Archives for 2024

“Fox News will be airing a town hall event with former President Donald Trump on January 10, the same night qualified 2024 GOP hopefuls will debate over on CNN,” The Messenger reports.

“Vivek Ramaswamy also announced on Tuesday that he’s hosting a competing event on the night of January 10.”

Washington Post: “Trump has avoided all of the GOP debates so far, drawing criticism from his opponents but little apparent blowback from Republican voters in early nominating states. Polls continue to show the former president maintaining a commanding lead over the rest of the GOP field.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) announced he was “proudly endorsing” Donald Trump for president.

Jim Messina, who managed Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, told the AP that Donald Trump could very well defeat President Biden in the fall — even if the former president is in prison.

Said Messina: “We just don’t know. Everyone in the world knows, especially me, that this election is going to be really, really close.”

“U.S. presidential elections have been rocked in recent years by economic disaster, stunning gaffes, secret video and a pandemic. But for all the tumult that defined those campaigns, the volatility surrounding this year’s presidential contest has few modern parallels, posing profound challenges to the future of American democracy,” the AP reports.

“Not since the Supreme Court effectively decided the 2000 campaign in favor of Republican George W. Bush has the judiciary been so intertwined with presidential politics.”

A.B. Stoddard: “Many Republicans have hoped, since Christie defended Haley against attacks from Vivek Ramaswamy at the last debate, that he would come around and endorse her in the end.”

“But Christie isn’t buckling twice. Credited with having helped smooth the path for Trump’s nomination in 2016, he has now gone all in on trashing his former friend and is clearly determined to spend every remaining day telling the truth about Trump’s lies, corruption, and crimes. Dropping out to clear the field would mean supporting a candidate he knows is going to lose to Trump anyway, and who refuses to tell that truth.”

“Haley is a talented, smart, ambitious, hypocritical phony. And she is going to endorse Trump. And if he asks her to be his running mate she is going to accept. So backing Haley would defeat the purpose of Christie’s campaign, which is to truth-bomb the GOP, injure Trump, and redeem himself.”

The Daily: How Donald Trump is trying to wrap up the Republican nomination before any court case can stop him.

“President Joe Biden is heading into 2024 with concerning numbers among Hispanic voters: A new USA Today/Suffolk survey shows him trailing Donald Trump by five percentage points, with many reluctant to back either candidate. While it’s an especially rough poll, others have also shown him struggling to match his 2020 numbers with a key swath of the Democratic base — and Hispanic leaders say they’re seeing the same problems on the ground,” Semafor reports.

“Conversations with leaders of Hispanic groups and political consultants in both parties underscored Biden’s difficult path forward.”

Republican presidential campaigns and supporting groups spent more than $100 million in total on ads in Iowa in 2023, NBC News reports.

“The 2024 campaign year for President Joe Biden’s inner circle will largely be about carefully ratcheting up the intensity against Donald Trump, wary of voters becoming dulled to what they expect to be the former president’s ever wilder rhetoric and promises about what he would do if back in power,” CNN reports.

“Or, as some of the younger aides on Biden’s reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it’s about when to go ‘full Hitler’ – when the leading Republican candidate’s speeches and actions go so far that the Biden team goes all the way to a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump ‘parroted’ him.”

Said a senior Biden aide: “You have this moment in the first quarter where he is continuing to go full MAGA extremist now in order to shore up support in his own base. While he may be successful in that effort, if we do our job, we’ll point out that everything he’s saying is extreme and unpopular.”

The super PAC supporting Nikki Haley is out with a new ad attacking Ron DeSantis on China that will air in Iowa, Politico reports.

“Of course, any attack ad usually hints at a vulnerability by the attacker. In this case, it’s that for all of Haley’s recent momentum, she hasn’t overtaken DeSantis in Iowa, where he has a three-point lead over the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador.”

“Three years after the Jan. 6 attack, Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021,” according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

“Republicans’ increasing loyalty to the former president comes as he simultaneously campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020. Republicans are now less likely to believe Jan. 6 participants were “mostly violent,” less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.”