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Tag: donald trump
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Is Trump Worried? Ex-President Rages At RFK Jr. On Truth Social

A series of polls released this week show Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s quixotic candidacy might attract more Republican-leaning voters in 2024 than Democrats. That may have been what prompted former President Donald Trump to release a three-post screed attacking him.

On Friday night, the 45th president of the United States set his sights on RFK Jr., insisting to his millions of followers that the independent presidential candidate is actually a "Radical Left Liberal" who was secretly working to help President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. He even attempted to assign Kennedy one of his patented nicknames: "Junior,'" notably with an unexplained apostrophe that he repeated throughout all three posts.

"A Vote for Junior' would essentially be a WASTED PROTEST VOTE, that could swing either way, but would only swing against the Democrats if Republicans knew the true story about him," Trump wrote.

"I lived with RFK Jr. in New York and watched him convince Governor Cuomo to make Environmental moves that were outright NASTY," he continued. "I’d even take Biden over Junior’, because our Country would last a year or two longer prior to collapse - But it would be dead either way."

"His Views on Vaccines are FAKE, as is everything else about his Candidacy," he added. "Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!"

The ex-president's rage toward RFK Jr. may be due to a new Quinnipiac poll that suggests his candidacy is more attractive to prospective Trump voters than Biden voters. That poll shows that while Trump is still slightly ahead of Biden in swing states, the two are in a dead heat nationally. And when RFK Jr. is thrown into the mix, Trump's vote share diminishes.

According to Axios, while Biden and Trump are tied in a head-to-head matchup with Kennedy on the ballot, Trump's share of votes is significantly larger when RFK Jr. isn't an option. This means that the independent's 2024 campaign could siphon off enough votes from Trump to push Biden over the edge in a close contest.

"That dynamic is consistent with two other polls — a Marist survey on Monday and a NBC News one on Sunday — that show Biden's margin increasing when RFK and other third party candidates are included," Axios reporter Hans Nichols wrote.

RFK Jr.'s appeal to Trump's base may be due to the conspiratorial tone of his campaign. Kennedy became well-known in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic as a vaccine skeptic. In the past, Kennedy has said he is personally "pro-vaccine" and that he's had all of his children vaccinated, but he sang a different tune on a 2021 podcast. CNN reported that in an episode of the "Health Freedom for Humanity" podcast, RFK Jr. encouraged parents to tell strangers to not vaccinate their kids.

"For many, many years, I think parents were so gaslighted, and they were scapegoated, and they were vilified and marginalized, so that even parents of kids who were very, very badly injured, knew what happened to their kid, but they were just reluctant to talk about it," he said. "And I think now those days are over."

Kennedy has also repeated Republican talking points about gun violence. In 2023, he told NewsNation that he viewed the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as reason to believe that gun control was a moot point, and added "I'm not going to take people's guns away."

"Anybody who tells you that they’re going to be able to reduce gun violence through gun control at this point I don’t think is being realistic," Kennedy said.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Melania Trump

Melania Irked By Hush-Money Trial and Trump's Birthday 'Celebration'

Friday marked former First Lady Melania Trump's 54th birthday, which was made more awkward by the fact that she spent it without her husband — who was in court defending himself from allegations that he covered up payments to women to keep quiet about extramarital affairs with him.

Stephanie Grisham, who was chief of staff to the former president's wife during her time in the White House's East Wing, said during a Friday interview on CNN that Melania's absence from the trial proceedings is likely not a coincidence.

"I'm sure she's not happy about it," Grisham said. "It's not fun to hear these details."

Grisham told CNN that because the details Pecker revealed on the stand were not previously known to the public, they were also not previously known to Melania Trump. She added that the video Trump posted to social media celebrating his wife's birthday and showing footage of her at the White House was a purely performative gesture that Melania likely saw right through.

"I rolled my eyes when he did that. It was so beyond inappropriate," Grisham said.

"[Melania] and I talked before about how they actually weren't really birthday people, that that wasn't actually a big deal to either of them... and so that was a performance for voters. That was not to her. Same with this video. That is a performance to try and get voters," she continued.

"It didn't surprise me at all. I'm sure she rolled her eyes too, because it was just so typical, selfish Donald Trump," she added.

The first week of former President Donald Trump's first criminal trial featured the testimony of David Pecker, who was the CEO of American Media Inc. — the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper — at the time of the 2016 presidential election. Pecker testified on the stand that while Trump had previously been concerned about how his wife would react to negative stories about him in the press, his main concern after he launched his campaign was about how negative coverage would impact his presidential ambitions.

Pecker's main point of contact was Michael Cohen, who was Trump's longtime personal lawyer and fixer. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's central argument in his 34-count felony indictment of the ex-president is that Cohen facilitated payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — both of whom claimed to have had affairs with Trump — in order to buy their silence so voters wouldn't have the chance to be influenced by their stories. Those payments were then allegedly labeled as legal fees, though Cohen maintains there was no legal retainer involved in those payments. Trump continues to deny Daniels' and McDougal's allegations.

During one exchange, Pecker said on the stand that he had conversations with former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and White House Communications Director Hope Hicks — who is expected to testify during Trump's trial — about possibly extending McDougal's contract to keep her silent.

"Both of them said that they thought it was a good idea," Pecker said on Thursday.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

'I Think I'd Fall Asleep': Right-Wing Media Praise Trump Snoozing In Court

'I Think I'd Fall Asleep': Right-Wing Media Praise Trump Snoozing In Court

Donald Trump’s MAGA media propagandists are so deep in the tank for the former president that they’ve been praising him for repeatedly falling asleep during his New York City hush money trial.

Since April 15, Trump has regularly been in a Manhattan courtroom, where he faces charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say these payments were intended to keep Daniels’ claims that she had an affair with Trump from becoming public during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump, age 77, often mocks President Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” suggesting that Biden is too old and frail to fulfill his duties. But reporters in the courtroom have repeatedly observed Trump appearing to fall asleep during the trial — most recently on Monday morning before opening statements began.

That evening on Fox News’ Special Report, chief political anchor Bret Baier suggested that news outlets are providing too much coverage of the first-ever criminal trial for a former president, and criticized them in particular for covering the spectacle of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s inability to stay awake in the courtroom.

“You know, we cover it every day,” Baier said of the trial, “and we will — all the details of each day in court — but there are some places that are obviously covering it ad nauseum and have gone through every single detail, including four times that he might have fallen asleep, everything that happens inside the courtroom.”

Meanwhile, Baier’s colleagues and their ilk spent last week attempting to turn Trump’s proclivity for nodding off in public into a virtue — apparently unphased by their years of denigrating Biden as an addled old man whose energetic speeches can only be the result of performance-enhancing drugs.

“I mentioned that Maggie Haberman posted this update from the courtroom, ‘It appears that Trump might be sleeping’ — this was on day one,” Republican political operative and Fox host Sean Hannity said on his April 18 radio show. “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there,” he added.

And Hannity wasn’t the only Trump flunky to attest that they, too, would sleep through a trial just like their beloved former president.

“I'd be falling asleep at that trial too,” Hannity’s colleague Laura Ingraham said on her April 15 Fox show.

“That’s exactly how all of us would act in, like, the ‘Intro to Gender Studies’ class at the University of Missouri,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his radio show.

Others praised Trump for falling asleep in court and urged him to be even more disrespectful during his trial.

“Did Donald Trump nod off for a moment? Good for him. These things are boring,” Newsmax host Greg Kelly offered on April 16.

“Trump appearing to sleep and be bored is exactly the response this Kafkaesque persecution deserves,” Fox host Greg Gutfeld said on the April 16 edition of The Five. “He is America, who, unlike this frothing infantile media, doesn't see this as some mutant form of entertainment and justice.”

“Trump should go to trial, bring a big book, big fat John Grisham novel, just sit there and read,” Gutfeld added. “Just sit there and read. That's the only response this manufactured mayhem deserves — is just contempt.”

Co-host Jesse Watters replied that he was going to send Trump’s team a copy of his new book so Trump “can open it up inside the courtroom.”

On Sunday’s MediaBuzz, Fox contributor Tomi Lahren praised Trump’s “excellent job” and claimed that journalists are “trying to distract from Joe Biden” by pointing out that Trump keeps falling asleep.

“I don't think anybody's buying it,” she said. “Good job media, but I don't think that it's resonating when you've got the current guy, President Joe Biden, in the office, who quite literally falls asleep.”

Less than 24 hours later, Trump apparently once again dozed off in court.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney Savagely Mocks Trump's Porn Star Payoff

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) hasn't shied away from criticizing former President Donald Trump in the past. But on Tuesday he gave his frank and candid take on the allegations surrounding the ex-president's ongoing criminal trial.

Trump's attorneys have spent the first portion of the Manhattan trial making their case that the former president is a "family man" who has been unfairly painted in the media as immoral. While speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, the Utah senator — a fifth-generation practicing Mormon — offered his opinion on that characterization of Trump to CNN congressional correspondent Kristin Wilson.

"I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character, and so far as I know you don't pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you," Romney said.

Romney — who was the GOP presidential nominee in 2012 — appeared to be referencing the hush money payment Trump allegedly made to buy the silence of adult film star and producer Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. Daniels maintains that she and the reality TV star had an affair in 2006, just weeks after Trump's wife, Melania, gave birth to their son, Barron. The former president continues to deny the allegations.

Tuesday's trial proceedings featured the testimony of David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc. — the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid newspaper. Daniels' story was part of the so-called "catch and kill" scheme in which Pecker would purchase the rights to certain stories in order to bury them and limit public knowledge. Pecker told prosecutors that he agreed during a 2015 meeting at Trump Tower to be the "eyes and ears" of Trump's 2016 campaign.

One such "catch-and-kill" scheme involved the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she had an ongoing relationship with Trump while he was married. When Trump reportedly asked Pecker his thoughts on whether they should pay McDougal, Pecker responded with, "we should take this story off the market.

"And I said, 'it's my understanding that she doesn't want her story published. I think the story should be purchased and I believe that you should buy it,'" Pecker said on the witness stand.

According to the 34-count indictment unveiled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year, Trump's personal lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen made the $130,000 payment to Daniels at the behest of Trump, who then reimbursed Cohen and labeled it as a legal retainer. Cohen has said repeatedly that there was no such retainer, and that the $130,000 was explicitly done to prevent Daniels from going public with her story.

Cohen will be one of the prosecution's key witnesses, and will be expected to guide the jury through the hush money payment process. In 2018, he was handed a three-year federal prison sentence for his role in the scheme, among other crimes.

Jurors were excused at approximately 2 PM ET on Tuesday, and the trial will be paused on Wednesday in observance of the Jewish Passover holiday. Proceedings are expected to resume on Thursday morning, with the defense expected to cross-examine Pecker on the stand.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.