Category Archives: Donald Trump

Throughout his time in the White House, Donald Trump collected a number of exceedingly reliable footstools. There was Attorney General William Barr, who basically served as the former presidents personal lawyer. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who regularly shredded his dignity on the guys behalf. Mike Pence, other than that one time. And, of course, the vast majority of the Republican Party, which lived in constant fear of getting on the wrong side of the then president.

One member of the GOP who consistently stood out from the bunch in his fealty to 45 was Senator Lindsey Graham. Afterdeclaringin June 2016 that he wouldnt support Trumps bid for office,referringto the then Republican candidate as a jackass, a kook, a race-baiting bigot, and the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party, Graham subsequently became one of Trumps most ardent and obsequious fans.

When Democrats were getting ready to impeach the guy the first time around, over his attempt to extort another country for his personal gain, Grahamtoldreporters the whole thing should be disposed of very quickly by the Senate. When people brought up the fact that Trump regularly slandered Grahams friend John McCaineven after McCain was dead, the senator from South Carolina said he was willing to overlook the attacks because when we play golf, its fun. Two months after a literal insurrection, GrahamtoldAxios: Donald Trump was my friend before the riot and Im trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend. Pressed on the fact that hed already been reelected for another six years, so politically, he didnt have to keep this relationship going, Graham doubled down, telling reporterJonathan Swanit would be too easy to simply dump the guy, before claiming, in a highly worrisome way, that while there was a dark side to the man who incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, there was also some magic there.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

In short, Graham has more than proved his servility to Trump over the last six years, and should probably be inducted into some kind of Hall of Fame for bootlicking hacks, or given a key to Mar-a-Lago. Unfortunately, Graham forgot the cardinal rule of serving at the pleasure of Trump, which is that one must vigorously and without fail agree with every single thing the guy does and says, at all times, forever and always. Instead, God help him, the Republican lawmaker expressed an independent thought, and this happened:

Yes, Trump dubbed Graham, a lifelong Republican, a Republican in Name Only, in an interview with Newsmax that aired Tuesday night. That may not sound so bad to some people, but as Trump made clear in 2020, its among the worst things he can think to accuse someone of. (Do you know what RINO is? heaskeda crowd in Arizona. A RINO may be the lowest form of human life.) Why is Graham, in Trumps eyes, a RINO? Because Graham had claimed it was inappropriate for Trump to say over the weekend that he might pardon some of the January 6 rioters if reelected in 2024, a move that effectively would allow Trump supporters to get away with waging a violent insurrection.

Lindsey Graham doesnt know what the hell hes talking about if he says that, Trump added to NewsmaxsRob Schmitt.

Which is not a very nice thing to say about someone whos basically had his head lodged inside your ass for over half a decade now! Though if we know Lindsey, and we think we do, itll all be water under the bridge by the end of the month. Last week, the South Carolina senatorsaidin an interview with Foxs Brian Kilmeade that hed spent the whole weekend with Trump and suggested that the ex-president apparently has total control over the Republican Party. He will be the nominee in 2024 if he wants it. Stay tuned, Graham said, adding: From my point of view, theres nobody thats going to beat Donald Trump if he wants to run.

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University Eric Adams Pulls Crypto-Paycheck Stunt Hours Before Bitcoin Crash Dave Chappelle and the Black Ass Lie That Keeps Us Down Trumps January 6 Cover-Up Is Unraveling Fast Florida Man Has Growing God Complex In 2024, Mike Pence Is Gearing Up to Go Rogue New York Attorney General to Trump, Ivanka, and Don Jr.: Dont F--k With Us Inside This Cable News Giants Streaming Dreams From the Archive: It Came From Wasilla Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.

Here is the original post:

Lindsey Graham Spent Six Years With His Head Up Trumps Ass for Nothing - Vanity Fair

Former President Donald Trump will headline the annual Conservative Political Action Conference due to take place in Orlando later this month.

The 45th president made the announcement in a video posted by Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union, on his Twitter account.

Ill be attending CPAC again this year in Orlando, Florida, Trump said. I will see you soon. Going to be a fantastic crowd lets have fun.

Trump, who has been a regular at CPAC since his first appearance in 2011, said he urged Schlapp and the organizers to get a bigger ballroom this year.

Last year it was packed and there were thousands of people outside, and they said were going to get a real big one,' he said.

Other scheduled speakers at CPAC include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

The annual gathering could function as an early preview of a potential 2024 Republican presidential primary between DeSantis and Trump.

Neither has announced a formal intention to run, but DeSantis is widely expected to throw his hat in the ring and Trump has teased a political comeback as he holds campaign-style rallies around the country.

The two Florida Republicans have also been indirectly critical of each other in public.

DeSantis became a GOP star during the COVID-19 pandemic by playing up his opposition to lockdowns as well as mask and vaccine mandates, selling the Sunshine State as freedoms vanguard.

In an interview on the Ruthless podcast last month, the Florida governor said he regrets not having been much louder in opposition when then-President Trump called for widespread lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic.

I never thought in February, early March [2020], that [coronavirus] would lead to locking down the country, he said on the podcast. I just didnt. I didnt think that was on the radar.

Trump, meanwhile, recently blasted politicians who refuse to admit whether they got a coronavirus booster shot as gutless, in what many see as a veiled attack against DeSantis, who wont divulge that information.

I watched a couple politicians be interviewed and one of the questions was, Did you get a booster? Because they had the vaccine, and theyre answering like in other words, the answer is yes but they dont want to say it, because theyre gutless, Trump told One America News Network.

A recent poll of Florida voters by Suffolk University/USA Today shows that Trump would defeat DeSantis by 47 percent to 40 percent in a 2024 primary race in the Sunshine state.

The 2022 edition of CPAC is scheduled to take place Feb. 24-27.

Read the original:

Trump, DeSantis confirmed to speak at CPAC in Orlando later this month - New York Post

The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing aticles elsewhere in the newspaper or onbangordailynews.com.

Almost exactly one year ago, former President Donald Trumps legal team bumbled its way through his impeachment trial defense. A record numberof senators from his own party voted to convict him, but not enough to reach the two-thirds threshold. He was acquitted.

As part of that underwhelming but ultimately successful defense, Trumps lawyers sought to distance him from the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol.

You will not hear any member of the team representing former President Trump say anything but in the strongest possible way denounce the violence of the rioters and those that breached the Capitol, Trump attorney Bruce Castor said in his opening remarksto senators.

Someone might want to remind Trump about that.

Rather than continually denounce that violence, the former president has repeatedly downplayedand even appeared to excuse it. He has doubled down on his disprovenclaims of election fraud, and insistedthat in actuality the Big Lie was the Election itself. He has indicated that he in fact wanted former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the resultsof that election.

And now, hes talking about potentially pardoning Jan. 6 rioters should he run for president again and win.

Another thing well do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly, Trump said during a rally on Saturday. We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.

There has been some deserved, if tepid, pushback from fellow Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called Trumps pardon suggestion inappropriate. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who voted to impeach Trumpa year ago, told ABC Newsthis weekend that he should not have made the pledge about pardons.

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota,however,had a somewhat different response to the former presidents comments. Many other Republicans in Congresshavent said much, if anything, in response to Trumps remarks about pardons and overturning the election.

The obsession with the former president is becoming obnoxious to me, Cramer said Monday when asked about Trump and the pardons, as reported by HuffPost.

Its sort of interesting, but considering what were dealing with here every day, its low priority, Cramer said while suggesting reporters should focus on President Joe Bidens administration and the economy.

Sort of interesting is an interesting choice of words. We think a different word is more appropriate: alarming.We and lawmakers should be able to discuss Bidens shortc omingswithout losing perspective about just how dangerousTrumps actions were and continue to be.

Recent polling indicatesthat Trump unfortunately remains the Republican frontrunner should he seek election again. Two years ago, we might have expected someone to become politically irrelevant after fueling, failing to quelland striking a celebratory toneabout a violent attack on Americas elected representatives. Maybe that was a naive assumption on our part.

While Trumps lawyers tried to distance him from rioters in the presentation to senators a year ago, their client has now done the opposite. If more Republicans could agree on a basic level that this is bad, then maybe we wouldnt have to keep pointing it out.

More articles from the BDN

Link:

We'll stop talking about Donald Trump when he stops saying alarming things - Bangor Daily News

To anyone who was watching the events of January 6 unfold live on television, one thing was quite clear: Donald Trump was excited and proud about the violence he incited.

As the timeline of his actions that day shows, he was so wound up tweeting invective at Congress and his vice president, Mike Pence, that he barely slept the night before. Once the riot was underway, Trump spent hours resisting the pressure to call off his dogs, instead tweeting more invective and ass-covering calls to "stay peaceful" that the crowd knew not to take seriously. He was also reportedly gleefully entranced by the footage of the insurrection. After three hours of rioting, he finally told the crowd to "go home" but only after it was clear that the riot wasn't going to overturn the election.

The blood was still being mopped off the floors when the great GOP gaslighting began. Republicans fell in line behind this narrative that the riot was not incited by Trump, but that it was an entirely self-directed action of a few thousand kooks and that it was only a wild coincidence it started after Trump's incendiary speech. Trump has always clearly chafed at the expectation that he go along with this narrative, wanted to instead publicly gloat about this demonstration of the power he has over people. Now, a year after the riot, Trump appears to be done with pretending to disapprove of the riot. He's circling back to his initial instinct, which was to celebrate it as the glorious MAGA revolution he always wanted it to be.

RELATED:Donald Trump's having an awful week and it's only Wednesday

This was most obvious in Trump's promise over the weekend to consider pardoning the January 6 rioters if he regains the White House in 2024. Politico soon reported that this was hardly some new urge of Trump's. He spent the two weeks between the riot and Joe Biden's inauguration asking advisors if he could issue a blanket pardon for everyone involved. He was waved off the idea, because it conflicted with the GOP's strategy of denying Trump's role. Trump, forever the coward,went along with the demands, even though it meant not getting to take the credit for the mayhem he unleashed. But, by making this promise of pardons to a cheering crowd of thousands of supporters he is sending a strong signal that he's done pretending to feel anything but beaming pride over inciting an insurrection.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Which isn't to say that Trump is no longer torn between wanting to celebrate the insurrection openly and worried about the legal jeopardy that might flow from that stance.

Over the weekend, he released an unhinged statement in which he outright said that he had wanted to "overturn" the election. But when members of the January 6 committee pointed out that was tantamount to a confession, Trump tried to walk it back with another statementabout how he meant to say he just wanted to send "back the votes for recertification or approval."

RELATED:Donald Trump's lackeys failed him and saved democracy

The pardon promise also could create legal problems for Trump. As January 6 committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told MSNBC Wednesday night, the rally speech is "very important evidence as to his intent" that Trump desired and condoned the violence. No doubt Trump's lawyers are advising him of the same danger. And yet, he can't or won't stop trying to publicly recast the insurrectionists as heroes. In a Newsmax interview this week, Trump falsely insisted "nobody died on Jan. 6" except Ashli Babbitt, who he described as "one young, fine woman." Making a martyr of Babbitt, who was shot because she was trying to lead a charge to run down fleeing members of Congress, is central to the pro-insurrection narrative.

Trump may feel hemmed in by legal concerns, but his political instincts clearly tell him that recasting the Capitol insurrection as a glorious revolution is the right move. Certainly, the cheers he got for promising pardons underscores that the base is with him. But many other Republican leaders aren't so sure, and really want to stick with the B.S. story that the riot was just a random thing that happened and Trump had nothing to do with it. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been surprisingly outspoken about this,telling reporters that the riot was "an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power" and insisting that people who participated should be punished.Even Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. who is always trying to be on the vanguard of right-wing nuttery has been queasy about celebrating the riot itself, preferring to hide behind conspiracy theories blaming the violence on the FBI instead.

But Trump's instinct to simply come out in favor of the storming of the Capitol sadly makes a lot of sense, politically, if not legally. The current GOP position, which amounts to disapproving of the rioters while supporting their larger anti-democratic aims, is incoherent. The vast majority of Republicans, both voters and leaders, have decided to embrace the Big Lie, largely because it creates the pretext to pass a bunch of laws and seize electoral offices in such a way that the next coup, in 2024, is successful. Trying to be for the Big Lie, but against the violence that flows from it, is too delicate a needle to thread. It's easier and simpler to stand for the whole kaboodle the Big Lie, the insurrection, the ongoing coup. And Trump understands better than anyone that "easy" and "simple" are huge advantages in political messaging.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Plus, as Heather "Digby" Parton has been arguing at Salon, Trump is clearly worried that the walls are closing inand that it will be impossible to successfully hide the evidencethat he was both attempting to overturn the election and that he deliberately called on a violent mob in order to make that happen. This is a fairly standard Trump strategy when he realizes he can't cover up a crime. Instead, he simply owns it, says it was a good thing, and dares anyone to do anything about it. So far, that's worked beautifully for him, and the continued inability of Attorney General Merrick Garland to arrest Trump for one of his many public crimes suggests it will continue to work for Trump.

The only question is how long it will take for the rest of the GOP to fall in line?

They also have a pattern when it comes to Trump's crimes, from his admitted sexual assault to his efforts to steal the election: First, there is resistance and disapproval, but soon they give in and either excuse or, in most cases, outright defend Trump's behavior. There's growing political pressure within the Republican ranks to go along with the "January 6 was good, actually" narrative. A proposal to formally kick Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois out of the party has 50 Republican House co-sponsors already. It's not because these two support free and fair elections, as they are fully on board with the voter suppression efforts going on at the state level. It's just that they sit on the January 6 committee and are appalled with the violence of the riot that has put them at odds with their party. Kicking them out amounts to a symbolic vote of confidence for the the insurrection itself.

For most Republicans, it would probably be easier to "move on" from the insurrection, which is to say talk about anything else while quietly supporting legislative efforts to make the next coup stick. But Trump isn't going to let them. As long as the January 6 committee and media keeps pushing out evidence of how deeply involved Trump was and how extensive the coup efforts were, Trump is going to keep circling back to the idea that every action he took, no matter how violent or criminal, was justified and noble. As long as he does that, Republicans are going to be forced to choose between pandering to the Trump base and trying to distance themselves from the violence that turns off moderate voters. But we always know how this story ends. Republicans always cave to Trump. And so it will be when it comes to the story of whether the riot was bad or good. It's just a matter of time.

Read the original here:

Donald Trump is done pretending. He is now openly celebrating the Capitol riot - Salon

Fifteen days after Election Day in 2020, James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, received a memo setting out what became the rationale for an audacious strategy: to put in place alternate slates of electors in states where President Donald J. Trump was trying to overturn his loss.

The memo, from another lawyer named Kenneth Chesebro, may not have been the first time that lawyers and allies of Mr. Trump had weighed the possibility of naming their own electors in the hopes that they might eventually succeed in flipping the outcome in battleground states through recounts and lawsuits baselessly asserting widespread fraud.

But the Nov. 18 memo and another three weeks later are among the earliest known efforts to put on paper proposals for preparing alternate electors. They helped to shape a crucial strategy that Mr. Trump would embrace with profound consequences for himself and the nation.

The memos show how just over two weeks after Election Day, Mr. Trumps campaign was seeking to buy itself more time to undo the results. At the heart of the strategy was the idea that their real deadline was not Dec. 14, when official electors would be chosen to reflect the outcome in each state, but Jan. 6, when Congress would meet to certify the results.

And in that focus on Jan. 6 lay the seeds of what became a pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to accept the validity of a challenge to the outcome and to block Congress from finalizing Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory a campaign that would also lead to a violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters and an extraordinary rupture in American politics.

It may seem odd that the electors pledged to Trump and Pence might meet and cast their votes on Dec. 14 even if, at that juncture, the Trump-Pence ticket is behind in the vote count, and no certificate of election has been issued in favor of Trump and Pence, the Nov. 18 memo said. However, a fair reading of the federal statutes suggests that this is a reasonable course of action.

Both federal prosecutors and the House committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 have recently confirmed that they are examining the effort to submit alternate slates of electors to the Electoral College. On Friday, congressional investigators issued subpoenas to 14 people who claimed to be official Trump electors in states that were actually won by Mr. Biden.

The two memos, obtained by The New York Times, were used by Mr. Trumps top lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and others like John Eastman as they developed a strategy intended to exploit ambiguities in the Electoral Count Act, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The memos were initially meant to address Mr. Trumps challenge to the outcome in Wisconsin, but they ultimately became part of a broader conversation by members of Mr. Trumps legal team as the president looked toward Jan. 6 and began to exert pressure on Mr. Pence to hold up certification of the Electoral College count.

Neither Mr. Troupis nor Mr. Chesebro responded to requests for comment about the memos. Even before they were written, legislative leaders in Arizona and Wisconsin sought advice from their own lawyers about whether they had the power to alter slates of electors after the election took place and were effectively told they did not, according to new documents obtained by American Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Mr. Trump has long embraced the scheme. Just this past weekend, he issued a statement reiterating that he was justified in using the process in Congress on Jan. 6 to challenge the outcome and asserting that Mr. Pence could have overturned the election.

The plan to employ alternate electors was one of Mr. Trumps most expansive efforts to stave off defeat, beginning even before some states had finished counting ballots and culminating in the pressure placed on Mr. Pence when he presided over the joint congressional session on Jan. 6. At various times, the scheme involved state lawmakers, White House aides and lawyers like Mr. Chesebro and Mr. Troupis.

In the weeks after the election, Mr. Troupis oversaw the Trump campaigns recount effort in Wisconsin, which ultimately showed that Mr. Biden had won by more than 20,000 votes. In early December 2020, Mr. Troupis filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump campaign that sought to invalidate the use of absentee ballots in Milwaukee and Dane Counties, which both have large numbers of Black voters.

At a hearing in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, one justice, Rebecca Dallet, noted that Mr. Troupis had not sought to invalidate votes in Wisconsins 70 other counties but had focused only on the most nonwhite, urban parts of the state. Another justice, Jill Karofsky, echoed that sentiment, telling Mr. Troupis that his lawsuit smacks of racism.

In late December, Mr. Chesebro joined Mr. Troupis in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the question of whether competing slates of electors in Wisconsin and six other contested states could be considered on Jan. 6. The high court denied their request.

The language and suggestions in the memos from Mr. Chesebro to Mr. Troupis closely echo tactics and talking points that were eventually adopted by Mr. Trumps top lawyers.

The November memo, for example, called Jan. 6 the hard deadline for settling the results of the election and advised that the Trump campaign had nearly two months for judicial proceedings to challenge the outcome. It also suggested that Trump-friendly electors in Wisconsin needed to meet in Madison, the state capital, on Dec. 14, 2020, the day the Electoral College would be voting.

The second memo was dated Dec. 9, 2020, and expanded on the plan. It set forth an analysis of how to legally authorize alternate electors in six key swing states, including Wisconsin. It noted that the scheme was unproblematic in Arizona and Wisconsin, slightly problematic in Michigan, somewhat dicey in Georgia and Pennsylvania, and very problematic in Nevada.

Representative Pete Aguilar, Democrat of California and a member of the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, said the panel was examining the origins of the plans to put forward alternate electors. The panel already has in its possession memos that were written by Mr. Eastman and another Trump lawyer, Jenna Ellis, in late December 2020 and early January 2021; those memos laid out steps for Congress to take to cast aside Mr. Bidens electors in key swing states.

We know this was a coordinated effort on behalf of the former president and those around him to overturn a free and fair election, Mr. Aguilar said. We continue to learn new and more details. Its incredibly troubling to know the lengths they went to support these efforts in multiple states.

Mr. Aguilar said that he and others on the panel believed the plan to use the electors was connected to other aspects of Mr. Trumps effort to remain in power, such as proposals to seize voting machines and to put intense pressure on Mr. Pence to throw out legitimate electoral votes.

We need to know the depth of that plan, and we need to know the different ways in which they sought to operationalize their theory, he said.

Read more from the original source:

Memos Show Roots of Trumps Focus on Jan. 6 and Alternate Electors - The New York Times

Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was desperate for a deal.

The comment knocked everyone off their chairs, David Friedman, Trumps ambassador to Israel, writes in a new book.

Although the meeting was private and off the record, we all envisioned a headline tomorrow that Trump had praised Abbas and criticised Netanyahu the worst possible dynamic for the presidents popularity or for the prospects of the peace process.

Fortunately, and incredibly, the event wasnt leaked.

Friedman now describes the incident, and how he says he changed Trumps mind, in Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, a memoir which will be published next week by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Trumps bankruptcy lawyer was a hugely controversial choice for ambassador. As well as being a hardline pro-settler rightwinger, during the 2016 campaign he called Barack Obama an antisemite and J Street, a liberal US Jewish group, worse than kapos, Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps.

He was confirmed as ambassador by a 52-46 Senate vote. US ambassadors to Israel are usually confirmed unanimously.

In his book, he says the worse than kapos remark was not a political or policy mistake but a tactical one, as it gave ammunition to critics in the Senate.

Describing four murder boards, sessions in which nominees are grilled over potential problems, he says he first said he used the controversial phrase because I felt that J Street had betrayed the Jewish people.

That, he writes, caused a firestorm of reaction and he was told he could not speak that way. His settled-on answer was: In the heat of a political campaign I allowed my rhetoric to get the best of me. I regret these comments and assure you that if confirmed, my remarks will be measured and diplomatic.

Describing his confirmation process, Friedman reproduces private conversations with Democratic senators including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (a bad joke), Cory Booker of New Jersey (delightful in person, only, Friedman writes, to turn on him in hearings), and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader.

Friedman says he had donated to Schumer and the two New Yorkers spoke amicably before Friedman made a pitch for his vote, which he said would send a strong message of bipartisanship on Israel, which you have advocated on numerous occasions.

Schumer, he says, smiled and answered: Im not giving Trump the win. Sorry.

Friedman also recounts an angry meeting with Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, who he accuses of siding with terrorists over one of Americas strongest allies.

But his description of the meeting between Trump and Rivlin and how Friedman says he turned his president round makes for more surprising reading, not least in how it appears to show how eager Trump was for a deal.

Friedman describes how during Trumps next meeting, with Netanyahu, he manoeuvred all present into viewing a two-minute collection of Abbass speeches that I thought was worth watching.

The tape contained two minutes of Abbas honouring terrorists, extolling violence, and vowing never to accept anything less than Israels total defeat.

After the tape ended, Friedman writes, the president said, Wow, is that the same guy I met in Washington last month? He seemed like such a sweet, peaceful guy.

The tape had clearly made an impact.

Friedman writes that he was rebuked by Rex Tillerson, Trumps first secretary of state, and HR McMaster, Trumps second national security adviser.

They thought it was a cheap propaganda trick, he writes. He told them, he writes, I work for the president, and nobody else I am going to make sure that he is well informed so that he gets Israel policy right.

Friedman emphasises his role in such policy, prominently including closeness to Netanyahu; support for Israeli settlers on Palestinian land; cutting aid to Palestinians; recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moving the US embassy there; and diplomacy that led to the Abraham Accords, the normalisation of Israeli relations with four Arab countries.

Aides to Trump, Steve Bannon notably among them, have often suffered from being seen to claim too much credit for his successes. Friedman is sure to repeatedly praise Trump, while bragging of how close to the boss he became.

Nonetheless, his description of Trumps private meeting with Rivlin behaviour Friedman says would have been embarrassing had it been leaked could prove embarrassing itself.

Trump has been repeatedly burned by books on his time in power, even those written by loyalists like Friedman.

In December, the Guardian was first to report that Mark Meadows, Trumps last chief of staff, described how the president tested positive for Covid-19 before his first debate with Joe Biden and how the result was covered up.

Read the original here:

Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador says - The Guardian

Republican Rep. Tom Rice faces a number of primary challengers in his South Carolina district after his vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump for his actions surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Rice stands by his vote. Victoria Hansen/South Carolina Public Radio hide caption

Republican Rep. Tom Rice faces a number of primary challengers in his South Carolina district after his vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump for his actions surrounding the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Rice stands by his vote.

Former President Donald Trump has endorsed another GOP primary challenger in the upcoming midterm elections, as he tries to take down the small number of Republican House members who voted to impeach him following last year's attack on the Capitol.

"Congressman Tom Rice of South Carolina, the coward who abandoned his constituents by caving to Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Left, and who actually voted against me on Impeachment Hoax #2, must be thrown out of office ASAP," Trump wrote in a statement Tuesday.

But Rice is not backing down.

"If we are going to have a scenario where the president can try to intimidate Congress into doing what he wants, well shoot, we might as well have a monarchy," Rice said in an interview from his Myrtle Beach home.

The congressman, who represents the state's 7th District, had just returned from a chamber of commerce speaking engagement, where he was greeted by protesters angry about his impeachment vote.

Rice told those who attended the event he's proud of his accomplishments during his five terms in office. He was recently named ranking member of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee. He says he helped Trump draft the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and voted with the former president more than 90% of the time.

But even those who know the congressman's voting record are upset about his vote to impeach. Immediately after, Rice was censured by the state's Republican Party.

Still, he stands by his belief that Trump was responsible for the Capitol violence.

He vividly remembers seeing beaten, bloody police while seeking safety from the House floor. Rice says the former president should have stopped the attack instead of watching it on television in the Oval Office, surrounded by Secret Service members.

"And I guess if the consequences are that the people think what happened is OK, then I guess, you know, I'm not that guy," Rice said.

South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry (left), who's seen here in a 2021 photo, was endorsed Tuesday by former President Donald Trump in his primary challenge to Rep. Tom Rice. Jeffrey Collins/AP hide caption

South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry (left), who's seen here in a 2021 photo, was endorsed Tuesday by former President Donald Trump in his primary challenge to Rep. Tom Rice.

The congressman faces a slew of challengers, including South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry. The 37-year-old was just endorsed by Trump, who called Fry Tuesday.

"He said he's been following our work at the Statehouse, from election integrity to the heartbeat bill to the open carry bill we passed last year," Fry said.

Fry believes he better represents people in the 7th Congressional District because he listens to what they want unlike Rice.

"He hasn't done that and continued to kind of poke the voters in the eye and they're frustrated, and I get that because I'm frustrated too," Fry said.

Also frustrated is Jeanette Spurlock, a single mother of three who says the district doesn't need another politician. She's also mounting a primary challenge.

Spurlock is angry that Rice not only voted to impeach Trump, but also recently doubled down, saying he regrets not voting to certify the election for President Biden.

"My heart is just aching because I feel betrayed and a lot of people do feel betrayed," said Spurlock, who was making campaign T-shirts in her spare bedroom.

She has no plans to drop out. She, like several others, just wants to run against Rice.

"That is one of the vulnerabilities of Tom Rice. Nobody would have thought of doing that," said Jerry Rovner, the district's GOP chair. "I mean, Tom could have been in that seat forever."

Rovner believes the impeachment vote could cost Rice his job.

He expects the number of challengers to dwindle following the Trump endorsement and says an open primary, one that allows any voter to participate, may favor the congressman in the strongly Republican district.

"So, if there's not a viable candidate on the Democratic side, he's going to get a lot of votes because people are going to come in and vote in the primary," Rovner said.

Rice was among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Capitol riot. Three of them have announced their departure from Congress.

But Rice feels he still has support in his South Carolina district.

"I will tell you that for every person that expresses disappointment, 10 people tell me thank you," he said. "Now, are those the people that are going to vote in the Republican primary? I don't know."

What Rice does know: His political future could come down to one vote.

See the original post:

GOP Rep. Rice stands by his impeachment vote of Trump. It could cost him his job - NPR

About thirty minutes into Donald Trumps speech Saturday night at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Conroe, north of Houston, the former president stopped playing the familiar rhetorical hits and a curious thing happened: many in the crowd began to leave. For the first half of his speech, Trump had kept the tens of thousands in his audience enraptured. He had been railing against Biden administration border policy and vaccine mandates (while extolling his administrations program to expedite vaccine development), when he suddenly turned to the ostensible purpose of his visit: endorsing a dozen or so Texas GOP candidates ahead of their March 1 primaries. But as he began to talk about the first recipient of his blessing, Governor Greg Abbott, the energy of the audience waned. The bleachers flanking the former president thinned, like the throngs of festivalgoers in 1965 had when Bob Dylan went electric. The crowd had come for something else.

One man wearing a Lets Go Brandon sweat shirt remarked to his friend, whod donned a Lets Go Brandon ball cap, that they knew what Trump was going to say from here on out and should try to beat the traffic out. An elderly woman, who had been sitting in a folding seat about fifty yards from where Trump loomed on the stage, remarked that she had been waiting to use the bathroom for more than six hours in order to save her seat, and now was the time to make her break. Theyd come to celebrate their devotion to Trump, after all. Texas has primaries coming up on March 1, but those were earthly matters; Trump could speak to their souls.

Indeed, the event was a reaffirmation of the hold Trump has on Texas politics. The whole grounds had the feel of a music festival, as Houston Chronicle writer Jeremy Wallace noted. Those attendees who had not, like some, started camping at the festival grounds 36 hours before Trump took the stage shared snacks and chargers with one another, and lit up cigars to pass the time in the two-hour line of vehicles to get in. Merch tables lined the entrance to the grounds, with items bearing messages ranging from the messianic (images of Trump alongside Jesus) to the action-heroic (the forty-fifth president as Sly Stallones Rambo or Arnold Schwarzeneggers Terminator). Parents brought toddlers, and teddy bears with Trumpian haircuts for them to play with; truck decals on countless autos warned of both the Q revolution and baby cowboys on board. One grandparent got up from his seat when Trump took the stage so that his elementary-school-age granddaughter could stand on it and see something shell remember for the rest of her life. Only a few were not there to worship: outside the entrance gates, an evangelical preacher warned that the crowd was forsaking God in its complete devotion to Trumpand received a chorus of heckles and curse words.

As much as the event was a celebration of Trump, it also threatened to be a rejection of the governor. Many right-wingers in the audience felt betrayed by his border policy, which they view as too migrant-friendly; a few opposing campaigns had plans to stir up audience members to heckle him. At the head of the main road to the festival grounds, a Trump 2024 broadside was obscured by a hand-painted canvas reading Abbott Is a Lying RINO. And outside the entrance gates, the audience could pose for photos with a handful of cardboard cutoutsMyPillow CEO and election conspiracist Mike Lindell, Melania Trump, and Florida governor Ron DeSantisbut not Texass leader.

About an hour before Trump arrived, when Abbott warmed the crowd for him, the governor took the stage to a smattering of boos. He had a vaccine against the jeering, however: repeating the name Donald J. Trump without much flair or expounding, ad nauseamsix times in the first 45 seconds of his address, and nearly thirty times in his six minutes, to be exactas if he were Ben Stein calling for Ferris Bueller. Are you ready for Donald J. Trump? Abbott asked. Donald J. Trump is ready for you. Donald J. Trump loves the great state of Texas, and Texas loves President Donald J. Trump. He is getting ready to come out here and he wants to see you show your support for our President Donald J. Trump. Now Donald J. Trump .. . Abbott began, before launching into a speech touting the former presidents support of the oil industry, and taking credit for working to finish the Trump border wall.Fittingly, he ended his remarks by leading a chant of Lets go Trump!

While Abbott faced the most opposition, he wasnt the only Texas politician to find the crowd restless and hard to control. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who took the stage before Abbott, briefly lost his listeners when he said Trump would win in 2024; audience members angrily chanted back that he should fix 2020in other words, reverse the election results. In a short address before Patricks, state attorney general Ken Paxton spoke of Trump in near-spiritual terms. Paxton, of course, had filed a doomed lawsuit to try to overturn other states election results in Trumps favor. He sought to highlight another round of lawsuits, his dozens brought against the Biden administration. Citing the Declaration of Independence, which he promised to protect, Paxton reminded the crowd members their rights dont come from Biden since they are God-given. He quickly added, They dont even come from Trump.

When the former president finally took the stage, at around 7:30, his speech, aided by a teleprompter, hit all the familiar notes, with some news pegs sprinkled in to keep things fresh. Even as Trump stuck to a well-trod script, with few of the meandering jests that characterize many of his speeches, the audience remained engaged and loud. The crowd roared as he called migration into the country an invasion and criticized Joe Biden for considering moving troops to the border of Ukraine but not to the U.S.s southern border. Laughs erupted when he mocked Biden as dementia-riddled and rhapsodized about Hunter Bidens laptop from hell, opining on how it might be influencing Russian diplomatic relations. And he received rapturous applause when he claimed that the 2020 election was fixed (earlier, Donald Trump Jr. had said it was the only thing Biden had fixed), and promised to pardon January 6 rioters if hes elected in 2024.The closest thing to news on this evening was Trumps dire warning that, if prosecutors take action against him, hed unleash a series of protests.

If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, he said, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere.

When it came time to endorse candidates, Trump sped through a whos who of Texas politicians in the crowd: Abbott (again to scattered boos), Patrick, Paxton, former governor Rick Perry, agriculture commissioner Sid Miller, seven congressmen, and two members of the state legislature. Other than a paean to Congressman Ronny Jackson, his former White House physician, Trump kept the shout-outs brief and they were met with polite applause. Superstar pitcher Roger Clemens elicited a few cheers, as did Catherine Engelbrecht, head of the right-wing poll-monitoring group True the Vote, which was founded to seek out voter fraud in Houstons majority-minority neighborhoods. No one in the crowd received a warmer welcome than Mike Lindell, who was present in the flesh as well as via cardboard cutout.

It wasnt just the politicians formally receiving Trumps endorsements who made their presence felt. So fully does Trump dominate the GOP in Texas that even campaigns that didnt win his backing showed up to solicit voters. Promoters of Abbott challenger Allen West proselytized outside the gate, citing an internal poll that found that nearly 75 percent of likely GOP primary voters thought Trump should reverse his endorsement of the governor. Former state senator Don Huffines, who is also running for governor, walked the festival grounds before Trump arrived, attracting crowds of anti-Abbott ralliers. (Many candidates who have not received Trumps endorsement coyly intimate palace intrigue; Lets just say that Im not sure the president is real happy with that endorsement, Huffines told me last week. Meanwhile, A.J. Louderback, running for a congressional seat in southeast Texas against Trump-endorsed Michael Cloud, who attended the rally, told Texas Monthly that Trumps endorsement was something I cant talk about. I have access, and I know what happened.)

During his speech, the former president seemed surprised to spot attorney general candidate Louie Gohmert moments after he had affirmed his complete and total endorsement of Gohmerts primary opponent Paxton. Hes very distinctive with the beautiful face, Trump quipped about how he had made Gohmert out in the crowd.

The campaign of a second Paxton challenger, land commissioner George P. Bush, also circled the fringe of the event. On the farm-to-market road where traffic was backed up for hours to get into the festival grounds, hundreds of tiny P. Bush lawn signs lined the shoulder, like progress markers on a marathon trail. Despite Trumps years of berating the Bushes, and P.s father Jeb in particular, the land commissioner had gone to embarrassing lengths to win his endorsement, even touting on campaign beer koozies the former presidents quote that he was the only Bush that got it right. If Trump hadnt given Paxton the nod, the event might have been the perfect place for Bush to appearhis grandfather is widely credited with helping flip Montgomery County from a Democratic stronghold to one of the largest red counties in the nation, and just twenty minutes away an airport bears his familys name. No matter: after the rally, as attendees ambled back to their cars, his flyers were waiting on their windshields like parking tickets.

Link:

Texas Republican Candidates Need Donald Trump More Than He Needs Them - Texas Monthly

Generally speaking, the Washington press corps and, in particular, the political reporters at the New York Times (NYT) are not ones to engage in hyperbole when it comes to Donald Trump. If anything, the paper of record has been downplaying the ongoing saga of Trump's Big Lie and all the evidence that's been piling up about what happened in the lead-up to January 6th recently. But this week's Trump news seems to have shaken even their jaded attitude.

For instance, the Times' Peter Bakertweetedon Tuesday, "Even for Trump it's quite a week -- first dangling pardons for capitol attackers, then admitting his goal was to have 'overturned the election' and now calling on the House to investigate Pence for not throwing out votes of multiple states so a president who lost could keep power." Then the Times' Maggie Haberman, appearing on CNN on Tuesday night, said, "it's been a breathtaking couple of days."This NYT pieceby Shane Goldmacher headlined "Trump's Words, and Deeds, Reveal Depths of His Drive to Retain Power" says it all.

Earlier this week,I wroteabout Trump's scripted comments at the rally in Texas over the weekend in which he promised pardons for the January 6th insurrectionists who were "treated unfairly" and called for protests against prosecutors who are investigating him. But that was just the beginning. On Monday, Trump put outa truly revealing statement(which some might call an admission of guilt.)

Republican leaders have picked a side and it appears to be Trump's. As usual, there hasn't been much of an outcry about any of this. Oh sure, a few have said it's "inappropriate" to talk about pardoning the January 6th rioters and there has been some tut-tutting about how "the process worked" but that's about it.

Trump followed up his confession that he wanted to overturn the election bysuggestingthat the January 6th Committee should investigate Mike Pence if they believe he could have overturned the election and ask him why he didn't do it. I would guess that's Trump's pathetic attempt at trying to clean up his earlier comment but it's incredibly lame and self-defeating. He shouldn't be pushing Mike Pence toward the committee Pence's closest aide and his lawyer both testified for hours this week.

RELATED:Trump is feeling the heat from investigations and wants his mob to save him

It couldn't have helped his agitated mood to see new details emerge about those crazy meetings in the White House after the election when he and his lawyers were trying to find ways to do exactly what he wanted Mike Pence to do on January 6th: overturn the election. I've been intrigued by the one that took place on December 18th ever since it was reported andI wrote about it just the other day. What we knew was already so nuts that it's hard to believe it could be any loonier --- but it is.

Recall that General Michael Flynn, Trump lawyer Sidney "Kraken" Powell and the former CEO of Overstock.com somehow got into the White House and proposed to Trump that he sign an Executive Order naming Powell as Special Counsel to investigate the alleged election fraud and order the military to seize the voting machines. What we didn't know until theNY TimesandCNNreported it this week is that Trump had earlier tried to get former Attorney General William Barr to have the Justice Department seize machines and Barr told him he could not do it because it would require probable cause and there wasn't any. (Barr resigned not long after.)

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

We also learned that when the idea of an Executive Order to the Penatagon was shot down by Rudy Giuliani and others, Trump directed Giuliani to see if the Department of Homeland Security could do it. And there was reportedly yet another draft Executive Order drawn up to that effect. In the end, none of the Executive Orders were signed and no one agreed to seize the voting machines. (Just imagine if they had actually tried to do that ...)

Until now, Trump has been portrayed as sort of passive in all this, simply receiving proposals from his minions and henchmen and not directing any of the action. It was never particularly believable except to the extent that he played the role of the mob boss who only has to quirk an eyebrow and his lieutenants know what to do. Fortunately for the country, as Salon's Amanda Marcottepoints out, Trump was saved by his lackeys and accomplices, either because they were too inept to carry out the coup or because even they had reached the end of the line with his lunacy.

But Trump can no longer hide behind his henchmen. We now know that Bill Barr told him that seizing the voting machines was illegal without a court order which requires probable cause and there was none. Yet he still entertained the proposal that he issue executive orders to the Pentagon and DHS to do it anyway. And according to the Times, Trump also made overtures to state officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania to have law enforcement agencies take control of voting machines, which were rebuffed. He was clearly convinced that if he could get someone to seize those machines it could turn the tide and somehow overturn the election.

Was it that he believed Sidney Powell and Mike Flynn's inane conspiracy theories that said the machines were rigged by the very dead Hugo Chavez or had been surreptitiously sent to Italy to have the votes changed? Or did he just think that making such a dramatic move would change the dynamic and make the state actors take action to change the electoral count? It's hard to know. Trump believes that he can change reality simply be saying things over and over again (and it works on about 35% of the population.) Maybe he just thought he could will it to be true.

These latest revelations do show us just how different these days are than 48 years ago when it was revealed that Richard Nixon had tried to get the CIA to block the FBI's investigation into Watergate. That was known as the"smoking gun"in that case and it made dozens of Republicans and conservative Democrats turn against him. He resigned days later.

What Trump did was worse.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

He tried to use the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (and for all we know the CIA and the Department of Education too) to overturn a legal election that he lost. And his party shrugs. Worse than that he is the front runner for the nomination in the next presidential election. If, for some reason, he is actually held to account for any of this -- or anything at all -- it won't be because the Republican Party lifted a finger to make it happen.

Read the original:

Donald Trump's having an awful week and it's only Wednesday - Salon

Theres a great deal of excitement in some quarters about the prospect of criminally prosecuting Donald Trump. Either for his role in the January 6 insurrection, or his efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election, or even for widespread financial fraud at the Trump Organization.

It is true that the Department of Justice has now charged some defendants with seditious conspiracy, and that, if such a conspiracy is proven, it could subject people who were nowhere near the Capitol, up to and including the president, to criminal liability for what happened on January 6.

It is also true that the New York attorney general is aggressively investigating Trumps financial dealings.

And it is true, too, that a prosecutor in Georgia has convened a grand jury to look into Trumps efforts to pressure the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes so that Trump would win.

Thats all very exciting and who knows what might come of it. But in all this drama, we are overlooking a lot of mundane illegal activity that also deserves to be investigated and, very possibly, prosecuted. Because sometimes you get John Gotti for murder. But sometimes you get Al Capone for tax evasion.

So here are three legal layupsinvestigations so straightforward that they probably wouldnt even require a grand jury. These may seem like minor offenses compared to seditious conspiracy, but a felony is a felony and a prison sentence is a prison sentence.

President Trumps efforts to threaten Ukraine into launching an investigation into Joe Biden resulted in Trumps first impeachment trial. But the events that led up to that trial, specifically how the whistleblower complaint was handled, have never been properly investigated.

To refresh your memory: Someone who had knowledge of Trumps call with the Ukrainian president filed a whistleblower complaint. The Office of the Inspector General quickly concluded that it was both credible and a matter of urgent concern. Consequently, the OIG had a legal duty to report it to Congress.

But when the OIG filed what should have been a pro-forma notification of the complaint with the Director of National Intelligence, something happened. Instead of facilitating the passing of the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees as the law requires, the administration began a frantic effort to bottle it up, permanently.

There are real questions here about who knew what, when, and what they did about it. It is not impossible that Trump himself was involved in the effort to suppress the complainteven though, as the subject of the complaint, he should not have been made aware of it, much less allowed to interfere with how it was processed. Theres written evidencefrom Senator Ron Johnson, of all peoplestrongly suggesting that Trump knew about the complaint by August 31, 2019 and was already actively covering his tracks.

But whether it was President Trump or someone close to him, its beyond dispute that someone made a serious effort to suppress the complaint that eventually led to Trumps first impeachment trial. We ought to know what exactly happened and if any laws were broken.

If they were, those people should be prosecuted. And if laws were not broken in this case, then we probably need some new laws.

Its now beyond dispute that President Trump regularly destroyed official records by tearing them into shreds. This was documented as early as 2018, when two federal employees, whose job it was to try and piece documents back together, were fired for discussing their job with the press. Just this week, the National Archive confirmed that Trump had a habit of tearing up documents when it provided several documents to the House Jan. 6 Committee which had been laboriously taped back together.

This wouldnt be quite as dramatic as nailing Donald Trump for the events of January 6 but it would be more than made up for by the bigly load of cosmic irony. If Donald Trump really did tear official documentsdocuments that are required to be preserved by the Presidential Records Actinto little pieces, then he violated 18 U.S.C. 2071, which makes it a felony to mutilate or destroy an official record. Whether or not someone was able to put the record back together later is irrelevant.

You might recognize 18 U.S.C. 2071. Its been in the news before. Its one of the statutes Republicans accused Hillary Clinton of violating when she erased the emails on her server.

When Donald Trump decided that hed hold part of the Republican National Convention on federal property and stage his acceptance speech from the White House, the Office of Special Counsel produced a letter explaining that this was perfectly legal because President Trump was not subject to the Hatch Act, which prevents federal employees from engaging in partisan politics. And even if it were illegal, the Hatch Act itself is fairly toothless and carries no criminal penalties.

But there is another statute, 18 U.S.C. 610, which does. This statute makes it a felonypunishable by up to three years in prisonto intimidate, threaten, command, or coerce any federal employee for the purpose of getting them to engage in political activity. And while its true that President Trump himself wasnt bound by the Hatch Act, all other federal employees, including White House staffers, were.

As many as a thousand Republicans were invited to attend the August 27, 2020 event. There was a stage, large screens and a backdrop of hundreds of flags, all set up on the White House South Lawn. It was a substantial undertaking. Putting aside whether President Trump coerced the federal government to make an in-kind donation to his campaign by making free use of the White House, are we really expected to believe that not a single federal employee was involved in supporting this event?

Who issued the security passes? Who checked those passes and screened the thousand people through security? Who set up all of the equipment? Who took it down? Who repaired the lawn afterwards? Were any of these people federal employees? Because if they were, unless these people spontaneously volunteered to work late on a Thursday night, then somebodylets call him Individual-1ordered people to participate in President Trumps presidential campaign. This is exactly the kind of thing that 18 U.S.C. 610 was designed to prevent. Somebody ought to look into this, if only to ensure that it doesnt happen again.

Perhaps the best thing about all these investigations is that they dont necessarily need to involve the Department of Justice. Since these are all potential crimes that occurred in the executive branch itself, they can all be investigated, at least initially, by the appropriate Inspectors General.

And investigated they should be. In America, laws arent just for little people. Theyre for everyone, including the president. In fact, they apply particularly to the president.

After all, the laws dont faithfully execute themselves.

Link:

Lock Him Up? - The Bulwark