Monthly Archives: September 2021

Former President Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, considers the 2022 midterm election the "most important" of Americans' lifetimes because it could be the deciding factor in whether her uncle runs in 2024.

Donald teased a return to the campaign trail after leaving office in January, promising supporters would be "happy" with his decision. The leading contender for the Republican nomination for president, he hasn't committed to mounting a bid for the White House, instead focusing his attention on helping Republicans win back control of Congress.

Mary told Newsweek editor-at-large Naveed Jamali on his podcast, The Daily Break, that Trump's decision to run will hinge on whether he thinks he "can't lose." If Democrats lose either the House or the Senate in 2022, she believes it could give her uncle the confidence to try to oust President Joe Biden from office.

"If Donald feels he can run and not lose because the system is rigged even further in his favor then he will," Mary said. "And if he wins depends largely upon how Republicans do in 2022 which is why Democrats need to be energized and vote in such large numbers that they can't be overcome."

Trump's throwing his weight behind several candidates looking to win or defend their seats in 2022 and is endorsing several people looking to oust Republicans who voted to impeach him. The former president has a track record for endorsing winning candidates and, since leaving office, has backed winning candidates in one congressional special election and one primary election.

History plays well in Republicans' advantage for winning in 2022, as it's common for a president's party to lose seats in the midterm election. Since 1946, the president's party has lost an average of 25 seats in the midterm elections, according to Forbes, and Republicans only need one in the Senate and six in the House to regain control.

If Republicans were to take control of the House, Mary told Jamali that she believes all investigations would stop. The Democrat-led House is investigating Trump on a number of fronts, including his role in the January 6 Capitol riot and the Department of Justice's seizure of data from devices that belonged to members of Congress, journalists and others. She added that the Senate would be "worse in some ways" if Republicans were at the helm, but didn't offer specifics.

"Right now 2022 is the most important election of our lifetime," Mary said. "If Democrats hang on in 2022, then 2024 becomes the most important election of our lifetime."

Trump maintains command of the GOP and a strong following, so it's likely he would be able to pose a strong challenge to Biden if he were to run in 2024. Having lashed out at some of his critics in the months since he left office, Mary was confident her uncle would be "gunning for" those who opposed him, joking that she would be sent to Guantanamo Bay.

If Trump were to win in 2024, he would also regain the immunity from lawsuits he had while in office the first time. Mary suspected those privileges were more enticing to Trump than the actual job of being president.

Newsweek reached out to former President Donald Trump for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

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Mary Trump Details What She Thinks Will Sway Donald Trump to Run in 2024 - Newsweek

Ivanka Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing, and in response to the news of the expanded probes, she angrily tweeted: This is harassment pure and simple. This inquiry by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. They know very well that theres nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever. These politicians are simply ruthless. The Trump Organization, on the other hand, was charged in July with conspiracy, a scheme to defraud, and multiple counts of tax fraud and falsifying records. The company, like its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded not guilty. Earlier this week an attorney for Weisselberg said there was strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the Times said the papers coverage of Donald Trumps taxes helped inform the public through meticulous reporting on a subject of overriding public interest. This lawsuit is an attempt to silence independent news organizations and we plan to vigorously defend against it. On Twitter, Craig wrote, I knocked on Mary Trumps door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism. Mary Trumps lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous Jr.said in a statement: This is the latest in a long line of frivolous lawsuits by Donald Trump that target truthful speech and important journalism on issues of public concern. It is doomed to failure like the rest of his baseless efforts to chill freedom of speech and of the press.

For her part, Mary Trump told the Daily Beast, of her uncle: I think he is a fucking loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can. Its desperation. The walls are closing in, and he is throwing anything against the wall that will stick. As is always the case with Donald, hell try and change the subject.

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Meanwhile, in Florida

A Republican lawmaker looked at Texass abortion bill and decided it wasnt extreme enough. Per CNN:

A Republican Florida state lawmaker on Wednesday introduced a bill that is modeled aftera strict Texas lawprohibiting abortions after six weeks, drawing condemnation from supporters of abortion rights who fear such legislation might soon be introduced in other states. House Bill 167was filed by Florida state Rep. Webster Barnaby. The bill, like the Texas law, contains a procedural feature that allows private citizens to bring lawsuits against physicians who provide abortions after six weeks as well as any person who knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion. The Florida legislation, like the Texas law, also provides for remedies and damages.

Notably, the Florida bill allows lawsuits to be brought up to six years after an abortion was performed in violation of the law, whereas supporters of the Texas law say that measure creates a four-year window for bringing suits. Additionally, the way HB 167 is written makes it extremely difficult to challenge the prohibition until it goes into effect, and even then there are high hurdles.

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Donald Trump Sounds Pretty Panicked About Spending His Twilight Years Behind Bars - Vanity Fair

Last year, John Eastman, whom CNN describes as an attorney working with Donald Trumps legal team, wrote a preposterous memo outlining how thenVice President Mike Pence could overturn the 2020 election by fiat or, failing that, throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Republicans could install Trump in office despite his loss to Joe Biden. The document, which was first reported by the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their new book, is a step-by-step plan to overthrow the government of the United States through a preposterous interpretation of legal procedure.

Pence apparently took the idea seriouslyso seriously, in fact, that, according to Woodward and Costa, former Vice President Dan Quayle had to talk him out of it. Prior to November, the possibility of Trump attempting a coup was seen as the deranged fever dream of crazed liberals. But as it turns out, Trump and his advisers had devised explicit plans for reversing Trumps loss. Republican leaders deliberately stoked election conspiracy theories they knew to be false, in order to lay a political pretext for invalidating the results. Now, more than 10 months after the election, the country knows of at least five ways in which Trump attempted to retain power despite his defeat.

Trump held early leads in vote counts in several statesnot because he was ever actually ahead but because of discrepancies between when states count mail-in ballots and Election Day ballots. This so-called blue shift was written about long in advance of Election Day, and was partially the result of Trumps own attacks on voting by mail. Nevertheless, Trump made this a key part of his election conspiracy theories (as many predicted he would), insisting that Democrats were somehow inserting fraudulent ballots into the vote count in the presidential election (something they apparently forgot to do in close House and Senate races, in which Democrats did worse than polls had anticipated). To help substantiate these falsehoods , the Trump campaign attempted to pressure secretaries of state to either not certify the results or find fraudulent ballots. In some states, spurred by the presidents fictions, pro-Trump mobs showed up at vote-counting sites and attempted to disrupt the proceedings.

Trump personally attempted to coerce state legislators to overturn election results in a few states that voted for Biden, on the dubious legal theory that such legislatures could simply ignore the results of the popular vote in their own states. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia, Trump publicly urged Republican-controlled statehouses to intervene to declare him the winner and tweeted, Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself. As my colleague Barton Gellman reported last year, the Trump campaign discussed contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.

David A. Graham: Trumps coup attempt didnt start on January 6

The embattled attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, filed an absurd lawsuit demanding that the Supreme Court void the election results in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, four states Biden won. The large majority of the Republican delegation in Congress, as well as nearly 20 Republican state attorneys general, supported this attempt to get the conservative-controlled Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election results by fiat. The justices declined to crown Trumpbut the amount of support this bid received from Republican elected officials is itself alarming.

As part of this effort, we can include the baseless Kraken lawsuits, filled with conspiracy theories about vote changes. Trump attempted to coerce the Justice Department into providing him with a pretext to overturn the results, but his attorney general, Bill Barr, refused to do so. Had DOJ leadership acquiesced, it would have lent credibility to Trumps other corrupt schemes to reverse his loss. In a meeting with the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, according to contemporaneous notes taken by Rosens deputy, Trump said, Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me.

It is hard to pick the most ridiculous means of executing a coup, but insisting that the vice president has the power to unilaterally decide who won an election is up there. Trump publicly hounded Pence to reject the results prior to the traditionally ceremonial electoral-vote count in Congress, and Pence reportedly took that demand seriously enough to seek advice from Dan Quayle on the matter, asking if there were any grounds to pause the certification because of ongoing legal challenges, according to Costa and Woodward. That this got so far is profoundly disturbing, but even more disturbing is Eastmans memo, which shows that the Trump team had thought very deliberately about how this scheme would work.

According to the memo, Pence could refuse to certify the results in particular states, giving Trump more electoral votes than Biden, and Pence would declare Trump the victor. If Democrats objected (as surely they would), the vote would then go to the House. Because the Constitution gives one vote to each state in disputed presidential elections, and the Republicans were the majority in 26 of 50 state delegations, the Democratic House majority would be unable to prevent Republicans from throwing the election to Trump. The election-law expert Ned Foley writes that the scheme would likely not have prevailed, given the Democrats ability to prevent a joint session, but that seems almost beside the point, which is that a sitting president and vice president were considering how to keep themselves in power following an election they lost.

At the rally prior to the vote count in Congress, Trump urged the crowd to act, saying, If you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore. The explicit goal of the rally and subsequent riot was to pressure Congress, and Pence in particular, into overturning the election results. Trump told his followers, If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.

This scheme didnt work on its own, but it certainly could have helped one of the others: Imagine if Pence had gone along with Eastmans absurd plan, and a mob had been present at the Capitol to help enforce the decision and menace lawmakers who tried to oppose itthen what? As it stands, the mob ransacked the Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee. Had the mob succeeded at reaching any actual legislators, the consequences could have been catastrophic.

Trump was impeached for his incitement of the January 6 mob, but Senate Republicans dutifully prevented him from being convicted and barred from holding office ever again.

Virginia Heffernan: Trumps campaign to overturn the election was inane

Those who attempted to subvert democracy have faced few political or legal consequences. As is typical, some rioters are facing prosecution while the elites who tried to overthrow the election through more bureaucratic or procedural means remain in good standing with their peers. The failure to impose accountability for an attempt to overthrow the constitutional order will encourage further such efforts.

Meanwhile, those rare Republicans who did stand up against this attempt to destroy American democracy are the only ones dealing with real political consequences from their party, facing primary challenges, being forced into retirement, or being stripped of their leadership positions. Republican officials who were unwilling to use their office to overturn the election results are seeing challenges from Trump devotees who will, should the opportunity arise again.

If Trump had succeeded, many of those downplaying the former presidents actions would today be rationalizing an American coup. No, you see, George Washington and James Madison intended for Donald Trump to be president for life. Read the Constitution.

At the core of these attempts is a dangerous ideologythe presumption that because Trump supporters represent Real Americans, the will of democratic majorities can be disregarded. This does not mean that the Republican Party is capable of winning majorities, but that winning them is irrelevant to whether or not the partys Trumpist faithful believe they are entitled to wield power. Win or lose, their claim to be the sole authentic inheritors of the American tradition means they are the only ones who can legitimately govern and are therefore justified in seizing power by any means. This is the modern incarnation of an old ideology, one that has justified excluding certain groups of Americans from the suffrage on the basis that their participation is an affront to the political process.

American traditions of unfreedom always represent themselves as democracys protectors, rather than its undertakers, and this one is no different. If Biden were allowed to take office, Eastman insisted in a longer version of his memo, we will have ceased to be a self-governing people. The catastrophe is not only that Trump tried to overthrow an election. It is that so many Americans were cheering him on.

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Five Ways Donald Trump Tried to Push a Coup - The Atlantic

A look at some of the top headlines trending online today around the world including the latest news surrounding Donald Trump, coronavirus updates and much more.

Pro-Trump group completes Arizona recount ... and it reveals Biden won (AP)

Donald Trump, set for return to Georgia, remains a force in its politics (AJC)

January 6 committee subpoenas Trump allies (CBS News)

Federal arrest warrant issued for Brian Laundrie in Gabby Petito investigation (NBC)

Pelosi Pledges to Avert Shutdown as GOP Opposes Debt-Limit Link (Bloomberg)

CDC endorses COVID booster for older Americans, workers at risk (AP)

COVID vaccine mandates: Heres everyone who needs to show proof of vaccination (CNET)

A daily pill to treat Covid could be just months away, scientists say (NBC)

More than $2 billion in federal rental assistance went out in August but millions still fear eviction (CBS)

Rochester police say one officer charged in Daniel Prude case (Reuters)

Abortion bill similar to Texas controversial ban introduced in Florida (GMA)

U.S. Returns Smuggled 3,600-Year-Old Gilgamesh Tablet To Iraqi Government After Forfeiture By Hobby Lobby (Forbes)

Tom Felton: Harry Potter star collapses during celebrity golf match (BBC)

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Booster shots, Donald Trump & more: Whats trending today - cleveland.com

A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more than 200 demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would turn out or more.

But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.

For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats have been tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults nearly 1 in 5 agree with the statement that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Of those, 21 million also agree that use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency.

Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization. At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those 21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.

In June 2021, our group commissioned a survey done by the independent, non-partisan researchers at NORC at the University of Chicago, seeking to discover how widespread insurrectionist sentiments are among U.S. adults.

The research methods meet the highest standards in the polling industry a random sample of a representative sample. Its the same process NORC uses to conduct polling for The Associated Press, the federal government and other major institutions.

First, NORC pulls together a panel of 40,000 people, called AmeriSpeak, who are representative of the entire U.S. population on dozens of characteristics, such as age, race, income, location of residence and religion. From that representative sample, NORC drew a random sample in our case, 1,070 people.

This polling found that 9% of American adults say they agree with the statement that Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency. And 25% of adults either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

Overall, 8% of the survey participants share both of those views.

The margin of error of this survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. So when calculating the number of the 258 million adult Americans who hold these views, we looked at the range of between 4% and 12% which gave us between 10 million and 31 million. The best single figure is the middle of that range, 21 million.

People who said force is justified to restore Trump were consistent in their insurrectionist sentiments: Of them, 90% also see Biden as illegitimate, and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve Americas traditional way of life.

Combined with their military experience, gun ownership and connections to extremist groups and militias, this signals the existence of significant mainstream support in America for a violent insurrection.

This group of 21 million who agree both that force is justified to restore Trump and that Biden is an illegitimate president has two additional views that are also on the fringes of mainstream society:

Some people with insurrectionist sentiments hold one of these political views but not the other, suggesting there are multiple ways of thinking that lead a person toward the insurrectionist movement.

This latest research reinforces our previous findings, that the Jan. 6 insurrection represents a far more mainstream movement than earlier instances of right-wing extremism across the country. Those events, mostly limited to white supremacist and militia groups, saw more than 100 individuals arrested from 2015 to 2020. But just 14% of those arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 are members of those groups. More than half are business owners or middle-aged white-collar professionals, and only 7% are unemployed.

There is no way to say for sure when or even whether these insurrectionists will take action. On Jan. 6, it took clear direction from Donald Trump and other political leaders to turn these dangerous sentiments into a violent reality. But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people might like to think.

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21 million Americans say Biden is 'illegitimate' and Trump should be restored by violence, survey finds - The Conversation US

Michael Cohen has made no secret that he doesn't think Donald Trump will be at the top of the Republican ticket again in 2024, often tweeting to panicked Democrats that they shouldn't worry. He also says that Trump has a good reason for claiming he might run again, even if he knows he won't. "His insatiable need for attention is one reason he continues to flaunt this disingenuous 2024 run," he toldBusiness Insider. "The other is he's making more money doing that than anything he has ever done before."

While Trump still tells his supporters he needs their money to help him fight the 2020 election results nearly a year later, Politico reported that the former president has mostly used the cash to pay his aides and for travel expenses. All of that money coming in has caused Cohen to call his former boss "the greatest grifter in the history of American politics."

In the end, Cohen told Business Insider that he believes Trump will find a good excuse not to run again but will make sure that nobody believes it's his fault. "He'll say he's not going to run again because of bipartisan hatred for him or because of the Democrats or because he doesn't want to put his family through any more," Cohen said. "He cannot stomach the notion of being a two-time loser, but he will continue to grift until the very last second."

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The Real Reason Michael Cohen Thinks Donald Trump Is Falsely Promoting A 2024 Run - The List

"The Apprentice" star's former cook, Andre Rush, told us that Trump likes pretty much everything overcooked. But there was one dish Donald Trump definitely preferred over the rest. "I would have to say burgers would be the number one if I had to put [it] into perspective, as he'd call it the American food," Rush said. Which isn't surprising, considering the entrepreneur has admitted many times that he's a huge fan of U.S. fast food. Some of his go-to restaurant chains include KFC, McDonald's, and Burger King.

Trump's so passionate about fast food, in fact, that he famously served it to Clemson University's football team when they came to the White House to celebrate their win over Alabama in 2019 (via The Guardian). The banquet spread included 300 Big Macs and Whoppers, which the 45th president said was "patriotic." When asked where he stands on the debate of McDonald's versus Wendy's, he was decisive in his response. "If it's American, I like it," Trump explained. "It's all American stuff. No matter what we did, there's nothing you can have that's better than that, right?"

Be sure to pick up Andre Rush's new memoir "Call Me Chef, Dammit!: A Veteran's Journey from the Rural South to the White House," or book him for a motivational speaking engagement.

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The Real Reason Donald Trump Didn't Eat In The Morning, According To Andre Rush - Exclusive - Mashed