Daily Archives: February 8, 2023

Former President Trump lashed out on Tuesday at the Club for Growth, a leading conservative group, after he was left off the guest list of its annual donor retreat.

In apost on his social media site, Truth Social, Trump ripped the group as the Club For NO Growth and recounted how his ties to the group fell apart after disagreements over his endorsements in high-profile races in Alabama and Ohio last year.

He also blasted the club for initially opposing his candidacy in 2016 before repeating his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.

The Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers, fought me incessantly and rather viciously during my presidential run in 2016, Trump wrote. They said I couldnt win, I did, and won even bigger in 2020, with millions of more votes than 16, but the Election was Rigged & Stollen.

They asked to get together on Endorsements of candidates, we did, and had MANY WINS & NO losses. Relationship broke up over my Endorsement of certain great people in Alabama & Ohio. I won them all!

Trumps comments came after the Clubs president, David McIntosh, told reporters on Monday that the group had invited several prospective Republican presidential contenders to its annual donor retreat in Florida, but had left Trump off its list. Trump is so far the only declared candidate in the race.

Among those invited to the gathering are former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Weve invited all of the folks listed here, McIntosh said. Not Trump. But weve invited the others.

While he hasnt announced whether he intends to run for the White House in 2024, DeSantis has emerged as an early favorite for the Republican nomination and perhaps the biggest threat to Trumps hopes of recapturing the White House.

Anew poll from the Club for Growthreleased on Monday showed DeSantis leading Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head 2024 primary match-up, with the Florida governor taking 49 percent of the vote to Trumps 40 percent.

McIntosh told reporters on Monday that he hoped to have DeSantis deliver one of the keynote speeches at the clubs donor retreat, but said that the Florida governor is still finalizing his schedule.

McIntosh also expressed concern about the GOPs prospects of winning the presidency in 2024 if Trump is once again the nominee, saying that Republicans should be open to another candidate.

McIntoshs comments and Trumps subsequent attack were the latest signs of just how bitter the relationship between Trump and the Club for Growth has become. While the Club initially opposed Trump in 2016, it eventually rallied to his side in the general election.

After he captured the White House, Trump and the Club formed something of a political alliance, coordinating endorsements in key races.

But things soured last year after Trump and the Club backed opposing candidates in the GOP Senate primary in Ohio. Trumps decision to rescind his endorsement of former Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in Alabamas Republican Senate primary also caused friction between him and the Club, which continued to stand behind Brooks.

In November, on the eve of Trumps latest campaign launch, the Club for Growth released a batch of internal polling that showed DeSantis leading Trump among GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that will kick off the Republican nominating contest next year.

Al Weaver contributed reporting.

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Trump rips Club for Growth after he wasnt invited to donor retreat

Briefers would also be willing to discuss Beijings similar operations in East Asia, South Asia and Europe over the last several years, the official said.

The proposal to brief the Trump officials is the latest development following the militarys shootdown of a Chinese spy balloon on Saturday, seven days after it entered U.S. airspace. Republicans and former Trump officials said this week that they would have downed the airship as soon as it appeared, and criticized President Joe Biden for waiting until the balloon was over water before bringing it down.

Yet on Saturday, a senior Defense Department official said that Chinese spy balloons entered American airspace three times during Trumps tenure and once before during the current administration. The administration officials didnt detail how they learned of those events long after they happened.

Still, it helps explain why five senior Trump administration officials POLITICO spoke with on Sunday said they were never told of such incidents occurring when they were in office. This never happened. It would have never happened, Trump told Fox News on Sunday.

Im not aware of a single civilian national security leader from the Trump administration who heard of this, a Trump administration national security official said.

But the difference between past instances and the one from last week, Defense Department officials said, is that those balloons never stayed above U.S. territory for a significant period of time. When pressed for specifics, such as the date, location and duration of those instances, Biden administration officials refused to provide them to POLITICO, citing the classified nature of that information.

Some officials did speak in generalities, however. DoD tracks hundreds of balloons every day, but they are typically not deemed a threat. Their presence close to or over the United States would not be brought to the attention of senior leaders unless their behavior was completely out of the ordinary, like this one, said one senior Pentagon official.

At lower levels, officials have tracked multiple instances of balloon activity over U.S. territories in recent years. One of the Trump-era balloons hovered over Guam, according to two U.S. officials. And in 2020, the intelligence community assessed that much smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia were Chinese radar-jamming devices, according to a former senior DoD official.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a House Armed Services Committee member, tweeted Sunday that the Pentagon had informed his office that several Chinese balloon incidents have happened in the past few years - including over Florida.

Why werent they shot down? he added. And according to several Trump Admin national security officials - they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.

The other time a similar airship appeared with Biden in the White House was last February near Hawaii.

Those and potentially other events were seemingly not discovered in real-time. One senior administration official said the events went undetected.

Weve gotten better at detection over time, a second senior Biden administration official said, noting that those responsible for surveilling Chinese spy balloons can remain in government even with a new president in the Oval Office.

Before the Biden administrations new offer, Trump officials denied any of this ever happened. I dont ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States, Trumps second Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN on Friday.

This never happened in the first two years of the Trump administration, a former senior DoD official said. A senior Trump intelligence official said nothing like what transpired over the past week happened during all four years of the previous administration.

Bidens team has given no indication it will downgrade intelligence to make a public case that there were past examples of Chinese spy balloons above the U.S. from 2017 to 2021. At this point, all briefings will apparently take place behind closed doors.

In fact, all senators will receive a briefing on the just-downed vehicles flight on Feb. 15, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.

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Biden admin offers to brief Trump officials on past Chinese spy balloon ...

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