Trump voorlopig enige serieuze kandidaat bij republikeinen

NOS Nieuws•Gisteren, 13:10

• Thijs-Jan van Aalstredacteur Bureau Washington

De waarschuwing is duidelijk bij de Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), het jaarlijkse hoogtepunt voor conservatief Amerika, deze week in Washington: de regering van president Biden is betrokken bij een complot om Republikeinse kiezers monddood te maken. En de enige manier om dat te voorkomen, is landelijk verzet.

Het is een van de vele onbewezen claims die worden gedaan op het evenement, bedoeld om alle conservatieven vooral lokaal in opstand te laten komen, in Amerika grassroots-activisme genoemd.

Op de eerste dag van de conferentie wordt de toon meteen gezet. In een van de kleinere zalen krijgen een paar honderd mensen, uitgedost met Amerikaanse vlaggen en petten met daarop de Trump-slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA), te horen waarom zij in actie moeten komen.

Het hoogtepunt van het drie uur durende trainingsprogramma is de toespraak van Republikeins congreslid Kat Cammack, die het publiek opzweept met een oproep om de Verenigde Staten te redden van de ondergang. “We kunnen het ons niet veroorloven om onderling verdeeld te zijn. We moeten samen vechten voor het voortbestaan van ons land!” Het levert haar een staande ovatie op.

“Amerika staat op de rand van de afgrond, en als we nu niet samen in verzet komen, gaan we allemaal over de rand heen.”Kat Cammack, Republikeins congreslid

De potentie van grassroots-bewegingen ziet ook politiek activist Andrew Langer, die de menigte toespreekt over waar deze bewegingen volgens hem toe in staat zijn. “President Donald Trump stuurde ons al de goede richting op, maar nu moeten de grassroots-activisten de regering van president Biden compleet overspoelen!”

Strijden in de schoolbanken

Op het marktplein van de conferentie zijn tientallen kraampjes opgebouwd. Te koop staan onder meer koeken van een halve meter in de beeltenis van Trump en MAGA-glittertasjes. Maar je kan je er ook aanmelden bij een van de vele actiegroepen die proberen mensen te werven.

Bij deze kraam worden Trump-koeken met geglazuurde verkiezingsslogans verkocht

Dat zijn groepen met namen als Bezorgde Vrouwen voor Amerika, de Coalitie tegen Socialistische Geneeskunde, en de Jonge Conservatieven voor CO2-Dividenden. Allemaal richten ze zich op één specifiek probleem, een tip die ook leiderschapscoach Dena Espenscheid aan haar toehoorders geeft. “Focus je op één onderwerp dat je niet aanstaat, in plaats van het hele systeem.” Conservatief demonstreren moet efficiënter worden, is de boodschap.

Dat efficiënte actievoeren zie je nu terug in de strijd die conservatieven voeren in schoolbanken door het hele land. Veel conservatieve ouders vinden dat de scholen zijn doorgeslagen in hun lessen over racisme en dat daardoor kinderen een schuldgevoel kunnen krijgen over hun huidskleur. In plaats van daar tegen te demonstreren bij het Capitool, vechten veel van deze ouders nu om een plek in hun schoolbestuur te bemachtigen, om zo invloed uit te kunnen oefenen.

De Concerned Women for America proberen bezoekers van CPAC te werven

Lokaal druk uitoefenen op overheden en instituten wordt dus gezien als een effectievere manier om dingen gedaan te krijgen. Met de Democratische president Biden in het Witte Huis valt er in de nationale politiek momenteel weinig te halen voor de Republikeinen. En dus moet er volgens hen op een andere manier gewerkt worden om de Democraten te verslaan.

Dat het om winnen of verliezen gaat, maakt Espenscheid duidelijk zodra ze de microfoon in haar hand krijgt gedrukt. “Zijn jullie klaar om te winnen?” Uitbundig gejuich volgt.

Oorlogstaal

Tijdens de hele conferentie wordt oorlogstaal gebruikt om te waarschuwen voor de regering-Biden. Zo ook door congreslid Cammack: “Amerika staat op de rand van de afgrond, en als we nu niet samen in verzet komen, gaan we allemaal over de rand heen.”

Of dat samen in verzet komen op deze conferentie ook gaat lukken, is nog maar de vraag. Decennialang was CPAC hét centrum van het conservatisme in de VS, waar iedereen gezien wilde worden. Tegenwoordig is de bijeenkomst vooral een feest voor Trump-stemmers, met een toespraak van de voormalige president zelf als hoogtepunt.

De hoofdzaal bleef grotendeels leeg tijdens de speech van presidentskandidaat Nikki Haley

Veel Republikeinse zwaargewichten laten het evenement links liggen, onder wie de gouverneur van Florida Ron DeSantis en Mike Pence, vicepresident onder Trump. Van beiden wordt verwacht dat ze zich kandidaat zullen stellen voor het presidentschap in 2024.

Wie zich wel liet zien was Nikki Haley, de voormalige VN-ambassadeur onder Trump en op dit moment nog de enige andere grote naam in de Republikeinse Partij die zich verkiesbaar heeft gesteld voor de presidentsverkiezingen. Zij zal waarschijnlijk niet met een goed gevoel terugkijken op de conferentie.

Niet alleen zat de zaal maar halfvol tijdens haar toespraak, toen ze zich een weg naar de uitgang baande werd ze uitgejouwd door een groep Trump-aanhangers met MAGA-petten op. Samen optrekken is een leuk idee, maar op CPAC kan dat maar achter één man.

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Trump proposes building 10 ‘freedom cities’ and flying cars

 

By Eric Bradner, Kristen Holmes and Alicia Wallace, CNN

Published 6:24 PM EST, Fri March 3, 2023

Former President Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks at the South Carolina State House in Columbia on January 28, 2023.Win McNamee/Getty Images/FileCNN — 

Former President Donald Trump on Friday proposed building up to 10 futuristic “freedom cities” on federal land, part of a plan that the 2024 presidential contender said would “create a new American future” in a country that has “lost its boldness.”

Commuters, meanwhile, could get around in flying cars, Trump said – an echo of “The Jetsons,” the classic cartoon about a family in a high-tech future society. Work to develop vertical takeoff and landing vehicles is already underway by major airlines, auto manufacturers and other companies, though widely seen as years away from reaching the market.

“I want to ensure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump, who announced his third bid for the presidency in November, said in a four-minute video detailing his plan.

He said he would launch a contest to charter up to 10 “freedom cities” roughly the size of Washington, DC, on undeveloped federal land.

“We’ll actually build new cities in our country again,” Trump said in the video. “These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American dream.”

Light on details

Trump’s pitch comes the day before he is set to address the Conservative Political Action Conference in the Washington, DC, area, and as the 2024 Republican presidential field begins to take shape.

The proposal is the latest in a series of early policy offerings from Trump, who in recent weeks has also said he would seek to ramp up domestic energy production, adopt a more isolationist foreign policy stance and purge the government and military of “warmongers and globalists,” and undo a Biden executive order that would require government agencies to submit annual public plans aimed at promoting equity.

Trump unveils plans to take on tech companies if he wins in 2024 in appeal to conservative base

In December, the former president unveiled plans as part of his “free speech platform” that included vows to ban federal money from being used to label speech as misinformation or disinformation and to punish universities engaging in “censorship activities” with cuts to federal funding.

Trump did not elaborate Friday on how he would pay for his latest proposal – leaving unanswered what could be the biggest question as Republicans in Washington seek to curb federal spending. He also did not explain how some elements of his proposal differ from similar Democratic plans.

His plan, which was light on details, includes three additional planks: increasing tariffs on goods imported into the United States; providing families with “baby bonuses” that he said would “help launch a new baby boom”; and launching a beautification effort aimed at removing “ugly” buildings and revitalizing parks and public spaces.

Trump did not explain what “baby bonuses” would amount to or who would qualify. It’s not clear how his proposal differs from the enhanced child tax credit, which wasn’t extended beyond 2021. A group of Democratic lawmakers and progressive advocates tried – but failed – to have it included in the $1.7 trillion spending measure in December. That proposal was blocked by Republicans.

Trade battle

Trump on Friday also called for universal tariffs and imposing higher taxes on imported goods. He said he would escalate a trade battle with China, which he began during his four years in the White House. Doing so, he said, would jump-start American manufacturing.

President Joe Biden has left tariffs in place on $350 billion of Chinese goods – nearly two-thirds of what the US imports from China – which were imposed by Trump.

However, the costs of those tariffs are being passed on to American consumers, and contributing to inflation, experts say.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last year that those tariffs on Chinese goods have “imposed more harm on consumers and businesses” than on China.

Here are the Trump properties at the center of the New York attorney general’s lawsuit against the former President and his family

Chris Rupkey, chief economist at markets research firm FwdBonds, said Trump’s proposed economic plan is reflective of the onetime real estate developer’s efforts before taking office.

“Builders build and make dreams a reality, but this plan looks like a stretch because the country cannot afford to undertake massive new projects when the national debt is over $31 trillion,” Rupkey said in an email. “There are some interesting ideas here, but this is not the right time for bold plans that dream big. There’s no money left in Uncle Sam’s till to pay for big dreams and daring projects.”

The nation is in the midst of a “cost-of-living crisis” that makes this too expensive of a proposition, Rupkey added.

CNN

The Courage to be Free review: Ron DeSantis bows and scrapes to Trump

On the page, the Florida governor doesn’t show much courage about the man he must beat to be the Republican nominee

Lloyd GreenSun 26 Feb 2023 07.00 GMT

The latest polls place Ron DeSantis and Joe Biden in a footrace for 2024. Florida’s 44-year-old Republican governor leads the octogenarian president by a whisker. More Americans like DeSantis than otherwise. Whether he can capture the Republican nomination, however, remains an open question. He has not yet declared his candidacy and trails Donald Trump in hypothetical matchups. Then again, no one else comes close.

Said differently, Trump and his legacy remain forces for any Republican to reckon with. Nikki Haley, an announced candidate for the GOP nomination, can barely mention his name. She wants to supplant her ex-boss by eliding him. A bold strategy.

DeSantis is patient. He will probably wait to announce until late spring, when the Florida legislature adjourns. For the moment, he expects us to be content with The Courage to Be Free, a memoir-cum-288-page-exercise in sycophancy and ambition tethered to a whole lot of owning the libs.

It is a mirthless read, lacking even the gleeful invective of Never Give an Inch, the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s own opening shot on the road to 2024. Predictably, DeSantis berates the left as unpatriotic and ruinous, all while prostrating himself before his former patron.

“I knew that a Trump endorsement would provide me with the exposure to GOP primary voters across the state of Florida,” he admits, discussing his campaign for governor in 2018. “I was confident that many would see me as a good candidate once they learned about my record.”

It’s all about bowing and scraping.

“Trump also brought a unique star power to the race. If someone had asked me, as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, to name someone who was rich, I – and probably nearly all my friends – would have responded by naming Donald Trump.”

DeSantis was born in 1978. Growing up, he would have seen Trump’s fortunes plummet and his first marriage hit the skids.

Apparently, 80s and 90s success stories – Steve Jobs of Apple, say, or Bill Gates of Microsoft – failed to cross DeSantis’s radar. These days, by contrast, the governor has a heap of scorn for the giants of tech. He depicts big tech as censorious, concentrated and “woke”. He reiterates his disdain for Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and George Soros, financier and liberal patron.

DeSantis criticizes Zuckerberg’s Center for Technology and Civic Life for funding election operations. He contends that such private-public partnerships undermine public faith in electoral integrity and give Democrats a boost. He says nothing about Citizens United, the 2010 supreme court decision that set corporate money loose on US elections, other than to distinguish campaign donations from ballot mechanics. This weekend, at the Four Seasons hotel in Palm Beach, DeSantis will host a getaway for the deep-pocketed set.

DeSantis also fails to examine the ties that bound the Mercer family – DeSantis donors and Trump stalwarts – with Facebook and Zuckerberg. In 2014, Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct company then partly owned by the Mercer family, used Facebook to illegally harvest personal data. Steve Bannon, who would become Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, was a board member and officer. He denies personal culpability.

The Mercers own Breitbart News, which Bannon once led. Parler, owned by Rebekah Mercer, allegedly provided connective tissue for the January 6 insurrection. In the run-up to the riot, the network emerged as a forum for violent threats, so much so that it warned the FBI of “specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol”.

On the page, not surprisingly, DeSantis does not examine the January 6 attack. He does loudly take credit for a Florida law that would have regulated platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Here, again, he omits crucial details. Namely, federal courts found the law unconstitutional: it violated first-amendment free-speech protections.

“Put simply, with minor exceptions, the government can’t tell a private person or entity what to say or how to say it,” wrote Kevin Newsom, a Trump-appointed judge on the 11th circuit. “We hold that it is substantially likely that social media companies – even the biggest ones – are private actors whose rights the first amendment protects.”

Florida is urging the supreme court to review the case. Adding to the drama, Trump filed an amicus brief. The high court awaits a submission from the justice department.

Ron DeSantis listens to Joe Biden, during a presidential visit to Florida last October, after Hurricane Ian. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

True to form, DeSantis brands the “national legacy press” as the “pretorian guard of the nation’s failed ruling class” and seconds Trump’s claim that the “fake news media” is the “enemy of the American People”. Yet for all of this media-bashing in the name of supposed truth, the governor omits the role of Fox News in propagating fake news about the presidential election and defamation cases brought against the news channel.

How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’Read more

Off the page, on that issue, DeSantis is at least mildly subversive. Recently, he featured the attorney Elizabeth “Libby” Locke at a confab dedicated to attacking the press and gutting US libel law. Significantly, Locke is representing Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News arising from allegedly false reporting on the 2020 election. The case is set for an April trial in Delaware.

“DeSantis hosting Dominion lawyer Libby Locke! He is showing his true colors!” So shrieked Mike Lindell, AKA the MyPillow guy and Trump adviser, on Twitter.

DeSantis thinks he can have it both ways. Democrats would do well to take him literally and seriously. Last fall, he won re-election by a jaw-dropping 19 points, attracting more than two in five working-class minority voters and making serious inroads among African Americans.

His book recounts all this. So far, the Democrats have offered little by way of response. At the polls, low taxes, plenty of sunshine and Jimmy Buffet’s greatest hits are a tough combination to beat.

• The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival is published in the US by HarperCollins

Rasmussen Polls: GOP Voters weigh in on their 2024 pick. There is a clear frontrunner

but DeSantis is coming closer

Rasmussen Polls: Presidents Day Analysis

– Recent Presidents Rated, and Trump Takes Best (And Worst)

Guess that Biden will not run again , he dis speak not if he will run again in Kjiev yesterday , but that’s is for my account , maybe I am wrong

Candidate no 2 with the republicans , when will she attack the one who put her forward as UN ambassador ?

chttps://twitter.com/i/status/1625461899218280448

Get excited! Time for a new generation.

Let’s do this! 👊 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/BD5k4WY1CP

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 14, 2023

Cartoon ( Biden ‘did it ‘)

#2024 Presidential election

Trump ally Kari Lake loses to Democrat Katie Hobbs in Arizona governor race

Lake and TRump are losers now, democrats did far more better overall than everybody expected , I do not see how Trump can win in 2024 from Ron DeSantis ( the nomination)  AZ

By Sam Cabral in Washington & Oliver Slow in London

BBC News

Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs has defeated Republican Kari Lake in Arizona’s race for governor, CBS News has projected.

The result is a rebuke of Ms Lake, who has peddled the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 US election.

In her victory statement, Ms Hobbs said that “in this moment of division” she would work for everyone in the state.

Ms Lake appeared to suggest that the result was incorrect, and that some votes for her had not been counted.

Elsewhere, almost a week after votes were cast, the race to control the House of Representatives remains tight.

Republicans must win at least 218 seats to claim a majority in the House of Representatives, a prospect that has sharply narrowed.

The party has currently won 215 seats while Democrats have won 211, according to race projections from CBS News.

In a midterm election that has further highlighted the stark partisan divisions in America, Ms Hobbs called for unity, saying she would work for those Arizonans who did not vote for her.

“Even in this moment of division, I believe there is so much more that connects us,” she said.

Her opponent, Ms Lake – who was endorsed by Mr Trump – told the BBC during campaigning that the former president should not need to run again in the 2024 election because “he won the last election”. She predicted he would “come back with a vengeance”.

There is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.

Ms Lake’s defeat sees her join the ranks of pre-eminent Trump-backed election deniers who lost last week. But a BBC News tally of results found at least 125 election deniers have won races for the House, Senate and governorships.

https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.46.6/iframe.htmlMedia caption,

BBC’s Katty Kay challenges Kari Lake on election claims

The midterm elections are also for Congress, including all seats in the House of Representatives and one third of those in the Senate.

The Biden administration had feared that a loss of power in Congress would bring the president’s agenda to a halt. However, the Democrats have retained control of the Senate, and the House has not yet been called.

If the two parties split control of Washington, Democrats will “maintain our positions” but voters should not “expect much of anything”, President Biden said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters in Indonesia, where he is attending the G20 summit, Mr Biden said the results had “sent a very strong message around the world that the United States is ready to play” and wants to remain “fully engaged in the world”.

• Republican anger over midterm election failings
• What Democratic Senate means for Biden and Trump
• The election-denier who wanted to be Arizona governor

He noted there was “a strong rejection” of election denialism, political violence and voter intimidation. But he warned that, without a majority in the House, Democrats would be unable to codify abortion rights through legislation, a key priority for liberal voters.

Out of the 11 House races that still remain to be called, most are in western and southwestern states, including California and Arizona.

• Results in maps and charts
• Why results take so long
• Why a Republican ‘wave’ never happened
• More female governors win office
• How many 2020 election deniers won?

Happy day’s are here again :(

did you see the recent election results in USA ?