Category Archives: Donald Trump

A notable difference between Trump and Berlusconi is that the latter has lost elections without incident. Still, there are elements of Berlusconis long tenure that Trump could seek to emulate, not least his ability to stage multiple political comebacks (his latest, as a lawmaker in the European Parliament).

But perhaps Berlusconis greatest success has been in his ability to retain his base of loyal supportersa personality cult that continues to see him as akin to a god. This is one outcome Trump can likely rely on: Even in the aftermath of last months deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill, Republican voters still approve of the former president in overwhelming numbers, as do many of the Republican state parties across the country.

David Frum: Itll do

To understand the importance that a loyal base can play, look no further than Peronism. The populist movement, which dates back to the rise of former Argentine President Juan Pern in the 1940s, continues to be the preeminent political force in the country, more than four decades after its namesakes death. This has to do largely with how Pern came to power and, crucially, how he lost it.

Like most populist figures, Pern cast himself as an advocate of ordinary citizens, and, in many ways, he was: In addition to advancing workers rights, he oversaw the enfranchisement of women in Argentina. But, like other populists, Pern became more and more authoritarian over the course of his rule, jailing his political opponents, vilifying the media, and restricting constitutional rights. By 1955, after nearly a decade in power, Pern was deposed in a coup and sent into exile in Spain; his party was banned.

His supporters continued to be extremely loyal to him, thoughso much so that by the time Argentinas constitutional democracy was restored nearly two decades later, Pern won reelection by a landslide.

Part of Perns enduring appeal had to do with the circumstances under which he lost power: His forced exile created a narrative of victimization, which can really actually help to solidify political identities, James Loxton, an expert in authoritarian regimes, democratization, and political parties in Latin America, told me. A similar sense of grievance seems to be taking over Trump supporters. An overwhelming majority of Republicans have subscribed to the former presidents unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Early polls show him to be the favorite of the 2024 Republican contenders. This idea that he didnt really lose and that everybody is out to get him, Loxton said, add[s] up to this actually quite compelling martyrdom story.

Irrespective of whether Trump runs again, Trumpism as a movement is all but certain to be on the ballot. Indeed, a number of Trump acolytesamong them Republican Senator Josh Hawley, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeoare already jockeying to succeed the former president. Should they be recognized as the Trumpist candidates, the movement could take on a Pernist quality: one that is highly mobilizing, highly polarizing, and highly durable.

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What History Tells Us Will Happen to Trumpism - The Atlantic

Donald Trump has paid tribute to conservative American radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, who has died at the age of 70.

Limbaugh's death came a year after he announced that he had lung cancer.

A leading voice of the American political right since the 1980s, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Mr Trump last year.

The former president called Fox News to thank Limbaugh for supporting his baseless campaign to overturn last year's US election results, saying he still believed he won November's election.

"Rush Limbaugh thought we won," Mr Trump said.

"And so do I by the way. I think we won substantially ... You would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat. We don't have the same support at certain levels of the Republican system."

Mr Trump lauded Limbaugh as a "legend" with impeccable political instincts who "was fighting till the very end".

Former president George W Bush said Limbaugh "spoke his mind as a voice for millions of Americans".

Limbaugh pioneered the American media phenomenon of conservative talk radio and became an enthusiastic combatant in the US culture wars.

His appeal, and the success of his top-rated radio show, rose from his brash and colourful style, his delight in baiting liberals and Democrats and his promotion of conservative and Republican causes and politicians.

His radio show became nationally syndicated in 1988 and quickly built a large and committed following, making him wealthy in the process.

Mr Trump, who pursued right-wing populism during his four years in the White House, awarded Limbaugh the highest US civilian honour during his 2020 State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.

Former first lady Melania Trump placed the Medal of Freedom around his neck after her husband lauded him as "a special man beloved by millions of Americans" and "the greatest fighter and winner that you will ever meet".

The honour came a day after the radio star announced his cancer diagnosis.

At the time Limbaugh said he planned to continue to do his program "as normally and as competently" as he could while he underwent treatment.

Limbaugh espoused an unflinchingly populist brand of conservatism during a daily show broadcast on more than 600 radio stations across the US.

Long before Mr Trump's rise in politics, he was pinning insulting names on his enemies and raging against the mainstream media, accusing it of feeding the public lies. He called Democrats and others on the left "communists", "wackos", "feminazis", "liberal extremists" and other slurs.

Railing against left-wing causes from global warming to healthcare reform, he helped shape the Republican Party's agenda in the media and mobilise its grassroots supporters.

When actor Michael J Fox, suffering from Parkinson's disease, appeared in a Democratic campaign commercial, Limbaugh mocked his tremors. When a Washington advocate for the homeless killed himself, he cracked jokes. As the AIDS epidemic raged in the 1980s, he made the dying a punchline. He called 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton a "dog".

He suggested that the Democrats' stand on reproductive rights would have led to the abortion of Jesus Christ. When a woman accused Duke University lacrosse players of rape, he derided her as a "ho", and when a Georgetown University law student supported expanded contraceptive coverage, he dismissed her as a "slut". When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, Limbaugh said flatly: "I hope he fails."

Limbaugh had experienced a variety of medical problems over the years, including a loss of hearing, reversed by a cochlear implant, as well as an addiction to prescription painkillers that landed him in rehab in 2003.

Reuters/ABC/AP

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Donald Trump breaks media silence with call to Fox following death of US conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh - ABC News

February 18, 2021 8:05 AM

CNN

Posted: February 18, 2021 8:05 AM

(CNN) Lawsuits involving Donald Trump tore apart the Supreme Court while he was president, and the justices apparently remain riven by him.

For nearly four months, the court has refused to act on emergency filings related to a Manhattan grand jurys subpoena of Trump tax returns, effectively thwarting part of the investigation.

The Supreme Courts inaction marks an extraordinary departure from its usual practice of timely responses when the justices are asked to block a lower court decision on an emergency basis and has spurred questions about what is happening behind the scenes.

Chief Justice John Roberts, based on his past pattern, may be trying to appease dueling factions among the nine justices, to avoid an order that reinforces a look of partisan politics. Yet paradoxically, the unexplained delay smacks of politics and appears to ensnarl the justices even more in the controversies of Trump.

The Manhattan investigation, led by District Attorney Cyrus Vance, continues to draw extensive public attention. The grand jury is seeking Trump personal and business records back to 2011. Part of the probe involves hush-money payments Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to cover up alleged affairs. (Trump has denied those allegations.)

For more than a year, Trumps attorneys have raised challenges to prevent enforcement of the subpoena. The controversy appeared to culminate at the Supreme Court last July, when the justices rejected Trumps claim that a sitting president is absolutely immune from criminal proceedings.

The 7-2 decision crafted by Roberts left some options for Trump on appeal, but lower court judges have since spurned Trump arguments, and his lawyers returned last fall to the high court for relief. Vance agreed to wait to enforce the long-pending subpoena until the justices acted on Trumps emergency request.

The Supreme Courts lack of response has given Trump at least a temporary reprieve.

And his lawyers could soon seek more. CNN has learned that Trumps legal team is preparing to submit a petition to the justices by early March, based on a standard deadline for appeals, asking them to hear the merits of Trumps claim in oral arguments.

In Trumps October filing, his lawyers continued to maintain that the grand jury subpoena was overly broad and issued in bad faith to harass him. They said it makes sweeping demands and crosses the line even were it aimed at some other citizen instead of the President.

The process for a petition for certiorari, as it is called, could add months to the case. If the justices agreed to hear the dispute fully on the merits, resolution could be a year off.

A spokesman for Vance declined to comment. Lawyers for Trump also declined to comment for the record.

When the latest round of litigation began, both sides premised their October filings on relatively quick court action and alerted the court to their pact requiring Vance to refrain from enforcement of the subpoena until the justices acted on the emergency request.

The Trump team added that it would abide by an expedited schedule for its petition that the court hear oral arguments on the merits of the case.

The justices did not respond to that offer or to any part of the filing. Typically, soon after an emergency request and response are filed, the justices announce whether they will grant the requested stay. (A grant, rather than denial, takes five votes; the filings in this chapter of Trump v. Vance were complete on October 19.)

A majority of the justices might have opted against action close to the November 3 election, to avoid any signal for or against Trump in his quest to keep his tax returns private. But the election, the recounts, the Electoral College certification and the January 20 inauguration have all come and gone.

Now that Trump is out of office, the heart of the case tied to his role as president could be moot, irrelevant as a legal matter. But neither side has raised that possibility in a supplemental filing, nor have the justices raised the question in anything made public. And the election results have been known for months.

In their initial October 13 request, Trumps lead lawyers noted that Vance had agreed to earlier delays as the case progressed and argued, His need to secure these records did not somehow become uniquely pressing in the last few weeks.

Vances office countered that the grand jury has waited long enough. The DAs office argued that the subpoena to Trump accountants Mazars USA had been issued in August 2019 and that the high court has warned in past cases against frustrating the public interest by delaying a grand jurys work.

This litigation has already substantially hampered the grand jurys investigation, Vances team wrote.

Throughout the Trump presidency, cases involving Trump regularly split the justices. Disputes over his administration policies, such as the travel ban, often were decided by 5-4 votes.

Controversies over his personal financial records appeared even more difficult. Yet Roberts was able to convince seven of the justices to join together in the July case of Trump v. Vance.

In elevated language and reference to the great Chief Justice John Marshall, Roberts wrote, Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.

Roberts emphasized the public interest in comprehensive access to evidence. The majority said, however, that Trump could return to lower courts to assert certain state law claims, including that the subpoena was too broad or issued in bad faith.

Trumps lawyers indeed pressed those claims in a second round but were rejected by lower US appeals court judges. When a New York-based US appellate court ruled in early October, it said of the financial records sought, There is nothing to suggest that these are anything but run-of-the mill documents typically relevant to a grand jury investigation into possible financial or corporate misconduct.

Until October, when Justice Amy Coney Barrett succeeded the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court was divided 5-4 along ideological and political lines. It is now a 6-3 court, with the six Republican appointees generally voting conservative and the three remaining Democratic appointees voting liberal.

On the 5-4 court, Roberts, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, was at the ideological middle. That is no longer the situation with the three Trump appointees in place.

That changed dynamic among the justices may be complicating consideration of the new Trump v. Vance case. Even in the momentous July ruling, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch (Trumps first two appointees) concurred only in Roberts bottom-line judgment and expressed a competing rationale that could bolster a presidents ability to fight a subpoena. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

The possible scenarios involving internal debate over Trump v. Vance are numerous, based on individual interests and regard for institutional integrity. Roberts may believe that airing differences privately over many months represents the best option, although it leaves the parties and public to wait and wonder.

If Trumps lawyers still have no word by the first week in March, they would submit a petition asking that the merits of the case be put to oral arguments.

Under current rules, apart from the emergency framework of this dispute, an individual who has lost in a lower court has 150 days from the date of that decision to petition the justices for review. If the individual has first made an emergency request to block the effect of the lower court ruling, the justices usually would have responded by either granting or denying the stay Thats because the party seeking court intervention would want immediate relief.

Here, however, because Vance agreed to hold off on enforcement of the subpoena, his office, rather than the Trump side, is disadvantaged by the courts inaction.

The path the justices have taken or, rather, not taken has baffled lawyers following the case. Long known for its secretive ways, the court has added a new dimension of mystery with Trump v. Vance.

All thats evident is the justices have diverged from long-standing practice and hindered the investigation of a former president.

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The Supreme Court is still sitting on Trump's tax returns, and justices aren't saying why - Channel3000.com - WISC-TV3

Yet we too are sticking to a script, as celebrants in the impeachment managers bid to win the hearts and minds of jurors who have not shown ownership of either. Mr. Trump may have railed against it and had his surrogates fight it, but the trial has given a new spotlight to an attention addict whose rehab was not going well. He is not there, but this is still The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, about Donald J. Trump, featuring applause for Donald J. Trump, and starring Donald J. Trump as Donald J. Trump. His ego and his coffers need you to watch, to tweet, to rage.

So do you not watch, to enlarge the collective spiting of him? Do you give oxygen to an amoral human torch? The Resistance did not create or empower Mr. Trump. But we did make the classic first mistake of concluding that our insights, analysis and morality would convince his supporters that they were tragically wrong. When that failed, we made the classic second mistake of assuming we hadnt made our first mistake loudly or clearly enough. Im not ready to believe that we started it, but I, for one, have gotten loud and blasphemous enough to peel the paint off my walls.

Still, we cannot underestimate the power of righteous and organic hatred to overwhelm everything else. It is hard to fathom now, but in the epic sitcom All in the Family, one of the best running jokes consisted entirely of Carroll OConnors Archie Bunker getting in the face of Bea Arthurs Maude Findlay and announcing the identity of the worst president in history. He would elongate it and he would mispronounce it and when he would intone Fraaaaanklin. Delllllano. Roooooooosevelt!; she would erupt in paroxysms of liberal rage at his heresy.

These political passion plays were performed some 25 years after Roosevelt died, and were thus a real-time testament to something the half century since has erased: Beloved and revered as he may have been, F.D.R. was also passionately hated and blamed, and his memory alone could start political fistfights into at least the 1970s.

One wonders if the visceral hatred of Mr. Trump will end that soon. Or if it ever will.

Just as I have far more history with Mr. Trump than I would have wished, I also have some standing on the subject of people consuming political Soylent that they clearly dont like, dont want to see, and dont want to eat.

At roughly this time of year in 1998, I was at the Super Bowl on assignment for NBC and also doing a week of celebrity-themed shows for my little niche, boutique, offbeat news hour on MSNBC. We were all set up to interview John Lithgow in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen set of Third Rock From the Sun when my producer advised there had been a slight change in plans: I would instead be interviewing Tim Russert via satellite from Washington, because the president might be resigning over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Our audience first doubled, then trebled. The heady, news-packed and unpredictable early days of the show we subtly renamed White House in Crisis made for compelling viewing. Then came an enormous cloud of the kind of illogic which may apply to whatever follows Mr. Trumps second impeachment trial.

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Opinion | Is This the End of Obsessively Hating Donald Trump? - The New York Times

On the eve of Election Day in 2016, Donald Trump made a characteristically boastful statement about his base of support.

Trump credited himself with building the single greatest movement, politically speaking, in the history of this country.

The next day, the American electorate seemingly proved his point. Voters defied the polls and sent Trump, a willfully crass New York mogul with no governmental experience, to the White House.

The funny thing about Trumps 2016 triumph, however, is that it had none of the earmarks of a movement election.

All appearances aside, Trump didnt win by building a huge grassroots following.

In fact, he got less than 26 percent of all eligible voters, a smaller percentage than the two previous Republican presidential nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney, both of whom lost in decisive fashion.

Trump benefited not from an excited electorate, but from a depressed one.

Even though his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, received nearly three million more popular votes than he did, enough traditional Democratic voters were turned off by the options they had been given to stay home. That lack of enthusiasm enabled Trump to win by default in the critical swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trumps movement primarily was built after he became president, when millions of people who voted for him grudgingly in 2016 turned into deeply committed followers.

I cant count the number of conversations Ive had over the past couple of years with Trump loyalists who voted for him in 2016 either because they hated Clinton or they figured theyd roll the dice with a non-politician. It was only after the election that many of these voters came to believe in Trump as a great leader.

As his following intensified, however, Trumps electoral fortunes diminished.

Over the past four years, his party lost its majority in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, and Trump became only the third elected president in the past 85 years to get voted out of office.

The ironic turns in Trumps fortunes are dissected in a 27-page 2020 campaign postmortem, written by Trumps chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and released last week by Politico.

The postmortem attempts to explain how Trump pulled off the remarkable feat of generating nearly 12 million more votes than he did in 2016, while losing five key states he won in that first election.

Fabrizios report is based on exit-poll analysis of voter behavior in 10 swing states (including Texas) that Trump carried in 2016. In 2020, Trump held five of those states. The other five (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) flipped to Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

One of the most telling pieces of the report concerns self-identified independent voters.

In the five election-deciding states that flipped from Trump to Biden, independents made up 28 percent of voters.

In 2016, Trump won the independent vote in those states by 10 percentage points. In 2020, he lost independents by nine percentage points. Given the thin margins in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, that 19-point swing basically decided the election.

Trumps loss of support was primarily among white men, and largely concentrated among the youngest and oldest segments of the electorate.

Trumps rabidly enthusiastic rally crowds probably convinced him that his downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic and his eagerness to fully re-open the economy put him in tune with the mood of the country.

In fact, however, Fabrizios report indicates that a strong plurality of voters across the 10 swing states viewed the coronavirus as the most important issue in the country.

More than 70 percent of voters in those states approved of the job performance of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations leading epidemiologist, and a frequent target of abuse among Trumps most ardent backers.

More than 75 percent of voters in these 10 states supported a public mask mandate, a policy prescription that Trump generally treated with derision. Among swing-state voters who considered the pandemic to be the most important issue, Biden beat Trump by 45 percentage points.

Trumps relentless disregard for the truth also did him no favors at a time of national crisis. Only 41 percent of voters in the five swing states that flipped from red to blue regarded Trump as trustworthy.

Fabrizios report tells the story of a president whose cult of personality couldnt help him overcome the basic laws of political gravity. The more he stirred up his base with red meat, the more he convinced his devotees that the election was a crusade with near-religious implications, the more he scared off everyone else.

As his base grew bigger and more intense, so did his opposition. For Trump, an enthused electorate meant defeat. Apathy, it turns out, was his best friend.

ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470

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Garcia: 2020 election postmortem: The more Trump stirred up his base, the more he scared off everyone else - San Antonio Express-News

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Gov. Mike DeWine continues to tout the rapid coronavirus vaccinations in the states nursing homes, but the program is run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Were talking about who deserves credit on This Week in the CLE.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editors Jane Kahoun, Kris Wernowsky and me.

Youve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom account, in which he shares what were thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions were answering today:

Why does it look a lot more certain that Dr. Amy Acton will be a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Ohio?

Should Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine be taking credit for the success of the nursing home coronavirus vaccination success?

Dennis Kucinich made his bones back in the day by fighting off the attempt to end what is now Cleveland Public Power. Why does that make his campaign finance form so much more interesting as he plans a possible run for mayor?

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine limits indoor gatherings to 300 because of the coronavirus, so what is the thinking behind giving the Cavs their second exemption to it and letting more than 2,700 fans watch the games at the arena?

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Why Donald Trump -- not Gov. Mike DeWine -- should get credit for Ohio nursing home vaccinations: This Week i - cleveland.com

Although public opinion doesnt determine the outcome of impeachment trials, it shapes the environment within which senators must decide. Based on multiple polls conducted during the past month, here are five key facts about Americans sentiment as Donald Trumps second Senate trial looms.

With former president Trumps trial set to begin in the Senate, a clear but not overwhelming majority of Americans favor removing him from office. In surveys conducted by 6 different polling organizations between January 10 and February, support for his removal averaged 52%, while 42% were opposed.[i]

There have been no clear trends in public opinion in the month since the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. One of the earliest surveys, conducted by Quinnipiac University between January 7th and 10th, found 52% favoring removal and 45% opposed. The next Quinnipiac poll (January 15-17) reported a 54-42 split, while the latest (January 28-February) put it at 50-45. Similarly, a comparison among the different polling organizations found no trend. It appears that most people made up their minds early on and havent changed them.

Although many observers believe that the case against Mr. Trump is significantly stronger than it was in his first impeachment trial, the share of Americans who want to see him convicted is only modestly higher than it was a year ago. Between December 18, 2019, when the House impeached then-President Trump for the first time, and on February 5, 2020, when the Senate acquitted him, support for removing him from office averaged between 46.4 and 48.5%. This was between 4 and 6 points lower than the average in support of conviction during the past four weeks of this, his second impeachment trial.

Support for barring Donald Trump from future public office, which averages 56%, is somewhat higher than for just convicting him. The Monmouth University survey found that when respondents who opposed conviction but favored barring him from office were told that he could not be barred unless he was convicted, support for conviction rose from 52 to 55%. With 56% of the public wanting to bar him from public office, Trump will face steep odds against regaining the presidency in 2024, even if he is acquitted.

Patterns of support for convicting or acquitting Mr. Trump closely mirror the divisions that prevailed throughout his presidency. Nearly all Democrats support conviction, while nearly all Republicans opt for acquittal. Non-whites favor conviction more than whites, women more than men, and whites with college degrees more than whites without them. According to Quinnipiac, the gender gap among white Americans was a stunning 23 points: 56% of white women favored conviction, compared to just 33% of white men.

As we begin Trumps second impeachment trial, it is hard to distinguish judgments about convicting him from judgments about the Trump presidency and Trump the man. The share of Americans who support convicting him is almost identical to the share who ousted him from office by voting for Joe Biden. Seventeen Republican senators would need to join all the Senate Democrats to convict Trump in his second trial. But so long as Senate Republicans from red states fear the wrath of their voters if they break ranks, few are likely to do so. The court of public opinion will have to move more strongly in favor of conviction to influence wavering Republicans, and so far, theres scant evidence that this will happen.

[i] Sources: Monmouth University, The New York Times, Times of San Diego, Politico, CS Monitor, Quinnipiac University

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Should the Senate convict Donald Trump? Heres what the American people think - Brookings Institution

BuzzFeed News; Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trumps campaign and Parler about Trumps potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company. It is unclear as to what extent the former president was involved with the discussions.

The never-before-reported talks between Trumps business organization and Parler, a social media network that promises less moderation than mainstream sites and is embraced by the far right, provide more insight into the frantic last weeks of Trumps presidency. Until the Jan. 6 insurrection, after which Facebook and Twitter suspended or banned him for continuing to sow discord about the election, Trump used those internet platforms to peddle baseless conspiracy theories. While doing so, his representatives actively negotiated to bring him to Parler, which sought to make the president a business partner who would help it compete with Twitter and Facebook by getting him to post his content on its platform first.

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale raised the idea to Trump of taking an ownership stake in Parler during a meeting last year at the White House, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. Parscale had taken an early interest in Parler, and reportedly considered creating an account for Trump on the site in 2019 as a bulwark against Twitter and Facebook.

Brad Parscale, former manager of President Donald Trump's reelection campaign, in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 30, 2020

Four sources told BuzzFeed News that Parscale and Trump campaign lawyer Alex Cannon met with Parler CEO John Matze and shareholders Dan Bongino and Jeffrey Wernick at Trumps Florida club Mar-a-Lago in June 2020 to discuss the idea. But the White House counsels office soon put a stop to the talks, one person with knowledge of the discussions said, ruling that such a deal while Trump was president would violate ethics rules.

The president was never part of the discussions, Parscale told BuzzFeed News. The discussions were never that substantive. And this was just one of many things the campaign was looking into to deal with the cancel culture of Silicon Valley.

Parscale was replaced as the Trump campaign manager in July.

Discussions were revived in the weeks following the election, according to two people involved, but the deal fell apart after the Capitol invasion. Following that event, Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores, and Amazon kicked the company off its cloud hosting service, forcing the site offline. The tech giants determined that Parler had not done enough to moderate hate speech and calls for violence on its platform before, during, and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

When reached by phone on Friday, Wernick, who called himself an adviser to the company, said that there had been discussions with the Trump Organization about bringing Trump onto the platform, but that the former president had not been involved in those conversations. He also said there were inaccuracies in what BuzzFeed News was reporting, but did not provide specifics on what, if anything, was inaccurate.

We have spoken to several people about potential stakes in the company for producing certain things, Wernick said. He declined to get into the specifics of negotiations citing nondisclosure agreements he said were in place between Parler and the Trump Organization.

Cannon and Matze declined to comment. Bongino and a Parler spokesperson did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

A Trump Organization spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

John Matze during an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight

Founded in 2018 by former college roommates John Matze and Jared Thomson, and Rebekah Mercer, the right-wing political donor and daughter of hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer, Parler focused on building a social network that would serve as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter by taking a more lax approach to content moderation. It billed itself as a site that allowed free expression.

While it struggled to gain traction in its early months, it soon became a home for conservative and far-right personalities who had been suspended or banned from mainstream social media. By late 2020, it had become a go-to online gathering place for hate groups, conspiracy theorists, and believers in the QAnon mass delusion, as well as prominent Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Devin Nunes.

On Wednesday, Matze told the Wall Street Journal that the site had 15 million users, including the former presidents sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., as well as various current and former members of Trumps staff.

Donald Trump, however, never maintained a verified account on that platform, and preferred to keep his daily missives to Twitter and Facebook, where his audience was much larger. He had 88 million followers on Twitter and more than 35 million followers on Facebook before his Twitter ban and indefinite Facebook suspension last month. Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, intervened to keep him off Parler during his last days in office, according to Bloomberg News.

However, in negotiations with the Trump Organization, Parler offered a 40% stake in the company, according to a December document seen by BuzzFeed News and two people with direct knowledge of the proposed deal. Upon completion of that deal, half of that stake would have been given immediately to the Trump Organization, while the other half would have been doled out in tranches over the 24-month period of the agreement.

The Trump Organization, which oversees Trumps brand and real estate interests, is a collection of hundreds of businesses that are owned or controlled by Donald Trump.

As part of the agreement, Parler wanted Trump to make it his primary social network. According to the documents, Trump would have had to post all his social content including daily posts, video, and livestreaming on Parler for at least four hours before putting it on any other platform.

As part of the deal, Parler also asked that Trump link back to Parler when posting to other social media sites or emailing his supporters, and to allow the company to use his email lists to promote its platform. In addition, Parler wanted Trump to make introductions to any potential investors or advertisers.

People familiar with the discussions said they were unclear if Trump was involved with negotiations, which were led from Parlers side by two shareholders, Wernick and Bongino, a popular right-wing personality with close ties to Trump.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor at the Washington University in St. Louis, said that, had the deal gone through while Trump was still in office, both Parler and the president could have been in violation of anti-bribery laws. Because the former president often used his Twitter and Facebook accounts to make official communications for example, announcing the firings of government officials seeking to gain something in exchange for making posts exclusive to another platform could be illegal.

I think it would have actually violated the bribery statute in that he would have been offered something of value a stake in this company in exchange for influencing an official act the act of where to publish his official comments, Clark said.

Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said the news warranted an immediate criminal investigation. A companys mere act of offering a stake for the presidents participation looks unethical and deserves further scrutiny, he noted.

While then-president Trump bragged that ethics rules didnt apply to him, bribery laws do apply, and courts have held that Trumps social media posts constituted official business while he was in office, Amey said. His posts were a preferred method for the White House to communicate with the public. If the offer included anything of value, and Trump planned to post on a social media platform while he was still in office, that would almost certainly be illegal, and he should be held accountable.

Discussions to bring Trump onto Parler were ultimately derailed by the events of Jan. 6. After months of casting doubt on election results and calling for violence on social media platforms, the presidents supporters stormed the US Capitol. Some posted pictures or videos of their exploits to Parler, which had become a breeding ground for organizing hate and threats ahead of the riot.

The blowback for the company came fast, culminating in Parlers removal from Apple and Googles app stores and Amazon Web Services.

Rebekah Mercer attends the Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017, in New York City.

Matze, who said he was fired as Parler CEO last week by Mercer, told the Journal that before he was fired he had tried to implement more content moderation so that Apple and Google would allow the app back into their app stores. He said his suggestion to ban groups based on affiliations with designated domestic terrorism organizations was ultimately resisted by the board.

In a press statement on Thursday, Amy Peikoff, Parlers chief policy officer, called Matzes characterization of his termination misleading but did not say what exactly was inaccurate.

The owners and managers of the company worked tirelessly to build a resilient, non-partisan platform dedicated to freedom of expression, civil discourse, and user privacy, she said in the statement.

With Parlers management in flux, its unclear when the app will come back online. With Matze gone, Mercer who maintains majority control has reportedly designated responsibilities to Matthew Richardson, a British lawyer, and Mark Meckler, a former tea party activist, according to a source.

Mercer, Richardson, and Meckler did not respond to requests for comment.

The company also recently attempted to raise funding, including from Narya Capital, the venture capital firm of J.D. Vance, the author of the popular memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Two sources told BuzzFeed News that Vance has also advised Mercer on matters regarding Parler.

J.D. Vance in Sun Valley, Idaho, July 12, 2017

Vance did not provide a comment for this story.

With no major social media outlet, Trump, who was impeached for his role in inciting the insurrection and will face a Senate trial next week, has been communicating with the public largely through the email list for his post-presidency office. Parler remains dormant, with a note that reads, We will resolve any challenge before us and plan to welcome all of you back soon.

On Friday, Wernick said he believes Parler will be up by next week and that the company has an executive team in place that has stepped up.

For now, the most recent post on the site is a Jan. 26 meme from Matze. It features a photo of a masked and gloved Bernie Sanders from Bidens inauguration with superimposed text that says, I wish that John guy would hurry up already.

Here is the original post:

Donald Trumps Business Sought A Stake In Parler Before He Would Join - BuzzFeed News

This less well-known section of the amendment that also gave people due process and equal protection under the Constitution after the Civil War has gotten a lot of attention of late. Some commentators have suggested that Section 3 could be invoked to bar Trump from future office regardless of the outcome of impeachment. But its procedurally tricky. And if it is to work, as many are suggesting, it may require that Congress shore it up statutorily so that it might survive the scrutiny that it needsand would undoubtedly getif Section 3 were ever employed against Trump.

The last time it was invoked was in 1919. That year, the House of Representatives refused to seat the first Socialist elected to Congress, Victor Berger, on Section 3 grounds. Berger actively opposed U.S. participation in World War I, and was prosecuted and convicted under the Espionage Act. The House of Representatives referred his case to a special committee for investigation, concluded that he was ineligible for membership and refused to seat him. If Trump were to run successfully for Congress, a Democratic majority in either chamber could presumably follow suit and vote to preclude him from taking office. But that option doesnt address a possible 2024 presidential bid, which is perhaps foremost among concerns of Democratsand many Republicans, too.

Alternatively, the current Democratic-controlled Congress could simply declare Trump in violation of Section 3 in due course, but whether that declaration would be enforceable in a future election is hard to tell.

There are few reported judicial opinions that even mention Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and none from the U.S. Supreme Court. The primary case appears to be the 1871 opinion in United States v. Powell, in which Amos S.C. Powell was indicted for accepting public office after the Civil War. Before the war, he had held the office of constable, which was such an office as rendered those who had held it engaged in the Rebellion against the Union. As a result, the court explained, Powell was deemed ineligible to any office now, by the provisions of the 3d section of the 14 amendment.

To bring this aspect of the 14th Amendment up to date, and to make it useful in a modern political context, Congress likely needs to pass a new law. Somewhat surprisingly, the Constitutions terms are not self-executingthat is, for an individual to seek judicial enforcement of the Constitution, Congress generally must have passed a statute giving litigants a cause of action.

Congress has done this as a matter of criminalbut not civillaw for Section 3. To enable judicial enforcement of Section 3 the 14th Amendment, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1870 (also known as the Enforcement Act or the First Ku Klux Klan Act), among other laws. Section 15 of that act makes it a misdemeanor to run for office when ineligible to do so under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, punishable by up to a year in prison. Section 14 of the same law also allows a federal prosecutor to forcibly remove an offender from office. (Congress later passed the Amnesty Act of 1872, which lifted political barriers for senior members of the former Confederacy.)

Whether the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden would have an appetite to indict Trump for a misdemeanor under the 1870 statute is highly dubious. When the act was drafted, everyone knew precisely what sections 14 and 15 were aimed at: former members of the Confederacy, whom Congress wanted to keep out of public office during Reconstruction. The actand thus Section 3 itselfis outmoded.

Congress can enhance the enforceability of the 14th Amendments ban on certain individuals holding public office by permitting private citizens to bring lawsuits for alleged violations of Section 3. Of course, theres plenty of precedent for statutes authorizing judicial causes of action.

For example, in order to bring a lawsuit against a state or local police officer for allegedly violating the 4th Amendments ban on unreasonable searches and seizures and other constitutional rights, a plaintiff must invoke 42 U.S.C. 1983a statute passed in 1871 after the Civil War to implement the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution. In 1961, the Supreme Court prominently brought that statute to life in Monroe v. Pape, which allowed a homeowner to use the act to sue individual Chicago police officers for money damages in connection with a warrantless search.

In theory, a law passed by Congress to implement Section 3 of the 14th Amendment could give a competing candidate for the same office the necessary standing to bring a civil lawsuit. If Trump were to run in 2024 and a plaintiff brought a suit to enjoin his campaign, the constitutionality of the legislation would undoubtedly wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court, with unpredictable results.

But this route would at least avoid criminal prosecution and thus the perception that the Department of Justice under a Democratic administration was trying to silence a political enemy. It would also shore up Congress role as a co-equal branch charged with ensuring that Oval Office occupants remain accountable for wrongdoing in officea constitutional obligation that a second impeachment acquittal would largely disavow.

Not since the Civil War has America seen a violent insurrection the likes of Jan. 6. Nor has it seen a president as cynically prone to undermining the Constitution and the rule of law as Donald Trump. If Senate Republicans arent willing to risk their own political relevance for the sake of the republic come Feb. 9, then the rest of those members who swore an oath to the Constitution should take steps to give it meaning through Congress legislative prerogative.

Read the rest here:

Opinion | Congress Still Has One More Way to Ban Trump from Future Office - POLITICO

Former President Donald Trump made his social media comeback on Friday with a post on Gab in which he called his second impeachment a "public relations stunt."

In his firstpost to the site since January 8, Trump put up a letter addressed to Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, who recently called on the former president to testify at his second impeachment hearing next week.

The letter, which Trump's attorneys David Schoen and Bruce Castor Jr signed, read: "We are in receipt of your latest public relations stunt. Your letter only confirms what is known to everyone: you cannot prove your allegations against the 45th President of the United States, who is now a private citizen."

"The use of our Constitution to bring a purported impeachment proceeding is much too serious to try to play these games," they added.

Read more: How Google finally decided to remove Parler after months of flagging the app's harmful content

Here is a screenshot of the post.

Screenshot of the Donald J. Trump post on Gab. Gab

Trump is in the midst of a second impeachment over his role in stirring up a mob of supporters that stormed the US Capitol on January 6.

Trump's return to Gab comes after reports that the ex-president was still so frustrated by being barred from Twitter that he is writing down insults and trying to get aides to post them from their own accounts.

The former president was permanently suspended from Twitter in the wake of the insurrection, which resulted in five people's deaths. He was also blocked on YouTube.

Gab is a social networking website that is popular among far-right supporters. It rose to infamy following the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh when it was discovered the shooter had posted anti-Semitic comments on the platform.

It was launched by "Christian technology entrepreneur" Andrew Torba following what he says was the rise of big tech censorship during the 2016 election, according to the company's website.

Trump joined the site in August 2016, shortly before he was elected.

Originally posted here:

Trump breaks silence with post on Gab denouncing impeachment trial - Business Insider - Business Insider