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Kanye West releases 2024 campaign video after meeting with Trump
Criticism continues to pour in after the former president hosted a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West, who has gone on an antisemitic rampage of late, and his associate Nick Fuentes, one of the US’s most notorious white supremacist activists.
On Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell condemned the meeting and said that it may have ruined Donald Trump’s chances in 2024.
“Anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”
House Republican Leader took a weaker stance – condemning Mr Fuentes but refusing to condemn Mr Trump and falsely claiming that the former president had condemned the white supremacist “four times”. Mr Trump has not done so even once.
As the fallout over the meeting continued, over in Washington DC Mr Trump’s former adviser Stephen Miller was testifying before a grand jury investigating the January riot – where a mob of supporters of his boss stormed the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election.
In a landmark verdict, two Oath Keepers were convicted on Tuesday of seditious conspiracy for their part in the riot.
A powerful House committee has obtained six years’ worth of Donald Trump’s tax returns, the Treasury Department confirmed on Wednesday.
The development brings an end to a six-year legal battle that reached the Supreme Court and ended in favour of House Democrats who have long pushed to investigate Mr Trump’s finances.
CNN first reported the news. Eric Garcia has more:
The House Ways & Means Committee has obtained six years of former president Donald Trump’s tax returns after a yearslong effort to obtain them, CNN reported.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would very much like to become speaker when the new House of Representatives convenes in January, but, thus far, he’s having trouble finding the votes that would confirm him to the chamber’s top position.
Mr McCarthy, a Californian, has led the Republican caucus since 2019. He needs a majority of voting members of the House to support him in a vote on the House floor on 3 January, but there are signs that he might have trouble getting to that number.
Abe Asher takes us inside the growing rebellion that threatens GOP leadership’s status quo in the House:
The Republican leader is struggling to corral the votes he needs to become Speaker
With lawsuits, criminal cases and the firestorm of criticism after his white supremacist dinner last week all hanging over him, Donald Trump is clearly in a foul mood – and true to form, he is using his bespoke platform Truth Social to vent his spleen about well-worn topics that he considers it safe to rant about when he needs to let off steam:
Mr Trump’s reference to mail-in ballots specifically refers to Kari Lake’s defeat in the Arizona gubernatorial election, which both he and she falsely attribute to electoral malfeasance. There is little popular momentum behind the effort to get Ms Lake into office despite her defeat – and Mr Trump is noticeably not bothering to make similar claims on behalf of his chosen Senate candidate in the state, defeated right-wing hardliner Blake Masters.
Republican candidate Herschel Walker has not taken questions from reporters on the trail in nearly two months as the Georgia Senate race sets to conclude in a runoff next week.
Mr Walker’s campaign remains beset by scandal and mistrust; The Daily Beast and other news organisations have reported that amid a barrage of stories about secret children and the pro-life candidate having supposedly funded an abortion his own staff now do not trust Mr Walker to make honest statements about his past.
He trailed Senator Raphael Warnock in an intitial round of voting last month and by all credible indications appears poised to fall further behind the Democrat next week without the buoying effect of other, more popular Republican candidates on the ballot. Many polls showed Mr Walker leading into the first round of voting in November; in actuality, he trailed the Democrat by one percentage point when all votes were counted.
Read more about how this race is playing out in its final days:
Georgia Senate race to end in December runoff
A civil rights group that has sued Florida governor Ron DeSantis for tricking two planeloads of South and Central American asylum seekers into boarding charter flights bound for the liberal Massachusetts community of Martha’s Vineyard has added two top of the governor’s top officials as defendants in their lawsuit.
“The object of this scheme was not to help immigrants find a better life in northern cities but to use political fervor over immigration to boost Defendant DeSantis’ national profile,” the attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
Read more about the growing legal battle over the political stunt that has caused headaches for Democrats and made Mr DeSantis a rising star in the GOP:
A civil rights group that has sued Florida governor Ron DeSantis for tricking two planeloads of South and Central American asylum seekers into boarding charter flights bound for the liberal Massachusetts community of Martha’s Vineyard has added two top Sunshine State officials as defendants in their lawsuit.
Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker struggled to explain to why former president Donald Trump is not campaigning for him in the final week of Georgia’s Senate runoff race.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked why the former president will not rally with Mr Walker, when former president Barack Obama will campaign with Mr Walker’s Democratic opponent, Senator Raphael Warnock, on Thursday.
The candidate’s response was a bit awkward. Watch below:
‘He’s been doing other things for me,” GOP candidate says of Donald Trump
Returning Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump ally of some standing, has not minced his words when it comes to the former president’s dinner with exuberant antisemite Nick Fuentes and disgraced rapper Kanye West.
“I condemned Kanye West’s antisemitic statements,” Mr Netanyahu told journalist Bari Weiss. “Straight away, I thought that was just wrong and misplaced. And I think that that’s what I would say about President Trump’s decision to dine with this person I think is wrong and misplaced. I think it’s a mistake. He shouldn’t do that.”
Kevin McCarthy may have a majority in the House of Representatives, but it is so small that to win the vote for speaker, he can scarcely afford to lose the support of a single member of the GOP conference – and it seems some of his most extreme members are still preparing to raise hell.
The whole-House vote comes at the start of January. To win it, Mr McCarthy needs a majority of the votes cast on the day – meaning he does not need a majority of all members provided enough of them either decline to take part.
If you’re behind on the story of Donald Trump’s dinner with antisemitic rapper Kanye West and racist toll Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago, here’s a piece running through what you need to know – from the events as described by those involved to the ensuing fallout, as the Republican Party and even many in Magaworld speak out against Mr Trump’s decision to host such exceptionally objectionable people at his private residence.
Ex-president under fire over questionable guests at Mar-a-Lago
Senator Marco Rubio had a particularly aggressive rebuke of Nick Fuentes, one of America’s most infamous white nationalists and antisemites, on Monday after former President Donald Trump faced another day of questions and criticism surrounding the Mar-a-Lago meetup with Mr Fuentes and rapper Kanye West.
It comes as the governor of his state, Ron DeSantis, is looking more competitive than ever against Donald Trump in 2024, coming off a strong reelection victory alongside victories for Republicans around the state.
Read more from John Bowden:
Florida senator headlined rally alongside Trump days before midterms
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Donald Trump and Kanye West meet in the Oval Office in 2018
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