Category Archives: Donald Trump

This week, Republicans are expected to vote to oust Rep. Liz Cheney from her position as conference chair, House Republicans' third highest-ranking leadership position. Her crime is that she won't stop saying former President Trump has been lying about the alleged theft of the 2020 election.

When people talk about an inability to quit Trump as an ongoing political problem for Republicans, they tend to mean that Trump is unpopular and continued association with him though pleasing to the Republican base is off-putting to most voters. And this is true as far as it goes, though we saw in 2020 how close the pro-Trump coalition came to electing a House majority and re-electing Trump.

But there's a second problem with the Trump fixation that's less noticed and may be hurting Republicans more. Since he left office, Trump's interests have diverged from the interests of elected Republicans. He no longer needs them to win their own elections like he did when he was president. And he has objectives like seeking revenge on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that have nothing in particular to do with advancing the Republican party's interests.

With his idiosyncratic, revenge-focused agenda, he's distracting Republicans from trying to win the next election.

Back when Trump was president, his relations with congressional Republicans were sometimes rocky, but held together by shared interests. Trump needed Republicans to win elections so that they could quash congressional investigations,pass his legislative agenda, and block his removal from office.

But as the Washington Post notes, much of his energy in recent months has been focused on "revenge endorsements" that is, efforts to defeat incumbent Republicans he sees as insufficiently loyal to him. At best, for Republicans, this is a distraction from beating Democrats in November. At worst, it may divide the party enough to throw general elections to Democrats a particularly serious risk in Georgia, a blue-trending state where Kemp only defeated Stacey Abrams by a modest margin in 2018's gubernatorial race.

Trump's meddling has also caused trouble for Republicans in Georgia's next Senate election, set to be held in 2022. Top-tier GOP officials continue to pass on enteringthe race while Trump's preferred candidate to challenge Sen. Raphael Warnock football great Herschel Walker, currently a resident of Texas ponders whether he wants to move back to Georgia and run for Senate. CNN reports that Republicans in Washington are concerned Trump "is propping up a candidate simply because he has been a loyal friend, rather than assessing the former NFL running back's electoral viability in a pivotal battleground."

Next November, Republicans will hope that Trump works hard to elect them. But we've already seen what Trump looks like in a post-loss general election. In last year's Georgia Senate runoff elections, Trump was lackadaisical, focused on a message about the presidential election he had already lost that had nothing to do with turning out voters for the runoff and Republicans' reward was a turnout gap large enough to cost them two senate seats.

Trump's similar reluctance to engage in this year's Virginia state elections also bodes ill for Republicans during next year's midterms.

Insider's Warren Rojas and Tom LoBianco report the former president chose not to endorse a candidate in the party's nominating contest ultimately won on Monday by former Carlyle Group co-CEO Glenn Youngkin in part "because the team is worried the Republican pick may lose in November," citing Trump advisers. This unwillingness to engage for fear of losing means there's even less of a chance Trump helps drive low-propensity GOP voters come November, potentially harming Youngkin's chances in the state.

Last time there was a new Democratic president, in 2009, Republicans picked up the governor's mansions in both Virginia and New Jersey the only two states that elect governors one year after presidential elections. Republicans are serious underdogs in both states this year, but Virginia should not be completely out of reach, and a strong gubernatorial campaign would boost the GOP's chances of retaking the state's house of delegateseven if they lose the governor's race.

But then, what's Trump's reason to care who controls the Virginia legislature?

His longstanding insistence on total loyalty a reason that Republican candidates for governor ran extremely Trumpy primary campaigns in a state he lost by 10 points last year has not helped in Virginia either.

There is another reason Republicans are cozying up to Trump, despite this blas attitude towards winning elections. Earlier this year, Trump had a message for Republican campaign committees: stop using my name and likeness to raise money.

Unusually for a former president, Trump continues to actively raise money. And he has urged Republican donors to direct their money to entities he controls. This complicates GOP efforts to raise money during the 2022 midterms and gives Trump a lot of control over how political money intended for Republicans will be spent.

What is Trump's incentive to spend this money in a way that helps Republicans win elections, rather than in a way that helps him settle scores, rewards politicians who say nice things about him, and enriches himself?

Liz Cheney is obviously correct on the merits in her commentary about former President Trump. His conspiracizing about the 2020 election is both false and dangerous. But since Republicans are committed to their alliance with him, I get why they wouldn't want her in leadership anymore. She hasn't signed onto the party's political strategy, odious as it may be.

Replacing her with Rep. Elise Stefanik a recent convert to extreme Trump boosterism, who even voted against his tax cut bill in 2017 will reduce the amount of time Republicans spend arguing with each other about him.

But what it doesn't do is align Trump's incentives with the party's.

I don't think Republicans have a better strategic option than trying to make nice with Trump. If the party tries to repudiate him, his political actions will be even more of an obstacle to the party's strategy, and Republican voters, who overwhelmingly approve of Trump, will punish Republican officials.

But don't confuse a situation where Republicans appease Trump with one where he is a net political asset to the party. Out of office, it's not even clear that his best benefit to Republicans an ability to drive turnout among voters whose primary loyalty is not to the party but to him will persist if he is not featured on the ballot.

And as we're seeing in Georgia and Virginia, he's not necessarily going to apply himself.

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Glaring Problem With GOP's Trump Obsession. He Doesn't Need Them Anymore - Business Insider

In May 2021, a tweet began circulating around the internet showing a picture of the inside of a Snapple drink lid, with a fact about Donald Trump.

People have been liking and retweeting the photograph, but many internet users have been questioning the legitimacy of the picture, with some claiming that it is photoshopped.

Snapple is known for the facts featured on their bottles and website. The Snapple website describes their facts: Theyre real. Theyre fun. Theyre really fun facts.

To receive Snapple facts regularly, you can text realfact to 762-775 for a new fact each day.

In May 2021, a photograph of the inside of a Snapple lid went viral. The fact inside it read: Trump lost and the election was not stolen.

According to Fact Checker site Snopes, a look through the online Snapplereal facts databasedid not return any results matching the viral image.

Furthermore, many people were quick to point out that the fact looked photoshopped, as the font of the fact does not match the font of the other words on the lid.

Therefore, we cannot confirm that the picture is a real Snapple fact.

Regarding their facts, the Snapple website explains:

Sometimes new information may be discovered that disproves one of our Real Facts, or a Real Fact may become outdated over time. When this happens, the only responsible thing to do is to retire that fact.

The Snapple website states that the facts on their bottles are real. It reads:

We call them Real Facts because they are just that: real facts. We check the validity of our Real Facts before we put them into circulation but if you find a fact that may be inaccurate, please let us know. We will have our fact-checking team look into any discrepancies.

On May 10th, a Twitter user shared a picture of the Snapple lid, and captioned it: Even Snapple is tired of the bulls**t.

The tweet received 10 thousand retweets and over 73 thousand likes.

One user retweeted the image, and stated: And this is another good reason I drink Snapple.

Another user wrote: Havent had a Snapple in years. Going to the store to stock up on my lunch.

In other news, Who is Alastair Campbells wife Fiona Millar? New Good Morning Britain host marries partner of 42 years!

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Is there a Snapple Fact that says that Donald Trump lost? Lid tweet goes viral! - HITC - Football, Gaming, Movies, TV, Music

Former first couple Melania and Donald Trump celebrated Mother's Day with son Barron at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, asPeople reported (though they weren't photographed together). While ex-Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman told the Daily Mailin 2020, "Melania is counting every minute until he is out of office and she can divorce," the two seem steadying on ... for now. "She has their relationship down to a science," a source at Mar-a-Lago told People. "She does what she wants and also continues as Mrs. Trump, so it's unlikely to expect much out of the order at this point." Meanwhile, on Donald, the source added, "He is very routine [and] rarely deviates on anything in this area." Fair enough!

The Trumps' post-White House living situation is interesting, with Melania reportedly only occasionally seeing Donald due to their splitting time between New Jersey and Florida for the sake of her son's education. "Melania and her family will spend time with Donald but also continue working with Barron's school and keeping him up to date on his extracurricular activities," the source told People.

Meanwhile, Donald is temporarily closing Mar-a-Lago for the summer and is expected to stay at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. in the meantime, perThe Independent. Does that mean the summer could bring the Trumps closer together? We'll see!

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The Truth About Melania And Donald Trump's Relationship Today - Nicki Swift

Today Facebooks Oversight Board, (its self-designated supreme court) upheld the decision to ban Trump from its platform. His account was suspended the day after the January 6 insurrection for his role in promoting and condoning the violent attacks on the Capitol that resulted in 5 deaths, at least 138 injuries, destruction of property, and over 400 arrests so far. However, the board took issue with the indefinite nature of the ban. The ruling stated that Facebook itself should reevaluate the ban within 6 months of this decision.

For four years the press and the public reacted to an unprecedented barrage of Trump Facebook posts and tweetssometimes appearing early in the morning or late at night. It wasnt too hard to distinguish between his own messaging and official messaging. His own was more outrageous, more prone to spelling errors and often at odds with what the rest of his government was saying. His musings appeared regularly on television news shows, often followed by administration officials trying gamely to figure out what he meant or how it wasnt really the opposite of what his government had just said.

And then, because of decisions by Facebook and Twitter, he went dark only a few weeks before he left office for what has been a relatively quiet retirement at Mar a Lago. What impact did going dark have on his popularity?

Following is a graph from RealClearPolitics that charts the average of Trumps approval ratings starting on January 6, the day of the insurrection at the Capitol, to the end of April. On the day of the insurrection Trump was viewed unfavorably by slightly more than half of the public and the gap between his unfavorable ratings and his favorable ratings was 10.5%. Ten days after the insurrection, as more and more people digested Trumps role in what happened that day, the gap between his unfavorable ratings and his favorable ratings grew to 21.6% of the public. But in the months following he gained back some of what he had lost and the gap has remained more or less stableat about 16% as of the end of April.

So far three months of relative silence from Trump on social media do not seem to have affected his standing with hardcore supporters that appear to constitute between 35% and 41% of the electorate. These numbers are more or less the same as Trumps numbers throughout most of the second, third and fourth years of his presidency, which were notable for the fact that unlike previous presidents he never obtained favorable ratings from 50% of voters. The stability in Trumps numbers leads to a variety of hypotheses about the importance of social media.

First, it is possible that Trump supporters, hostile to the media and big corporations, do not respond to survey research and thus support for Trump is lower in polls than it is in reality. This possibility is supported by the fact that turnout for Trump in the actual 2020 election was far greater than many polls had predicted.

The second possibility is that the impact of social media on politics is not as influential as members of the political establishment and the press think it is. A Pew poll from this spring found that 70% of social media users never or rarely post or share about political, social issues.

In other words, a subsection of the populationprobably the same people who, in a different generation would have been mailing letters or calling into radio showscreate a large portion of the social media noise.

The third possibility is that by the time of his election loss Trump had created a hardcore base within the Republican Party that was powerful enough to dictate internal party decisions. Look, for instance, at the attempt to dislodge Trump critic Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership position. That base may have solidified to the point where it does not need constant tending by Trump himself, thus making access to social media platforms less crucial. In spite of his being banned from social media his support among Republican voters has remained strong this year, as the following table using data from the Morning Consult/Politico poll indicates.

Table 1: Donald Trumps favorability among Republican voters (Morning Consult/Politico)

This strength, however, may have come at a cost. While Trump appears to have solidified his hold over the Republican Party, he also appears to have damaged the brand. Gallup has asked about party identification in polls going back decades. By the end of the first quarter of 2021 they found that people who identify as Democrats were more numerous than people who identified as Republicans by a margin of 49% to 40%. This is the biggest gap in party identification in a decade. It also correlates with an increase in people who say they are independent.

My final hypothesis is that even if Trump does return to social media, it is possible that his pronouncements will not be magnified by the mainstream press, especially television, now that he is no longer president. During his presidency Trumps most outrageous lies were covered because he was the president and many reporters and editors felt that they had an obligation to report what the president said. They may not feel the same obligation to an ex-president in Florida. (In the week after he was silenced, misinformation about the election dropped 73% according to a study by Zignal Labs.) This possibility has, no doubt, been a concern to Trump who just recently launched a new site From the Desk of Donald J. Trump as a way of getting around the social media ban.

So while todays decision has momentous consequences for social media in the coming decade, it may not have momentous consequences for Donald Trumps future. He remains the undisputed leader of a political party but that party has lost two elections in a row (2018 and 2020). In four years as president of the United States he was unable to expand his base. And now, the changing demographics of the country seem to be working against him. With or without social media he may have trouble expanding his following enough to become president again.

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What will Facebooks ban mean for Donald Trumps future? - Brookings Institution

Banned by Facebook and Twitter, Donald Trump has gone back to the future with an online communication tool that might be described as a glorified blog.

His retro webpage, billed From the Desk of Donald J Trump, appears at DonaldJTrump.com/desk and features a small photo of the 45th president writing in a book on his desk.

A video includes archive material announcing Trumps ban from Twitter and images of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and of a desktop, overlaid by captions: In a time of silence and lies, a beacon of freedom arises. A place to speak freely and safely. Straight from the desk of Donald J Trump.

Below the video are a series of Trump statements resembling blogposts, of which the most recent begins: Heartwarming to read new polls on big-shot warmonger Liz Cheney of the great State of Wyoming.

Cheney is under fire from fellow Republicans loyal to Trumps claims that he actually won the 2020 election, because she publicly calls out the lie and has strongly criticised the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol by extremist Trump supporters.

Tabs on Trumps new website allow users to like or share the posts on their own Facebook or Twitter accounts, but there is no option for them to reply.

Visitors are also invited to sign up for alerts, so that Trumps musings can be beamed directly into their inboxes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, options to shop and contribute figure prominently.

A footnote says the tool is funded jointly by the ex-presidents Save America and Make America Great Again political action committees.

When the page was unveiled on Tuesday, social media erupted with comment and mockery suggesting that Trumps long-awaited return to social media owed much to platforms such as Blogger, launched in 1999.

But Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the former president, sought to provide a clarification via Twitter.

President Trumps website is a great resource to find his latest statements and highlights from his first term in office, but this is not a new social media platform, he wrote. Well have additional information coming on that front in the very near future.

Twitter announced it had banned Trump permanently after the US Capitol attack for breaking its glorification of violence rules.

Facebook also banned him, with its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, saying the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.

But Facebooks independent oversight board is expected to announce on Wednesday whether it is overturning the suspension.

In the meantime Trump, exiled at his private Mar-a-Lago residence and club in Palm Beach after leaving office in defeat and disgrace, has been sending press releases to journalists.

They are often in a style reminiscent of his tweets, with capital letters, exclamation marks and misspellings. But they no longer drive the days agenda or cable news chyrons as his presidential missives once did.

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Donald Trump returns to social media with glorified blog ...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) New Jersey Republicans will decide whether they want an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump to be their standard bearer in the fall election for governor, while Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy is on an easy path toward capturing his partys nomination.

New Jerseys June 8 primary is just a month away, with some clear contours already emerging.

Murphy is aiming to become the first Democrat since 1977 to win reelection in a state where Democrats now outnumber Republicans by more than 1 million voters. On the GOP side, many in the party have lined up behind Jack Ciattarelli, a one-time Assembly member, accountant and small business owner. Ciattarelli is focusing his attacks on Murphy, but he faces competition from candidates embracing Trump.

A closer look at how the race is shaping up:

MURPHY CRUISING

Murphy wont have any challenger on the ballot for the Democratic primary. State officials ruled that two would-be challengers filed faulty petitions to get on the ballot last month.

That means Murphy, who is the head of the Democratic Party in the state, will secure the nomination.

It also means he wont have to burn cash to fend off attack and can instead focus on November.

A Monmouth University poll out Wednesday showed Murphy with a 57% approval rating, down from 71% at the height of the outbreak last year, but still in positive territory.

That poll surveyed 706 New Jersey adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.

If he wins in November, hell be the first Democrat to win reelection in more than four decades.

As governor, he has a pulpit during his usually twice-weekly COVID-19 news conferences, which are streamed live on YouTube.

And despite some squabbles with fellow Democrats who control the Legislature, he has achieved a number of key campaign promises: phasing in a $15 minimum wage, enacting recreational marijuana legalization, raising taxes on millionaires, expanding gun control legislation and expanding paid family leave. A big unfished campaign promise is the establishment of a state bank.

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REPUBLICAN RIVALS

Ciattarelli is the only one of the four Republicans running for governor to qualify for public matching funds. He has also received support from county Republican parties up and down the state.

Ciattarelli ran four years ago for governor, but lost the nomination to then-Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. He launched his campaign for governor almost as soon as Murphy took office in 2018.

Ciattarelli had been critical of former GOP Gov. Chris Christie and President Donald Trump. Still, in a GOP primary, hes highlighted the support he received from Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a Trump favorite who left the Democratic Party and fully embraced the president over his opposition of the first impeachment.

Hes focused much of his campaign squarely on Murphy, calling for reopening from pandemic closures sooner and making the state more affordable.

Also seeking the nomination are Hudson County pastor Phil Rizzo, who recently posted a photo of himself alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Hirsh Singh, a former unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in 2017, and Brian Levine, an accountant and former county elected official. Singh has also been a vocal Trump supporter. Levine has called for the party to stop arguing over Trump and focused reining in tax rates.

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THE FUNDRAISING PICTURE

Based on the available public records, Murphy is leading the fundraising contest by a lot. Hes brought in $3.4 million, according to the Election Law Enforcement Commission, and gotten $4.1 million in public matching funds.

Ciattarelli has raised nearly $1 million and received $3.6 million in matching funds.

Data for the other GOP candidates, who havent qualified for public funds, will become available later this month.

The matching fund program goes back to 1974 and allows candidates to get $2 in public cash for every $1 raised. Candidates must raise $490,000 to qualify for the funds. Theres a cap of $4.6 million and spending for candidates getting public money is limited to $7.3 million in the primary.

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Murphy gliding in NJ's primary; GOP wrestling with Trump - Associated Press

As I write this article, Arizona Republicans are conducting a fake audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, the state's major population center. The purpose of that audit, as my colleague Amanda Marcotte accurately observes, is to satisfy Donald Trump and his supporters by doing two things. First, itapplies unproved conspiracy theories to the recount process in the hope of "proving" Trump actually won the state. More importantly, itdemonstrateshow easy it would be for Republicans to steal elections if Trump supporters and their ilk controlled the political process.

Since the most direct way for the Trump movement to gain power would be for Trump himself to be elected again in 2024, this article will look at a phenomenon that has recurred several times in American history: a defeated ex-president running again. (Only one actually won. We'll get to that.) Of course it's alsopossible that a future Trump-style movement could be led by a pseudo-Trumpsuck-up like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz or Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The fundamental difference between Trump and other ex-presidents who have considered or attempted a political comeback is the question ofattitude. Prior to Trump, former presidents who tried to run again did so by appealing to democratic instincts. Sometimestheir party leaders believed they were the most electable alternative. Sometimes theyran asthird-party candidates to advance causes they believed were important.

Trump, by contrast, would run in 2024based on the assumption that power is his right, and something only he (or his sycophantic followers)are allowed to hold. Hehas conditioned his supporters since the 2016 election cycle to believe that the only possible outcomes whenhe's a candidate are thathe wins the election or the electionwas stolen. This disturbing personality trait, which hasbound many people to him through a process known asnarcissistic symbiosis,is why many people (including this author) believed that Trump would try to stagea coup if he lost the 2020 election. It didn't help that, as scientists have demonstrated,many Trump supporters are also motivated by their own insecure conception of masculinity.

Trump has already destroyed many of the precedents that would stop the rise of an authoritariandictator. He has used fascistic tactics to create a cult of personality that hisparty is expected to slavishly follow, has become the first incumbent president tolose an election and refuse to accept the result and has spread a Big Lie about his defeatso that his followers will believe he has a right to be returned to power. Most significantly, he actually egged on his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a futile attempt to overturn the election results.

The good news is that the Trump movement represents a minority point of view. The bad news is, that may not matter. If Trump stages a successful comeback, it won't be viewed in normal political terms, as an ex-president losing one election and then being vindicated in another. It will be perceived as a validation of all of Trump's fascist, dishonest behavior and will provide him all the justification he needsto stay in power indefinitely.

Nothing like that was ever the case for any of the other ex-presidents who tried to return to power. Let me clarify that I'm including some borderline cases ofex-presidents who launchedhalf-hearted efforts to get back in the gamebut never waged full campaigns, as well as those who were encourage to run again by othersbut chose not to.

The first defeated ex-presidentto seriously consider another run was Martin Van Buren, who had been narrowly elected overWilliam HenryHarrison in 1836, and then lost to Harrison four years later. (Harrison went on to have the shortest tenure of any president, dying of a severe infection after 31 days in office.) Because of Van Buren'sclose ties to Democratic Party founder Andrew Jackson who had chosen him as his running mate for Jackson's second term Van Buren was originally viewed as a leading contenderfor the 1844 nomination, at leastuntil he came out against annexing Texas on the grounds that it could spark a war withMexico (as in fact it did). Democratic slaveholders wanted to annex Texas so they could expand slavery throughout the West, so Van Buren was suddenly no longer a viable candidate. Four years later, Van Buren was nominated as a third-party candidate by the Free Soil Party, which wanted to gradually abolish slaveryby prohibiting its expansion into the newly-acquired western territories.

The next ex-president to take a shot at the White House didn't do so for a noble cause. Millard Fillmorehad been elected vice president as Zachary Taylor's running mate in 1848, and served nearly three years as president after Taylor's death. The Whig Party didn't even nominate Fillmore to run for a full term in 1852, and he wound up running in 1856 as the candidate of the Know Nothing Party, which wasopposedto immigration and especially the large numbers ofIrish Catholics then arriving in the country.Fillmore did extremely well for a third-party candidate, winningmore than 21 percent of the popular vote and Maryland's electoral votes. Sincethe Whig Party had just collapsed, Fillmorehad a hypotheticalopportunity to turn the Know Nothings into America's second major party but did not even come close, with the newly-formed Republicans surging onto the scene. The Know Nothings dissolved a few years later, as did any chance of Fillmore becoming president again.

For more than 20 years after Fillmore, noex-president actively triedfor a restoration. Then, in the 1880 election, a powerful faction of Republicans wanted Ulysses S. Grant to be their nominee, even though the Civil War hero had already served two terms, leaving office in 1877. Rutherford B. Hayes, the president elected in the notorious compromise of 1876, was not running again, and Republicans needed a candidate. (The 22nd Amendment had not yet been passed, so there was no legal impediment to Grant running again.)Grant had been a great general but controversial president, due to a series of scandals that beset his administration, but was still a widely beloved figure.The Republican convention was sharply divided between Grant's supporters and his opponents.Although Grant had more delegates than any other candidate, he could not muster a majority, and delegates eventually united around a compromise candidate, James Garfield, who went on to win the election.

Twelve years later, in 1892, the above-referenced Grover Cleveland became the first and only ex-president to be electedto a second, non-consecutive term. There were a number of reasons why that worked: Democraticleaders trusted Cleveland's conservative economic philosophy and thought he was electable, which was reasonable enough, since Cleveland actually won the popular vote in 1888, despite losing the election toBenjamin Harrison (grandson of William Henry Harrison), who had become unpopular amid an economic downturn. There were no primary elections to select a party nominee, and Cleveland was well known and well liked by leading Democrats.

That brings us toTheodore Roosevelt, who had become president in 1901 after William McKinley's assassination and was then elected in his own right in 1904.After leaving office in 1909, replaced byhishandpicked successor, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt became dissatisfied with Taft's leadership and the Republican Party's direction. He first tried to wrest the Republicannomination away from Taftin 1912, and when that failed, wound up runningas the nomineeof the Progressive Party. Roosevelt didn't win the election but outperformed Taft in both popular and electoral votes his 27 percent share of the popular vote remains the largest proportion won byany third party candidate ever and for better or worse was instrumental in the election of Woodrow Wilson.

That was the last serious campaign mounted by a former president, nearly 110 years ago. The gradual emergence of the primary system probably has something to do with that, as doesthegrowing cynicism amongAmericans about politicians perceived as "losers." Otherformer presidents, including Herbert Hoover and Gerald Ford, have considered running again, but nonehas actually done so.

Until, perhaps DonaldTrump.

No previous ex-presidentwas anything likeTrump, as is blatantly obvious.Of course they were ambitious,but none of them tried to arguethat the presidency was his God-given right. None urged the kinds of party purges that Trump and his crew are leading against "disloyal" Republicans like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney. None of them flat-out lied about the reason why they'd lost power or urged anti-democratic means in order to reclaim it.

Right now Republicans across the country are pouring millionsintovoting restrictions, clearly targeting Democratic voters, primarily people of color. They hope to win elections simply by preventing certain voters from exercising their constitutional rights. Even if this gambit fails in the near term, Republicans have laid the foundations for overturning unfavorable outcomes.They can simply appoint loyal Trumpers or GOP partisan to the right positions to ensure that they can win even if they lose, and then create another Big Lie to justify their behavior.

It is entirely conceivable that Trump could becomethe first ex-president since Cleveland to be elected to another term, given the potential effects of thesevoter suppression laws and the ardor of his supporters. Whether we will still have anything left that could be called a democracy, if that happens, is anyone's guess.

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Trump wouldn't be the first ex-president to run again but he might be the last - Salon

Caitlyn Jenner praised Donald Trump for "disrupting" American politics and said she aims to do the same if she is elected to office in her first major TV interview as a candidate for California governor.

The 71-year-old former Olympian and reality TV star, who came out publicly as a trans woman in 2015, spoke with Fox News' Sean Hannity from her private airplane hangar in Malibu, California.

Jenner has no previous political experience. But during the 2016 election, she publicly supported Donald Trump and now counts several former Trump aides including Brad Parscale, who headed Trump's 2020 presidential campaign, as her advisers.

"What I liked about Donald Trump is he was a disruptor, you know," she said. "He came in and shook the system up, OK. A lot of people didn't like that in Washington, D.C., but he came in and shook the system up. I think he did some things that I agree with, some things I didn't agree with on trans issues, LGBT issues. I was more hopeful at the beginning. And but there were some good things he did."

"On the other hand, Biden, I don't think I've agreed with anything," she continued. "I don't think since he's been in there, he has done anything for the American worker, maybe other ones ... It is a 180-degree turn in our country, going the other direction, and it scares me."

Earlier this week, Jenner released her first campaign video in which she describes herself as a "compassionate disruptor." And later during her interview with Hannity, Jenner categorized herself as "an outsider" and said she wants to surround herself "with some of the smartest people out there" to develop her political brief.

"I'm in a race for solutions. I need to find solutions to be able to turn this state around," she said. "I absolutely love this state. I'm a fighter. Always have been."

The pair also discussed immigration policy, and the former reality TV star said she is "all for the wall," referencing Donald Trump's defunct plan to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico.

"I would secure the wall. We can't have a state, we can't have a country without a secure wall," she said.

"You have two questions here, one is stopping people from coming in illegally into the state. And then the second question is, what do we do with the people that are here? We are a compassionate country, OK? We are a compassionate state. Some help, I mean, some people we're going to send back, OK? No question about that. But I have met some of the greatest immigrants into our country."

At one point during the interview, Jenner mistakenly said she was "pro-illegal immigration" before Hannity corrected her.

"You're pro legal immigration," he said.

"Legal immigration, yes," Jenner replied. "Thanks for catching me. You've got my back Sean, I appreciate that."

Jenner first announced her candidacy via a statement posted to Twitter late last month. If elected, she would be the first trans governor elected in the United States.

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Caitlyn Jenner praises Donald Trump and says she's in favor of building 'the wall' in Sean Hannity interview - Business Insider

When Donald Trumps ban from Facebook was upheld this week, the howls of bias could be heard from Republicans far and wide. Those shrieks, ironically, came mostly on social media.

Republicans have spent recent years criticizing Facebook and Twitter, demonizing them as biased against the right. But they, not Democrats, have been the most enthusiastic embracers of social media, and the most successful in harnessing its potential.

Between 1 January and 15 December last year, right-leaning Facebook pages accounted for 45% of all interactions on Facebook, according to a study by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit which monitors US media.

Rightwing pages earned nearly 9bn likes or comments, MMFA found, compared to 5bn interactions on left-leaning pages. Conservative pages account for six of the top 10 Facebook pages that post about US political news.

The years-long dominance on Facebook has translated to notable successes most memorably in 2016, when Donald Trumps win was propelled by his social media reach. Facebook and Twitter were the reason we won this thing, Brad Parscale, the digital director of the 2016 Trump campaign, said in the aftermath of the election.

Twitter for Mr Trump. And Facebook for fundraising.

Those successes appeared to have been forgotten in the last week, when prominent Republicans, including Texas senator Ted Cruz and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, condemned Facebook in particular. The platform angered the right with its decision to uphold Trumps post-insurrection suspension, even though a long-term decision has been punted down the road.

If the big tech oligarchs can muzzle the former president, whats to stop them from silencing you? Cruz said.

If they can ban President Trump, all conservative voices could be next. A House Republican majority will rein in big tech power over our speech, was McCarthys take.

Cruz and other Republicans have been accusing Facebook of bias for years even as the platform was propelling Trump to victory, while being criticized on the left for being slow to remove rightwing lies or conspiracy theories.

Because Republicans have such a disproportionate amount of influence on these platforms and engagement, the real effect is that by constantly crying bias, it works the refs in such that they dont enforce the rules against them in a consistent way, Angelo Carusone, the president of MMFA, said.

Or theyre less likely to take action against cheaters and bad actors, because they dont want to deal with the blowback of what happens when I take off one of these accounts.

Carusone pointed to how Facebook dealt with groups promoting QAnon, a conspiracy movement that alleges a group of global elites are involved in paedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children. It took until October last year for the network to finally ban groups, pages or Instagram pages which represent QAnon, despite the theory having been promulgated for years.

Joe Romm, author of How To Go Viral and Reach Millions and editor-in-chief of Front Page Live, a news site dedicated to elevating fact-based stories said that for Republicans, claiming that they are oppressed by media is a consistent narrative.

Its part of the overall strategy of playing the victim, Romm said. Donald Trump showed that its part of the overall strategy of: accuse your opponents of doing what youre doing before they can accuse you.

And so it just makes it so much harder, because if you accuse them first, then when progressives then accurately say: Oh, were being disadvantaged on social media, no one is going to believe it, because they bought into this big lie that the conservatives are being punished on social media.

As Republicans have cried foul, several rightwing politicians have even written books about such perceived bias the most recent by Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a millionaire Yale law school graduate turned earthy, blue collar, man of the people.

Hawley wrote The Tyranny of Big Tech after claiming he had been censored and canceled by social media. The hypocrisy of the books claim that big tech is suppressing conservative thought was exposed by Hawley himself this week, however, when he used Twitter, one of the companies he rails against, to giddily proclaim that his book had been a bestseller all week on Amazon another company he opposes.

The claims of conservative bias are only like to continue as the 2022 midterms approach, but experts sayany bias is actually against the other side.

I would say that, in fact, big tech right now is biased against liberals the thumb is on the scale for those who put out the rightwing lies, Romm said.

The thing that the social media apps want to do is keep you on their site. Thats what they care about. They dont care about the truth, they care about keeping you on their site.

So the way things are set up, if you can stir up anger, and get people to comment, and engage and send out shares and say: This is outrageous, then youve got a big advantage in the algorithm. So what the social media sites have done is create a system that favors the most outrageous statements.

Ironically, some of those most outrageous statements are set to come against the leaders of the Republican party railing against the social media giants.

I think the right will leverage this moment to make big tech the new Hillary, Carusone said. And thats going to be a galvanizing force for them leading into 2022 and then again in 2024.

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Republicans cry big tech bias on the very platforms they have dominated - The Guardian

News media is failing usonmedical marijuana

It is extremely concerning to me that our local media is just blindly accepting the medical marijuana legislation instead of questioning very serious elements.

Why are we allowing the legislature to bypass the FDA for approving medication? All other medications have been required to go through the FDA approval processes

Why are we allowing the use of marijuana for illnesses or conditions that have zero or little research science behind them?

Why are we willing to accept an extremely high dose level of THC that has been clearly demonstrated to cause episodes of psychosis?

How are we going to deal with patients that want to smoke pot while they are hospitalized for other conditions. Will hospitals be required to carry marijuana?

Will malpractice lawsuits increase because of serious side effects from marijuana recommendations?

Why are we not hearing about all of the negative experiences from other states that have succumbed to medical marijuana. There is tremendous evidence that allowing medical marijuana was a mistake.

News media needs to be asking these questions and pushing back on a dangerous and potentially harmful legislative action.

Eric Voth, M.D., Topeka

A vote for a Republican now means a vote to nullify free speech, a vote to accept truth as that which Donald J. Trump says is truth. The Republican Party no longer allows dissent. If the Republican Party again becomes the majority party, the right to freedom of speech for all of Americas citizens could end.

The Republican Party has long been a home for those who are conservative in ideology. Today, it is a party that has no ideology. It had no platform. It is the party of whatever Trump wants it to be. If he proclaimed the sky to be orange with purple stripes, the Republican Party would oust those Republicans who would insist that the sky is blue & sometimes gray. An orange sky with purple stripes would be the new truth.

Those who claim a Trump win last November are either lying or delusional or, worst of all, standing silent to protect their own already tainted political futures. To minimize the Capital insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, is to minimize or even deny our democratic roots.

Scary stuff.

Terry Larson, Topeka

Medicaid expansion is one of the most critical steps our lawmakers can take right now to help fight cancer.

More than 165,000 Kansans are in the Medicaid coverage gap they earn too much to qualify for the Medicaid program but not enough to receive subsidies for insurance on the federal marketplace. By increasing the income eligibility for Medicaid, these hard-working Kansans can finally gain access to affordable, comprehensive coverage.

Medicaid expansion has been proven to increase access to preventive health care like cancer screenings. That means cancer can be caught and treated earlier, leading to better outcomes for patients. In short, we can save lives with Medicaid expansion.

Kansans overwhelmingly support Medicaid expansion and all our neighboring states have chosen to expand their Medicaid programs. Now is the time for the Kansas Legislature to do the right thing and expand the Medicaid program so that more Kansans can lead healthier lives.

As the child of someone who lost their fight with cancer, I know that cancer doesnt wait. And I encourage our lawmakers to not wait either.

Alexandra Williamson (American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network volunteer),Topeka

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Letters to the editor: Doctor against medical marijuana; readers address Donald Trump's lie, Medicaid expansion - The Topeka Capital-Journal