Category Archives: Donald Trump

PALM BEACH, Fla. Conspiracy-minded followers of the enigmatic cult figure QAnon have developed a new popular theory inspired by the anime JoJos Bizarre Adventure which suggests that Donald Trump may soon unleash his stand.

Based on the speed and power of that most recent clip of Trump playing golf, I have to assume hes got the power of a Stand whos currently invisible to us, said Vaughn Roberts of the YouTube channel WhereWeGoVaughnWeGoAll. The way he keeps deflecting subpoenas and legal challenges at lightning speed, its the only explanation at this point.

Speculation along these lines has run rampant, with clue-hungry QAnon followers eager to jump on any detail to confirm evidence of Stand powers at use.

I made a post that got to the front page because we thought it was the first spirit photo of Trumps stand in action, but it turned out to be Barron Trump, said another commenter, JoJoBidensBizarrePresidency. How was I supposed to know the difference? That kid grows five more inches every time he steps in front of a camera. Either way, thanks for the gold I guess!

Its currently unknown how the former president could have acquired the theorized stand, said Roberts in a follow-up video rounding up the top ten most popular clues related to the theory. But we believe that it must have short-range abilities, with the ability to detect satanic pedophiles and possibly obliterate their genitals. Surely Trump will show the Stands true power soon and all will be revealed then. He sure does love to leave us on cliffhangers, just like JoJos!

At press time, proponents of the theory were speculating on whether Trumps stand might be named Dead Kennedys, Back In The U.S.A., or Ol Dirty Bastard.

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New 'JoJo's Bizarre Adventure' Inspired QAnon Theory Suggests Donald Trump Will Soon Unleash his Stand - Hard Drive

All of the living former U.S. presidents, with the exception of former President Trump, have issued formal statements condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Republican and Democratic ex-presidents characterized the Kremlin's assault as "brazen," "reckless," "the gravest security crisis on the European continent since World War II" and an "unjust assault on the sovereignty of Ukraine." President Biden issued new sanctions on Russian financial institutions Thursday, calling Putin's attack "premeditated."

"Russia's attack on Ukraine constitutes the gravest security crisis on the European continent since World War II," said former President George W. Bush. "I join the international community in condemning Vladimir Putin's unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine. The American government and people must stand in solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people as they seek freedom and the right to choose their own future. We cannot tolerate the authoritarian bullying and danger that Putin poses."

Former President Barack Obama said Russia launched an attack on Ukraine "not because Ukraine posed a threat to Russia, but because the people of Ukraine chose a path of sovereignty, self-determination, and democracy."

"For some time now, we have seen the forces of division and authoritarianism make headway around the world, mounting an assault on the ideals of democracy, rule of law, equality, individual liberty, freedom of expression and worship, and self-determination," Obama said. "Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows where these dangerous trends can lead and why they cannot be left unchallenged."

Obama urged Americans, regardless of party, to support Mr. Biden's efforts to sanction Russia.

Obama critics pointed out that in a 2012 presidential debate, he appeared to mock then-candidate Mitt Romney for calling Russia the biggest geopolitical threat. At the time, Obama said the "1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

Former President Bill Clinton said Putin's "war of choice has unraveled 30 years of diplomacy and put millions of innocent lives in grave danger."

"The world will hold Russia and Russia alone accountable, both economically and politically, for its brazen violation of international law. I stand with the people of Ukraine and am praying for their safety," Clinton said.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who was president during the Cold War, while the Soviet Union was still intact, said Russia's "unprovoked attack on Ukraine using military and cyber weapons violates international law and the fundamental human rights of the Ukrainian people."

"I condemn this unjust assault on the sovereignty of Ukraine that threatens security in Europe and the entire world, and I call on President Putin to halt all military action and restore peace," Carter said. "The United States and its allies must stand with the people of Ukraine in support of their right to peace, security, and self-determination."

Trump, Mr. Biden's predecessor, has not issued a formal statement about Russia's incursion in Ukraine since it took place, although he did appear on Fox News as the invasion began.

"This all happened because of a rigged election," the ex-president claimed to Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

He called the situation a "terrible thing," but said Putin "wanted to do something and negotiate and it just got worse and worse."

"And then he saw the weakness. And you know it really started, I think with the weakness in Afghanistan," Trump said, an apparent reference to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal at the end of last August.

At a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser Wednesday evening, before the assault began, Trump called Putin "pretty smart" in "taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions."

CBS News' Fin Gomez contributed to this report.

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Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.

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Former Presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter respond to Russia's assault on Ukraine - CBS News

During the first hundred hours of Joe Biden's presidency, Biden issued a wave of executive actions aimed at undoing the legacy of his conservative predecessor, Donald Trump. At the time, many of those actions successfully scaled back or outright eliminated Trump's policies on immigration, climate, and public health, leading many mainstream outlets to frame Biden's win as the dawn of a new era. But as Biden continues to maintain, and in some cases, expand the policies and practices of the Trump-era, failing to deliver on many of his campaign promises, it's hardly apparent that this new era will arrive at all.

Biden's failure to deliver on his agenda holds especially true with respect to immigration, an issue on which the president has bolstered a number of Trump-era holdovers.

Notably, the president has chosen to expand one of Trump's most draconian border policies, "Remain in Mexico," which mandates that all asylum-seekers stay in Mexico until the scheduled date of their immigration hearing. The policy, enacted in January 2019, forces thousands of migrants to live for months in squalid encampments and shelters along the border, which are notoriously rife with gang violence.

Back in October 2019, Biden, then a presidential candidate, blasted Trump over his use of "Remain in Mexico," claiming during a debate that Trump was "the first president in the history of the United States of America that [said] anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country."

"That's never happened before in America," Biden said. "They're sitting in squalor on the other side of the river."

Upon taking office, the president seemingly kept his word on the matter, nixing the policy in January. But after a Texas judge in August ordered that the rule be reinstated, Biden did little to fight back, Vox noted, and has in some ways actually expanded the policy's scope.

RELATED: Court ordered Biden to restart Trump's "Remain in Mexico" but he didn't have to make it worse

For one, Biden's version of the policy sets out clear individual asylum cases within six months the same period of time allotted by Trump. Biden is also now allowing border agents to determine whether a migrant has "reasonable possibility" of facing danger in Mexico. But while 85 to 90 percent of the program's enrollees say they fear harm, The Washington Post reports, only 10 to 15 percent are found to face a "reasonable possibility" of facing any danger.

Most alarming is the fact that Biden has actually expanded the program's eligibility requirements, as BuzzFeed News reports. Under Trump, only migrants from Spanish-speaking countries, including Brazil, qualified for the program. But under Biden, asylum-seekers from any country in the Western Hemisphere will be sent back to Mexico. This means that Haitians, for example, who primarily speak Haitian Creole, will be sent to Mexico to await the hearing, where the dominant language is Spanish.

This expansion "is going beyond good faith implementation of the court order," one former Biden appointee told BuzzFeed News. "When you add new populations you are intentionally implementing a program that you know is largely indistinguishable from the prior one and putting more populations in it."

Unfortunately, the elimination of "Remain in Mexico" is hardly the only immigration promise Biden has failed to deliver on.

RELATED: Will Biden's Central America plan slow migration or speed it up?

On the campaign trail, Biden vowed to raise Trump's refugee cap of 15,000 to 125,000. But while the cap was ultimately raised to 125,000 last September following months of progressive pressure, Biden only took in a paltry 11,411 in 2021, which, according to the Post, is the lowest level of admittance since 1980.

The president has also failed to do away with Title 42, a little-known public health policy that Trump used to mass-expel immigrants from the U.S. over COVID-19 concerns. Democrats and human rights groups have widely condemned the rule because it offers migrants no legal recourse to gain entry. Furthermore, dozens of doctors and epidemiologists, including Chief Medical Advisor to the President Anthony Fauci, have casted strong doubt over the scientific basis of the policy. Just last month, the Biden administration vigorously defended Title 42 by citing COVID risks, even though the U.S. spread of the Omicron variant was already well underway.

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"The Title 42 order is not and has never been about public health. Rather it represents a cynical manipulation of public health arguments to advance political policies of immigration control," said Dr. Ron Waldman, Professor Emeritus at the Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University. "Despite President Biden's promises to end the harmful immigration practices of the previous administration, his administration, acting through the [CDC], has fully embraced, defended, and used this inhumane policy for a year now."

RELATED: Top State Dept. official rips Biden's "illegal" and "inhumane" deportations on his way out

When it comes to immigration, it's also hard to discount the fact that the Biden administration has refused to right the wrongs of Trump's most draconian border policy: family separation.

Shortly after taking office, the president established a Family Reunification Task Force designed to reunite the approximately 5,500 migrant families that had been separated under Trump. But as of last November, the Biden administration had only reunited thirty, according to Vice News.

Worse, the Department of Justice has withdrawn from monthslong settlement negotiations around compensating the affected families. In November, Biden shot down the idea of paying $450,000 to families who will likely carry the lifelong trauma of temporary or permanent separation.

"That's not going to happen," Biden said during a press conference at the time, calling a Wall Street Journal report alluding to the $450,000 payments "garbage."

The DOJ is specifically arguing that families aren't entitled to payouts from the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act, a 1946 federal statute that allows individuals to sue the U.S. government for personal injuries, such as psychological and physical trauma, caused by agents of the state. To make its case, Vox notes, the White House has claimed that Trump's separation policywhich Biden once called "a weapon against desperate mothers, fathers, and children seeking safety and a better life" was legal.

RELATED: Biden Administration may pay out more than $1 billion to migrant families separated under Trump

Back in 2019, a government watchdog found that separated children received little to no mental health support despite exhibiting "more fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress than did children who were not separated."

"There's no amount of money, or anything really, that is ever going to make something like that okay," Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, told Vox.

While immigration is no doubt an area of particular failure when it comes to rectifying Trump-era policies, it's far from the only one when you consider Biden's approach to climate change.

At the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, back in November, the president promised "demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example."

But after that firm commitment, the president shortly proceeded to open more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to auction off for oil and gas drilling the largest kind of this sell-off in the Gulf of Mexico's entire history. Initially, Biden claimed that the auction was court-ordered due to a June court decision that forced Biden to lift his moratorium on drilling, a pause put in place last January. But according to The Guardian, no court judgment actually compelled the government to hold an auction.

"[The Department of Interior] had a lot of discretion over whether to hold this lease sale and they chose to do it anyway," Brettny Hardy, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, told The Guardian. "We have no good answer as to why they are doing this. It's problematic and disappointing."

RELATED: The Biden administration said its drilling-lease spree in the Gulf was court-ordered. It wasn't

As a presidential candidate, Biden also vowed to ban drilling on all federal land. But his administration has apparently done a u-turn on that promise, approving more oil and gas drilling contracts on federal land than Trump, according to a report by Public Citizen. As Post reported back in November, Biden greenlit 35% more drilling permits during the first year of his presidency than Trump did in that same period.

"Biden's runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership," Taylor McKinnon, Senior Public Lands Campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires ending new fossil fuel extraction, but Biden is racing in the opposite direction."

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Biden tries to reverse Trump's impact on the courts but continues to defend parts of his agenda - Salon

On a podcast on Wednesday, Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trumps former adviser, also praised Mr. Putin as anti-woke. He suggested the Ukrainian conflict was not our fight.

After Russias attack began, some online users explained Mr. Putins motives by blending them with conspiracy theories about Covid-19. One Twitter account named War Clandestine declared that Mr. Putin was targeting biolabs in Ukraine that were operated by the United States. The idea was made more believable, the author said, because of the conspiracy theory that the United States engineered Covid-19 at a lab in Wuhan, China.

Pro-America influencers like Mikel Crump and John Basham, who have a combined following of 99,200, amplified the thread. Twitter later suspended the War Clandestine account, plus a second one by the same user for trying to evade the ban, but people continued posting screen recordings of the thread online.

Twitter said that the accounts by the user were permanently suspended for violating its abusive behavior policy and that it was monitoring for emerging narratives that violate its rules. Mr. Crump and Mr. Basham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some pro-Russia commentators insisted they were right. Many blamed Mr. Biden, dredging up old conspiracy theories about his son Hunter and Hunters employment at a Ukrainian gas company when Mr. Biden was vice president and engaged in diplomatic efforts with the country. There was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens, but conservatives seized on the narrative during the 2020 election.

When reached for comment, Mr. Oltmann, the conservative podcaster, said, You really have no idea about Ukraine. People support Russia because you did not do the right thing when it came to the fraud and corruption of Biden. I pray for the people in Ukraine but equally pray the people who facilitated the evil communist agenda in the U.S. are held accountable.

In an email, Ms. Owens, the conservative talk show host, also said the Russia-Ukraine war was Mr. Bidens fault. Ukrainians are dying because of the Biden familys criminal connections and insistence on stoking conflict in the region, she said.

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Ill Stand on the Side of Russia: Pro-Putin Sentiment Spreads Online - The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) Lawyers for Donald Trumps longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, are asking a judge to throw out tax fraud charges against him, arguing New York prosecutors targeted him as punishment because he wouldnt flip on the former president.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Weisselbergs lawyer said the Trump Organizations CFO is collateral damage in a singular crusade by Democratic prosecutors to have him implicate and help put the Republican ex-president behind bars.

Mr. Weisselbergs unequal and unfair treatment is the consequence of his proximity to Donald J. Trump, and his rejection of (prosecutors) demand that he cooperate with (their) investigation targeting Mr. Trump and his businesses, Weisselberg lawyers wrote.

Weisselberg was arrested last July on charges he collected more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation, including apartment rent, car payments and school tuition. Trumps company is also charged in the case, which prosecutors have described as a sweeping and audacious tax fraud scheme.

Weisselberg and the Trump Organization have pleaded not guilty. Lawyers for the company also sought Tuesday to have the companys charges dismissed.

Weisselberg, 74, is the only Trump executive charged in the yearslong criminal investigation started by former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and now overseen by his successor, Alvin Bragg. Several other Trump executives have been granted immunity to testify before a grand jury in the case.

A message seeking comment was left Wednesday with the Manhattan District Attorneys Office. Prosecutors are expected to respond to Weisselbergs motion to dismiss in a court filing in the coming weeks.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan has given both sides until spring to file motions and responses and indicated hell decide on them at a July hearing, the next time Weisselberg is due in court. Merchan has said hell likely schedule a trial for the end of August or beginning of September.

Weisselbergs lawyers, who include Mary Mulligan, Bryan Skarlatos and Rita Glavin, have also asked Merchan to consider throwing out part of the indictment and suppressing statements made while in custody on July 1, if the judge doesnt agree to dismiss the case entirely. Glavin also represents former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Weisselbergs lawyers argued that some charges against him are outside the statute of limitations or are otherwise legally deficient. They said Weisselbergs statements to investigators during the eight hours he was in custody after his arrest shouldnt be admissible because they were taken in violation of his rights.

D.A.s office investigators struck up conversations with Weisselberg that were laser-focused on issues relevant to the indictment, even though they were aware that Weisselberg was represented by counsel that wasnt present at the time, the lawyers wrote. The conversations constituted an interrogation and violated Weisselbergs Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, they said.

Trump has not been charged with any wrongdoing, but prosecutors noted he signed some of the checks at the center of Weisselbergs case, which they said stemmed from a 15-year scheme orchestrated by the most senior executives at the Trump Organization.

A judge last week ruled that Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. must answer questions under oath in a parallel civil investigation into his business practices being run by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James, a Democrat, said her investigation has uncovered evidence Trumps company, the Trump Organization, used fraudulent or misleading valuations of assets like golf courses and skyscrapers to get loans and tax benefits. Trumps longtime accounting firm recently dumped him after warning him not to rely on years of financial statements it prepared based on his companys valuations, given questions about their accuracy.

Although James civil investigation is separate from the criminal investigation, her office has been involved in both, dispatching several lawyers to work side-by-side with prosecutors from the Manhattan D.A.s office. It was evidence uncovered in James civil investigation that led to criminal charges against Weisselberg.

In a statement last week, Trump said he believed Weisselberg was innocent and that the charges against the man he described as a 74-year-old long-term and wonderful employee were overblown.

The charge is that he did not pay taxes on a company car or a company apartment (Do others pay such a tax? Did Cy Vance pay a tax on his car?), and a charge having to do with my paying for the education of his grandchildren, Trump said. Murderers all over the city and they are worried about me helping with young childrens education?

In a separate ruling, a judge last week ordered Weisselberg to sit for a limited deposition in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racines lawsuit accusing Trumps inaugural committee of grossly overspending at Trumps Pennsylvania Avenue hotel to enrich Trumps family.

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Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/

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Weisselberg, Trump Organization seek to toss tax fraud case - Associated Press

The rollout of Truth Social, former President Donald J. Trumps social media alternative to Twitter, has gotten off to a slow start.

On Wednesday morning, Mr. Trumps account on the app, available free on Apples App Store since Monday, had just under 50,000 followers. That is a far cry from the tens of millions of followers he had on Twitter before the social media platform barred him last year after some of his supporters attacked the Capitol.

Mr. Trumps account still has a single post, which the company calls truths as opposed to tweets.

The official debut of Truth Social on Monday was marred by error messages and a long waiting list for people who had already signed up to download the app. (This reporter was at 94,000 on the list but was able to download the app on Tuesday.)

Technical glitches for new apps are not uncommon, and the parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, had said it didnt expect the new platform to be fully operational before the end of March. Truth Social posted a message from its own account that said our team is working as fast as possible.

The apps glitchy start didnt appear to have deterred investors, who continue to push up the share price of Digital World Acquisition, the special purpose acquisition company that Trump Media announced plans to merge with in October. On Tuesday, Digital Worlds stock rose 14 percent to close at just over $96 a share.

Digital World has become the best performing SPAC a kind of company that goes public first, raising money from investors to buy a private company. The stock has continued to rise even in the face of regulatory investigations into how exactly Digital Worlds deal with Trump Media came about.

Because of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, it is unclear when the merger will close. If and when it does, Trump Media will gain access to nearly $1.3 billion in cash, which would help build its social media business.

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Donald Trumps Truth Social Is Off to a Glitchy Start - The New York Times

Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz has once again claimed he has tried to convince Donald Trump to throw his hat in the ring to serve as speaker of the House if the GOP retakes the majority in the 2022 midterms.

Gaetz, who has touted the far-fetched prospect of the former president becoming the next leader of the House since last summer, told Sebastian Gorka's America's First show that he has once more discussed the possibility with Trump.

"I just think America deserves that moment when Nancy Pelosi hands Donald Trump the gavel," the Florida Republican said.

"I told him you don't even have to be speaker for the whole day," Gaetz said. "You could do it for like three or four hours, give us a great speech, make a few structural reforms to the institution and then you could resign and we could have another election for speaker."

Gaetz said he mentioned the idea to Trump in Florida the night before he appeared on Gorka's show, but admitted "I don't know if I've fully got him to swallow the hook."

Only one vote is needed for someone to be nominated for the speaker's post, and they do not have to be a sitting member of Congress.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who appeared on Gorka's show alongside Gaetz, said that her choice for the next speaker if the GOP regains control of the House has to be someone "willing to fight for things that matter," such as conservatives like herself and Trump getting banned from social media.

"I want to see a person that's willing to step up to the plate and be the type of speaker that will actually take action in defense of conservatives across America that have been censored and banned and had their accounts taken away," the Georgia Republican said.

The congresswoman, who had her personal account banned from Twitter for repeatedly spreading COVID-19 misinformation, said such actions are like Big Tech companies putting tape over people's mouths so "they can no longer speak in the public sphere."

Gaetz previously said in December 2021 he had spoken with Trump about running for the potential speaker of the House position.

Pressed for additional details at a press conference, Gaetz said he kept "conversations with the former president between the two of us."

Gaetz also vowed to nominate Trump as the next House speaker during a "Save America" rally in Sarasota, Florida, in July 2021.

"After the next election cycle when we take back the House of Representatives, when we send Nancy Pelosi back to the filth of San Francisco, my commitment to you is that my vote for speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives will go to Donald J. Trump," Gaetz told the crowd.

Trump has not publicly expressed any desire to become the next House Speaker, although he told radio talk-show host Wayne Allyn Root in June 2021 that the idea was "very interesting."

Trump has been contacted for comment.

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Matt Gaetz Tries To Convince Donald Trump To Become Speaker of the House - Newsweek

Former Vice President Mike Pence was once considered the natural successor to President Donald Trump for a 2024 run, but after Joe Bidens 2020 presidential victory, the dynamics of the 2024 race have changed significantly.

Former President Donald Trump has indicated several times that he intends to run again in 2024 and is hosting Save America rallies across the country. He has also very publicly disagreed with the former president on allegations of fraud and misconduct in the last election.

Despite this, it looks as though former Vice President Mike Pence is making moves and considering his own run for the presidency in 2024 presumably conscious of the fact that he will be running against Trump.

Pence Is Making Moves

Former Vice President Pence, who was the Governor of Indiana at the time he was chosen by candidate Donald Trump to be his running mate, appears to be preparing a run of his own.

Mike Murphy, a Republican campaign strategist from Indiana, said that Mike Pence is doing everything he needs to set himself up to run and that if Trump is not the eventual nominee in 2024, Pence is clearly the frontrunner.

I think people are realizing that he was an unlikely hero on January 6. In the end, even for people who disagree with him for many other policy positions hes taken, whether it was as a governor or as a vice-president, he did the right thing when the pressure was on January 6, Murphy said.

Pence has visited New Hampshire, he has spoken at conservative, pro-life events in South Carolina. He even gave a speech at an event hosted by Heritage Action in which he slammed President Joe Biden for overseeing rising inflation and implementing a catastrophic environmental spending plan.

Some Say He Cant Do It

Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director who now works at The Lincoln Project, said in an op-ed for NBC News this month that Vice President Pence has no chance of winning the Republican nomination or becoming the next president of the United States.

Setmayer, who served as the communications director for former Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, said that Pences criticism of the former president is a cardinal sin that means hell never win the nomination.

Lets be honest, my cat, Tiki, has a better chance of becoming president than Pence, she said.

Mike Pence Heres What the Polls Say

Pence certainly has an uphill battle securing the Republican nomination for 2024, and it remains to be seen whether his campaign will involve direct or severe criticism of former President Donald Trump.

In the meantime, we have the polls and they dont give us a clear idea either.

One poll from Quinnipiac University released on February 16 suggests that 52% of Republicans side more with former Vice President pence than they do Trump on whether or not Pence had the authority to reject Electoral College votes in the wake of the 2020 election. Just 36% said otherwise.

That poll indicates a majority of Republican voters are willing to forgive Pence for refusing to reject those votes on January 6, 2021.

Other polls, however, show Trump with a clear lead over Pence. In fact, not a single poll so far has shown Pence even remotely competitive in a race against former President Trump.

Could Mike Pence win the nomination in 2024? That depends on a lot of factors.

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and report on Western governments approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.

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Does Mike Pence Have A Chance Against Donald Trump In 2024? - 19FortyFive

Ivanka Trump, assistant to U.S. President Donald Trump, listens to remarks during the American Technology Council roundtable hosted at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 19, 2017.

Zach Gibson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Ivanka Trump, the adult daughter of former President Donald Trump, is negotiating with the House probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot about cooperating with the investigators, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The House select committee, which is investigating the facts and causes of the 2021 invasion of the Capitol by a mob of Trump's supporters, had invited Ivanka Trump last month to sit for a voluntary interview.

Attorneys for Trump's eldest daughter have been in talks with the committee since Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., delivered that invitation in an eight-page letter, the Times reported, citing a person familiar with the discussions.

A spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump confirmed in a statement to the newspaper that she is "in discussions with the committee to voluntarily appear for an interview."

Neither a spokesman for the select committee nor a Trump Organization spokeswoman immediately responded to CNBC's requests for comment.

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Ivanka Trump in talks about cooperating with House investigation of Jan. 6 Capitol riot, report says - CNBC

INSURGENCYHow Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever WantedBy Jeremy W. Peters

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination on the morning of June 16, 2015, there was little indication the event would alter American political history. Pundits dismissed Trumps chances. He was polling at 4 percent; the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, suggested Trump was really seeking a job at NBC, not the White House.

But Trump did make an impression on Steve Bannon, a voluble conservative activist plotting his own takeover of the Republican Party. Watching the reality-television star deliver remarks from the Trump Tower food court to a crowd that allegedly included actors who had been paid $50 to hold signs and cheer, Bannon couldnt contain himself. Thats Hitler! Bannon said. And, as Jeremy W. Peters writes in this spirited new history, he meant it as a compliment.

Insurgency chronicles the astonishingly swift transformation of the Republican Party, from the genteel preserve of pro-business elites to a snarling personality cult that views the Jan. 6 insurrection as an exercise in legitimate political discourse. Peters, a political reporter for The New York Times, depicts mainstream Republicans surrender to Trumpism as a form of political self-flagellation. From 1969 to 2008, Republicans occupied the White House for all but 12 years. And yet one of the more peculiar features of American conservatism is that despite decades of Republican rule, many true believers grew embittered and resentful of their party. They thought it was run by weak-willed leaders who compromised and sold out once they got in power.

The outlines of the Republicans hard-right turn are by now largely familiar. What distinguishes Insurgency is its blend of political acuity and behind-the-scenes intrigue. Much of the books opening material revolves around the first national figure to channel the bases anger: the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who might have forestalled Trumps rise had she chosen to run for president in 2012. Trump was sufficiently concerned about Palins potential to claim the title of populist standard-bearer that he invited her to Trump Tower in 2011 to size her up in person. He concluded that while she had tremendous political appeal, she didnt know what to do about it.

Trump, of course, did. Peters is a fluid and engaging writer, and as the narrative of Insurgency unfolds and Trump inevitably, irresistibly, assumes center stage, you almost cant help admiring as Bannon did the candidates raw, demagogic genius: Devoid of empathy, incapable of humility and unfamiliar with what it means to suffer consequences, he behaved and spoke in ways most would never dare. In one luridly fascinating section, Peters details how Trump defused the furor over the Access Hollywood tape by ambushing Hillary Clinton with her husbands accusers at the second presidential debate in St. Louis. The stunt came about thanks to a norm-shattering partnership between the Trump campaign and Aaron Klein, a 36-year-old reporter for Bannons website, Breitbart News, who tracked down the women and cajoled them into attending.

In the history of modern presidential politics, no candidate had pulled off such a ruthless act of vengeance in public, Peters writes. It changed the game, proving to Trump and his allies that there was nothing off-limits anymore. So pivotal was Kleins role in Trumps upset victory that Jared Kushner later told him, My father-in-law wouldnt be president without you.

Anecdotes like these make Insurgency worth reading, though its harder to say who would want to. The book contains too many examples of Trumps manifest flaws to appeal to MAGA true believers, but not enough revelations of outright criminality to satisfy veterans of the #resistance. With the specter of a 2024 Trump candidacy looming, the rest of us could use a break while we can still get one. He just dominates every day, Bannon told Trumps advisers in 2020, warning of voters exhaustion with the president. Its like a nightmare. Youll do anything to get rid of it. Easier said than done.

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How Donald Trump Captured the Republican Party - The New York Times