Trump news – live: Ex-president shrugs off potential 2024 challenge from Mike Pence
‘Any of my fellow Republicans wanna speak out now’
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Donald Trump has laughed off the news that Mike Pence might run for president in 2024, shrugging that he “wouldn’t be concerned with that” even as his former deputy stumps for a rival candidate in Georgia.
Mr Pence has kept his public appearances mostly low-key since the end of the Trump administration, but has lately increased his presence on the campaign trail while insisting he was right not to try and overthrow Joe Biden’s victory on 6 January 2021.
Meanwhile, Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s longest-standing political confidants and White House aides, has revealed that the ex-president offered her a blanket pardon after the 2020 election.
In her new memoir Here’s the Deal, Ms Conway writes that she asked the president why he thought she needed a pardon at all.
“Because they go after everyone, honey. It doesn’t matter,” Mr Trump allegedly said. Ms Conway claims she “politely declined” the offer.
Ted Cruz spurns other right-wingers on Ukraine
There is an open rift in the Republican Party over how invested the US should be in the fate of Ukraine. Some are specifically sceptical of sending huge quantities of financial aid, as 86 senators voted to do last week, but others have more intense objections, with figures like Tucker Carlson questioning why the US should care about Ukraine at all.
The correlation between intensity of conservatism and bearishness is, however, not perfect: among those at the more orthodox anti-Russian end of the scale is none other than Ted Cruz, who has put out a muscular statement explaining why he views Ukraine as worth standing up for.
Conway on Kushner: “No subject he considered beyond his expertise"
Jared Kushner’s role at the centre of the Trump administration saw him getting involved in all sorts of policy areas, from Middle East diplomacy (where some major breakthroughs were made) to the Covid-19 emergency response (where his efforts to procure PPE for the government proved disastrous).
Now, Mr Kushner has been slated by Kellyanne Conway, who describes him in her new book “as someone who, as the president’s son-in-law, knew that no matter how disastrous a personnel change or legislative attempt may be, he was unlikely to be held accountable for it”.
Mr Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump were often mocked for their sometimes imperious behaviour on foreign visits, where they appeared alongside or even on behalf of Donald Trump at important events that usually do not host family members.
Kellyanne Conway skewers ‘shrewd and calculating’ Jared Kushner in new book
‘If Martian attacks had come across the radar, he would have happily added them to his ever-bulging portfolio’
Jan 6 hearings slowly coming into view
The first of the 6 January committee’s long-awaited series of public hearings will come on 9 June, but details of what the sessions will entail have so far been scant. But now the Guardian reports that the committee plans to hold a total of six sessions, the first and last of which will be broadcast at 8pm ET for the benefit of prime-time TV viewers:
According to the draft schedule, the June public hearings will explore Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, starting and ending with prime time hearings at 8pm on the 9th and the 23rd. In between, the panel will hold 10am hearings on the 13th, 15th, 16th and 21st.
The select committee appears to be planning for the hearings to be extensive affairs. The prime time hearings are currently scheduled to last between 1.5 and 2 hours and the morning hearings between 2 and 2.5 hours.
A select committee member will lead each of the hearings, the sources said, but top investigative lawyers who are intimately familiar with the material will primarily conduct the questioning of witnesses to keep testimony tightly on track.
Read the report below.
Trump rants about Twitter as Musk sale stumbles on
Donald Trump has said he will not be returning to Twitter even if Elon Musk reinstates his account there, instead insisting that Truth Social is the place for conservatives to be if they want to hear from him directly (though he only started posting on the platform after Mr Musk’s buyout became news).
In a new “truth” posted to the platform but also shared via email with supporters who don’t use it, Mr Trump has delivered another rant about Twitter that manages to fold in criticism of one of his most hated enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has successfully had the president fined for refusing to turn over documents in accordance with a subpoena.
ICYMI: Conway says Trump considered dropping out after 2016 Access Hollywood tape
Back in late 2016 when the notorious Access Hollywood tape hit the media, it briefly looked as if leading Republicans might try and force Donald Trump off their presidential ticket, replacing him with Mike Pence and drafting in another vice presidential candidate to take on Hillary Clinton without Mr Trump’s baggage.
Of course, the effort ultimately came to nothing. But according to former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, who was helping lead the campaign at the time, the ex-president himself considered backing out of the race. In her telling, Ms Conway responded: “You actually can’t unless you want to forfeit and throw the whole damn thing to Hillary... I know you don’t like to lose, but I also know you don’t like to quit.”
Read more from Graeme Massie.
Trump considered quitting 2016 race over Access Hollywood tape, Kellyanne Conway says
Vulgar 2005 recording released weeks before election day
Trump still complaining about slow Pennsylvania count
The Pennsylvania senate matchup between Dr Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick has still not yielded a result, and Donald Trump is growing steadily more frustrated. He has called on Dr Oz, whom he endorsed over the objections of many conservatives, to declare victory prematurely in an attempt to delegitimize the mail-in ballots that have contributed to the slow count.
Here’s one of the recent Truth Social posts giving a flavour of the ex-president’s disdain:
Pence gives strongest indication yet of 2024 plans
Mike Pence has essentially been on low-key speaking tour of the US ever since the end of his vice presidency, and while he has shied away from explicitly and directly condemning Donald Trump in public, he has stuck to his guns about his actions on 6 January 2021, when he eventually oversaw the certification of the electoral college votes in Joe Biden’s favour.
That has left the door open to speculation about Mr Pence’s possible intentions to make a presidential run of his own. And now, the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin reports that the ex-vice president has given his clearest indication yet that a campaign may be on the table.
Mr Pence is today campaigning in Georgia for Brian Kemp, the incumbent governor who refused to endorse the lie that the election was stolen. Mr Kemp looks set to cruise to victory over a Trump-backed challenger, David Perdue.
Fashion police: Trump rants at Birx about credibility and scarves
Dr Deborah Birx has long been slated by Trump critics for not only standing by his side during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic but for celebrating his supposed acumen in various interviews even as the crisis raged out of control and the then-president suggested the virus could be cured by ingesting disinfectant or “bringing light inside the body”.
Mr Trump himself, however, is no fan either, especially not since Dr Birx published a book about her experiences in the administration.
Kinzinger lays into Trump fans alluding to “civil war"
Adam Kinzinger, who aside from being one of Donald Trump’s staunchest Republican critics is also a military pilot, has called out fans of the former president who are defending him after he shared a Truth Social post about “civil war”...
From North Carolina: How a swing state Democrat is campaigning
Cheri Beasley is the Democratic nominee to take a run at North Carolina’s open Senate seat, and having made it through last week’s primary, she is now on the air with an ad funded by Senate Democrats’ campaign operation.
The ad is a glimpse at the kind of messaging Democrats are using in states and districts Donald Trump won or nearly won in the last election. Many in the party are worried that slogans like “defund the police” have hurt them among voters who rank crime high on their list of concerns, and Ms Beasley’s ad takes the opposite approach to say the least...
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