Obama: Trump broke ‘core tenet’ of democracy with ‘bunch of hooey’ over election

Ex-president calls for action to stop ‘delegitimizing of democracy’ during redistricting fundraiser

Barack Obama said on Monday that his successor in office, Donald Trump, violated a “core tenet” of democracy when he made up a “bunch of hooey” about last year’s election and refused to concede he lost.

Speaking at his first virtual fundraiser since the 2020 election, the former Democratic president said former Republican president’s claims undermined the legitimacy of US elections and helped lead to other anti-democratic measures such as efforts to suppress the vote.

Continue reading...

New Michael Wolff book reports Trump’s confusion during Capitol attack

Mark Meadows reportedly said ‘We can’t organize that’ after Trump told supporters he’d march, according to Landslide

Donald Trump told supporters he would march on the Capitol with them on 6 January – then abandoned them after a tense exchange with his chief of staff, according to the first excerpt from Landslide, Michael Wolff’s third Trump White House exposé.

Related: Top US general got into shouting match with Trump over race protests – report

Continue reading...

New York prosecutors set deadline for Trump on legal action – report

Ex-president’s lawyers have 24 hours Monday to say why the Trump Organization should not face charges, reports claim

New York prosecutors have given lawyers for Donald Trump 24 hours to respond with any last arguments as to why criminal charges should not be filed against his family business, according to a report on Sunday.

The deadline set for Monday was another strong signal that the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, are considering criminal charges against the former president’s company as an entity, according to sources quoted by the Washington Post.

Continue reading...

Romney: Trump’s lie that he lost 2020 election from voter fraud ‘like WWF’

‘It’s entertaining. But it’s not real’, says Utah senator, referring to artificial world of professional wrestling

Donald Trump’s “big lie” that he lost the 2020 US election because of voter fraud is “a bit like WWF”, Mitt Romney said on Sunday, referring to the gaudy and artificial world of professional wrestling, an arena in which Trump starred before entering politics.

Related: ‘First of all, I’m taller’: AOC dismisses Greene’s ‘little communist’ attack

Continue reading...

‘He’s not a quitter’: faithful out in force as Trump gets back to the campaign trail

Thousands of adoring fans turned out in Ohio to remind America that Trump’s cult of personality never went away

There were raucous cheers and boos. There were Secret Service agents and metal detectors, food trailers in long grass and loudspeakers booming songs by Elton John and Dolly Parton. There were flags, hats, and T-shirts proclaiming Donald Trump the true winner of the 2020 election – or the man to beat in 2024.

And flying overhead was a small plane trailing a banner that proclaimed: “Ohio is Trump country.”

Continue reading...

Donald Trump returns to campaign trail with rally targeting Ohio Republican

As New York legal troubles mount, ex-president hints at 2024 run and targets those who voted for impeachment

Donald Trump was set to return to the campaign trail with a rally in Ohio on Saturday night, campaigning against a Republican who voted for his impeachment and trailing his own candidacy for president in 2024.

Related: Trump Organization could face criminal charges in New York next week

Continue reading...

Pence breaks from Trump and calls bid to reverse election result ‘un-American’ – live

Vice-president Kamala Harris is visiting the Southern border today amid ongoing criticism from Republicans about Harris’s absence from traveling there yet.

VP Kamala Harris boards AF2 to El Paso for her first visit to the border as VP. She was greeted by Sec. Mayorkas, Sen. Durbin and Rep. Escobar, all of whom are joining her on her trip. pic.twitter.com/GFr44Lw62Y

Vice President Kamala Harris will be in El Paso on Friday, where she will tour a Customs and Border Protection processing facility, meeting with advocates and NGOs. She will also be delivering remarks on her visit.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who has been helping with negotiations on immigration legislation on Capitol Hill, and Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, will be accompanying Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the trip.

Excerpts from a new book about Donald Trump’s presidency includes details about the 45th president’s increasingly violent language in the oval office.

CNN reports:

...the book reveals new details about how Trump’s language became increasingly violent during Oval Office meetings as protests in Seattle and Portland began to receive attention from cable new outlets. The President would highlight videos that showed law enforcement getting physical with protesters and tell his administration he wanted to see more of that behavior, the excerpts show.

“That’s how you’re supposed to handle these people,” Trump told his top law enforcement and military officials, according to Bender. “Crack their skulls!”

Continue reading...

Trump hoped Covid-19 would ‘take out’ former aide John Bolton, book claims

  • Nightmare Scenario details final year of presidency
  • Washington Post reporters’ book one of several on Trump

Donald Trump wanted Covid-19 to “take out” his former national security adviser John Bolton, a new book is set to reveal, as a heated summer of further colourful revelations about the controversial former president spills out from competing tomes.

The forthcoming Nightmare Scenario will stake out the claim, in addition to telling of how Trump advocated shipping Americans who contracted coronavirus while abroad to the prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Continue reading...

Trump proposed sending Americans with Covid to Guantánamo, book claims

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump advocated shipping Americans who contracted Covid-19 abroad to Guantánamo Bay.

Related: Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is key source for media he ‘hates’, columnist says

Continue reading...

The martyr who may rise again: Christian right’s faith in Trump not shaken

The talk in the carpeted corridors of the Road to Majority conference suggests the ex-president’s big lie has firmly taken root

Young alligators swam in the water or lazed on artificial rocks as a waterfall cascaded nearby. “Alligators are found primarily in freshwater and swamps and marches,” noted a nearby sign. “... Alligators are opportunistic feeders.”

Related: Conservative Christians jeer ‘traitor’ Pence for refusing to overturn election

Continue reading...

‘Pure insanity’: emails reveal Trump push to overturn election defeat

  • White House chief of staff pushed debunked conspiracy claims
  • House committee releases emails sent to justice department
  • US politics – live coverage

Donald Trump tried to enlist top US law enforcement officials in a conspiracy-laden and doomed effort to overturn his election defeat, a campaign they described as “pure insanity”, newly released emails show.

Related: White House unveils first national strategy to fight domestic terrorism

Continue reading...

Trump insists he’s writing ‘book of all books’ but big publishers unlikely to touch it

Figures at major houses said book might stoke ‘staff uprising’ and it would be ‘too hard to get a book that was factually accurate’

Donald Trump has insisted he is writing “the book of all books” – even though major figures in US publishing said on Tuesday that no big house is likely to touch a memoir by the 45th president because it might stoke “a staff uprising” and it would be “too hard to get a book that was factually accurate”.

Related: A Very Stable Genius? No, a narcissist and a racist – a portrait of Trump from a vast library of books

Continue reading...

Benjamin Netanyahu: the former commando who became King Bibi

As he leaves office, some see Israel’s longest-serving PM as ‘Mr Security’, others as someone who spurned the chance for peace

Israelis and Palestinians under the age of 30 have lived most of their lives with Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister of Israel. First elected PM in 1996 aged 46, King Bibi – as he is known by supporters and critics alike – has since then never been far from high office, which he is due to now depart aged 71.

Related: Israeli coalition ousts Netanyahu as prime minister after 12 years

Continue reading...

G7 leaders seek right balance in dealing with their China dilemma

Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?

G7 summit: latest news and reaction

In an extra-secure, 90-minute session, with the phones and wifi cut off, all designed to block any eavesdropping by a prying foreign state, leaders of the G7, with glorious St Ives sunshine outside, wrestled with an issue that will probably dominate the rest of their political lives – China and the right balance between extreme competition and necessary cooperative coexistence.

Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy director, describes the dilemma as presenting “complex coexistence paradigms”, something of which he says the US has had little previous experience.

Continue reading...

House Democrats outraged that Trump justice department seized their data – live

Twelve people, including a minor, were targeted in a leak investigation as Democrats decry ‘weaponization’ of DoJ

• Full story here

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate judiciary committee chair Dick Durbin shared in the outrage over the Justice Department under Donald Trump retrieving data from from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House intelligence committee, in addition to their aides and family members.

They said Trump’s former attorney generals, William Barr and Jeff Sessions, “must testify before the Senate judiciary committee under oath.”

Schumer/Durbin: "The revelation that the Trump Justice Department secretly subpoenaed metadata of House Intelligence Committee Members and staff and their families, including a minor, is shocking. This is a gross abuse of power and an assault on the separation of powers."

Schumer/Durbin: "This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress."

Schumer/Durbin:"This issue should not be partisan; under the Constitution, Congress is a co-equal branch of government and must be protected from an overreaching executive, and we expect that our Republican colleagues will join us in getting to the bottom of this serious matter.”

In an attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, a digital marketing firm closely linked to a pro-Trump youth group ran a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections.

A new Guardian investigation found that Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser - Rally Forge, a group with ties to Turning Point Action - which used socialist memes and rhetoric to sway leftwing voters toward the Green party.

Related: Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats

Continue reading...

Legal storm clouds gather over Donald Trump’s future

As the ex-president hints at running once again, his future could lie in the courtroom, not the Oval Office

He’s Teflon Don no more, at least when it comes to court.

Donald Trump, no longer insulated by claims of presidential protections, faces a host of increasingly serious legal problems in some of the US’s most high-profile courts, including both criminal investigation and civil litigation.

Continue reading...

Facebook to suspend Trump’s account for two years

Decision follows oversight board recommendation over ex-president’s post on Capitol attack

Facebook is suspending Donald Trump’s account for two years, the company has announced in a highly anticipated decision that follows months of debate over the former president’s future on social media.

“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols. We are suspending his accounts for two years, effective from the date of the initial suspension on January 7 this year,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, said in a statement on Friday.

Continue reading...

Mike Pence says he and Trump ‘may never see eye-to-eye’ on Capitol attack

The former vice-president was speaking at a New Hampshire Republican dinner as he considers his own 2024 White House run

Mike Pence has said he isn’t sure that he and Donald Trump will ever see “eye to eye” over what happened on 6 January, when a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the election.

Pence, speaking at a Republican dinner in the early voting state of New Hampshire, gave his most extensive comments to date on the deadly events, when rioters broke into the Capitol building, some chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” after the vice-president said he did not have the power to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.

Continue reading...

Trump closes his ‘beacon of freedom’ website a month after launching it

Jason Miller, senior aide to former president, confirms closing of the ‘From the Desk of Donald J Trump’ online communication tool

Donald Trump has discontinued the blog-type website he launched in a fanfare less than a month ago as “a beacon of freedom” and “a place to speak freely and safely”.

Jason Miller, a senior aide to the former US president, confirmed the closing of the “From the Desk of Donald J Trump” online communication tool in a statement to CNBC on Wednesday, just weeks after billing the venture as “a great resource” for his boss’s musings.

Continue reading...

Patrick Byrne: pro-Trump millionaire pushing election conspiracy theories

Weekend rallies with Roger Stone and Michael Flynn show key influence of libertarian helping to fund Arizona election audit

This Memorial Day weekend, several prominent conservative allies of Donald Trump, who have promoted almost nonstop his false narratives about the 2020 election results, are slated to hold rallies in Florida and Texas endorsed by the wealthy libertarian Patrick Byrne.

Billed as featuring the Trump confidant Roger Stone, the retired general Michael Flynn, Byrne and other pro-Trump stalwarts, the dual events underscore that Byrne – who has been leading private fundraising for the politically driven vote audit now under way in Arizona’s largest county – seems intent on funding and pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections.

Continue reading...