Detroit.

March 4, 2016 – In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering in National Harbor, Maryland, Carson officially ends his presidential campaign and reveals his next move: becoming the national chairman of My Faith Votes, a group focused on getting out the Christian vote in November.

March 11, 2016 – Carson announces his endorsement of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

November 15, 2016 – A close Carson adviser tells CNN that Carson has declined an offer from President-elect Trump to join his cabinet as secretary of Health and Human Services.

December 5, 2016 – The Trump transition team announces Carson will be nominated as the next secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

March 2, 2017 – Carson is confirmed as HUD secretary with a 58-41 vote in the Senate.

February 2018 – CNN obtains a November 2017 complaint from HUD’s former chief administration officer, who said she was told to “find money” beyond the legal $5,000 limit for redecorating Carson’s office. Soon after, it is revealed that HUD spent $31,000 to replace a dining room set for the office. Carson says in a statement to CNN that he was “surprised” about the order and had it canceled.

May 16, 2019 – In a letter to Congress, the Government Accountability Office’s general counsel says HUD broke the law when it spent about $40,000 in 2017 for a new dining set and dishwasher for Carson’s office.

September 12, 2019 – HUD’s internal watchdog clears Carson of wrongdoing for his plan to purchase a $31,000 dining set without notifying Congress.

November 9, 2020 – HUD Deputy Chief of Staff Coalter Baker releases a statement that Carson has tested positive for the coronavirus. “He is in good spirits and feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.”

May 17, 2022 – Carson’s book “Created Equal: The Painful Past, Confusing Present, and Hopeful Future of Race in America,” is published.

November 15, 2022 – “Crisis in the Classroom: Crisis in Education,” a book co-authored by Carson, attorney Ben Crump and political commentator Armstrong Williams, is published.

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August 2, 2023
Who is Laphonza Butler, California’s next senator? | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Laphonza Butler, the woman selected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to succeed the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is a longtime union leader and abortion rights advocate, who also will be the first out Black lesbian to enter Congress.

The appointment fulfills Newsom’s pledge to appoint a Black woman who had not announced plans to run for the seat, and in Butler, he picked someone with deep ties to several critical Democratic constituencies in the Golden State.

Butler will also be the sole Black woman serving in the Senate and only the third in US history. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday the incoming senator would be sworn in this week.

“I am humbled by the Governor’s trust,” Butler said in a statement Monday. “Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s leadership and legacy are immeasurable. I will do my best to honor her by devoting my time and energy to serving the people of California and the people of this great nation.”

Butler previously made history in 2021 by becoming the first woman of color to lead EMILY’s List, an organization dedicated to electing Democratic women who support abortion rights.

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, Butler worked at SCRB Strategies – a California-based political strategy firm now known as Bearstar Strategies – where she served as a senior adviser on then-Sen. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, according to EMILY’s List. She also served as an adviser on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to Butler’s LinkedIn page.

Butler previously held multiple roles at the Service Employees International Union, most recently serving as president of SEIU Local 2015 for nearly a decade. SEIU Local 2015 represents California’s long-term care workers and is the largest labor union in the state, the governor’s office said. Prior to joining EMILY’s List, Butler was a director at Airbnb.

Butler, who has a long history working in California politics, moved to Maryland in 2021 around the time she was chosen to lead EMILY’s List, public records show. She was registered to vote in Maryland in 2022, according to public records.

Responding to questions about Butler’s residency, Newsom’s office said Monday she had re-registered to vote in California ahead of her Senate appointment.

EMILY’s List board chair Rebecca Haile called Butler “a groundbreaking leader who has done terrific work” over her two years leading the group.

“EMILYs List was created to get more Democratic pro-choice women in government and I am thrilled to see my friend put that into action by taking on this role,” Haile said in a statement.

Butler, a Mississippi native, attended Jackson State University, according to EMILY’s List. She has served as a member of the University of California Board of Regents and as a board member of the National Children’s Defense Fund. She and her wife, Neneki, have a daughter, Nylah, Newsom’s office said.

Newsom was under intense pressure within California to choose a Black woman to succeed Harris when she was elected to the vice presidency. He instead appointed Alex Padilla, then California’s secretary of state, who became the first Latino senator from the state.

This year, many – including members of the Congressional Black Caucus – had urged Newsom to appoint Rep. Barbara Lee in case Feinstein’s seat became vacant. Lee filed to run for the seat after Feinstein announced earlier this year that she would not seek reelection in 2024, but Newsom said last month he would not appoint any of the candidates currently seeking the office. His office said Monday there were no conditions placed on Butler’s appointment and any decision to seek a full term next year would be her own.

Newsom has described Butler as “an advocate for women and girls, a second-generation fighter for working people, and a trusted adviser to Vice President Harris,” who will “carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein.”

“As we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for – reproductive freedom, equal protection, and safety from gun violence – have never been under greater assault,” Newsom said in his announcement. “Laphonza will carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings, and fight for all Californians in Washington D.C.”

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August 2, 2023
Trump and team seek to destroy credibility of his election subversion trial before a date is even set | CNN Politics

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CNN
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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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August 2, 2023
Here’s what DeSantis, Christie and other Trump 2024 rivals are saying about the Georgia indictment | CNN Politics

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CNN
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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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August 2, 2023
Fact check: Trump falsely claims polls show his Black support has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that polls show his support among Black Americans has quadrupled or quintupled since his mug shot was released.

The booking photo was taken on August 24, when Trump was arrested in Fulton County, Georgia, on charges connected to his efforts to overturn his defeat in the state in the 2020 election.

On Wednesday, Trump claimed in a falsehood-filled interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt that “many Democrats” will be voting for him in the 2024 election because they agree with him that the criminal charges against him in four cases are unfair. He then made this assertion: “The Black community is so different for me in the last – since that mug shot was taken, I don’t know if you’ve seen the polls; my polls with the Black community have gone up four and five times.”

Facts First: National public polls do not show anything close to an increase of “four and five times” in Black support for Trump since his mug shot was taken, either in a race against President Joe Biden or in his own favorability rating; Trump’s campaign did not respond to CNN’s request to identify any poll that corroborates Trump’s claim. Most polls conducted after the release of the mug shot did find a higher level of Black support for Trump than he had in previous polls – but the increases were within the polls’ margins of error, not massive spikes, so it’s not clear whether there was a genuine improvement or the bump was just statistical noise. In addition, one poll found a decline in Trump’s strength with Black voters in a race against Biden, while another found a decline in his favorability with Black respondents even as he improved in a race against Biden.

Because Black adults make up a relatively small share of the overall population, they tend to have small sample sizes in national public polls. That means the margins of error for this group are big and the results tend to bounce around from poll to poll. And even if Trump’s recent polling improvement captures a real change in voter sentiment, there is no evidence that change has anything to do with his mug shot, which no poll asked about; it could just as well have to do with, say, the summer increase in the price of gas or any of numerous other factors affecting perceptions of Biden.

Regardless, Trump greatly exaggerated the size of the recent uptick seen in some polls. Here’s a look at what polls actually show about his recent standing with the Black population, plus a fact check of three of Trump’s many other false claims from the Hewitt interview.

CNN identified five national public polls that: 1) included data on Black respondents in particular; 2) were conducted after Trump’s mug shot was released on August 24; 3) were conducted by pollsters who had also released polls in the recent past.

Four of the polls showed gains for Trump among Black respondents, though much smaller gains than the quadrupling or quintupling he claimed to Hewitt.

Trump gained 3 percentage points with Black respondents in polling by The Economist and YouGov, though within the margin of error – going from 17% against Biden in mid-August to 20% in late August. (The earlier poll asked the Trump-versus-Biden question of Black adults regardless of whether they are registered to vote, while the later poll asked the question to Black registered voters, so the results might not be directly comparable.) At the same time, Trump’s favorability with Black respondents was down 9 percentage points to 18%.

Trump gained 3 percentage points with Black registered voters between a Messenger/Harris X poll in early July and a survey by the same pollster in late August, edging up from 22% against Biden to 25%. Trump gained 6 percentage points among Black adults in polling by the firm Premise, going from 12% against Biden in an Aug. 17-21 poll to 18% in an Aug. 30-Sept. 5 poll. He gained 8 percentage points among Black registered voters in polling by Republican firm Echelon Insights, going from 14% against Biden in late July to 22% in late August. Based on the sample sizes reported for Black respondents in each poll, all of those changes are within the margin of error.

One of the five polls, by Emerson College, showed Trump’s standing with Black registered voters worsening after the mug shot was released, though this change was also within the margin of error. In Emerson’s mid-August poll, Trump had about 27% Black support in a race against Biden; in its late-August poll, he had about 19% support.

In addition to looking at those five polls, we contacted The Wall Street Journal about an Aug. 24-30 poll, conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, for which the newspaper has not yet released detailed demographic-by-demographic results. Aaron Zitner, a Journal reporter and editor who works on the poll, told us that Trump’s level of support with Black voters “didn’t change at all” between the paper’s April poll and this new poll, though Biden’s standing declined slightly within the margin of error.

Exit polls estimated that Trump received 12% of the Black vote in the 2020 election. A post-election Pew Research Center analysis found that he received 8%.

Mike Pence’s standing in 2016

Trump made another false polling-related claim to Hewitt.

This one was about how Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president and his current opponent for the Republican nomination, had performed in polls during his 2016 campaign for reelection as governor of Indiana. Pence ceased his Indiana campaign when Trump selected him as his running mate in July 2016.

Trump said Wednesday: “I’m disappointed in Mike Pence, because I took Mike from the garbage heap. He was going to lose. You know, he was running for governor, reelection. He was running for governor again, to continue his term, and he was absolutely, you know – he was down by 10 or 15 points.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that Pence was trailing by “10 or 15 points” in his 2016 race is false. It’s true that Pence had faced a tough battle for reelection as governor before he ended the campaign to run nationally with Trump, but no public poll had shown him down big.

A May 2016 poll (commissioned by a Republican group that was founded by an opponent of Pence’s right-wing stance on gay rights and other issues) had showed Pence with 40% support and his Democratic opponent, John Gregg, with 36% support; the Indianapolis Star called this a “virtual dead heat” because of the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, but nonetheless, Pence certainly wasn’t “down by 10 or 15 points” like Trump said. An April 2016 poll had showed Pence with 49% support to Gregg’s 45%, again within the margin of error but not with Pence trailing.

“There would not be any poll that would show Pence down 10-15 points to John Gregg at that time or frankly at any point even if Pence had stayed for the reelection campaign,” Christine Matthews, the president of Bellwether Research & Consulting and a Republican pollster who conducted surveys during that 2016 race in Indiana, including the May 2016 poll mentioned above, told CNN on Wednesday. Matthews said Pence could possibly have lost the race if he had remained in it, “but no poll would have shown him down by 10-15 points in that process.”

Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina in 2020

Trump repeated his usual lies about the 2020 election – saying, among other things, that “it was rigged and stolen.” In support of those lies, he said: “One of the top people in Alabama said you don’t win Alabama by 45 points or whatever it is I won, and then win South Carolina in a record, nobody’s ever gotten that many votes, and then you lose Georgia by just a couple of votes. It doesn’t work that way.”

Facts First: Trump hedged his claim that he won Alabama by “45 points,” adding the “whatever it is I won,” but the “45 points” claim is not even close to correct no matter what “one of the top people” told him; he won Alabama by about 25.5 percentage points in 2020. He lost Georgia by far more than “just a couple of votes”; it was 11,779 votes. And while he did earn a record number of votes in South Carolina, he did not win the state with anything close to a “record” margin of victory; his roughly 11.7-point margin in 2020 was about 2.6 points smaller than his own margin in 2016 and also smaller than the margins earned by numerous previous winners.

In addition, Trump’s claim that “it doesn’t work that way” – winning some states big while losing a nearby state – is also baseless. Even neighboring states are not the same. Georgia, which Trump lost fair and square, has key demographic and social differences from South Carolina and Alabama, as we explained in a previous fact check.

Polls and election results weren’t the only things Trump exaggerated about in the interview.

He invoked the price of bacon while criticizing the Biden administration for speaking positively about the state of inflation, which has declined sharply over the last year but remains elevated. “They try and say, ‘Oh, inflation’s wonderful.’ What about for the last three years, where bacon is five times higher than it was just a few years ago?”

Facts First: Trump’s claim that the price of bacon has quintupled over the last few years is grossly inaccurate. The average price of bacon is higher than it was three years ago, but it is nowhere near “five times higher.” The average price for a pound of sliced bacon was $6.236 per pound in July 2023, up from $5.776 in July 2020, according to federal data – an increase of about 8%, nowhere near the 400% increase Trump claimed.

You can come up with a larger percentage increase if you start the clock at a different point in 2020; for example, the July 2023 average price is a 13.4% increase from the February 2020 average price. But even that larger increase is way smaller than Trump claimed.

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August 2, 2023
2016 Presidential Debates Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Here’s a look at the 2016 presidential debates:

August 3, 2015
Event Type: Republican Forum
Location: Manchester, New Hampshire
Sponsors: KCRG-TV, WGIR-AM, New Hampshire Union Leader, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Post & Courier
Moderator: Jack Heath
Participants: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Scott Walker
Transcript

August 6, 2015
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Sponsors: Fox News/Facebook/Ohio Republican Party
Moderators: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace
Participants (decided by polling data): First Debate – Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Scott Walker
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

September 16, 2015
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Simi Valley, California
Sponsors: CNN/Salem Radio/Reagan Library Foundation
Moderators: Jake Tapper; Dana Bash and Hugh Hewitt also participate
Participants: First Debate – Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Scott Walker
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

October 13, 2015
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Sponsors: CNN/Facebook
Moderators: Anderson Cooper; Dana Bash, Juan Carlos Lopez, Don Lemon also participate
Participants: Lincoln Chafee, Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb
Transcript

October 28, 2015
Event Type: Republican Debate
Title: Your Money, Your Vote: The Presidential Debate on the Economy
Location: Boulder, Colorado
Sponsors: CNBC/The University of Colorado Boulder
Moderators: Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick, John Harwood
Participants: First Debate – Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

November 10, 2015
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Sponsors: Fox Business Network/Wall Street Journal
Moderators: Sandra Smith, Trish Regan, Gerald Seib and Neil Cavuto, Maria Bartiromo, Gerard Baker
Participants: First Debate – Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

November 14, 2015
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Sponsors: CBS, KCCI and The Des Moines Register
Moderators: John Dickerson; Nancy Cordes, Kevin Cooney, Kathie Obradovich also participate
Participants: Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders
Transcript

December 15, 2015
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Sponsors: CNN/Salem Radio
Moderators: Wolf Blitzer; Dana Bash and Hugh Hewitt also participate
Participants: First Debate – Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

December 19, 2015
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Manchester, New Hampshire
Sponsors: ABC and WMUR
Moderators: David Muir and Martha Raddatz
Participants: Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders
Transcript

January 14, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: North Charleston, South Carolina
Sponsors: Fox Business Network
Moderators: First Debate – Trish Regan and Sandra Smith; Second Debate – Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo
Participants: First Debate – Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

January 17, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Charleston, South Carolina
Sponsors: NBC, YouTube and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute
Moderators: Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell
Participants: Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders
Transcript

January 25, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Presidential Candidates Town Hall Meeting
Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Sponsor: CNN
Moderator: Chris Cuomo
Participants: Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders
Transcript

January 28, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Sponsors: Fox News and Google
Moderators: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace
Participants: First Debate – Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum; Second Debate – Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio
Transcript – First Debate
Transcript – Second Debate

February 3, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Town Hall
Location: Derry, New Hampshire
Sponsor: CNN
Moderator: Anderson Cooper
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

February 4, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Durham, New Hampshire
Sponsor: MSNBC
Moderators: Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

February 6, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Manchester, New Hampshire
Sponsors: ABC News and IJReview
Moderators: David Muir and Martha Raddatz
Participants: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript

February 11, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Sponsors: PBS/WETA
Moderators: Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

February 13, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Greenville, South Carolina
Sponsor: CBS News
Moderator: John Dickerson
Participants: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript

February 17, 2016
Event Type: Republican Town Hall
Location: Greenville, South Carolina
Sponsor: CNN
Moderator: Anderson Cooper
Participants: Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio
Transcript

February 18, 2016
Event Type: Republican Town Hall
Location: Columbia, South Carolina
Sponsor: CNN
Moderator: Anderson Cooper
Participants: Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Donald Trump
Transcript

February 23, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Town Hall
Location: Columbia, South Carolina
Sponsors: CNN
Moderator: Chris Cuomo
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

February 25, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Houston, Texas
Sponsors: CNN/Telemundo/Salem Communications
Moderator: Wolf Blitzer
Participants: Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript

March 3, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Detroit, Michigan
Sponsors: Fox News
Moderators: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace
Participants: Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript

March 6, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Flint, Michigan
Sponsors: CNN
Moderator: Anderson Cooper
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

March 9, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Miami, Florida
Sponsors: Univision/Washington Post/Florida Democratic Party
Moderators: Maria Elena Salinas, Jorge Ramos, Karen Tumulty
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

March 10, 2016
Event Type: Republican Debate
Location: Miami, Florida
Sponsors: CNN/Salem Media Group/The Washington Times
Moderators: Jake Tapper; Dana Bash and Hugh Hewitt also participate
Participants: Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump
Transcript

April 14, 2016
Event Type: Democratic Debate
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Sponsors: CNN/NY1
Moderators: Wolf Blitzer; Dana Bash and Errol Louis also participate
Participants: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
Transcript

September 26, 2016
Event Type: First Presidential Debate
Location: Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Moderator: Lester Holt
Transcript
Viewership: The debate is the most-watched debate in American history, averaging a total of 84 million viewers across 13 of the TV channels that carried it live.

October 4, 2016
Event Type: Vice Presidential Debate
Location: Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Moderator: Elaine Quijano
Transcript

October 9, 2016
Event Type: Second Presidential Debate
Location: Washington University in St. Louis
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Moderators: Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz
Transcript

October 19, 2016
Event Type: Third Presidential Debate
Location: University of Nevada-Las Vegas
Sponsor: Commission on Presidential Debates
Moderator: Chris Wallace
Transcript

The final presidential debate

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August 2, 2023
2024 Presidential Debates Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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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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August 2, 2023
Abortion politics take center stage after Biden campaign capitalizes on GOP debate rift | CNN Politics

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CNN
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More than a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republican candidates remain split over how to move forward on abortion, a political liability Democrats are eager to exploit regardless of who becomes the Republican nominee.

The GOP divide was laid bare on the debate stage this week, as candidates backed a 15-week abortion ban, deferred to the states or tried to split the difference. President Joe Biden’s campaign responded immediately in a new digital ad, painting the field’s top contenders as extreme on the issue – and signaling what the Democratic campaign is likely to focus on in the coming year.

When it comes to the future of abortion access, Republican candidates are facing pressure on all sides.

GOP-led state legislatures have passed a wave of complete or near-total abortion bans that go beyond what most Americans support. Voters have supported abortion rights ballot initiatives and candidates in several key elections over the last year. And anti-abortion and evangelical groups are demanding presidential candidates go on the offensive and get as specific as possible.

“The debate reflected the many different views among Republicans regarding abortion policy: not only what the policy ought to be, but what level of government ought to be making the decisions,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “There’s no real consensus at this point.”

Biden’s reelection campaign has also homed in on remarks GOP candidates made on abortion during the debate. In talking points sent out to surrogates Wednesday night, the campaign claimed Republicans “spent two hours shouting over each other on … who has the best plan to ban abortion nationwide,” CNN reported Thursday.

Biden’s team followed up Friday morning with a digital ad, “These Guys,” highlighting comments former President Donald Trump, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have made on abortion, including a clip of DeSantis on the debate stage. The ad, aimed at women in seven battleground states, is part of a $25 million ad campaign CNN first reported earlier this week.

The ad also reaffirms Biden’s stance on abortion: that the U.S. should maintain the standard set in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which allowed for abortion up until fetal viability, generally viewed as around 24 weeks.

“This ad is the first of many that will hold all MAGA Republicans accountable for their extreme, losing positions throughout the cycle, while also highlighting the President’s support for women and their fundamental freedoms,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

Polling suggests that Americans support some legal abortion, but with limits. Seventy-three percent of respondents to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released last month said abortion should be allowed during the first six weeks of pregnancy, including 88% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans surveyed. Asked if states should allow abortion at 15 weeks, 51% of those surveyed said yes, including 75% of Democrats and 29% of Republicans.

Only 27% of those surveyed supported allowing abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Democrats are hoping that abortion access will continue to be an issue that helps them with voters heading into 2024. Since last year’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturned Roe and left abortion access up to individual states, Democrats and abortion rights activists have racked up a number of wins in special elections and ballot initiatives, and the party overperformed in the 2022 midterm elections.

Trump – whose handpicked nominees lost key Senate races in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia – went on to write a January social media post blaming the party’s midterm losses on “the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that insisted on No Exceptions.”

Tom Bonier, chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democratic political targeting firm, said he expects abortion will be an even stronger issue for his party heading into the 2024 election.

“The evidence that we’re seeing at this point is that abortion rights as a political issue is having an even greater impact than it did last year, which is saying a lot because it had a huge impact on elections in 2022,” he said.

Bonier cited two causes for abortion’s growing influence. Voters, he said, no longer have to imagine what life would look like after Roe. They’re experiencing it firsthand. At the same time, Republicans have not adopted their message to address the political climate, he said. That dynamic was on display in the ad released by the Biden campaign Friday.

“It literally speaks for itself as an issue at this point, that Republicans have not moderated, that in some ways they’ve actually got further to the right,” he said.

Nearly two dozen states have moved to ban or restrict abortion in the wake of Dobbs. Some of the bans have been blocked in court, including the six-week limit DeSantis signed in April. Abortion is currently legal in Florida until 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Republicans have begun to coalesce around the idea of a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group, has called on candidates to support the 15-week limit at minimum, with room for states to pass more restrictive measures.

“A number of GOP officeholders and even presidential aspirants use ‘states’ rights’ as an excuse to tape their mouths shut on abortion,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, wrote in a Thursday Washington Post op-ed with former Trump White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway. “This should not, and will not, stand.”

Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and DeSantis all declined to commit to signing a 15-week ban, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Scott did. The latter two criticized their opponents in post-debate interviews. Scott said in a Thursday Fox News interview that it is “a problem for our nation” that some candidates said they would not commit to a 15-week ban, while Pence also took a jab at Trump.

“Whether it be with Gov. Desantis or Nikki Haley or others onstage, frankly most of the candidates running, including the one that did not show up tonight, are all trying to relegate the question of abortion as a states-only issue,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on Wednesday.

Trump has not said whether he would back a 15-week ban and has suggested he would leave it with the states. In May, he criticized the six-week ban DeSantis signed as “too harsh” for the anti-abortion movement but declined to say whether he supported it personally. A month later he told the audience at a Faith and Freedom Coalition conference that while there “remains a vital role for the federal government” to play in abortion policy, people want it to be a state-level issue.

“I believe the greatest progress for pro-life is now being made in the states, where everyone wanted to be,” Trump said. Pence used his remarks at the same conference to call on every GOP candidate to back a 15-week ban as a national standard.

If a consensus is reached it will likely be whatever the eventual Republican nominee backs, though Ayres would advise candidates to leave the issue to the states — if that’s what they personally believe, he said.

“Ultimately, a candidate has to look into his or her heart and soul to find a position they’re comfortable with, otherwise, they’ll never be able to articulate it effectively,” he said.

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August 2, 2023
RFK Jr. is polling high for an independent. But it may not last | CNN Politics

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to announce Monday that he is dropping out of the Democratic presidential primary and will run as an independent. The move would come after Kennedy’s calls for a debate with President Joe Biden went nowhere and with Biden continuing to hold a 50-point advantage in primary polling.

But while Kennedy’s bid for the Democratic nomination was largely inconsequential, he could play a big role as an independent candidate in determining the winner of the general election.

The polling on an independent run by Kennedy is limited, but the data we do have suggests he would start out as one of the strongest third-party or independent candidates this century.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this past week among likely voters finds former President Donald Trump at 40%, Biden at 38% and Kennedy at 14% in a hypothetical November 2024 matchup. The 2-point difference between Biden and Trump looks a lot like other surveys we’ve seen and is well within the margin of error.

But from a historical perspective, the 14% for Kennedy is quite unusual. Consider Gary Johnson, the 2016 Libertarian nominee for president. Like this cycle, the two major party nominees in 2016 (Democrat Hillary Clinton and Trump) were unpopular. Johnson, though, appears to never have hit 14% in any poll when matched up against Clinton and Trump.

Indeed, I can’t find any instance of an eventual third-party or independent candidate getting to 14% in a national poll since Ross Perot in the 1996 cycle.

Now, the chance of Kennedy garnering 14% of the vote next November is not high. Non-major-party candidates almost always fade down the stretch.

We can see this, again, by using the Johnson example from 2016. The former New Mexico governor polled at 4% or above in every national poll before September 2020 that met CNN’s standards for publication. He averaged 8% of the vote in those polls and frequently registered in the double digits.

Johnson ended up getting a mere 3% come Election Day.

And he isn’t alone. At one point in the 1992 campaign, independent Perot led both major-party nominees; he ultimately ended up a distant third. Independent John Anderson was often polling in the 20s in national surveys of the 1980 election, before getting less than 7% that November.

We obviously don’t know if or how much Kennedy’s polling might change between now and the election. Still, even if he ends up with the same level of support as Johnson, it could make a big difference.

At the moment, Biden and Trump are close in the national polls. Some surveys have Biden slightly ahead. Others give Trump the edge. The same is true in swing states like Pennsylvania, where Biden and Trump are within the margin of error of each other.

If Kennedy takes disproportionately from either Biden or Trump, it could tip the balance of the election.

The question, therefore, is: Which one of them should fear a Kennedy candidacy more?

The answer is far from clear at this early stage. Although Kennedy has so far been running in the Democratic primary, his favorability ratings are far higher among Republicans. He was just announced as a speaker at an upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference event, after all.

Still, most of Kennedy’s admirers on the GOP side also hold a favorable view of Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University poll from last month. It’s tough to see Trump-supporting Republicans voting for Kennedy, even if they like him too.

When you drill down to Democrats (and independents who lean their way) and Republicans (and GOP-leaning independents) who don’t hold a favorable view of their party’s front-runners, Kennedy is about equally liked. His favorability rating among this group of Democrats is 31%, while it’s 32% among this group of Republicans.

In the Ipsos poll of a potential general election, Kennedy got 12% from Republicans and 9% from Democrats. This isn’t a big difference, but you could see it helping Biden in a very close election.

The Ipsos poll also found that when an unnamed third-party candidate is matched up against Biden and Trump, Biden comes in with 43% to Trump’s 42%. That 1-point deficit for Trump (within the margin of error) is worse for him than his 2-point lead (again, within the margin of error) when Kennedy is included instead of a generic third-party candidate. Kennedy’s presence on the ballot could therefore benefit Republicans a tad more.

One thing that does seem true from the Ipsos and Quinnipiac data is that among voters who either didn’t vote in 2020 or aren’t likely to vote this time around, Kennedy has better net favorability ratings and trails the front-runners by a narrower margin.

This means Kennedy could drive up voter turnout but still not affect the election outcome.

The race between Biden and Trump is so close, though, that I’m not sure either side wants to risk a Kennedy candidacy potentially taking votes away from them.

We’ll see what happens over the next 13 months.

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August 2, 2023