A new poll of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire showed former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley— not Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — running second in the first primary state.
But they both remain far behind the frontrunner, Donald Trump. The former president leads his Republican rivals with 49 percent support in the poll of 500 likely GOP primary voters that was conducted after the second debate and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
But Trump remains immovable atop the field. And no other candidate cracked double digits in the Suffolk/Globe/USA TODAY survey. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie notched 6 percent support, while entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott got roughly 4 percent apiece. Former Vice President Mike Pence and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum trailed even further behind, with just 1 percent each.
The poll comes days before GOP candidates will descend on New Hampshire next week, starting with the former president on Monday and most of the rest of the field at a weekend cattle call hosted by the state GOP.
New York Judge Arthur Engoron issued a limited gag order for all parties on Tuesday after Trump’s Truth Social account made a post targeting the judge’s principal clerk while she sat just feet away from him in the courtroom.
The judge issued the gag order barring Trump and any party in the case from posting or speaking publicly about members of his staff after Trump released personally identifying information about his principal clerk
The trial judge, without naming Trump, addressed the court on the matter, saying “one of the defendants” posted a “disparaging, untrue and personally-identifying post” about his staff, and though the judge ordered it deleted, it had been emailed out to “millions of other recipients.”
“Personal attacks on members of my court staff are not appropriate and I will not tolerate it under any circumstance,” Engoron said.
He added that he warned counsel off the record about the former president’s comments yesterday, but the warning went unheeded.
In a Truth Social post that went up while Trump was sitting in the courtroom Tuesday, Trump targeted Engoron’s principal law clerk — who was sitting just a few feet away — calling her “Schumer’s girlfriend,” that reposted a picture of her alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a fellow New York Democrat.
It is unclear what connection, if any, Schumer has with the clerk.
Trump’s campaign on Tuesday also sent out an email shortly after the Truth Social post while the court was on a lunch break
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted 208-218 on a motion to table Gaetz’s resolution to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), setting the stage for a vote on whether he should remain in the top spot.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, McCarthy indicated he would not make any deals with Democrats in exchange for their support to help save his Speakership and Democrats would not offer any lifelines.
“They haven’t asked for anything. I’m not going to provide anything,” McCarthy said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“Hakeem Jeffries and I have a good relationship,” McCarthy said. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for me. I understand where the Democrats are. I’m not asking for any special deal or anything else.”
According to The Hill the only time the House has voted on whether to oust a Speaker was in 1910, in an unsuccessful move against Speaker Joseph Cannon (R-Ill.).
Over the weekend, the Florida Congressman told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he planned to make good on his threats to oust McCarthy this week.
“I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week,” Gaetz (R-Fla) said. “I think we need to rip off the band aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.”
“Speaker Mccarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January, and since then he has been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement,” Gaetz said Sunday. “This agreement that he made with Democrats, to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we had set up, is a last straw.”
As part of the list of concessions made during his battle for the Speaker’s gavel in January only five Republicans need to side with Democrats to oust McCarthy.
Five GOP lawmakers – Reps. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Bob Good (R-Va.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) – have said they are voting against keeping McCarthy as speaker. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) has strongly suggested he would do so as well.
A day after his New York civil trial kicked off, former President Donald Trump called on New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to reverse his previous ruling finding Trump liable for fraud.
In a Tuesday morning Truth Social post, Trump shifted blamed New York Attorney General Letitia James — a “Trump Deranged Lunatic” — for having provided Engoron with “false and ridiculous information.”
“Now that it has been agreed in Court that Mar-a-Lago is WORTH 50 to 100 times the Value the Racist & Incompetent Attorney General of New York State, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, ascribed to it (18 Million Dollars), & likewise other assets that were valued crazily low by this ‘Monster’ that has allowed Violent Crime in New York to reach EPIDEMIC levels, and dangerous illegal migrants to roam free all over our State, we hope the Judge will TERMINATE his first ruling of fraud in that he was given false and ridiculous information by the Trump Deranged Lunatic, A.G. James,” wrote Trump.
“In actuality, I am WORTH FAR MORE than the numbers put down on the Financial Statements, not less. In addition, there is a far reaching and professionally drawn Disclaimer Clause boldly stated on the FIRST PAGE OF THE DOCUMENT,” he continued. “This entire case should be thrown out and dismissed. The A.G. should be reprimanded and sanctioned for bringing this case with its FAKE LOW VALUES, in order to make me look bad. Election Interference!”
Trump’s ask comes just one day after he attacked Engoron as a “Trump hater” and “rogue judge” with “contempt for his own court system.”
“He [Engoron] should resign from the ‘Bench. and be sanctioned by the Courts for his abuse of power, and his intentional and criminal interference with the Presidential Election of 2024, of which I am leading all candidates, both Republican & Democrat, by significant margins,” argued Trump on Truth Social Monday Morning. “Likewise, Letitia James should resign for purposeful and criminal Election Interference. She is fully aware that Mar-a-Lago, and other assets, are worth much more than what she is claiming. Both of these Democrat Operatives are a disgrace to New York, and to the United States of America!”
Last week, Engoron sided with James and found Trump committed fraud by overestimating the worth of the Trump Organization.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)
ANALYSIS – General Milley’s comments were beneath him, even if Trump provoked him. As I wrote about earlier, former President Donald Trump made typically inappropriate remarks when he implied outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, due to his back-channel calls to China’s top general, deserved the ‘DEATH’ penalty for treason (all caps were in Trump’s post on Truth Social).
While no one should take Trump’s bombastic social media posts too seriously, I did say Trump was wrong to add fuel to an already flammable political environment in our country with his comments. I have also criticized Milley for his many overreactions to Trump’s words and deeds during his time in office.
In doing so, Milley made Trump out to be something he wasn’t, placed himself smack in the middle of the Democrat Party narrative of Trump, and undermined the commander-in-chief and the presidency.
In my view Milley has also been at the very least deliberately and willfully ignorant of the extreme woke policies the Pentagon has been pushing. Still, despite all my jabs at Milley, I respected his decades of service to the uniform and our country.
It’s a shame then, that Milley chose to take the low road on his way out of the DC swamp, demeaning himself and the institution, while himself politicizing the military against Trump.
Gen. Milley retired this week after four years as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We are unique among the world’s militaries,” the top military officer said at a retirement ceremony on Friday, noting that service members swear an oath to the Constitution.
“We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”
Readers will catch the parting shot at Mr. Trump. The media certainly did. And who could blame Gen. Milley for loathing Mr. Trump? Casually floating the idea of harming a U.S. military officer is conduct unworthy of a wannabe Commander in Chief.
Yet it was still dispiriting to hear Gen. Milley’s remarks about a former President, in public, while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army. Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Like it or not, he commands political support in the country. That doubtless includes a large chunk of the enlisted ranks of the United States military services. The end-of-tour catharsis of a swipe at Mr. Trump isn’t worth polarizing the force over politics.
I agree wholeheartedly with the Journal. Milley knows better, and with his bitter and snarky jabs at Trump chose to take the low road rather than the high road on his way out.
Despite my great misgivings about the truly woke new Joint Chiefs Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, I also concur with the Journal’s parting words: “We hope that turning down the temperature of politics in the U.S. armed forces is a priority for the new chairman—perhaps behind only the military threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Message to Brown: We need an apolitical military leadership no matter the provocations from any political leader. That also means being non-ideological and non-woke.
It’s a shame Milley couldn’t see that while he was chairman, and also couldn’t just leave gracefully.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – In what is only the latest weaponized, partisan legal action against former President Donald Trump, the far-left Democrat New York state attorney Letitia James and her leftist cohort Justice Arthur Engoron have just found Trump guilty of civil fraud before his trial even began.
Never mind that the case is obscene to begin with and should not even exist. And the law it is based on is obscene as well and should not exist either. Andrew McCarthy explains in National Review:
James, an ambitious progressive authoritarian who campaigned for office on a vow to weaponize the Empire State’s legal processes against Trump, decided to package the scraps [of leftover fraud charges no one else could prosecute] into a lengthy civil complaint. After all, she had a secret weapon: New York’s Executive Law 65(12), which empowers an abusive prosecutor to put partisan enemies out of business without having to prove anything. Although this provision purports to outlaw “repeated” and “persistent” “fraud” and/or “illegality,” in reality, as I explained last week in a column for The Messenger:
“The law doesn’t require a showing of harm. The state need not prove the defendant even intended to defraud anyone, much less actually defrauded someone. It need not be established that any creditor or financial institution even relied on the defendant’s misrepresentations, that those misrepresentations were material, or that anyone was actually fooled by them. The state just has to show that a defendant made false claims with enough “persistence” and “repetition” that at least two persons were “affected” — which, whatever it means, is not a synonym for ‘harmed.’”
Claiming Trump significantly overvalued his properties and assets when presenting his company’s financials to banks and lenders and that this somehow “affected” someone, James is seeking at least $250 million in penalties, a ban against Trump and his sons Donald Jr. and Eric from running businesses in New York, and a five-year commercial real estate ban against Trump and the Trump Organization.
The accusations are that Trump inflated the value of assets by $1.9 billion to $3.6 billion annually between 2011 and 2021 to save hundreds of millions on loans and insurance.
This, even though no one has been claimed to have been harmed, and all financial institutions take self-declared valuations like those made by Trump, with a grain of salt when making loans and other major financial decisions.
Bankers and insurance executives have a fiduciary obligation to conduct their own due diligence to determine what they believe are fair market valuations of assets. And they always do.
And as McCarthy further explains, everyone involved knew Trump exaggerated just about everything:
…this was for political consumption and the burnishing of celebrity. In the league of sophisticated financial actors in which Trump plays, where corporate departments are dedicated to valuation analysis because that’s the bread-and-butter of finance, nobody took this nonsense seriously. Indeed, Trump even included a “worthless clause” in his SFCs which, in so many words, warned that they were apt to be, you know, somewhat less than perfectly accurate. Many of the financial institutions that did business with Trump did so for years, and knew exactly the cat they were dealing with. They made loans and indemnified Trump because they knew, based on their own expertise and experience with him, that he was quite wealthy (even if not as wealthy as he claimed) and that he would pay up.
But that didn’t stop Justice Engoron, who ruled preemptively on September 26 that James had proven Trump and his co-defendants fraudulently inflated his assets.
Engoron, in his ruling, ordered the cancellation of certificates that 10 of Trump’s business entities need to operate some of his marquee properties — including Trump Tower and his golf clubs in New York — and said he would appoint independent receivers to oversee their “dissolution.”
The judge thus essentially imposed the corporate death penalty on Trump’s businesses BEFORE the trial even began.
Trump responded in a post on his Truth Social platform the day of the ruling, calling accusations that he committed fraud “ridiculous and untrue,” and hit back, calling Engoron a “DERANGED” judge.
In this case, I must agree with Trump’s wording. The judge is deranged, but he is also a partisan hack and embarrassment in what is already a highly partisan and embarrassing New York judicial system.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Good news for Team Trump!
On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a bid to disqualify former President Trump from running for office under the 14th Amendment.
John Castro, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, filed various lawsuits seeking to challenge Trump’s eligibility to appear on the 2024 ballot.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that no person shall hold elected office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
In a brief, unsigned order issued Monday, the justices declined to take up one of his cases after Castro lost in a lower court.
“The Supreme Court can deny to hear the case but appellate courts cannot,” Castro responded on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“I’m still pursuing decisions in the liberal appellate courts and there’s a full blown trial scheduled for October 20 in New Hampshire and a bench trial in Arizona on October 31,” he added.
Castro had argued Trump gave “his aid and comfort to the convicted criminals and insurrectionists that violently attacked our United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, which results in disqualification to hold public office pursuant to the self-executing nature of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
The Supreme Court’s decision comes as Trump faces similar efforts in multiple states to disqualify him from the ballot.
Trump, who waived his right to respond to Castro’s petition before the Supreme Court, has broadly attacked the legal push as “another ‘trick’ being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists.”
Chuck Kennedy for The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an interview that he would resign if asked by President Joe Biden to take action against Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.
While noting the unlikelihood that he would be put in such a position AG Garland told “60 Minutes” that he would not personally take action against the former president. The Justice Department has indicted Trump on charges relating to his effort to overturn the 2020 election and wrongly keeping classified documents after leaving office.
“I am sure that that will not happen, but I would not do anything in that regard,” he said on CBS “60 Minutes.” “And if necessary, I would resign. But there is no sense that anything like that will happen.”
Garland has largely kept silent about the cases and reiterated Sunday he would not get into specifics, but dismissed claims by Trump and his supporters that the cases were timed to ruin his chances to be president in 2024.
“Well, that’s absolutely not true. Justice Department prosecutors are nonpartisan. They don’t allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations,” Garland said.
“We do not have one rule for Republicans and another rule for Democrats. We don’t have one rule for foes and another for friends,” he said. ”We have only one rule; and that one rule is that we follow the facts and the law, and we reach the decisions required by the Constitution, and we protect civil liberties.”
A liberal group in Michigan is trying to keep Donald Trump out of the White House by any cost necessary…
On Friday, a liberal group sued to prevent Trump from appearing on the state’s ballot, claiming the former president violated the 14th Amendment.
The lawsuit marks the third such attempt to keep Trump off the ballot after similar actions were filed in Colorado and Minnesota. It was filed by Free Speech for People, the same group behind the Minnesota lawsuit.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which is cited in the lawsuit, states that no person shall hold elected office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
“The insurrection defeated the forces of civilian law enforcement; forced the United States Congress to go into recess… occupied the United States Capitol, a feat never achieved by the Confederate rebellion… and blocked the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America, another feat never achieved by the Confederate rebellion,” the suit reads.
“Donald J. Trump, through his words and actions… engaged in insurrection or rebellion, or gave aid and comfort to its enemies, as defined by Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the group continued. “He is disqualified from holding the presidency or any other office under the United States unless and until Congress provides him relief.”
A group of New Hampshire lawmakers urged their state’s election chief to prevent similar 14th Amendment arguments for their 2024 ballot, calling the attempts an “absurd conspiracy theory.”
Trump himself dismissed the attempts earlier this month.
“Almost all legal scholars have voiced opinions that the 14th Amendment has no legal basis or standing relative to the upcoming 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)
ANALYSIS – Words matter. In a post on his Truth Social platform last Friday, former President Donald Trump suggested that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserved to be executed after speaking with China’s top general during Trump’s final months in office.
Trump said Milley’s “treasonous act” was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Clearly, Trump wasn’t threatening to do so but saying that Milley’s actions could have been punished by death in a prior era.
I condemned Milley’s actions at the time because they seemed to give the Chinese Communist regime a promise that they would be given a warning prior to any attack under Trump.
While Milley claims his actions were a normal part of his duties, I disagree.
They appeared to be more a normal part of the mission that he took upon himself, which was to counter Trump when Milley believed the president had crossed some line only Milley could see.
Some argue that Milley’s actions were not only disloyal to the president but also borderline ‘treasonous.’
Milley contends that he was behaving appropriately to avert an accidental war. He responded to Trump’s comments on CBS:
He also assured viewers that he had adequate safety measures for himself and his family.
The two backchannel calls to China’s top general, Li Zuocheng, that Milley made, and at the center of all this, were revealed in the 2021 book “Peril.”
In October 2020, as intelligence suggested China believed the US was going to attack them, Milley sought to calm Li by reassuring him that the US was not considering a strike, according to the book. Milley called again two days after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol to tell Li that the US is “100 percent steady” even though “things may look unsteady.”
How much of this reporting in the book was accurate, is hard to say. But Trump sees things very differently.
Trump said that Milley “turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States.”
And Trump may be right. For Milley to do that could be seen as highly inappropriate, if not exactly ‘treasonous.’
Still, Trump, a former president, and current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, is way out of line. No American political leader should be using that kind of language against any American military official or political leader.
In today’s volatile climate, it is extremely dangerous.
Yet few in the GOP will condemn Trump’s statements. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is one of those willing to take aim at the Republican frontrunner. Politico quoted Hutchinson as saying:
To suggest that Gen. Milley should be executed is inexcusable and dangerous. While some will excuse this latest outrage as Trump just being Trump, the fact is that his statement endangers people and is an insult to those who serve in the military.
Perennial Trump critic, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had stronger words, calling Trump an “absolute child” for the “reprehensible” remarks.
But it is part of a disturbing pattern by both sides to use dangerously inflammatory rhetoric at the highest levels against the other side.
Democrats raised the political temperature considerably against Trump, calling for, or at least condoning the calls for, his beheading and death on many occasions.
The demonization of Trump by the left and Democrat Party was more than I had ever seen in over thirty years in and around U.S. politics.
It was, and still is, outrageous.
But Trump isn’t helping things with his own dangerous rhetoric.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
