Category Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump made it clear how he felt about the media during his time in the White House. He capitalized the term "fake news" and often used it to describe anyone who disagreed with him (via CNN). "It is amazing what's happening to the discredited media like CNN, MSDNC, New York Times, and Washington Post," Trump said in an August 2021 statement. "Their businesses have dropped off a cliff, which is actually a very good thing for the American people, because they are Fake News (likewise the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS)."

There are a few networks he didn't consider to be fake news, though, and one of them was the conservative-leaning One America News (OAN). According toThe Independent, Trump released a statement shared through his son's Twitter account that called for protests against Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, who both chose to drop the network from its services.

"Between heavily indebted Time Warner, and Radical Left Comcast, which runs Xfinity, there is a virtual monopoly on news, thereby making what you hear from the LameStream Media largely FAKE, hence the name FAKE NEWS," Trump's statement read. "It is a very popular channel, far more popular than most would understand, and they are being treated horribly by the Radical Left lunatics running the networks."

His statement concluded with him saying, "Instead of being allowed to grow, their voice is being shuttered. Don't let it happen, cancel DirecTV. If you feel infringed by what this Communist movement is doing, cancel DirecTV!"

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Donald Trump Is Seeing Red Over This Cancellation - The List

Donald Trump Jr. has suggested sending his father to Europe to meet with NATO leaders to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine instead of President Joe Biden.

The former president's eldest son claimed that having Biden speak to European leaders at a NATO summit in Brussels on March 24 would "embolden our enemies further."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed on Tuesday that Biden will meet face-to-face with his European counterparts in the Belgium capital. He will also attend a scheduled European Council summit to discuss imposing further sanctions against Russia and provide further humanitarian support to those affected by the conflict, which is entering its third week.

"Sending Biden to Europe for 'High Stakes' NATO talks will only embolden our enemies further," Trump Jr. tweeted.

"If you want to get something done right send Trump."

Trump Jr.'s tweet arrived after his father appeared to attempt to revise history regarding his relationship with NATO.

Before he entered office, Trump described NATO as "obsolete" and threatened to withdraw the U.S. from the coalition while president if more countries didn't meet the minimum spending requirements of 2 percent of GDP.

In 2019, The New York Times reported that Trump discussed pulling the U.S. out of NATO, a move that would have emboldened Russia and Vladimir Putin. According to the report, Trump considered the military alliance a financial drain and was unhappy with the other countries that failed to meet the spending targets he had set.

Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, told The Times pulling out of the Western alliance, which has been a deterrent of Russian aggression since the fall of the Soviet Union, would be "a geopolitical mistake of epic proportions."

"Even discussing the idea of leaving NATOlet alone actually doing sowould be the gift of the century for Putin," Stavridis said.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Trump attempted to claim credit for the continuation of the alliance and the military support being given to the country being attacked by Russia.

"I hope everyone is able to remember that it was me, as President of the United States, that got delinquent NATO members to start paying their dues, which amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars," Trump said in a February 28 statement.

"Also, it was me that got Ukraine the very effective anti-tank busters (Javelins) when the previous Administration was sending blankets."

It was noted at the time that Trump threatened to withhold weapons from Ukraine in a 2019 phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky where he was accused of attempting to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, ahead of ahead of the 2020 election, which lead to Trump's first impeachment.

Recently, Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton told The Washington Post that he believed the former president would have pulled the U.S. out of NATO had he won reelection in 2020, and that Putin was "waiting" for him to do that.

In another interview with SiriusXM's Julie Mason, Bolton added that the U.S. would be in "a lot worse shape" had Trump followed through with his threats to withdraw from NATO.

"I think one of the reasons that Putin did not move during Trump's term in office was [that] he saw the president's hostility with NATO...and to Putin's mind, it's a binary proposition: A weaker NATO is stronger Russia," Bolton said.

"So I think Putin saw Trump doing a lot of his work for him and thought, maybe in a second term, Trump would make good on his desire to get out of NATO, and then it would just ease Putin's path just that much more."

In a tweet ahead of the "extraordinary" summit on March 24, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said: "We will address Russia's invasion of Ukraine, our strong support for Ukraine, and further strengthening NATO's deterrence & defense.

"At this critical time, North America & Europe must continue to stand together."

The White House has been contacted for comment.

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Donald Trump Jr. Wants His Father To Attend NATO Summit Instead of Biden - Newsweek

Donald Trump had a notoriously close relationship with Vladimir Putin during his time in office as US president, with the American even labelling the Russian president as a friend, however he now has revealed just why Putin invaded Ukraine.

Trump has been roundly criticised for his public admiration of Putin, but he really doesn't seem to mind as long as his own base continues to laud his every move.

"He wants to rebuild the Soviet Union," Trump told Jeanine Pirro in a radio interview with Fox News.

"They had a country, you could see it was a country where there was a lot of love and, you know, we're doing it because someone wants to make their country bigger or wants to rebuild back to the way it used to be when it wasn't really working too well."

Trump continued to describe Putin as a person with a big ego, who would do 'unspeakable things' if he continues to feel cornered by Ukrainian resistance and Western sanctions.

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Donald Trump reveals the reason why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine - Marca English

President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on Tuesday, June 20, 2017.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Donald Trump asked if US troops were in Ukraine in 2017 at a meeting with then-President Poroshenko.

The revelation was made in a new book by former US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.

"It was disconcerting that he did not seem to know where we had our troops deployed," she wrote.

President Donald Trump asked whether US troops were in Ukraine during an Oval Office meeting with then Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in 2017, according to a new book by former US ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, seen by The Guardian.

At the meeting, Trump asked his national security adviser HR McMaster if US troops were in Donbas, a territory in Ukraine claimed by Russian-backed separatists.

"An affirmative answer to that question would have meant that the United States was in a shooting war with Russia," Yovanovitch wrote in the book, according to The Guardian.

"It was disconcerting that he did not seem to know where we had our troops his troops deployed. I could only imagine what the Ukrainians were thinking."

In the same meeting, Trump also told Poroshenko that Ukraine "was a corrupt country, which he knew because a Ukrainian friend at Mar-a-Lago had told him," Yovanovitch wrote in the book, according to The Guardian.

She also claims Trump said, "Crimea was Russian, as the locals spoke Russian."

Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea in 2014 in a move widely condemned by the international community.

Yovanovitch said that others in the meeting "kept a poker face on" as then-President Trump made the cringe-worthy comments.

The former ambassador describes the meeting in her upcoming book, "Lessons from the Edge: A Memoir."

She served as US ambassador to Ukraine until she was removed from her post by Trump in 2019, amid his attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden by withholding military aid. The scandal ultimately led to Trump's first impeachment.

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Yovanovitch writes in the book that she had the impression that "Trump had come into the meeting viewing Ukraine as a 'loser' country, smaller and weaker than Russia."

She added that "Trump's obsequiousness toward [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was a frequent and continuing cause for concern."

However, she wrote that Trump was surprised by Poroshenko, who was "as physically imposing as Trump" and "a billionaire businessman."

The revelations from Yovanovitch's book come weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a military invasion of Ukraine.

In recent weeks, Trump has continued to praise Putin for being "smart" and described his justification for invading Ukraine as "savvy" and "genius."

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Former US ambassador describes the awkward moment Donald Trump thought US troops were in Ukraine during a meeting with its president in 2017 - Yahoo...

While speaking with the Nelk Boys for their podcast, "Full Send," former President Donald Trump received an expensive gift from one of the Nelk Boys. According to TMZ, the Nelk Boys' SteveWillDoIt, also known by his real name, Stephen Deleonardis, gave Trump an ice blue platinum Day-Date 40mm Rolex, worth a staggering $75,000. This particular model of the Rolex watch is actually not sold in stores, which means that SteveWillDoIt had to place a custom order to craft Trump's gift. SteveWillDoIt claimed that he felt the need to give Trump a gift after selling $500,000 worth of t-shirts featuring his face alongside Trump's face.

Just hours after uploading the podcast on YouTube, the platform removed the video for violating its misinformation policy, which was likely sparked by Trump's claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. After his interview with the Nelk Boys was taken down, Trump released a statement through his Save America PAC, citing this incident as proof that American censorship is becoming similar to Russian censorship. "Whatever happened to free speech in our Country? Incredibly, but not surprisingly, the Big Tech lunatics have taken down my interview with the very popular NELK Boys so that nobody can watch it or in any way listen to it," Trump said in a statement, per the New York Post.

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Donald Trump Just Received A Massive Gift That Is Sure To Turn Heads - The List

Zelensky personally thanks Biden for banning imports of Russian oil

In a tweet sent Tuesday, the Ukrainian president wrote: Thankful for US and @POTUS personal leadership in striking in the heart of Putins war machine and banning oil, gas and coal from US market." He reiterated his appreciation in an a video posted later in the day, saying: The United States has taken a step that will significantly weaken the invaders. It will make them pay for aggression and be responsible for the evil they have done. For all the evil...I am grateful personally to President of the United States...for this decision. For this leadership. For this most powerful signal to the whole world. It is very simple: every penny paid to Russia turns into bullets and projectiles that fly to other sovereign states.

Just last week, the Biden administration said it did not wish to sanction Russias oil and gas industry. But Biden was under major pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as well as Zelensky particularly as Putin targets Ukrainian civilians. During remarks at the White House on Tuesday, Biden acknowledged, however, that the move will lead to a significant increase in costs for American consumers. Republicans, despite lobbying Biden to ban Russian oil imports, have obviously, already begun attacking Biden for this.

According to the Washington Post, the White House officials have launched an effort to explore what the administration can do to get other authoritarian countries to ramp up their production of oil, considered tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and revived discussions about a gas tax holiday to help alleviate Americans price pressures at the pump. (Republicans will no doubt try and use any fallout against Biden during the midterms, selectively ignoring the fact that they, too, called for this ban). The president also warned energy companies against price gouging and told them not to exploit this situation or American consumers.

Nevertheless, many have said the ban is necessary to inflict pain on Putin. Even former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who last year desperately wanted Democrats to cut down Covid-19 relief in order to avoid inflation, is on board. History is going to remember much better what we did or did not do to stand up for freedom than it is going to remember the inflation rate, or the price of gasoline, in the spring and summer of 2022, Summers told the Post.

Or as Stephen Colbert put it: A clean conscience is worth a buck or two.

In case you were worried Republicans had started to view Trumps attempt to extort Ukraine in a new light...

Worry no longer.

Elsewhere!

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Trump Admired Putins Ability to Kill Whomever He Wanted: Ex-Staffer - Vanity Fair

Trump shares some thoughts with Georgia governor Brian Kemp back when they were on speaking terms. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock

Its no secret that Atlanta is not one of Donald Trumps favorite places. But now the former president is upping the stakes in his yearslong battle with the place that likes to call itself the City Too Busy to Hate. He hopes to bust it up. Seriously.

Trump made his feelings about the city clear just before he took office in 2017, when he took a shot at Representative John Lewis, who had represented the Atlanta district for more than three decades. Trump was miffed at the civil-rights leader, who died three years later, because hed announced he would not be attending Trumps inauguration so Trump sent a pair of nasty tweets.

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results, Trump said. All talk, talk, talk no action or results. Sad!

Memories of this insult were fresh a few weeks later when Trumps favorite NFL team, the New England Patriots, faced the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl. Lewis was being beaten for voting rights while Trump was avoiding Vietnam, Atlanta-based sportswriter Jason Kirk observed at the time. Kirk pointed out that Atlanta has lots of new business and residential structures, plenty of corporate headquarters, some great neighborhoods, and not at all unusual crime levels. It probably didnt help local feelings when Trumps team won in a heartbreaker. Less than a year later, the 45th president showed up at the College Football National Championship game in Atlanta between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia; his security forced the closure of some gates at Mercedes-Benz Stadium and left a lot of fans waiting in freezing rain to occupy their insanely expensive seats. When Trump sauntered onto the field at halftime, the Alabama fans cheered lustily. On the Georgia side of the stadium, there were as many boos as cheers. The famously touchy president surely noticed.

Atlanta got some revenge in 2020 when the city and its inner suburbs delivered huge margins for Joe Biden and turned Georgia blue in a presidential election for just the second time since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. And a few months later, Atlanta again delivered for Democrats in dual runoffs that gave the party control of the U.S. Senate; two Atlantans (Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff) won seats in the chamber, humiliating Trump, who campaigned personally for their Republican opponents.

The following year, a campaign emerged to have Buckhead, Atlantas richest and whitest area, secede from the rest of the city; as far as we know, Trump originally had nothing to do with the effort. Making Buckhead, which was first annexed by the city in 1952, a separate municipality would cripple Atlantas revenue base and remove a fifth of its population. The ostensible reason for the secession push led by a New York businessman and GOP fundraiser named Bill White, who moved to Atlanta in 2018 was rising crime; the idea was an independent Buckhead would hire a lot more cops and some vicious judges to crack down on the criminal element. Under Georgia law, such secessions require an authorizing act from the state legislature and a victory in a local referendum of voters in the area seeking recognition as a city. White rural Republican legislators, who have been bashing Atlanta daily for generations, loved the idea, and it looked for a while as though the referendum would be called for 2022.

Soon, however, Atlantas powerful business community began to mobilize opposition to the Buckhead secession effort, and White damaged his own cause with a series of racially offensive comments and conspiracy-theory claims. In early February, the two Republicans who run the Georgia legislature, Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan and House Speaker David Ralston, announced they opposed the enabling legislation for the referendum, basically killing it, while indicating they wanted to give newly elected Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens a chance to roll out some anti-crime initiatives. The fear of simultaneously alienating corporate donors and looking more nakedly racist than usual was probably the big motivation; Duncan in particular (who is retiring after mocking Trumps election-fraud lies) is associated with efforts to broaden the base of the GOP. Republican Governor Brian Kemp, whom Trump considers an enemy, was conspicuously quiet.

Then, as the clock ticked down to the official demise of the secession effort, a thunderbolt came from Mar-a-Lago in the form of a statement on this extremely local issue. Trump said on February 26:

What is happening in the City of Atlanta is nothing short of disgraceful. Its national news and a regional embarrassment. The good people of Buckhead dont want to be a part of defunding the police and the high crime thats plaguing their communities. However, RINOs like Governor Brian Kemp, the man responsible, along with his puppet master Mitch McConnell, for the loss of two Senate Seats and 2020 Presidential Vote, Lt. Governor Jeff Duncan, Speaker David Ralston, and State Senators Butch Miller, Jeff Mullis, and John Albers always talk a big game but they dont deliver. What good is having Republican leaders if they are unwilling to fight for what they campaigned on? Every RINO must go! Let the voters decide on the very popular City of Buckhead proposal!

Duncan immediately and sardonically assessed Trumps weird intervention as an effort to find a new culture-war campaign issue for his gubernatorial candidate, David Perdue (the same man who lost one of those Senate seats), as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. As David Perdues campaign continues to flounder, his supporters are desperately deploying a spaghetti-on-the-wall approach, which, as usual, is devoid from any semblance of reality, Duncan said.

Perdue has not only stuck with the Buckhead secession cause; hes doubled down on it, telling the big CPAC clambake in Florida last month that its just like Ukraines resistance to Russia. (Yes, really.) We have to defend our way of life. Its just that simple, he said. If self-determination and freedom are going to abound and flourish in the rest of the world, we have to defend it here at home.

Despite the former presidents power among Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere, he cant save the Buckhead bill from its scheduled death (Duncan would have to agree to any resurrection, and that isnt happening). So Trump and his candidate have tossed a racial hot potato into an already dangerously divisive GOP primary for no reason other than nastiness. In the cold war between the 45th president and Atlanta, the city will win this latest skirmish.

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Trump Backs Buckhead Secession to Get Revenge on Atlanta - New York Magazine

Carey Dunne, center, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance's general counsel, leaves federal court in Manhattan, July 1, 2021. (Jefferson Siegel/The New York Times)

NEW YORK On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States.

The prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges.

But Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorneys office in lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Pomerantz and Dunne about whether they could show that Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.

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The questioning was so intense that as the meeting ended, Dunne, exasperated, used a lawyerly expression that normally refers to a judges fiery questioning:

Wow, this was a really hot bench, Dunne said, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. What Im hearing is you have great concerns.

The meeting, on Jan. 24, started a series of events that brought the investigation of Trump to a sudden halt, and late last month prompted Pomerantz and Dunne to resign. It also represented a drastic shift: Braggs predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., had deliberated for months before deciding to move toward an indictment of Trump. Bragg, not two months into his tenure, reversed that decision.

Bragg has maintained that the three-year inquiry is continuing. But the reversal, for now, has eliminated one of the gravest legal threats facing the former president.

This account of the investigations unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events, pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history. Had the district attorneys office secured an indictment, Trump would have been the first current or former president to be criminally charged.

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Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorneys office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence.

Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York Attorney General Letitia James, had not taken issue with Dunne and Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Trumps intent a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records and about the risks of relying on the former presidents onetime fixer, Michael Cohen, as a key witness.

Cohens testimony, the prosecutors leading the investigation argued, could help to establish that Trump was intentionally misleading when he exaggerated the value of his properties. The financial statements Trump submitted to banks to secure loans documents that say Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the valuations could also support a case.

Bragg was not persuaded. Once he told Pomerantz and Dunne that he was not prepared to authorize charges, they resigned. Explaining the resignation to his team of prosecutors in a meeting a day later, Dunne said he felt he needed to disassociate myself with this decision because I think it was on the wrong side of history.

Bragg has told aides that the inquiry could move forward if a new piece of evidence is unearthed, or if a Trump Organization insider decides to turn on Trump. Other prosecutors in the office saw that as fanciful.

Trump has long denied wrongdoing and has accused Bragg and James, both of whom are Democrats and Black, of carrying out a politically motivated witch hunt and being racists.

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Bragg, said the investigation into Trump was continuing under new leadership.

Pomerantz and Dunne declined to comment.

The Brain Trust

Vance and his top deputies were riding high last summer.

They had just announced criminal tax charges against Trumps family business and his longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg. The next step for Dunne, Pomerantz and their team was to build a case against Trump himself.

By the fall, a number of the prosecutors assigned to the investigation thought it was likely that Trump had broken the law. Proving it would be another matter.

Concern among the offices career prosecutors about the investigation into the former president came to a head in September at a meeting they sought with Dunne. Dunne offered to have them work only on the pending trial of Weisselberg or leave the Trump team altogether.

Two prosecutors eventually took him up on the latter.

Vance pressed on, and in early November, convened a new special grand jury to start hearing evidence against the former president. Still, he had yet to decide whether to direct the prosecutors to begin a formal grand jury presentation with the goal of seeking charges. As his tenure drew to a close in December, he consulted a group of prominent outside lawyers to help inform what would be his final decision.

The group was referred to internally as the brain trust a handful of former prosecutors that included two senior members of Robert Muellers special counsel inquiry into Trumps 2016 campaign.

Before they all convened for a meeting on Dec. 9, Dunne and Pomerantz circulated hypothetical opening arguments in advance: one for the prosecution, another for the defense.

The deliberations led prosecutors to simplify the charges they planned to seek to make it easier to win a conviction, and Vance was soon persuaded. Three days later, Dunne sent the team an email announcing that they would proceed. The plan, he said, was to seek charges from the panel in the spring.

Most of the remaining career prosecutors were on board. But that week, a third prosecutor left the investigation into Trump.

Time Is of the Essence

With Vance about to leave office, the investigators attention turned to their future boss.

Bragg first got involved in the district attorneys criminal investigation in the final days of last year. He and his top deputies met with Pomerantz and Dunne over the holidays, appearing eager to get up to speed.

Braggs first priority upon taking office was adopting a new set of policies that essentially reduced the list of crimes for which he would seek jail time. The decision, announced internally in a Jan. 3 memo, prompted a fierce backlash from law enforcement, elected officials and some members of the public.

Dunne emailed Bragg and his team that day, emphasizing the need to make a decision about the Trump case within two weeks. Time is of the essence, Dunne wrote.

Bragg signaled a strong interest in the investigation and committed to adding two prosecutors to the team.

When they met again Jan. 11 to focus on Trumps financial statements, Braggs team asked a number of questions and offered suggestions for how to present a case against Trump to a jury.

Dunne and Pomerantz then resumed their grand jury presentation, questioning Trumps longtime accountant from Mazars USA on Jan. 19 and a real estate valuation expert the next day.

Around that time, Weisselbergs lawyers filed legal papers seeking to dismiss the earlier indictment, a routine filing that nevertheless appeared to raise alarms for Bragg and his team about using Cohen to prosecute Trump. The papers took aim at Cohen, claiming that he was pursuing a vendetta against Weisselberg as revenge for the accountants having testified against him before a federal grand jury in the hush-money case.

It was the next day, Jan. 24, that Pomerantz and Dunne faced the hot bench.

There, Bragg expressed concern about calling Cohen as a witness. He and his aides also emphasized the potential difficulty of proving that Trump had intended to break the law.

Braggs aides agreed that it was wise to stand down.

One Decision, Two Resignations

Pomerantz did not take kindly to the setback. In an email soon after the Jan. 24 meeting, he threatened to resign if Bragg did not make a final decision about the future of the investigation.

He also offered to make a series of presentations about crucial issues in the case in an effort to speed up Braggs decision. Bragg agreed, and Pomerantz and Dunne delivered three presentations beginning early last month. After some of the meetings, Braggs team met behind closed doors without the two prosecutors.

Pomerantz and Dunne had one final chance to sway Bragg in a meeting on Valentines Day. The topic: Which laws had Trump broken?

On the morning of Feb. 22, Bragg notified them of his decision: He did not want to continue the grand jury presentation.

Pomerantz resigned the next day. Bragg asked Dunne to stay, but within hours, he joined Pomerantz in leaving.

Dunne, however, left the door open to a possible return. If Bragg reconsidered his decision, Dunne told colleagues, he would gladly come back.

2022 The New York Times Company

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How the Manhattan DA's Investigation Into Donald Trump ...

Proclaiming whats going to happen is a popular way to shrug off taking responsibility for helping to determine whats going to happen. And its something weve seen a lot with doomspreading prophecies that Donald Trump is going to run for president or even win in 2024.

One of the assumptions is that Trump will still be alive and competent to run, but the health of this sedentary shouter in his mid-70s, including the after-effects of the Covid-19 he was hospitalised for in 2020, could change.

Look to external issues too, for whatever the condition of his own health, his financial health is under attack, with businesses losing money and some banks refusing to lend to him after the storming of the Capitol.

Its also worth remembering that he lost the popular vote by millions in 2016 and by more millions in 2020; he never had a mandate. The Republicans are clearly gearing up to try to steal an election again, but their chances of winning one with Trump as candidate seem slim. Currently, he is creating conflict within the Republican party with his insistence on controlling it for his own agenda and punishing dissenters.

Another assumption we make when we assess Trumps prospects is that he wont be locked up in 2024, or that his reputation, such as it is, wont be severely damaged even in the eyes of some who voted for him before. Even in the past couple of weeks his standing has shifted significantly. Former attorney general Bill Barr is now speaking up to promote his book about how Trump was clearly advised that his claims of election theft had no basis and that his strategies to overturn the results were illegal. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has woken up people around the world (or at least those who were dozing) to Vladimir Putins malevolence and reminded Americans of how eagerly Trump allied himself with the Russian dictator, personally and politically. Suddenly a lot of Republicans are trying to scurry away from their own pro-Putin record, which may mean distancing themselves from Trump as well. His 2019 withholding of military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure Ukrainian president Zelenskiy into supporting his lies is also being re-examined under the harsh light of this war.

Additionally, Trump is facing many criminal charges, from allegations of financial dirty dealing by the Trump Organization in New York (Trump has called the various probes into the business politically motivated), to an investigation into whether Trump and his allies subverted election results in Georgia, where Trump claims election fraud took place. Just last week, the January 6 committee laid out a series of potential charges against the ex-president, including conspiracy to defraud the American people and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. Trumps domestic status seems to be shifting rapidly. He is also facing so many lawsuits that both CNN and NBC published indexes of the cases. Last month news broke that Trump had left the White House with classified documents, which he claimed he had a right to take to his home. That could be a felony, though how much appetite the Biden administration has for jailing a former president remains to be seen.

Among the large array of civil charges Trump faces are E Jean Carrolls allegations of defamation over his insult-laden denial that he raped her (he has responded that he was simply responding in the line of official duties) and former consigliere Michael Cohens case that his return to prison was triggered by Trump after Cohen released a revealing memoir. There are also suits holding Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection both from members of Congress, and two policemen injured in the mayhem. In February the courts ruled that these civil suits can go forward, and Trump lacks the immunity that would protect him from them. Trump has initiated lawsuits of his own, but a great many have been dismissed, although he is still suing his niece, Mary Trump, for disclosing tax information about him. She in turn is suing him and two of his siblings, alleging that they defrauded her out of much of her inheritance (which they deny).

Though the 14th amendment of the US constitution should ban all insurrectionists from running for elected office, it seems unlikely to be applied to 21st-century candidates the way it was to former Confederates. But still, the Georgia and New York charges are serious. All of which is to say that the road from early 2022 to late 2024 is bumpy for Trump. Popular opinion is fickle; George W Bush is Trumps age and clearly a permanent has-been. Even Barack Obama, at 60, has strolled offstage.

But even if Trump is not indisputably in the running, Trumpism is running rampant, and its a force to contend with in political races across the US. Trump was a super-spreader of his brand of amoral self-interest that tramples fact, truth, law and rights. The man himself is sulking in his private club in Florida enduring effectual exile from New York, Washington and Twitter but to a degree, his work is done. He has got an already corrupt political party to embrace his tactics and values. The brazen lies of prominent figures in the party show that theyve abandoned all ethics and standards, and will happily violate the oaths they took to uphold the constitution. Viral Trumpism has already merged with conspiracy theories such as QAnon, with anti-vaccine cults, with white supremacists and neo-fascists, and with the gun-fetishising groups that continue to have an ominous presence in public life.

I sometimes think of the American right as a pot on the boil; whats inside is concentrating as it shrinks. The Republican party has been losing membership for years: a Gallup poll earlier this month reports that 24% of eligible voters are registered Republican, a steady decline over the past 15 years.Thats a reminder that news stories revealing that a majority of Republicans believe something could actually mean that only a small minority of Americans do.

There have been high-profile defections and general atrophy in the age of Trump. Thats the shrinking. But then theres the concentration that renders those who remain more furious, more closed-minded, more ready to jump on any bandwagon that looks as if it leads to power, and even more rigidly committed to an increasingly rightwing agenda, even though or maybe because that means minority rule.

For progressives, Republican desperation is a good sign, in its way. A popular party doesnt have to suppress votes and steal elections. A party aligned with the will of the people doesnt need to lie and cheat. Trumpism seems like a last gasp, a desperate last chance to hang on to whats slipping away. The old Soviet-satellite aphorism You can cut down the flowers but you cant stop the spring applies nicely.

The future of this country is white-minority. Yet the Republican party has done its best to alienate everybody else, while the rising majority of Americans support reproductive rights, climate action and many economic justice measures. The long-term progressive future of the United States seems almost inevitable. But with Trumpism still a force, the short-term future is alarming and unpredictable, and the damage may be lasting; whether its the prevention of climate action or the infliction of literal and financial violence on poor and marginalised people.

Enemies of authoritarianism and white supremacy have their work cut out, but the task is clear and straightforward: to protect the democratic process, upholding voting rights and free and fair elections, to try to win those elections for progressive candidates, and to articulate and defend the values behind those objectives.

Trump is treading water, but this is how resistance to Trumpism works, and how it can prevail if enough people work at it hard enough.

Originally posted here:

Donald Trumps power is fading: Trumpism is the clear and present danger now - The Guardian

When former President Donald Trump summoned then U.S. Attorney General William Barr in early December, he says he knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant meeting and thought Trump was going to fire him.

"I told my assistant as I left the office she may have to pack up for me because often he would tell you not to come back," Barr told "CBS Mornings."

When he entered the Oval Office, Barr said the conversation quickly turned into a back and forth between Barr and Trump about the former president's allegations of widespread fraud.

During that conversation, Barr said Trump got "madder and madder" so Barr said that he could resign if Trump was not happy about his work.

"I said, 'look, Mr. President, I know you're unhappy with me. I'm happy to tender my resignation.' Boom, he hit the desk, and said, accepted," Barr recalled. "As I was pulling out of the White House, two of his lawyers came and pounded on the window, government lawyers, and said, 'The president doesn't want you to leave.'"

This is just one of several events that Barr details in his new book, "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General," which went on sale on Tuesday.

Barr said after that encounter, he reluctantly stayed although he knew his relationship with Trump had deteriorated.

"I didn't leave then because I wanted to see how this was playing out and I thought I could continue to look at these claims and make sure that people understood that most of, well, what was being presented simply wasn't true," he said.

When asked if he would vote for Trump if runs for office in 2024, Barr said he would support the Republican candidate even if it is Trump.

"I would not work with him, if I was faced with that choice," he said. "I hope I'm not faced with that choice. I don't think the party will go back in that direction."

Barr's resignation was official in December 2020. He has not spoken to Trump since then and said he wouldn't particularly want to have another conversation.

"You don't have a conversation [with him]. You mostly listen," he said.

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Former Attorney General William Barr says Trump got "madder and madder" when challenged on unfounded allegations of election fraud - CBS...