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    Former Trump Official Launches New PAC Supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    6
    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.

    Is Doug Mastriano Planning a Senate Run?

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    2
    Photo via Wikimedia Commons

    While Doug Mastriano’s November gubernatorial loss disappointed Republicans retired Army colonel-turned-state senator seems ready to strategize for the future.

    A new report from POLITICO reveals Mastriano’s first steps toward a potential Senate run in 2024 and it seems clear he’s not ready to throw in the towel when it comes to pursuing higher office.

    “What do you do with a movement of 2.2 million?” he told POLITICO. “We’re keeping it alive.”

    “We’ve seen people in the past, other Republican gubernatorial candidates, they rise and they disappear when they lose. Why?” he asked. “You have people that love you and support you.”

    Mastriano affirmed he is “praying” about whether to go forward with a potential Senate run in 2024. After God, his wife, Rebbie, will have the final word he said.

    However, if Mastriano does decide to mount a Senate campaign the Republican would run in a primary for the right to take on Democrat Sen. Bob Casey. Which is likely to be a considerable challenge due in part to Sen. Casey’s familial history in the Keystone State.

    POLITICO noted that “no one in the Pennsylvania GOP establishment is eager for that matchup. “

    Casey’s father, former Gov. Robert Casey Sr., signed abortion regulations into law that went all the way to a landmark Supreme Court case, where they were largely kept intact. Mastriano even noted that Casey Sr. was “more pro-life than most Republicans” before insisting Sen. Casey is incapable of living up to his father’s legacy.

    “I think he’s a huge disappointment. He’s nothing like his dad,” he said.

    Still, all signs point to the fact Mastriano is taking steps to position himself for a possible run. He’s planning an upcoming rally in central Pennsylvania, which will feature Trump lawyer Christina Bobb and conservative media personality Wendy Bell as speakers. Mastriano also led a hearing on the East Palestine train derailment over the border from the incident in western Pennsylvania, and he successfully pushed a committee he chairs to subpoena Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw to testify.

    He also hired Dan Cox, the unsuccessful Maryland gubernatorial nominee, as his chief-of-staff which has fueled speculation he might want to run for higher office again. He seemed to confirm the link during the interview.

    “Hmm,” he said, laughing. “Gute erkennung. As the Germans say, ‘Good deduction.’”

    Larry Hogan Shuts Down 2024 White House Speculation

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    5
    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.”

    Paul Ryan Refuses to Attend RNC if Trump Wins 2024 Nomination

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    35

    As more presidential contenders declare their candidacy some Republicans are taking the time to publicly break with former President Donald Trump well ahead of the 2024 primaries.

    Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is firmly against what is now Trump’s third pursuit of the White House and says he intends to keep his distance-literally.

    In an interview with WISN-TV, Ryan said he will not attend the Republican National Conference (RNC) if former President Trump wins the party’s presidential nomination in 2024.

    Ryan announced the results naming Trump as the Republican nominee in 2016 when he was the chair of the RNC convention.

    “It depends on who the nominee is. I’ll be here if it’s someone not named Trump,” he said.

    The 2024 RNC will be held in Ryan’s home state Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

    “I’m not interested in participating in that, no. Even in Wisconsin,” he added.

    Ryan, who was now-Sen. Mitt Romney’s (Utah) vice presidential running mate, expressed his doubts Trump will manage to win the GOP’s nomination.

    “The reason I don’t think he’ll be our nominee is because we now we’re going to lose with him,” he said. “He cost us the House in ’18, he lost the White House in ’20, he cost us the Senate in ’20, he cost us the Senate again in 2022, and he cost us probably a good dozen House seats in 2022. This is a lesson we don’t need to repeat again.”

    Despite his lack of confidence in Trump’s latest presidential pursuit the former House Speaker refused to throw his support behind any other candidate.

    On Sunday, Trump ripped into Ryan over his comments on Truth Social.

    “Paul Ryan is a loser, Mitt Romney could have won without him. I won twice, did much better the second time, and was 233 Wins out of 253 Races in the Midterms. Paul Ryan is destroying Fox, and couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in the Republican Party!” he posted.

    Since leaving Congress in 2019, Ryan has served on the board of Fox News’s parent company and as vice chairman of Teneo, a public relations and CEO advisory firm.

    Marianne Williamson Teases 2024 Biden Primary Rematch

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    0
    Marianne Williamson via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    It’s not just Republicans who have their eyes on unseating President Joe Biden…

    Former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, 70, teased a rematch against Biden.

    Williamson, a progressive activist, went viral during the 2020 presidential debates but dropped out before voting started. Williamson eventually endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president.

    Williamson plans to make an “important announcement” on March 4.

    She told POLITICO on Friday that she took issue with Biden running on the economy, saying such a campaign speaks to the “disconnect” between party elites and the American people. Her campaign strategy, she said, would be to “tell the truth.”

    When Williamson was asked bluntly on Friday about critics who say she has “no conceivable path forward” and another campaign would simply be a “vanity project,” the would-be candidate invoked other movements throughout American history. 

    “Abolitionists would not have thought that abolishing slavery was possible,” Williamson said. “The suffragists would have had days when they didn’t think women’s suffrage was possible. Civil rights workers would have thought that desegregation wasn’t possible.”

    “As America gears up for the 2024 presidential election, I’m preparing an important announcement on March 4th in Washington DC,” Williamson said. 

    Williamson rose to prominence as the author of 14 self-help books who made regular appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show. She ran a failed independent House campaign in 2014.

    Williamson’s entrance into the 2024 primary field would mark the first Democrat to openly challenge President Biden’s second term.

    Vivek Ramaswamy Announces 2024 White House Bid

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
    -
    6

    The 2024 presidential primary field is growing.

    Tuesday evening, Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy officially launched his 2024 White House campaign during his interview with Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

    “We are in the middle of this national identity crisis, Tucker, where we have celebrated our diversity and our differences for so long that we’ve forgotten all of the ways that we are really just the same as Americans, bound by a common set of ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago, and that’s why I am proud to say tonight I am running for United States president,” Ramaswamy said.

    “We’re in the midst of a national identity crisis. Faith, patriotism & family are disappearing. We embrace one secular religion after another — from wokeism to climatism — to satisfy our deeper need for meaning. Yet we cannot even answer what it means to be an American,” Ramaswamy said on Twitter.

    “The GOP can fill that void. E pluribus unum: from many, one. That is the dream that won the American Revolution; that reunited us after the Civil War, that won us two World Wars & the Cold War. That is the dream that still gives hope to the world. That is American exceptionalism,” he said.

    The millionaire investor and author has been hinting for weeks about potentially entering the race.

    Ramaswamy, 37, is 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. 

    If the anti-woke tech entrepreneur is elected to the White House, Ramaswamy told The New York Times his first act as president would be repealing Executive Order 11246.

    That order “requires affirmative action and prohibits federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin,” according to the Department of Labor.

    DeSantis Lays Out Timeline for 2024 Decision

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
    -
    7

    Americans may not have to wait much longer on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘s White House decision…

    The beloved Republican governor has been considered a potential White House contender for months but has remained silent over when Americans can expect a potential campaign announcement.

    On Monday, Gov. DeSantis indicated that he will make a decision on a 2024 presidential run after the state’s legislative session wraps up in May.

    During an appearance with “Fox & Friends” DeSantis charted out the next few months saying that he will embark on a tour to promote his new book, “The Courage to be Free,” and work through the Florida legislature’s regular session, which begins in early March.

    “We’re going to sell some books, we’re going to spread the message of Florida. And then on March 8, I have our Legislative Session that’s kicking off,” DeSantis said.

    “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he added. “This is going to be the most productive Legislative Session we have had across the board and I think people are going to be really excited … So those are what we’re going to be doing over these next few months as we get beyond that, then we can decide from there.”

    Republicans now hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature after November’s midterm elections, meaning DeSantis has a clear path to getting some of his biggest policy priorities approved.

    His remarks on Monday were some of the most explicit from the Florida governor on when to expect an announcement. 

    Donald Trump Braces for New Challenger in Presidential Contest

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
    -
    1

    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. 

    Pence Gives Strongest Signal Yet on 2024

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
    -
    0
    Mike Pence via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    The 2024 primary field is already growing and another challenger could be throwing his hat into the ring sooner rather than later…

    On Thursday, former vice president Mike Pence told reporters that Nikki Haley “may have more company soon” in the 2024 presidential race. 

    Speaking in Iowa, Pence noted that he wished Haley well and that she had done a “great job” during her time in the Trump administration serving as ambassador to the United Nations.

    On Wednesday, Haley officially launched her bid for the White House after months of speculation. Trump told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that he is “glad” Haley is in the running for the GOP presidential nomination.

    “Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. That has to change,” Haley, 51, said. “Joe Biden’s record is abysmal, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again. It’s time for a new generation of leadership.”

    Last month, Haley signaled that she was still weighing a White House bid during an interview, saying that the country needed a new generation to step up in 2024 and offering herself as a potential leader. 

    “It’s bigger than one person. And when you’re looking at the future of America, I think it’s time for new generational change. I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in D.C.,” Haley told the network. “I think we need a young generation to come in, step up, and really start fixing things.”

    Nikki Haley Secures Endorsement from Key Trump Ally

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
    -
    9
    The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is already securing key endorsements.

    On Wednesday, House Freedom Caucus member Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) has chosen to endorse Haley for president, dealing a disappointing blow to former President Donald Trump.

    “We are at a pivotal point in our nation.  While the Republican candidates, values, and messages have done very well here in South Carolina, that hasn’t been the case everywhere across our great nation,” Norman said in a tweet on Wednesday.

    “It’s time for a reset and a new chapter in national Republican politics, and there’s no better person to help write that new chapter than our former governor and my good friend, Nikki Haley!” Norman said.

    Rep. Norman was among the more than 20 hardline Republicans that withheld support from Kevin McCarthy during the contentious battle to elect the newest House Speaker.

    Following the tense Speaker battle, Norman was appointed to serve on the influential House Rules Committee, which controls legislation that can go to the House floor.

    The South Carolina congressman’s decision to stray from Trump is notable, Norman has been a staunch defender of the former president for years.

    According to The Hill, Norman has also been a supporter of former President Trump and voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results from Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, 2021. Text messages reported by Talking Points Memo show that Norman texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 17, 2021, encouraging Trump to invoke “Marshall [sic] Law” to investigate alleged election fraud.

    In comments to Fox News, Norman said that Trump “was exactly who the Republican Party needed at the time” in 2016 because he “reminded us how to fight what we believe,” but that the GOP has since “entered a season of change.”

    “We’re at a pivotal juncture, and most of the Republicans I know are now looking for new leadership with a new vision at the top of the ticket. Nikki Haley has that vision, and she’s going to be an outstanding President,” Norman told Fox News.

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