Trump news – live: Ex-president says Musk won’t buy Twitter at ‘ridiculous price’ as Pence backs Gov Kemp

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Biden mocks Trump as ‘the great MAGA King’ in speech on economy

As Donald Trump’s chosen candidate David Perdue struggles to gain momentum in Georgia’s gubernatorial primary, Mike Pence has announced he will visit the state to get out the vote for incumbent Brian Kemp – a Republican who refused to bow to Mr Trump’s insistence that the state was stolen from Joe Biden in 2020.

Meanwhile, the select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol has issued subpoenas to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and four other GOP lawmakers who are close allies of Donald Trump: Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Mo Brooks of Alabama. Each was given the opportunity to voluntarily give evidence.

And the Department of Justice is now investigating whether former President Trump or any of his aides violated federal law by mishandling classified documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago instead of at the national archives at the end of his term.

On Friday, the former president shared some thoughts on Elon Musk’s plan to buy Twitter, saying the billionaire would not pay a ‘ridiculous price’ for the platform as it is mostly “BOTS or spam accounts”.

Key Points

• Trump says Elon Musk will not buy Twitter at such a ‘ridiculous price’
• Pence breaks with Trump in Georgia governor’s race
• Capitol riot committee subpoenas Kevin McCarthy and four other GOP lawmakers
• Prosecutors begin probe into secret official documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago
• Dan Crenshaw says Marjorie Taylor Greene is ‘going after that Russia Today slot’ in row over Ukraine aid

[13 May 2022 09:15 · Andrew Naughtie]

Fading pro-Trump candidate loses 2020 election challenge

David Perdue, the former Georgia senator who has Donald Trump’s backing in this year’s gubernatorial primary, has suffered a humiliating setback in his attempts to challenge the 2020 election outcome in the state., with a judge throwing out a lawsuit that he dismissed as a product of “speculation, conjecture and paranoia”.

Mr Perdue has failed to rise in the polls despite Mr Trump’s endorsement, and despite taking an increasingly aggressive stance in public. He has remained squarely focused on the 2020 result and the supposed illegitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency, but Georgia’s Republican voters appear unmoved despite their support for Mr Trump.

The lawsuit, filed alongside a Republican voter, sought a declaration from the judge that 16 former county election officials violated the Georgia constitution in their oversight of the vote.

Read more from Law & Crime below.

[13 May 2022 10:00 · Andrew Naughtie]

Rising “ultra-Maga” candidate challenges Hannity and Oz to debate

Kathy Barnette, the extreme right-wing Pennsylvania Senate candidate whose last-minute surge in the polls has alarmed many in the pro-Trump establishment, has pushed back on a torrent of negative coverage coming from Fox News’s Sean Hannity, who is openly supporting her rival, the Trump-backed Dr Mehmet Oz.

Ms Barnette was last night the subject of extended negative coverage on Mr Hannity’s show – and she has even been attacked by Mr Trump himself, with the ex-president declaring in a statement that she “will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats.”

[13 May 2022 10:35 · Andrew Naughtie]

Poll: Should Trump be allowed back on Twitter?

Donald Trump could soon be back on Twitter, after Elon Musk said he plans to end the former US president’s ban. And we want to know your views.

Mr Musk, who is in the process of buying the social media network, said the decision to block Trump in January 2021 was “morally bad” and “a mistake”.

“I think it was a morally bad decision, to be clear, and foolish in the extreme,” he said at a Future of the Car event hosted in London by the Financial Times.

We want to know what you think. Do you think Trump should be allowed to return to Twitter? Vote in the poll below and feel free to let us know what answer you chose and why in the comments.

[13 May 2022 11:10 · Andrew Naughtie]

Would you watch a ‘Maga version of Netflix’?

The pro-Trump right has for years been angry at large tech companies for supposedly censoring conservatives’ “free speech”, and since the end of the Trump presidency, its focus has widened to include the wider business world and the culture industries.

Disney is for now the top target, but also on the list are other entertainment giants who are viewed as insufficiently hospitable to hardcore right-wing thought. In the latest attempt to create a new ecosystem for that tendency, Donald Trump’s media company is recruiting for its upcoming streaming service in hopes that it will become the right wing’s answer to existing streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu.

The Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) made the announcement in an ad posted on Wednesday that described the streaming service, named TMTG+, as “a ‘Big Tent’ platform offering broad-based entertainment rooted in free speech”.

Sravasti Dasgupta has the story.

[13 May 2022 11:45 · Andrew Naughtie]

The astonishing cost of the Cyber Ninjas’ Arizona vote audit

The self-styled “Cyber Ninjas” who conducted an “audit” of Arizona’s 2020 election result reportedly spent $8.8m on their futile effort to uncover nonexistent voter fraud in the key swing state. That towering sum represents $2.1m more than the group had on hand.

More gallingly still, much of the money seems to have been spent on high fees for individual contractors, among them inventor and conspiracy theorist Jovan Pulitzer, who offered the use what he described as a technology that could detect “kinematic artifacts” – or folds in paper ballots.

The Cyber Ninjas, whose effort was mandated by Republican state senators, ultimately filed for bankruptcy last year.

Andrew Feinberg has the story.

[13 May 2022 12:18 · Andrew Naughtie]

Elon Musk’s Twitter deal “on hold"

Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur Elon Musk appears to be rethinking his decision to buy Twitter, if a tweet sent early this morning is anything to go by.

In his post, Mr Musk said the deal would be postponed until he could see the reasoning for the company’s claim that only a tiny proportion of accounts are fake or exist to pump out spam.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” he wrote.

The prospect of Mr Musk going back on the deal will be an unpleasant one for many right-wingers who hoped to see Donald Trump and others restored to what used to be their platform of choice.

Andrew Griffin has more.

[13 May 2022 12:55 · Andrew Naughtie]

Sign up to The Independent’s US Morning Headlines newsletter

As the Biden administration scrambles to punish Russia for its assault on Ukraine, Congress fights over abortion and the 6 January investigations steadily heat up, The Independent has launched a new US Morning Headlines newsletter to keep you in the know.

As the day begins, our roundup will bring you up to date with the biggest stories, exclusives, explainers, and the big questions of the day. Sign up below:

[13 May 2022 13:25 · Andrew Naughtie]

Laura Ingraham defends extreme candidate Kathy Barnette

After Sean Hannity spent a remarkable portion of his show laying into Pennsylvania candidate Kathy Barnette, his Fox News colleague Laura Ingraham followed up with a hearty defence of the surging right-wing candidate.

Ms Ingraham not only criticised Dr Mehmet Oz, who has been endorsed by Donald Trump for the seat, but hosted a guest to speak out in Ms Barnette’s favour – and warn that tearing her down could alienate Black voters whose votes the GOP currently struggles to win.

[13 May 2022 14:00 · Andrew Naughtie]

ICYMI: Prosecutors probing Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents

The Department of Justice has begun its investigation into how several boxes of official Trump administration documents, some of them classified, found their way to Mar-a-Lago instead of being turned over to the National Archives as required by law.

Under federal law, all records created during Mr Trump’s term were the property of the United States and should have been transferred to the archives by the time he left office on 20 January, 2021.

The investigation is aimed at determining how the boxes of documents were transported to Florida, who was responsible for boxing them up, if anyone was aware that classified material was taken out of the White House in a way that was improper, and how they were stored in Florida, according to The New YorkTimes.

Andrew Feinberg and Gustaf Kilander have the story.

[13 May 2022 14:30 · Andrew Naughtie]

Hillbilly Elegy director “surprised” by JD Vance’s far-right turn

Ron Howard, who directed the widely panned movie adaptation of JD Vance’s memoir of Appalaichan cultural dysfunction, Hillbilly Elegy, says he is surprised by the now-candidate’s embrace of Donald Trump and hardcore right-wing politics.

“I always knew he was conservative, but [he] struck me as a very center-right, a kind of a moderate thinker,” the director said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, reflecting also that the movie he directed “wasn’t ever meant to suggest that he was headed in the direction of politics.”

Around the time his well-received book elevated him to national prominence, Mr Vance was an unsparing critic of Donald Trump, whom he warned could become “America’s Hitler” and described as the political equivalent of the ferociously addictive opiates that had ruined lives in the region where he grew up. But by the time of this year’s Ohio Senate primary, Mr Vance had transformed himself into an ardent Trumpist and belligerent culture warrior.

Read more from Abe Asher below.