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NYT’s Maggie Haberman Reveals Trump’s Next Potential Running Mate

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New York Times reporter and avid Trump critic Maggie Haberman revealed to “The View” panel who former President Trump is considering to be his next running mate and has reportedly narrowed the pool of candidates down to two lawmakers.

While promoting her upcoming book on the 45th President of the United States, Haberman admitted Trump is laser-focused on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his potential to torpedo Trump’s chances of winning the Party’s nomination with his own presidential campaign.

Trump is “focused on Ron DeSantis in a way he isn’t on anybody else,” Haberman said, according to Mediaite.

“There are a couple of people whose names get mentioned,” Haberman answered, “and the one ho gets mentioned the most by people close to him is Tim Scott from South Carolina, the senator. And then Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is possibly the next governor of Arkansas.”

The mention of Trump’s former White House press secretary drew very audible groaning from Whoopi Goldberg, others at the table, and the audience.

“I didn’t mean to cause that. I’m sorry,” Haberman said, to which, Goldberg replied “it just came up out of my system.”

Former Trump Official Launches New PAC Supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis

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Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is already seeing a tremendous outpouring of support for a 2024 White House bid and he hasn’t even decided to run yet.

A senior Trump administration official and former Virginia attorney general has launched a new political action committee (PAC) to persuade Gov. DeSantis to throw his hat into the ring. Ken Cuccinelli served as acting deputy Homeland Security secretary under former President Trump during his final year in office.

The ex-Trump official filed Never Back Down PAC with Federal Elections Commission (FCE) in late February according to documents obtained by The Hill.

Cuccinelli launched the campaign to draft DeSantis into the 2024 race on Thursday, saying in a video that “America’s future is Ron DeSantis.”

“Ron DeSantis doesn’t just talk, he acts, but most of all he never backs down,” Cuccinelli says in the video. “Gov. DeSantis, today I’m asking you to run for president. You’ve had our back, now we will have yours.”

Two similar super PACS— titled “Ready for Ron” and “Ron to the Rescue” — which are not affiliated with DeSantis or his political circle are already up and running, raising money as they urge the governor to launch a presidential campaign. But sources in DeSantis’s wider political orbit have described those groups as “a grift – plain and simple” to Fox News.

Super PACs, known as independent expenditure-only committees, are legally allowed to raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, and to spend unlimited sums to support or oppose political candidates. Unlike traditional PACs, they are prohibited under long-standing federal rules from either coordinating or contributing directly to a candidate or candidate’s campaign. 

DeSantis is widely expected to announce a presidential bid this spring. (RELATED: DeSantis Lays Out Timeline for 2024 Decision)

Last month, the Republican governor told “Fox & Friends” we would make a final decision after Florida’s legislative session wraps up in May and after his book tour.

Trump launched his campaign right after the 2022 midterm elections and has consistently attacked DeSantis ahead of his possible entry into the race.

“I have been speaking to many grassroots conservative activists around the country who are very enthusiastic for Governor DeSantis to run for President in 2024,” Cuccinelli said in a statement. “The energy is there, grassroots conservatives see the Governor as a leader and a fighter with a winning conservative track record who will lead the Republican Party to victory in 2024.”

Cuccinelli is hardly the first Trump-aligned Republican to change allegiances.

Donald Tapia, a prominent businessman from Arizona and Trump’s former ambassador to Jamaica from 2019 to 2021, was a strong financial backer of Trump in 2016 and 2020, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the former president over his two elections but recently announced he plans to support DeSantis for president.

“The name-calling has turned a lot of people off,” Tapia said to Politico. “Let me tell you, we don’t like that.”

However, despite some grumblings among conservatives, Trump has consistently come on on top in various 2024 hypothetical matchups.

Biden Says Re-Election Plans Entirely Revolve Around Trump

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Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

Now we see where President Biden’s priorities are…

During remarks to donors at one of the fundraisers he attended on Tuesday in Massachusetts the President said he doubted he would seek a second term in the White House if Donald Trump was not also running for President.

“If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win,” Biden said, according to a press pool report from the event.

Another reporter also asked if Trump were to drop out of the race if Biden would consider doing the same.

“Would you drop out if Trump drops out?” the reporter asked.

“No, not now,” President Biden replied.

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), who is running a challenge against Biden for the Democrat Party’s 2024 nomination, responded to Biden’s quote on Tuesday, saying on X, “Says the candidate with lower approval figures and losing to Trump in every poll of consequence. It’s downright delusional.”

Trump has been narrowly topping Biden in head-to-head polls taken over the past several weeks, including in battleground states. 

President Biden’s age and leadership abilities have cast serious doubts among Americans that Biden is the right man for the job. Even former Obama adviser David Axelrod has openly questioned if it would be “wise” for Biden to back out of the race now.

Trump has dominated the polls thus far, however, his numerous legal battles are cause for concern.

Biden Drops Out Of 2024 Race

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The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

President Joe Biden has officially withdrawn from the 2024 race in a stunning development.

Biden, 81, announced Sunday he will no longer seek another four years in office after his physical and mental acuity were called into question following a primetime debate that broadcast to the world his repeated struggles to finish sentences, giving confused looks and fumbling through his answers.

The Hill reports:

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to social media.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks in National Statuary Hall on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, January 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

The president said he would address the nation later in the week about his decision. He did not immediately endorse Vice President Harris or any other candidate to be the party’s nominee in November.

“For now let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected,” Biden wrote. “I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.”

This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.


Report: Trump’s Approval Rating Takes Concerning Nosedive

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

The polls are in and it’s bad news for Donald Trump.

In the latest in a series of polls concerning the former president who is currently making a comeback bid results have shown other potential candidates soaring past him. The newest poll from Quinnipiac University shows Trump’s approval rating has sunk it its lowest level since 2015, according to The Hill.

The rating is Trump’s lowest recorded by Quinnipiac since July 2015, just after he’d announced his first run for the presidency. 

The poll, released Wednesday, found that less than a third of registered voters, or just 31 percent, have a favorable view of the former president, while 59 percent view him unfavorably. 

Seventy percent of all voters in the Quinnipiac poll — including 38 percent of Republicans — said they don’t want to see Trump as the GOP’s 2024 nominee.  

More than half of respondents (51 percent) in the Quinnipiac poll said Trump should be disqualified from the race due to his recent calls to terminate the Constitution

Recently, a Wall Street Journal poll also showed Trump trailing behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical matchup.

Donald Trump Braces for New Challenger in Presidential Contest

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The 2024 presidential primary field is filling up.

Entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy signaled to Fox News that he’s seriously considering entering the race and will give a final answer by the end of the month.

Ramaswamy told Fox News Digital in an interview that he’ll make his decision on whether to run for president before the end of February. The entrepreneur says his vision is about restoring the “national identity in America,” decrying the “vacuum” in younger generations who fill the void with “the poison of wokeism, and climatism, and transgenderism, and COVIDism for that matter.”

“Yes, I’ve accomplished things but so has everyone else who would be running in this race too. I think I am running on a vision that I believe I can articulate what it means to be an American in 2023,” Ramaswamy said.

The 37-year-old Ohio native warned the “real threat” to liberty in the year 2023 is the “merger of state power and corporate power” while knocking Republicans who “want to go back to 1980” and tout “Reaganite solutions.”

“The thing that distinguished Reagan is he did what he needed to do in his era. He stood up to the orthodoxies of his party and led a national revival at a time when America was in the middle of its last national identity crisis in the late 1970s. I think we’re in a late 1970s moment now,” Ramaswamy said. “I think 2024 could be a landslide election if we actually make it about those basic American ideals of merit, free speech, open debate.”

Ramaswamy is calling for a “total decoupling” from Communist China, who argued is “worse” of a threat to America today than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War since China makes the “shoes on our feet and the phones in our pockets.” 

Throughout his sprawling interview with Fox News, the multi-millionaire investor also pointed to the concerning fentanyl epidemic coming from the southern border noting the “unholy alliance between China as the supplier and its distributors within the Mexican drug cartels.”

When asked if continuing to build the barrier started by the Trump administration would be enough to deter criminal activity Ramaswamy opted to take a harsher approach while admitting his tactic is not for the faint of heart.

“Go Mohammed Atta, bin Laden-style, Soleimani-style airstrikes, special forces, you name it. We’re taking them out,” Ramaswamy said. “I think it’s got to be a shock and awe strategy so that they don’t have a cycle of adaptation. Again, not something you’re supposed to say in polite company.”

If Ramaswamy enters the race he is likely poised to be one of the youngest and richest candidates in the contest. In 2016, Forbes reported his net worth was at a whopping $600 million. Forbes reported former President Trump has a net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2022. 

In 2022, Ramaswamy founded the asset management firm Strive, which aims to be an alternative to what he calls the “woke” investment giant BlackRock, a major force in the ESG movement. 

His entry would make him the first non-elected official and the second first-generation Indian American seeking the White House in the 2024 election cycle, the first being former ambassador to the U.N. and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who launched her candidacy last week. 

Activists Seek to Disqualify Trump From 2024 Ballot

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Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

Two activist groups want to keep former President Donald Trump from the White House by any means necessary.

The groups say secretaries of state are empowered by the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from running for office because of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. The groups are calling their campaign “Trump is Disqualified,” and are timing it to coincide with the 155th anniversary of the 14th Amendment.

The Hill has more:

Starting Sunday, Mi Familia Vota and Free Speech for People will stage a week of rallies and banner drops outside the offices of the secretaries of state of California, Oregon, Colorado and Georgia.

The groups also penned a letter to Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar last month, calling on him to block Trump under what’s known as the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause.

“We’re really focusing on Nevada and California and [Oregon, Colorado and Georgia] to make sure that they are taking a stand by disqualifying Trump in those spaces, which is something that the secretary of state can do,” said Héctor Sánchez, executive director of Mi Familia Vota.

“Trump is responsible for the January 6th insurrection, plain and simple,” said Alexandra Flores-Quilty, campaign director for Free Speech For People. 

“Failing to hold him responsible not only violates the Constitution, but it also sets a dangerous precedent for permitting violent attacks on our democracy. That’s not a risk we can afford to take.”

Secretaries of state are charged with certifying eligibility of candidates and counting the votes in their state. Though Trump has been indicted twice and is under investigation in other cases, the groups say those are not disqualifying facts under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Larry Hogan Shuts Down 2024 White House Speculation

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Maryland GovPics, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) has officially decided against launching a presidential campaign.

Hogan, who has been a staunch critic of Donald Trump, told CBS News that while he gave “serious consideration” to pursuing the Republican nomination he ultimately felt he did not need to run for another office.

“I did give it serious consideration and I talked to people everywhere and I talked to my family,” Hogan told CBS News. “And it was a tough decision. But I’ve decided that I will not be a candidate for the Republican nomination for president.”

The two-term Maryland governor said it was not the idea of running against Trump that deterred him from launching a campaign but noted it would have been an uphill battle. Trump has dominated amongst 2024 prospective polls and handily won the Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC) straw poll.

Trump won with 62 percent, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), likely his closest rival, came in at 20 percent. Businessman Perry Johnson, who announced his candidacy for the White House this week, earned 5 percent.

Trump won last year’s straw poll at CPAC in Orlando, Fla., with 59 percent support. DeSantis scored 28 percent in that straw poll.

“That didn’t really scare me,” Hogan said. “You’re right. It would be a tough race. And he’s very tough. But, you know, I beat life-threatening cancer. So having Trump call me names on Twitter didn’t really scare me off.”

Hogan asserted he was not running to give other candidates who are polling in the “single digits” a chance to challenge front-runners such as Trump and DeSantis.

“I didn’t want to have a pile up of a bunch of people fighting,” Hogan said. “Right now, you have Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field, they’re soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention. And then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits and the more of them you have, the less chance you have for somebody rising up.”

“I didn’t need that job,” Hogan said. “I didn’t need to run for another office. It was really, I was considering it because I thought it was public service and maybe I can make a difference.”

Pence to Return to Iowa as 2024 White House Speculation Builds

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Mike Pence via Gage Skidmore Flickr

Former vice president Mike Pence appears to be inching toward a 2024 White House announcement.

New reports indicate Pence plans to travel back to Iowa this week, adding to the rumors he’s planning to mount his own White House campaign shortly.

The trip back to Iowa, the state that leads off the Republican Party’s presidential nominating calendar comes after Pence has repeatedly said he’ll decide in the spring whether to launch a 2024 White House run, joining a field of GOP contenders that already includes his one-time running mate – former President Donald Trump. 

Fox News first reported the upcoming trip:

Pence will start his day in the Hawkeye State in Urbandale, just outside of Des Moines, where he’ll give remarks at a breakfast hosted by the Westside Conservative Club. The group usually holds two breakfasts a month but added a third in March for the former vice president’s visit.

Pence will then take part in a fireside chat at a luncheon in Cedar Rapids, which will also include a book signing for his memoir “So Help Me God.” The former vice president will conclude his day in Iowa by delivering remarks in Coralville at the Johnson County Republicans Reagan dinner.

The stop in Iowa will be Pence’s second in a month and his eighth since the end of the Trump administration in January 2021.

While momentum surrounding Pence’s potential campaign seems to be building in an interview earlier this month Pence said Republican voters’ familiarity with his story affords him some breathing room as he makes his 2024 decision

“I think the advantage that we have is I think the American people know the Pences,” the former vice president said. “By and large they know our story and our career, and some are getting to know it better every day. So, we think we have time to be discerning, to be reflective, to listen.”

“I do believe that different times call for different leadership. I think we’ll have better choices come 2024,” Pence said in a Fox News Digital interview earlier this month, when asked about his former running mate. “I’m confident that Republican primary voters are going to choose well, that are going to choose a standard-bearer that will be able to lead us to victory in 2024.”

Trump Accuses GOP Primary Rivals Of Trying To Rig Iowa Caucus

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In a Tuesday video message, former President Donald Trump urged supporters to show up for the 2024 Iowa Caucus while accusing his opponents of cheating.

Trump began the video clip posted to Truth Social by thanking his “Trump caucus captains” and urging them to “turn out” their voters on caucus night.

“Teach them how to caucus. Take them in your car on caucus night. If you have to do whatever is necessary, we’ve got to get them in. We got to make America great again. So do whatever it takes. If you do, we will win and win big,” Trump said in what began as a fairly standard political message.

Trump then accused the process of being rigged.

“And that’s what you have to do. You know, the other side does cheat!” he insisted, adding:

And we’re not going to let that happen. We cannot let that happen. But that’s what we need from you. Get in your car, get a lot of people and get down and caucus. Give a great speech for me. I hope you will. And I know you will have such confidence in you as you had in me. And you have in me.

During the 2016 presidential contest, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) beat Trump in the Iowa Caucus and was accused of cheating, according to Mediaite.

“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump added and later threatened to sue.