Category Archives: Donald Trump

In a normal society, a former presidentlets call him Donald Trumpwhos been indicted three times in under four months, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to conspiracy to defraud the United States, would have absolutely no chance of ever being president again. It straight up would not be a scenario anyone would have to even contemplate; even if this individual were not in prison, the idea that they would be able to run for and win higher office once more would not compute.

But unfortunately, we dont live in a normal society; instead, we live in a place in which millions of people not only still support Donald Trump, but grow fonder of him with every new criminal charge. Which means that, despite the aforementioned indictments*, the twice-impeached, thrice-indicted ex-president is dominating every other candidate for the Republican nomination, and currently looks to be the most likely GOP nominee in the 2024 general election. That, of course, scares the shit out of a lot of peopleincluding, apparently, one Barack Obama. Whose fear, it has to be said, is extremely unsettling!

The Washington Post reports that during a private lunch with Joe Biden in late June, the 44th president voiced concern about Donald Trumps political strengthsincluding an intensely loyal following, a Trump-friendly conservative media ecosystem, and a polarized countryunderlining his worry that Trump could be a more formidable candidate than many Democrats realize. According to people familiar with the conversation, Obama made it clear his concerns were not about Bidens political abilities, but rather a recognition of Trumps iron grip on the Republican Party.

Obamas concerns are certainly warranted: In a New York Times/Siena poll released on Monday, Trump led his closest competition, Ron DeSantis, by a whopping 37 points. An even wilder data point that seems to validate Obamas fears was that Trump beat DeSantis even among Republicans who believe he committed serious federal crimes. To be clear, that means these people believe Trump is a criminal, and want him to be president anyway.

As FiveThirtyEight optimistically notes, should Trump be convicted before November 5, 2024, voters might be less inclined to cast a ballot for him, and presumably theyd be even less so if hes sentenced to time in prison. (In the case of the most recent indictment, two of the charges carry up to 20 years behind bars, and compared to her colleagues, the judge assigned to the case has imposed the toughest sentences for January 6 defendants.) Though, who knows!

As for a potential Trump-Biden rematch, another Times/Siena Poll poll published this week put the two in a tie, with each receiving 43% of the votewhich, for people who think democracy is worth preserving, is pretty pants-shittingly scary.

In somewhat happier news, Obama reportedly promised at the same June lunch to do all he could to help the president get reelected. And in a statement, a spokesman for Bidens campaign told the Post: President Biden is grateful for his unwavering support, and looks forward to once again campaigning side-by-side with President Obama to win in 2024 and finish the job for the American people.

*And everything else!

Mike Pence giveth and Mike Pence taketh away

Yes, he tweeted yesterday that anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President, but then he basically suggested today that Trump was just listening to his lawyers advice when he tried to overturn the electionwhich, coincidentally, is a defense Trump is reportedly planning to use.

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Barack Obama Is Also Scared Shitless That Donald Trump Could Win Another Term: Report - Vanity Fair

Former President Donald J. Trump is dominating his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, leading his nearest challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, by a landslide 37 percentage points nationally among the likely Republican primary electorate, according to the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the 2024 campaign.

Mr. Trump held decisive advantages across almost every demographic group and region and in every ideological wing of the party, the survey found, as Republican voters waved away concerns about his escalating legal jeopardy. He led by wide margins among men and women, younger and older voters, moderates and conservatives, those who went to college and those who didnt, and in cities, suburbs and rural areas.

The poll shows that some of Mr. DeSantiss central campaign arguments that he is more electable than Mr. Trump, and that he would govern more effectively have so far failed to break through. Even Republicans motivated by the type of issues that have fueled Mr. DeSantiss rise, such as fighting radical woke ideology, favored the former president.

Overall, Mr. Trump led Mr. DeSantis 54 percent to 17 percent. No other candidate topped 3 percent support in the poll.

Below those lopsided top-line figures were other ominous signs for Mr. DeSantis. He performed his weakest among some of the Republican Partys biggest and most influential constituencies. He earned only 9 percent support among voters at least 65 years old and 13 percent of those without a college degree. Republicans who described themselves as very conservative favored Mr. Trump by a 50-point margin, 65 percent to 15 percent.

Still, no other serious Trump challenger has emerged besides Mr. DeSantis. Former Vice President Mike Pence, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina each scored 3 percent support. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, each received support from just 2 percent of those polled.

Yet even if all those candidates disappeared and Mr. DeSantis got a hypothetical one-on-one race against Mr. Trump, he would still lose by a two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 31 percent, the poll found. That is a stark reminder that, for all the fretting among anti-Trump forces that the party would divide itself in a repeat of 2016, Mr. Trump is poised to trounce even a unified opposition.

The survey comes less than six months before the first 2024 primary contest and before a single debate. In an era of American politics defined by its volatility, Mr. Trumps legal troubles his trials threaten to overlap with primary season pose an especially unpredictable wild card.

For now, though, Mr. Trump appears to match both the surly mood of the Republican electorate, 89 percent of whom see the nation as headed in the wrong direction, and Republicans desire to take the fight to the Democrats.

He might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wifes underpants and you cant be a man anymore, David Green, 69, a retail manager in Somersworth, N.H., said of Mr. Trump. You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trumps my guy. Hes proved it on a national level.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis maintain strong overall favorable ratings from Republicans, 76 percent and 66 percent. That Mr. DeSantis is still so well liked after a drumbeat of news coverage questioning his ability to connect with voters, and more than $20 million in attack ads from a Trump super PAC, demonstrates a certain resiliency. His political team has argued that his overall positive image with G.O.P. voters provides a solid foundation on which to build.

But the intensity of the former presidents support is a key difference as 43 percent of Republicans have a very favorable opinion of Mr. Trump a cohort that he carries by an overwhelming 92 percent to 7 percent margin in a one-on-one race with Mr. DeSantis.

By contrast, Mr. DeSantis is stuck in an effective tie with Mr. Trump, edging him 49 percent to 48 percent, among the smaller share of primary voters (25 percent) who view the Florida governor very favorably.

In interviews with poll respondents, a recurring theme emerged. They like Mr. DeSantis; they love Mr. Trump.

DeSantis, I have high hopes. But as long as Trumps there, Trumps the man, said Daniel Brown, 58, a retired technician at a nuclear plant from Bumpass, Va.

If he wasnt running against Trump, DeSantis would be my very next choice, said Stanton Strohmenger, 48, a maintenance technician in Washington Township, Ohio.

A number of respondents interviewed drew a distinction between Mr. DeSantiss accomplishments in Tallahassee and Mr. Trumps in the White House.

Trump has proven his clout, said Mallory Butler, 39, of Polk County, Fla. And DeSantis has, but in a much smaller arena.

The truly anti-Trump faction of the Republican electorate appears to hover near one in four G.O.P. voters, hardly enough to dethrone him. Only 19 percent of the electorate said Mr. Trumps behavior after his 2020 defeat threatened American democracy. And only 17 percent see the former president as having committed any serious federal crimes, despite his indictment by a federal grand jury on charges of mishandling classified documents and his receipt of a so-called target letter in the separate election interference case being brought by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.

I think Donald Trump is going to carry a lot of baggage to the election with him, said Hilda Bulla, 68, of Davidson County, N.C., who supports Mr. DeSantis.

Yet Mr. Trumps grip on the Republican Party is so strong, the Times/Siena poll found, that in a head-to-head contest with Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Trump still received 22 percent among voters who believe he has committed serious federal crimes a greater share than the 17 percent that Mr. DeSantis earned from the entire G.O.P. electorate.

Mr. DeSantis has made taking on woke institutions a centerpiece of his political identity. But when given a choice between a hypothetical candidate who prioritized defeating radical woke ideology or one who was focused on law and order in our streets and at the border, only 24 percent said they would be more likely to support the candidate focused on fighting woke issues.

Equally problematic for Mr. DeSantis is that those woke-focused voters still preferred Mr. Trump, 61 percent to 36 percent.

The ability to defeat Mr. Biden and to enact a conservative agenda is at the core of Mr. DeSantiss appeal to Republicans. He has warned that Mr. Trump has saddled the party with a culture of losing in the Trump years and has held up his resounding 2022 re-election in the once purple state of Florida as a model for the G.O.P. As governor, he has pushed through a sweeping set of conservative priorities that have sharply reoriented the state and promised he would bring the same policymaking zeal to the White House.

Yet these arguments do not appear to be working. A strong majority of Republicans surveyed, 58 percent, said it was Mr. Trump, not Mr. DeSantis, who was best described by the phrase able to beat Joe Biden. And again, it was Mr. Trump, by a lopsided 67 percent to 22 percent margin, who was seen more as the one to get things done.

Mr. DeSantis narrowly edged Mr. Trump on being seen as likable and moral. Interestingly, the share of Republicans who said Mr. Trump was more fun than Mr. DeSantis (54 percent to 16 percent) almost perfectly mirrored the overall horse race.

He does not come across with humor, Sandra Reher, 75, a retired teacher in Farmingdale, N.J., said of Mr. DeSantis. He comes across as a a good Christian man, wonderful family man. But he doesnt have that fire, if you will, that Trump has.

Increasingly on the trail, Mr. DeSantis is calling attention to his blue-collar roots and his decision to serve in the military as reasons voters should support him as he runs against a self-professed billionaire. But the poll showed Mr. Trump lapping Mr. DeSantis among likely Republican primary voters earning less than $50,000, 65 percent to 9 percent.

As of now, Mr. DeSantiss few demographic refuges places where he is losing by smaller margins are more upscale pockets of the electorate. He trailed Mr. Trump by a less daunting 12 points among white voters with college degrees, 37 to 25 percent. Among those earning more than $100,000, Mr. DeSantis was behind by 23 points, half the deficit he faced among the lowest earners.

The fractured field appears to be preventing Mr. DeSantis from consolidating the support of such voters: In the hypothetical one-on-one race, Mr. DeSantis was statistically tied with Mr. Trump among white college-educated voters.

On a range of issues, the poll suggests it will be difficult for Mr. DeSantis to break through against Mr. Trump on policy arguments alone.

In the head-to-head matchup, Mr. Trump was far ahead of Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who accept transgender people as the gender they identify with, and among those who do not; among those who want to fight corporations that promote woke left ideology, and among those who prefer to stay out of what businesses do; among those who want to send more military and economic aid to Ukraine, and among those who do not; among those who want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are, and among those who want to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.

Mr. Trump leads Mr. DeSantis among Republicans who believe abortion should always be legal, and among those who believe it should always be illegal.

Mr. DeSantis signed a strict six-week abortion ban that Mr. Trump has criticized as too harsh. Yet Mr. Trump enjoyed the support of 70 percent of Republicans who said they strongly supported such a measure.

Marcel Paba, a 22-year-old server in Miami, said he liked what Mr. DeSantis had done for his state but didnt think the governor could overcome the enthusiasm for Mr. Trump.

There are just more die-hard fans of Trump than there are of Ron DeSantis. Even in Florida, Mr. Paba said. I dont see people wearing a Ron DeSantis hat anywhere, you know?

Camille Baker, Alyce McFadden and Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.

The New York Times/Siena College poll of 932 voters in the likely Republican primary electorate was conducted by telephone using live operators from July 23 to 27, 2023. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.96 percentage points. Cross-tabs and methodology are available here.

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Trump Crushing DeSantis and G.O.P. Rivals, Times/Siena Poll Finds - The New York Times

Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a political rally while campaigning for the GOP nomination in Erie, Pa., in July. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a political rally while campaigning for the GOP nomination in Erie, Pa., in July.

Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges he participated in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results an effort that reached a bloody crescendo as his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, a grand jury voted to charge Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering and conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

Trump, who has been summoned to appear in court on Thursday, is still the leading candidate in the Republican primary race. If he pleads not guilty (as he has with the other indictments), we could be hearing about his trial as he makes his case for the White House.

Here are five key points to help get you up to speed.

The former president now faces legal peril in three criminal cases following March's indictment on 34 counts of falsifying business records and June's indictment on 37 counts of mishandling classified documents. Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

A prosecutor in Fulton County, Ga., is leading a separate investigation into Trump's alleged efforts to pressure state election officials there. And Trump is also fighting two civil lawsuits, including a federal jury finding that left him liable for battery and defamation.

But this latest indictment stands apart from Trump's other legal challenges.

The Department of Justice's investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, is among the most sprawling and complex in U.S. history it gets at the heart of the alleged effort to overturn legitimate election results and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.

"The attack on our nation's Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," said the special counsel in a short statement before reporters. "As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government."

The indictment charges Trump with four serious federal criminal offenses:

University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias described the overall case against Trump as "damning" and representing real "legal jeopardy."

Trump is the only person who is charged and he is the only defendant in this latest indictment. But the court document scatters some clues for the future in terms of who else might potentially face charges.

Six people are labeled as co-conspirators in the indictment. They are given individual numbers and potentially identifying traits but they are not identified by name in the court document.

Some are attorneys who helped promote bogus election fraud claims. Co-conspirator 3 is described as an attorney who privately acknowledged that the unfounded election fraud claims were "crazy." Another, co-conspirator 4, was a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and "attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures."

And their descriptions line up with those of people who could be of interest to investigators, such as former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell and former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark.

Even before the indictment was unsealed, Trump and his allies were actively working to control the narrative, calling this a sham indictment and accusing the Biden administration of trying to interfere with the 2024 election.

On Truth Social, Trump said a "Fake Indictment" was evidence of "prosecutorial misconduct." His campaign issued a formal statement (and, later, a fundraising pitch) calling it "election interference." And his Republican allies in Congress plus even some of his GOP primary foes cast the indictment as political persecution at the hands of the Biden administration.

But as NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoez pointed out in an interview with All Things Considered, the attacks from Trump and his supporters are focusing on the process not so much the substance.

"They claim these are politically motivated charges. They attack the special counsel. But they don't necessarily refute specific allegations," Ordoez said. "They don't argue Trump never incited those followers who attacked the Capitol. They never say that Trump didn't seek a group of fake electors."

That's because after two impeachments, three indictments and quite a few scandals in between, Trump has conditioned his supporters to see each allegation against him as a reason to rally around him.

And it works. In March, several weeks before the first indictment, Trump had just 43% of the vote in Republican polling, according to a RealClearPolitics average. But a day after he was charged in a hush-money scheme to an adult film actress, his numbers had jumped to 50%.

Two months later, he was indicted for mishandling classified documents. His polling average jumped again.

As of Monday, ahead of the news of the latest indictment, Trump was still in the lead among Republican presidential candidates.

The federal indictment of Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 election came soon after similar election interference charges were made public against a Trump ally in Michigan.

Matthew DePerno the most recent Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, who worked with Trump's team to try to contest his 2020 loss in the state was arraigned Tuesday on state charges for an alleged effort to unlawfully gain access to voting machines.

DePerno has been charged with undue possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine and conspiracy, according to the special prosecutor investigating the case.

Investigations into election interference are ongoing elsewhere, as well. Arizona's Democratic attorney general is investigating the 2020 fake electors there, and a Georgia prosecutor is set to soon announce her long-awaited charging decisions in an investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election there.

And all of these investigations are happening separately from the Justice Department's sprawling and complex investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

On that day, Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, injuring scores of law enforcement officers, forcing a panicked evacuation of the nation's political leaders and threatening the peaceful transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

To date, the DOJ has charged more than 1,000 people in what's become the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

That list now includes Trump.

NPR's Ben Swasey and Carrie Johnson contributed reporting.

This reporting originally appeared in our digital live coverage.

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Donald Trump indictment news: What to know about the 2020 ... - NPR

As the Post notes, Willishas strongly hintedfor months that she will seek multiple indictments in the case, using Georgias expansive anti-racketeering statutes that allow prosecutors not only to charge in-state wrongdoing butto use activities in other statesto prove criminal intent in Georgia. In court filings, Willis has described her probe as an investigation of multi-state, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.

In addition to potential charges out of Georgia, Trump is likely to be indicted by special counsel Jack Smith in connection with the Justice Departments investigation into his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and the attack on the Capitol that followed. Thats on top of the charges Trump was already indicted with in June related to his handling of classified documentswhich were expanded last week, as well as a criminal case brought in April by the Manhattan district attorneys office.

Meanwhile, if anyone was thinking an actual prison sentence would stop the former guy from running, think again. On Friday, in an interview with a conservative talk show host, Trump doubled down on his pledge to never drop out of the race, even if hes behind bars.

On the other hand

According to Ron DeSantis, the constant barrage of insults from Trump and others means hes still a contender. If youre up by so much, you would not be worried about anybody else, DeSantis told reporters on Sunday. So the fact that Im taking the incoming from all of these people, not just him, but a lot of the other candidates, a lot of mediathat shows people know that Im a threat.

Chris Christie not sure how many different ways he can say it

Continued here:

Donald Trump Has an Absurd Amount of Support From Republicans ... - Vanity Fair

My research analyzes real speeches made by politicians past and present, including those of Trump, Orban and Putin, using cognitive linguistics a branch of linguistics that examines the relationship between language and the mind. What I have found is that throughout history, speeches by dictators and autocrats have one thing in common: they use dehumanizing metaphors to instill and propagate hatred of others.

It is well-documented that for example words like reptiles and parasites were used by the Nazi regime to compare outsiders and minorities to animals. Strongmen throughout history have referred to targeted social groups as rats or pests or a plague. And its effective regardless of whether the people who hear this language are predisposed to jump to extreme conclusions. Once someone is tuned into these metaphors, their brain actually changes in ways that make them more likely to believe bigger lies, even conspiracy theories.

These metaphors are part of a cognitive process that entraps some people in this kind of thinking while others are unaffected. Heres how it works.

The first step to manipulating the minds of the public, or really the precondition, is that listeners need to be in the right emotional state.

In order to hack into the minds of the public, people need to feel fear or uncertainty. That could be caused by economic instability or pre-existing cultural prejudices, but the emotional basis is fear. The brain is designed to respond to fear in various ways, with its own in-built defense mechanisms which produce chemicals in the response pattern, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These chemical responses, which zip straight past our logical brains to our fight-or-flight reactions, are also activated by forms of language that instill fear, either directly (as in a vocal threat) or, more insidiously, by twisted facts which allay fears through lies and deceptive statements.

In this state, dehumanizing metaphors are very effective. My research shows that this language taps into and switches on existing circuits in the brain that link together important and salient images and ideas. In effect, metaphors bypass higher cognitive reasoning centers to make linkages that may not have a basis in reality. And when that happens, a person is less likely to notice the lie, because it feels right.

This pattern becomes more effective the more it is used. According to studies, the more these circuits are activated the more hardwired they become, until it becomes almost impossible to turn them off. What this means is these repetitive uses of dehumanizing metaphors are incredibly powerful to those brains already willing to hear them, because they direct their thoughts, making it easy to focus on certain things and ignore others.

The same is true of conspiracy theories. The neuroscientific research shows that people who believe them develop more rigid neural pathways, meaning they find it difficult to rethink situations once this pattern of thinking is established.

This also means that if someone is already more susceptible to believing lies in the form of dehumanizing metaphors and this same person comes across a big lie or a conspiracy theory that fits into that well-trodden neural pathway, they are more likely to believe it and be influenced by it.

This is how language that might seem like harmless hyperbole winds up literally changing the way people think. And once they think differently, they can act in ways that they might not have before.

With the rise of populist and far-right political movements in the 2010s, the use of dehumanizing metaphors to engender hatred of foreigners or of those who are different in some way has spread worldwide.

In 2016, during a state-orchestrated public campaign against refugees and migrants in Hungary, Orban characterized them as a poison. In August 2017, when groups of white supremacists arrived in the college town of Charlottesville, Va., to participate in a Unite the Right rally, the protesters used both animal and dirt metaphors when they claimed they were fighting against the parasitic class of anti-white vermin and the anti-white, anti-American filth.

Putins labeling of the Ukrainian leadership as Nazi falls into this category, a powerful slur against the Jewish leader Zelensky, whom Putin called a disgrace to the Jewish people. Significantly, he uses this alongside dehumanizing language to justify the invasion of Ukraine, claiming it as a mission in denazification, eliminating Ukraine of its Nazi filth by innuendo. The use of the dirt and filth metaphor, coupled with the historically loaded terminology, is a persuasive linguistic tool.

Former President Trump also supported his Big Lie with the same pattern of conspiracy theories and fake news reported in far-right social media that spurred supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

These dehumanizing metaphors have been used consistently to tap into the neural pathways of fearful or anxious people ready and waiting to believe. This helps explain why so many Trump supporters were influenced by the QAnon conspiracy hoax in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. Trumps Big Lie refers to the false claim that the election was rigged and stolen from him through massive electoral fraud even though that assertion has been repeatedly debunked.

Significantly, Trump also supported his Big Lie with the same pattern of conspiracy theories and fake news reported in far-right social media, such as QAnon, that spurred Trump supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This sustained use of the central metaphor of a cabal of satanic, cannibalistic abusers of children conspiring against Trump will easily fit into the entrenched neural pathways of someone who is already willing to believe.

The tricky thing about all this is that some people are more susceptible to this type of rhetorical manipulation than others. This comes down to critical thinking and brain training. If one wants to or needs to believe then the language works manipulatively and the neural pathways are built up. If we arent fearful or primed to believe, our brain has mechanisms to alert us to the deceit. Simply put if we are constantly critical of lies, our brains are more trained to notice them.

Unfortunately, research into this brain wiring also shows that once people begin to believe lies, they are unlikely to change their minds even when confronted with evidence that contradicts their beliefs. It is a form of brainwashing. Once the brain has carved out a well-worn path of believing deceit, it is even harder to step out of that path which is how fanatics are born. Instead, these people will seek out information that confirms their beliefs, avoid anything that is in conflict with them, or even turn the contrasting information on its head, so as to make it fit their beliefs.

People with strong convictions will have a hard time changing their minds, given how embedded a lie becomes in the mind. In fact, there are scientists and scholars still studying the best tools and tricks to combat lies with some combination of brain training and linguistic awareness.

Not all hope is lost, however. History has shown that disruptive events such as the toppling of a regime or the loss of a war can force a new perspective and the brain is able to recalibrate. So it is at least possible to change this pattern. Once the critical mind is engaged, away from the frenzy of fear and manipulation, the lie can become clear. This is the uplifting moral tale that can be gleaned from history all the great liars, from dictators to autocrats, were eventually defeated by truth, which eventually will win out.

But the bad news is that you need that kind of disruption. Without these jarring events to bring a dose of reality, it is unlikely that people with strong convictions will ever change their minds something that benefits the autocrat and endangers their society.

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What Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbn Understand ... - POLITICO

In trademark Trump fashion, the former president responded Saturday with blistering personal attacks on his foes and pushing back hard on the idea that he is running to counter his legal battles.

In Iowa last night I noticed that a little known, failed former Congressman, Will Hurd, is ridiculously running for President, Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. He got SERIOUSLY booed off the stage when he said I was running to stay out of jail. Wrong, if I wasnt running, or running and doing badly (like him & Christie!), with no chance to win, these prosecutions would never have been brought or happened!

Four criminal cases are playing out against Trump, including two that have yielded indictments. In New York state, he has been accused of falsifying records in connection to paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, and federal prosecutors have charged him with treating classified national security documents carelessly.

If I werent running, I would have nobody coming after me, Trump said at the Iowa dinner. Or if I was losing by a lot, I would have nobody coming after me.

On Saturday, Trump posted a copy of a friendly letter between him and former President Richard Nixon, who President Gerald Ford eventually pardoned from crimes he may have committed during the Watergate scandal.

Many of his GOP opponents are still treading a fine line regarding a potential Trump pardon. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly indicated that he would pardon a convicted Trump if he won the presidency, noting in a Friday interview that he would not be good for the country to have an almost 80-year-old former president go to prison. Mike Pence, Trumps former vice president, has been noncommittal in response to Trumps indictment regarding classified documents and the ongoing investigation around Jan. 6.

On the trail in Iowa Saturday, DeSantis said, If the election becomes a referendum on what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, we are not going to win,according to ABC News. We got to focus on what the people are looking for in terms of their futures and I just think in 2024, we wont, we cant have distractions, he added.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a prominent Trump critic, hasnt minced words on the former presidents legal battles. He has insisted that Trumps indictments have arisen come from his conduct. He skipped the Iowa event to focus on his campaign efforts in New Hampshire.

Hutchinson, who launched his presidential run on the principle that Trump could not win another term, described the former presidents legal troubles in his speech as a harbinger for the countrys future.

You will be voting in Iowa, while multiple criminal cases are pending against Donald Trump. Iowa has an opportunity to say: we as a party, we need a new direction for America and for the GOP, Hutchinson said at the dinner.

Trump responded to Hutchinson Saturday with another personal attack.

Dont weak people like Aida know or understand that the Prosecution of Donald Trump is an Election Interference Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia, or the Fake Dossier, and that he is playing right into Marxists hands, when I am leading the [Republicans] by 50 Points and leading Biden BIG, Trump wrote on Truth.

Later Saturday, Trump posted: WHY DIDNT THE CORRUPT MARXIST PROSECUTORS BRING THESE RADICAL & UNJUSTIFIED CHARGES AGAINST ME 2.5 YEARS AGO, LONG BEFORE MY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN HAD BEGUN. ... THIS IS ELECTION INTERFERENCE & PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!

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Trump hits back at GOP candidate who said he's running to 'stay out ... - POLITICO

Donald Trump Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Donald Trump's attorneys were told by the Department of Justice last week that he may soon be indicted and arrested for alleged crimes connected to the Jan. 6 coup attempt. That would makethe third time that Trump is indicted and arrested for allegedly committing crimes this year. The ex-president also faces an indictment in Georgia for additional alleged crimes connected to the events of Jan. 6 and the plot against American democracy. Also on Thursday, special counsel Jack Smith and his investigators filed additional charges against Trump that include obstructing justice in connection with the Mar-A-Lago stolen classified documents case.

If Trump is found guiltyof committing all of these alleged crimes, he may spend the rest of his life in prison.

How is Donald Trump going to respond? Predictably. He will threaten and encourage, through direct means as well as stochastic terrorism and other veiled commands, acts of violence, chaos, mayhem and murder. To that point, in response to his impending indictment and arrest for the crimes of Jan. 6, Trump is behaving like an unrepentant reprobate, as he rants and throws a fit on his Truth Social disinformation platform. Trump's verbal explosions there these last few days include statements such as:

"We'll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn't Rigged and Stollen. THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!"

"2024 ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!" "PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!!!" "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

"They ought to throw Deranged Jack Smith and his Thug Prosecutors in jail, with Meritless Garland and Trump Hating Lisa Monaco. They have totally Weaponized the Department of Injustice. Whatever happened to the Crooked Joe Biden Boxes Case? Why was Hillary Clinton allowed to delete 33,000 emails, many of them Classified, AFTER getting a Subpoena from Congress? Why was Bill Clinton allowed to take tapes out of the W.H. in his socks? Why has no other President ever been charged? ELECTION FRAUD!"

"How can Deranged Jack Smith bring a case on January 6th., as ridiculous as it is anyway, when I have already won such a case, and been fully acquitted, in the U.S. Senate? In other words, I was Impeached on this, and WON!!! ELECTION INTERFERENCE & PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, all rolled up as one. We are truly a Nation In Decline!"

"At the direction of Crooked Joe Biden and his Weaponized DOJ, Deranged Jack Smith is attempting to destroy the lives of two fine people who have worked for me (and have done a great job!) for a long time. They are being persecuted with one goal, to "Get Trump." This is textbook Third World intimidation by rabid, lawless prosecutors. These same craven tactics were used, and failed, during the Russia, Russia, Russia Witch Hunt and other Hoaxes. We will not let Radical Lunatics destroy our Country!"

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To reiterate: There is no evidence of real election interference against Trump and the Republican Party. Trump is again trafficking in the Big Lie, where any such "election interference" or related skullduggery in the 2020 election was actually committed by Donald Trump and his Republican Party and other agents to suppress, nullify, and outright rig and steal votes to keep him in power against the will of the American people.

Yetat a rally held in Eerie, Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump continued with his fascist-authoritarian Big Lie verbal fusilladesand other mouth noises against reality, the truth, and human decency as he continued to proclaim that he is being "persecuted" by some vast conspiracy because he is a champion of the MAGA movement and "real Americans":

They waited two and a half, almost three years, so that they could bring this up right in the middle of my presidential election because it's election interference. They're crooked people...You know they're not indicting me; they're indicting you. I just happen to be standing in their way that's all it is....Until the FBI, DOJ, and IRS hand over every scrap of paper they have on the Biden Crime Families corrupt businesses dealings. We have to know, and the public deserves to know.

Fake news is all you get. They refuse to discuss the Biden crime family, but enjoy covering false indictments of Donald Trump, who has done nothing wrong

During his speech, Trump made an exceptionally vulgar attack on President Joe Biden,calling him "a dumb son of a bitch":

We have somebody that's not at the top of his game, never was at the top of a game. Never was...We have a guy who's a dumb son of a b***h to allow this to happen Every dollar spent attacking me by Republicans is $1 given straight to the Biden campaign if he makes it.

The crowd of MAGA faithful in Eerie was in ecstasy.

Donald Trump is not going to change or otherwise modify or correct his behavior. He is 77 years old; violence is core and central to his personhood, identity, and way of being in the world. As mental health professionals continue to warn, Trump has shown himself to be a sociopath if not a psychopath. His collective behavior such as the coup attempt on Jan. 6, democide in response to the COVID pandemic, being impeached twice, the multiple indictments and arrests, embrace of neofascism, massive corruption, malignant narcissism and utter disregard for reality and facts, political cultism, and other pathological behavior by an American president is unprecedented in the country's history.

Thus, the problem and growing peril for the nation: what happens when the unprecedented keeps repeating itself and by doing so becomes normalized and no longer "shocking" or "surprising"?

In continuing with his many and varied incitements to violence and civil disorder, last Monday Trump shared an image on his Truth Social disinformation platform with the caption, "'Nothing can stop what is coming." This is language associated with the antisemitic Qanon conspiracy cult and a threat of massive destruction and violence in the form of a "storm" a bloody revolution and purge against the "deep state" and other "enemies" of the movement and "White Christianity" and "real Americans."A large percentage of Republicans believe in some or all of the Qanon conspiracy-lie and its claims about how Democrats, liberals, progressives, "the left" and other elements of some global cabal-secret society control the world using superpowers they obtain from drinking the blood of children and other victims.

The mainstream news media, however, with several notable exceptions such as MSNBC, was mostly silent about Trump's renewed Qanon threats.

And not to be ignored by a public and news media that are afflicted with a very short attention span and what too often appears to be a form of organized forgetting and collective amnesia, several weeks ago Donald Trump shared what he believed to be the Washington DC home address of former president Barack Obama on his Truth Social disinformation platform. As Trump intended, one of his MAGA cult members, who was armed with two guns, a machete, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, attempted to gain access to Obama's home with the goal of assassinating him.

On his Truth Social disinformation platform, Trump shared audio of him saying that "If you f**k around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before."

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

The ex-president continues to harangue, insult, and generally make threats against Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Counsel Jack Smith, and the other prosecutors and members of law enforcement who are attempting to hold him accountable like any other person in the United States should be under the law.

Trump has also threatened that if he were to go to prison for his alleged crimes that "I think it's a very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters, much more passion than they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016." So there is a move to keep the names of the jury members in Trump's impending criminal trials a secret because of concerns about their safety in the face of death threats and other acts of intimidation and violence.

Violence, malice, and menace are the animating energy for Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and his Hitlerian promise of a final battle and revenge against him and his MAGA movement's perceived enemies such as the Democrats, liberals, progressives, the news media, and any others who dare to oppose them and their plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy.Trump's threats and plans are not hyperbole, bluster, or just "politics" and "polarization." These are real threats that should be responded to appropriately and with extreme haste.

On this, we should heed journalist Masha Gessen's wisdom:

Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: Humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable.

National security, law enforcement, and other experts are continuing to warn that right-wing extremism is 1) the greatest threat to the country's domestic safety and security and 2) that there are many millions of Trump's followers who believe that President Biden and the Democrats are usurpers, otherwise illegitimate, and who "stole" the White House from Trump and the MAGA movement.

What should be done to stop Donald Trump and his repeated incitements and commands to violence and mayhem?

In a recent interview with host Dean Obeidallah on SiriusXM, Glenn Kirschner, who is a former federal prosecutor, explained why Donald Trump should be taken into custody immediately:

Donald Trump should be detained pending trial.And I say that not from my own personal preference or animosity, I have for the man....I say it because the law provides that when there is clear and convincing evidence that a defendant pending trial presents a danger to the community he is supposed to be detained, or she is supposed to be detained pending trial, that's the law.Everyone has ignored that when it comes to Donald Trump.

Psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank, who is the author of the book "Trump on the Couch", agrees with Kirschner.In a recent conversation here at Salon, Dr. Frank told me that:

He gives permission to unstable people to carry out their grievances at a murderous level. This is not just because violent people love Trump, but because they are following Trump's stated practice of striking back "ten times as hard" with any means available when he feels wronged.

I'm beginning to think a warning, or even a gag order is not sufficient. He needs to be secured where nobody can hear his genuinely dangerous outpourings. And it needs to be now.

As I continue with my efforts to warn the American people about how dangerous Donald Trump and his neofascist movement continues to be, there are many moments when I feel like I am in a documentary film or TV series that is being directed by Joshua Oppenheimer or Errol Morris. I imagine myself sitting across from a detective, discussing a mass murderer, a cannibalistic serial killer, mad bomber or terrorist, or some other evildoer. I slowly read off the long list of arrests and criminal incidents and other warnings the proof of what this man was doing in the years and decades before he was finally arrested and put in prison. The detective, nervous, looks away sheepishly, his eyes searching for some type of explanation or deflection. He mutters, "We couldn't have imagined, it was all so shocking. Who could have ever guessed such a thing was happening? I press back, "The evidence was right in front of you. The police could have stopped him years ago and his victims would still be alive." I say nothing; Silence is an interviewer's friend. The camera focuses back in on the detective's face and lingers on it for a few seconds. He has nothing else to say. The screen then fades to black as he takes off the mic, gets up from the chair, and then exits the room.

That is America in the Age of Trump.

Will there be an epilogue and some satisfying closure from Donald Trump's criminal trials? That is the stuff of Hollywood movies. The Trumpocene is real life.

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It's time to believe Donald Trump - Yahoo News

As he flails to reverse a polling decline that is beginning to resemble a rockslide, Gov. Ron DeSantis must be feeling a little clueless about why his political fortunes are crumbling so quickly. Attacking wokeness and bullying transgender people seemed to work so well in Florida, so why arent national Republicans in awe of the divisions hes deepened? Making repeated appearances with racial provocateurs never stopped him from getting elected as governor, so why did he have to fire a young aide who inserted Nazi imagery into his own video promoting Mr. DeSantiss presidential campaign?

But the political bubble inhabited by Mr. DeSantis is so thick symbolized by the hugely expensive private-plane flights that are draining his campaign of cash, since he and his wife, Casey, wont sit with regular people in a commercial cabin that he has been unable or unwilling to understand the brushoff he has received from donors and potential voters and make the changes he needs to become competitive with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.

For years, Mr. DeSantis has created an entire political persona out of a singular crusade against wokeness, frightening teachers and professors away from classroom discussions of race, defending a school curriculum that said there were benefits to slavery, claiming (falsely) that his anti-vaccine crusade worked and engaging in a pointless battle with his states best-known private employer over school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. He had the support of the Florida Legislature and state Republican officials in most of his efforts and presumably believed that an image of a more effective and engaged Trump would help him beat the real thing.

But its not working. A Monmouth University poll published on Tuesday showed Mr. Trump with a 20-point lead over Mr. DeSantis in a head-to-head match, and the advantage grew to more than 30 points when all the other candidates were thrown in. Major donors have started to sour on him, and The Times reported on Thursday that they are disappointed with his performance and the management of his campaign, which he says he will somehow reboot.

DeSantis has not made any headway, wrote the polls director, Patrick Murray. The arguments that hed be a stronger candidate and a more effective president than Trump have both fallen flat.

The most obvious fault in his strategy is that you cant beat Donald Trump if you dont even criticize him, and Mr. DeSantis has said little about the multiple indictments piling up against the former president or about his character. Granted, there are downsides to a full-frontal attack on Mr. Trump at this point, as other Republicans have become aware, and Mr. DeSantis still needs to establish some kind of identity first. But he cant become an alt-Trump without drawing a sharp contrast and holding Mr. Trump to account for at least a few of his many flaws. There are graveyards in Iowa and New Hampshire full of candidates who tried to ignore the leader through sheer force of personality, and even if he had one of those, Mr. DeSantis hasnt demonstrated the skills to use it. Both men will speak Friday night at the Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, and if Mr. DeSantis leaves his rival unscathed, its hard to imagine how he goes the distance.

The deeper problem, though, is that Mr. DeSantis is peddling the wrong message. Only 1 percent of voters think that wokeness and transgender issues are the countrys top problem, according to an April Fox News poll essentially a repudiation of the governors entire brand. Race issues and vaccines are also low on the list.

Lakshya Jain, who helps lead the website Split Ticket, which is doing some really interesting political analysis and modeling, said Mr. DeSantis misinterpreted what Florida voters were saying when they re-elected him by a 19-point margin in 2022.

The economy was doing well in Florida, and Democrats didnt put up a good candidate in Charlie Crist, Mr. Jain told me. Im not sure the majority of Florida voters really cared what he was saying on wokeness. Its not really an issue people vote on.

The economy, naturally, is what people care most about, but Mr. DeSantis hasnt said much about his plans to fight inflation (which is already coming down) or create more jobs (which is happening every month without his help). Clearly aware of the problem, he announced on Thursday that he would unfurl a Declaration of Economic Independence in a major speech in New Hampshire on Monday (a phrase as trite and tone-deaf as the name of his Never Back Down super PAC).

That appears to be the first fruit of his campaign reboot, but there are good reasons he doesnt like to stray from his rigid agenda, as demonstrated by his occasionally disastrous footsteps into foreign policy. Bashing Bidenomics means hell immediately have to come up with an excuse for why inflation is so much higher in Florida than the nation as a whole. Though the national inflation rate in May was 4 percent compared with a year earlier, it was 9 percent in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area for the same period and 7.3 percent in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area.

The primary reason for that is the states housing shortage, an issue that Mr. DeSantis largely ignored during his first term and has only belatedly taken a few small steps to address. When the issue inevitably comes up on the campaign trail, you can bet that Mr. DeSantis will find some way of blaming it on President Biden. That way he can quickly pivot to his preferred agenda of rewriting Black history, questioning science and encouraging gun ownership.

He really cant help himself; just this week he said he might hire the noted anti-vaccine nut Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to work at the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Then he got into an online fight with Representative Byron Donalds, Floridas only Black Republican member of Congress, over the states astonishingly wrong curriculum on slavery, and a DeSantis spokesman called Mr. Donalds a supposed conservative.

Great way to expand your base. Remind me: When does the reboot start?

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Opinion | Why Ron DeSantis Isnt Beating Donald Trump - The New York Times

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia on Friday. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images hide caption

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia on Friday.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing criticism from within and beyond his party after his presidential campaign shared a video touting his record of opposing LGBTQ rights and attacking former President Donald Trump for his past support.

The more than a minute-long video was made by the Twitter account Proud Elephant and shared by the DeSantis War Room his campaign's "rapid response" account on Friday, the last day of June.

"To wrap up 'Pride Month,' let's hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it," the War Room account wrote.

The video opens with a clip of then-candidate Trump pledging to "do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens" in a speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, just weeks after a gunman killed 49 people at a gay club in Orlando.

That's followed by several interview snippets in which Trump says he would let Caitlyn Jenner use a bathroom of her choice at Trump Tower and that he would allow transgender women to compete in Miss Universe (which he co-owned until 2015).

Meanwhile, upbeat music plays in the background as pictures of among others Trump holding a rainbow flag, his campaign website's "LGBTQ for Trump" T-shirts and his 2019 tweet celebrating Pride Month float across the screen. A drag queen called "Lady MAGA" appears on screen, saying "make America great again."

Then the tone of the video changes dramatically. There's a photo of DeSantis, edited to show lasers shooting out of his eyes, accompanied by the word "no." The music shifts to a thumping bass beat as a montage of headlines, memes and movie snippets begins.

It features headlines about DeSantis' policies, like "DeSantis Signs 'Most Extreme Slate of Anti-Trans Laws in Modern History'" and "Pride event in St. Cloud canceled after DeSantis signs 'Protection of Children Act' into law."

There are brief clips of Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in "American Psycho," Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in "Wolf of Wall Street" and Brad Pitt as Achilles in "Troy." There are flashes of bodybuilders and the chiseled figure known online as "Gigachad," interspersed with clips of DeSantis walking purposefully, signing legislation and riding in a helicopter.

That's overlaid with tape from commentators and newscasters slamming the governor's actions, including describing them as "some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence."

The video has been viewed more than 22 million times as of Monday morning, according to Twitter.

And it has sparked plenty of backlash, including from DeSantis' Republican challengers, LGBTQ politicians on both sides of the aisle and the nation's largest conservative LGBTQ group.

NPR has reached out to DeSantis' team for comment.

The Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ conservatives, said in a Twitter thread that DeSantis' rhetoric had "ventured into homophobic territory," calling it "divisive and desperate."

Charles Moran, the group's president, told Morning Edition on Monday that the ad does not have a clear point or purpose.

"You've got some strange imagery of Ron DeSantis being between two oiled-up, hunky type of men," he said. "I mean, the ad smacked of both homophobia and homoeroticism at the same time."

Moran said that the Republican Party has "already basically agreed upon" advocating for equal rights for LGBTQ individuals, pointing to polls that show widespread support for marriage equality.

A May Gallup poll shows that the percentage of Republicans approving of same-sex relationships dipped from 56% last year to 41% this year.

"A misguided attack like this shows that they really don't have a focus and don't have anybody on their team who is truly understanding where the movement is," Moran added. "And that's that style of attack is ... going to backfire and is not helpful for his campaign or the GOP in general."

Former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican and vocal Trump critic, also questioned the helpfulness of the video, adding that "outrage over outrage is the only way these guys know how to campaign."

Similar criticisms have been echoed by a slew of LGBTQ Republicans, including Jenner, who tweeted that DeSantis had "hit a new low."

"You can't win a general, let alone 2028 by going after people that are integral parts of the conservative movement!" she added.

Richard Grenell, Trump's former acting director of national intelligence and the first openly gay Cabinet member called the video "undeniably homophobic."

Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for DeSantis' campaign, responded in a tweet that opposing the federal recognition of Pride Month is not homophobic.

"We wouldn't support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either... It's unnecessary, divisive, pandering," she wrote. "In a country as vast and diverse as the USA, identity politics is poison."

(The Clinton administration first recognized Pride Month in 1999. Trump broke with precedent by not recognizing Pride Month until 2019, the third year of his presidency.)

Criticism also came from within the Biden administration. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg the first openly gay Cabinet member to be approved by the Senate alluded to DeSantis "trying to prove his manhood," and asked who he is aiming to help.

"I just don't understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning, thinking that he's gonna prove his worth by competing who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America," Buttigieg said on CNN.

Trump's team has slammed the video, with campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung telling CNN it showed "a desperate campaign in its last throes of relevancy."

And several of their GOP primary challengers have spoken out against it, too.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told CNN on Sunday that he is not comfortable with the video, nor with "the way both Gov. DeSantis and Donald Trump are moving our debate in this country."

He called their back-and-forth a "teenage food fight," describing it as inappropriate for leaders and distracting from the bigger issues facing the country.

"It certainly doesn't make me feel inspired as an American, on the Fourth of July weekend, to have this type of back-and-forth going on at all, and it's wrong to be doing it, and it's narrowing our country, and making us smaller," Christie added.

Separately, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd told CNN he doesn't believe LGBTQ rights should be a focus of the campaign.

He pointed to what he considers more pressing issues like the economy, artificial intelligence and international relations.

"I wish they would focus their attacks on war criminals like Vladimir Putin, not my friends in the LGBTQ community," Hurd said. "It is 2023. We should be talking about how do we embrace our differences ... we're better together."

While the video paints Trump as a staunch ally of the LGTBQ community, his administration notably took several steps to significantly roll back protections for it.

Among them, it banned transgender service members from the military, walked back Obama-era non-discrimination protections and guidance for schools on transgender students, appointed judges with anti-LGBTQ track records and sought to block questions about sexual orientation from the census.

And it appears Trump would go even further if reelected to a second term.

In a speech on Friday, he said he would sign an executive order to cut federal funding for any school "pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children," according to the Associated Press.

He also vowed to sign an executive order instructing federal agencies "to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age," adding that hospitals and health care providers should lose federal funding if they provide gender-affirming care for minors.

Both Trump and DeSantis have spoken out against transgender women participating in women's sports and described gender-affirming care for minors as "mutilation," NBC News reports.

DeSantis who said while campaigning for governor in 2018 that "getting into bathroom wars, I don't think that's a good use of our time" has taken a more hardline stance in recent years, signing a slew of bills that roll back protections for gay and transgender individuals.

Last March he signed a bill that critics have branded "Don't Say Gay," which bans public school teachers from holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity.

This spring, Florida enacted what the Human Rights Campaign calls "a record six expressly anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law," more than the last seven years combined.

Among them are bills that ban transition-related care for minors, bar trans people from using the public facilities that align with their gender identities and prohibit schools from requiring students or employees to refer to each other with pronouns that don't align with their assigned sex at birth.

Another bill, aimed at keeping children from attending drag shows, was blocked by a federal judge late last month (just days before the Supreme Court, in an unrelated case, ruled that a web designer was entitled to refuse same-sex wedding work).

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DeSantis slammed over Trump attack ad over LGBTQ rights - NPR

The top spokesperson for a super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that former President Trump is the “runaway front-runner” in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

“Look right now in national polling, we are way behind,” the spokesperson, Steve Cortes, said during a Twitter Spaces event Sunday night. “I’ll be the first to admit that. I believe in being really blunt and really honest. It’s an uphill battle, I don’t think is an unwinnable battle, but clearly, Donald Trump is the runaway front-runner, particularly since the indictments.”

“That was not the case before the indictments. It is the case afterwards,” Cortes added. “And it is understandable that a lot of folks want to rally to [Trump] when he’s been unfairly prosecuted, really, but persecuted.”

Cortes served as a senior advisor to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, but announced in May that he would be endorsing DeSantis for the GOP nomination in the 2024 presidential election. He now serves as an advisor and spokesman for the Never Back Down PAC, which backs DeSantis for the GOP nomination.

He wrote in an op-ed at the time that DeSantis was “the best possible option to win the presidency,” adding that the “America First movement” is larger than any one individual.

In response to an email from The Hill, Cortes said he remained convinced that DeSantis had a strong path to winning the GOP presidential nomination.

“The former president has debated through two successive presidential cycles, so of course he possesses a lot of experience in that arena. But I am convinced that Governor DeSantis will outperform expectations and inform large audiences about his amazing life, political record, and winning agenda for the presidency,” Cortes said in the email.

“Taking on an incumbent or former president in the primary always represents a significant challenge. I gladly embraced that reality in joining the team. All of us on Team DeSantis remain convinced that the governor has a strong path to the nomination, and the best chance of any Republican to defeat Biden in the general election.”

In the Twitter Spaces event, Cortes said that while DeSantis remains the “clear underdog,” he believes the GOP primary is a two-man race between the former president and the Florida governor.

He also noted that in the first four primary states, the polls are “a lot tighter” than what they are showing on the national scale.

“There’s a lot of other folks in the race, who I think most of whom are not truly running for president,” Cortes said. “They’re running for other positions or for sort of branding reasons or, you know, other and I think in some cases, frankly, some nefarious reasons that their right. I think it’s a two-man race. We’re clearly the underdog. We are clearly fighting uphill, but I think we have an amazing story to tell.”

“If we do not prevail — and I have every intent on winning, I didn’t sign up for this to come in second — but if we do not prevail I will tell you this, we will make President Trump better for having this kind of primary,” he added.

Politico first reported the conversation between Cortes and Twitter user @CryptoLawyerz, an anonymous account, on Twitter Spaces.

DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin reiterated the campaign’s confidence in a statement to The Hill, saying that the Florida governor has been “underestimated in every race he has won, and this time will be no different.”

“Donald Trump has to explain to Republican voters why he didn’t do the things he is now promising in his first term as president,” he said. “Governor Ron DeSantis over-delivered on his promises as governor and has the national vision we need to restore our country, clean out DC, and lead our Great American Comeback. This campaign is a marathon, not a sprint; we will be victorious.”

This story was updated at 5:26 p.m.

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DeSantis PAC spokesperson calls Trump the runaway front-runner - The Hill