DeSantis and Haley, who emerged second and third in the caucus, hope to overtake Trump further down the primaries…reports Asian Lite News
After suspending his presidential campaign, Indian-American Vivek Ramaswamy thinks it would be “healthy for the country” if Republican candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis,drop out of the 2024 White House race and endorse former President Donald Trump.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, the biotech entrepreneur said the Republican voter base in Iowa has “spoken loud and clear” that they want Trump to be the presidential nominee.
“I think Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley would actually at this point, do this country and this party a service by stepping aside to make sure that we’re focused on not only nominating Donald Trump, but getting this country back and reviving those founding revolutionary ideals,” the 38-year-old said.
“I do think that would be healthy for this country,” he added.
The twice-impeached former President, facing more than 90 criminal charges, emerged triumphant in Iowa and solidified his position as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
DeSantis and Haley, who emerged second and third in the caucus, hope to overtake Trump further down the primaries but the gap between the former President and both his rivals remains too wide.
“I think it’s very clear who the Republican primary electorate is saying that they want to be their nominee. I ran to be that person. They sent me a very positive message. But the very positive message they sent to all of us is that Donald Trump needs to be the nominee of this party,” Ramaswamy said.
“And I think that you know what, especially Ron DeSantis, at least of the two of them will have an important role to play in the future of this country leading this nation,” he added.
Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis seem reluctant to make the GOP primary about Trump, perhaps wary of alienating the legions of Republican voters who have backed him in the past, media reports said, reports T.N. Ashok
The Republican presidential race ahead of the primaries to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire meet in another 50 days should have been a referendum on former President Donald Trump, instead, it’s turning out to be a vote on President Joe Biden’s performance, because of the vice grip on the GOP that Trump holds, media reports said.
As the four presidential hopefuls prep up their debate Wednesday in Alabama for the 4th GOP debate, challengers like number two Nikki Haley and number three Ron DeSantis seem reluctant to make the GOP primary about Trump, perhaps wary of alienating the legions of Republican voters who have backed him in the past, media reports said.
The former New Jersey Gov Chris Christie, the most vocal critic of Trump, hasn’t gained much traction in his campaign, polling below 4 per cent in Iowa, while holding at third place in New Hampshire. Christie and other anti-Trump Republicans say the party has no choice but to focus on the former president, given his weakness with independent voters and the unprecedented fact that he is facing as many as four criminal trials in the coming year, USA TODAY reported.
“If Trump is our nominee, we will not only lose the presidency again, but we will lose both houses of Congress, and we will lose races up and down the ticket,” Christie told NewsNation in an interview. “He is political poison, up and down the ballot.”
Wednesday’s debate: Will Trump surface?
The non-Trump candidates will get another chance to discuss the frontrunner − or not − during Wednesday’s debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama is the question. Trump himself plans to host a fundraiser in Florida, skipping the Alabama debate just as he did the three previous throw-downs in Pennsylvania, San Francisco and Milwaukee.
Pollsters and political analysts don’t expect the Trump issue to surface as they don’t gain much attention or traction with the republican voters during the debate because there’s little or no gain in it for the challengers. Most of Trump’s rivals are leery of attacking the GOP’s undisputed leader, fearing a backlash from grassroots Republican voters, they said.
Attacks on Trump seem to have strengthened him politically. Many Republican voters have rallied around him, regardless of whether the attacks have come from GOP rivals, President Joe Biden and the Democrats, or prosecutors and grand juries that have charged him with felony crimes, reports said.
Trump faces trials in Washington, D.C., and Georgia on charges of trying to steal the 2020 election. He was indicted in New York over hush money payments to an adult film actress, and in Florida on allegations of mishandling classified documents. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges. “Criticism of Trump from any corridor makes him stronger in the Republican primary,” said Republican political consultant Mike Madrid, who opposes the ex-president’s campaign.
Trump holds leads of more than 45 percentage points in national polls compiled by the Real Clear Politics website.
Madrid added: “If politics was normal, this would be a referendum” on Trump. “But these are not normal times.”
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said there are basically three types of Republican voters: “Always Trump”, “Maybe Trump”, and “Never Trump”.
Challengers will need those Maybe Trump voters, he said, and that means they have to be careful in how they criticize the former president, making a case against him without offending the fence-sitters. Whatever the approach, the Republican race is all about Trump, whether candidates or pundits like it or not.
“It’s defined by Trump,” Ayres said. “He has such a big personality and has taken over the party.”
‘Trump’s Second Term Threatens America’s Existence’
A possible second term for former US President Donald Trump “poses a threat to the existence of America as we know it”, the editor of a US-based magazine has said.
Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic, said he refuses to go gently into that good night. “We can’t participate in the normalization of Donald Trump,” an impassioned Goldberg said. “I refuse to participate in the normalization of Donald Trump,” Goldberg was quoted by US media reports as saying.
Goldberg is one of the few major newsroom leaders who has been exceptionally clear-eyed about the perilous storm on the horizon for American democracy. Using plain language, Goldberg and his team of writers at the magazine have not shied away from portraying Trump as a vandal of civilized society and an outright menace to the US Constitution, a CNN columnist wrote on Tuesday.
On Monday, The Atlantic published a special edition of its monthly magazine focusing on what a second Trump term would look like.
The aptly-titled “If Trump Wins” issue features two dozen articles laying out how the twice-impeached, four-time indicted candidate would shred norms, weaponize government, warp the rule of law, and degrade democracy, reports said.
Trump faces 90 counts of felony, a $250 million civil and criminal tax fraud trial in Manhattan, cancellation of his business licenses, subversion of the electoral processes and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election verdict electing Joe Biden as the President in Washington DC and Georgia.
“I want people to be able to hand this issue to people… who are still unsure about the nature of Trump’s authoritarianism,” Goldberg explained.
While most leaders of major American newspapers hold to the belief that Trump will rule as an authoritarian, it is rare to hear any of them saying so aloud — especially in such frank terms. But Goldberg is more than comfortable doing so. He points out that his position is not a partisan one.
“It’s not about Republicans and Democrats,” he stressed, but “about authoritarians versus pro-democracy Americans”. And, in his view, not being open with readers about dangerous forces on the march would amount to a dereliction of duty, the CNN analyst said.
“I would prefer journalists to speak plainly about what they’re seeing,” Goldberg said. “And I believe that a second Trump term poses a threat to the existence of America as we know it.”
“It is not that difficult for newsrooms to say they are pro-democracy. Most leaders in the Fourth Estate have no problem saying so. The conundrum they face is that in this dark time in which we find ourselves, staking out a vocal pro-democracy stance effectively means being anti-Trump. Most news organizations are not comfortable in that turf, as it could be perceived as partisan and turn away audiences. This is one of the discomforting aspects of this whole dilemma that people in the news media face,” Goldberg noted.
“Our eyes and ears tell us that Donald Trump fomented an insurrection against the Constitution. Right? We saw it. We heard it. It happened. That means that he placed himself outside the norms of American democratic behaviour. That is why I am comfortable devoting an entire issue to answering the question of what a second Trump term would look like and reaching the conclusion that it would be terrible. Absolutely terrible.”
When asked by the CNN analyst whether being outspoken about the prospect of a second Trump presidency could alienate otherwise persuadable audiences, Goldberg argued that self-censorship is not the solution. As he put it, “At a certain point, you can’t convince people of reality”.
Former US President Donald Trump.(photo:Instagram)
“All we can do is try to present fairly and completely our fact-checked views of Trump and Trumpism and hope that people read it and understand that we are trying to be truthful with our readers and truthful with ourselves and transparent,” Goldberg said.
“And if some voters in America can’t handle that, then they can’t handle that. There’s not much I can do about it.”
“And this is the dilemma facing all journalism institutions,” Goldberg continued. “We’d like to be able to speak to 100 per cent of Americans. But at a certain point you don’t want to twist or muffle or downplay certain realities simply because reporting those realities offends a segment of your audience.”
Goldberg personally knows that being candid and reporting aggressively on Trump can come with severe consequences. After Goldberg reported in September 2020 that Trump had disparaged American service members who had died in the war as “suckers” and “losers” (something former White House chief of staff John Kelly later confirmed on the record to Jake Tapper), he had to move out of his house over security concerns for a period.
But, he warned, a second Trump presidency could be even worse for the press. And, for that reason, members of the news media will need to contemplate their editorial decisions now, given Trump’s already-declared hopes to muzzle critics if he were to regain power.
“We all understand that Trump thinks of us as enemies of the state, and we understand that there are consequences for us that come with this belief,” Goldberg said. “There’s a chance that he would try to somehow criminalize reporting in a second term, and so we have to sound the alarm about that, along with the more generalized threats to American democracy. And we have to sound the alarm now.”
Haley received a huge boost last week after her poll numbers jumped over DeSantis when the influential and deep-pocketed Koch political network endorsed her….writes T.N. Ashok
US Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s rapid ascension in the echelons of the GOP and donors endorsements in the primaries, just days before the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire meet, could be humiliating to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who had the early bird advantage in the race for the 2024 Presidential poll candidacy.
Haley received a huge boost last week after her poll numbers jumped over DeSantis when the influential and deep-pocketed Koch political network endorsed her. This apparently left in cold the once-hailed DeSantis as the Republican Party’s next big thing, US media critics observed.
Haley gets Koch cash while DeSantis gets another kick in the …, critics wrote in op-eds.
While Haley was counting all the new campaign cash she would get from Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP), linked to billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, DeSantis was desperately vying for attention by debating a Democrat who’s not running for president, namely California Governor Gavin Newsom on whether the Californian liberal model or the stringent DeSantis model was good for America’s future. The public opinion was only marginally in favour of DeSantis.
The once-heralded presidential candidate, trailing Haley in New Hampshire and South Carolina (where she was also the former governor) and tying up with her in Iowa, spent Thursday night on Fox News debating Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
It didn’t work very much in favour of DeSantis, critics pointed out saying viewers again saw Awkward Ron, a guy who struggles with smiling and other basic human facial expressions. He parroted his usual culture-war lines while Newsom – who again is not running for president and really doesn’t matter – battered him with facts and lured him into exchanges like his pandemic response.
Donald Trump continues to brutally mock DeSantis, who has lost his support in the GOP. Prior to the weird and unnecessary debate, critics said, leading GOP presidential primary candidate Trump’s spokesperson released a predictably crass statement that wound up being prescient: “Instead of actually campaigning and trying to turn around his dismal poll numbers, DeSanctus is now so desperate for attention that he’s debating a Grade A loser like Gavin Newsom”, USA TODAY said in a special feature Sunday.
At the debate, Ron will flail his arms and bobble his head wildly, looking more like a San Francisco crackhead than the Governor of Florida. This isn’t a prediction. It’s a spoiler, a USA TODAY critic wrote.
“While the DeSantis campaign’s death rattle is satisfying to those of us who have found him, his often-cruel policies and his bullying demeanour repulsive, there is an orange-hued elephant in the room that minimizes Haley’s admirable progress,” the critic wrote.
Trump remains miles ahead of both her and DeSantis in every poll, state or national. The former president again won’t bother to attend Wednesday’s debate at Alabama, and while the Koch endorsement of Haley clearly irked him, it’s going to take more than money for anyone to overtake Trump and his 90-plus state and federal indictments, unprecedented for a former president in American history and yet popular with voters.
His near-certain conviction in the New York civil fraud trial in March 2024 could change the scene for Trump as 15 per cent of his supporters are said to be thinking of dumping him if he’s proved a tax evader.
If it comes down to Haley vs. Trump, the critic said she will need some big-time help.
DeSantis tried to out-bully Trump, and that’s a fool’s errand, the critic said pointing out that the only thing about Haley’s rise to “most-favoured No. 2” that matters is that she’s delivering another kick to the shins of DeSantis and what is arguably one of the worst presidential campaigns ever witnessed.
California Governor Gavin Newsom talks to the media near the scene of a shooting in San Jose, California, the United States, May 26, 2021. (Photo by Li Jianguo/Xinhua/IANS)
Democrats after all will still most likely prefer the California model and Republicans will still prefer Florida. …reports T.N. Ashok
Majority of the US population is looking forward to the debate of the year between Reformist Californian Governor Gavin Newsom and the restrictive Conservative Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Fox News at Thursday 9 p.m. They are not keyed in at all of the GOP presidential debate or the speeches of Trump theatrics and Bidenomics Biden for the potential 2024 match they don’t desire at all.
This is a debate every voter wants to watch, media reports said.
At the core of the debate is which model is suitable for the country, a model that would keep America stable over the years — the Californian model or the Florida model, reports added.
Democrats after all will still most likely prefer the California model and Republicans will still prefer Florida. But voters from both parties can look at the stage and see what could be the guiding factor for the future of the country.
There is still time. We are not yet trapped in the Biden vs Trump rematch nobody wants. Both parties can still choose better options. It is to be hoped that this Thursday will push them toward making that decision, the Washington Examiner said.
One man (California Governor Gavin Newsom) has made cutting carbon emissions his state’s top policy priority. The other (Florida Governor Ron DeSantis) has prioritised energy production (focusing on fossil fuels rather than green energy technologies). One made his state the most welcoming sanctuary jurisdiction for migrants from all over the world. The other signed one of the nation’s strictest anti-illegal immigration laws ever.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis.(photo:instagram)
One oversees a state higher education system that has abandoned standardised tests and embraced mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion loyalty oaths. The other is fighting the higher education cartel and returning academic standards to classrooms, the Examiner said.
The stark contrasts in policies between the California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis can be very diverse, but both being young in their 40’s, represent the future of America, they could be up for the presidency of the US at a later date, reports said.
Both politicians not only represent the future of their respective parties, but both also have track records guiding their states in new directions, the Examiner added.
Newsom versus DeSantis is a debate our country needs right now, the Examiner said, adding, “Do we keep mandating more expensive cars, homes and appliances while also prohibiting energy production from record amounts of public land? Or do we let people drive the cars they want, build the homes they want, and produce the energy they need to make a good life affordable for all?”
Do we keep our southern border open, releasing every migrant who claims asylum into the country — most of the claims are without merit — bankrupting cities from Denver to New York? Or do we return illegal immigrants to Mexico, eliminating the incentive that is causing a historic wave of mass migration across the hemisphere? These are issues that voters would be considering rather than aid Israel or Ukraine or be involved in a war overseas in which Americans have no stake or interest, the report said.
The Examiner said America is cruising towards a dismal presidential rematch. Biden, at 81, is too old and incapable to be president. Trump, at 77, is not far behind in age and is in a category of unsuitability (with his legal baggage and rhetoric bordering on racism). Both men are clearly slower than they were four years ago. Can either handle another four years in one of the most demanding jobs imaginable? Voters must be thinking about this all the time worrying about who should be the next President in 2024.
How have Hunter Biden or Donald Trump Junior or Jared Kushner exploited the families’ names to enjoy monetary benefits is a question on the top of the mind of young voters specially, the report said.
Important questions in their own right, people who have broken laws are accountable, but these are not questions that should determine who is the next Commander-in-Chief, the reports said.
Biden took a one point lead over Trump (49 per cent to 48 percent), while lagging behind Haley by four points …reports Asian Lite News
In a recent poll, it was found that if the 2024 presidential election were held today, US President Joe Biden would face tough competition.
Republican candidates Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis would both outperform him, while he would only narrowly defeat his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Biden took a one point lead over Trump (49 per cent to 48 percent), while lagging behind Haley by four points (49 per cent to 45 per cent) and DeSantis by two points in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, the Fox News survey said.
Released this week, the poll conducted between October 6-9, showed that the Indian-American former South Carolina Governor has made the greatest gains since September, having doubled her numbers with 10 per cent support.
Haley also garnered the highest number of defections among Democrats (9 per cent support her), while Trump gets the least (5 per cent of Democrats back him).
“She has the momentum, she has the experience, and she’s the only person who’s consistently polled as beating Joe Biden in the general election,” former Congressman Will Hurd, who dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, told Forbes.
A CNN poll showed last month that Haley is the only Republican who can beat Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
“Haley stands as the only Republican candidate to hold a lead over Biden, with 49 percent to Biden’s 43 per cent in a hypothetical match between the two,” the CNN reported.
The Fox News survey also showed that despite facing a bevy of legal challenges, former President Trump maintained his lead in the Republican presidential contest.
The 77-year-old received 59 per cent support among Republican primary voters, and he has been above 50 per cent since March and hit a record 60 per cent in September.
Just after her first Republican primary debate in late August, Haley had said that Trump would not be the party’s nominee for the 2024 presidential elections.
Haley claimed earlier this month that Trump sent her a birdcage, a couple of days after he had posted a social media message calling the her a “birdbrain”.
Responding to Trump, along with a picture of the birdcage, Haley wrote on X: “Love this. It means we are in 2nd and moving up fast. Bring it!”
At the second Republican debate, Haley slammed Trump over his policies on China, saying that while in being in office, he did not focus on issues like Asian nation’s role in fentanyl being shipped into the US, placing a base in Cuba or sending spy balloons across the country.
US House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy (Photo:Instagram)
Even as McCarthy’s supporters have endorsed Trump, many Republican members are keeping away, report by T.N. Ashok
The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy is under tremendous pressure between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the two will spar off in Iowa setting the temperature high within the party before the primaries kickoff.
McCarthy is unrelenting and a truce could be short lived as the Speaker’s allies understand why he is not offering an formal endorsement toTrump, media reports said.
The pressure on McCarthy to choose sides will only keep growing throughout the summer as the former President locks down support across the House Republicans, says Politico, a leading media outlet.
By delaying a decision, media reports have claimed that McCarthy is only risking Trump’s ire by not officially endorsing his third White House bid.
But political observers say the Speaker is fulfilling a vital mission, that is of sparing the House Republicans over a ‘civil war’ in 2024 as Trump and DeSantis up the ante with harsh words against each other.
Even as McCarthy’s supporters have endorsed Trump, many Republican members are keeping away.
Political observers say that this camp of ‘stay away from Trump’ fear embracing him could spell their electoral doom next fall — as well as allies of the former President’s rivals, from DeSantis to Doug Burgum.
Even as McCarthy risks alienating Trump by staying on the sidelines, the California Republican is shielding his members who are right now very vulnerable.
“The pressure on the speaker to choose sides will only grow throughout the summer, though, as Trump locks down support across the House Republican and questions intensify about why McCarthy isn’t fully embracing the man who helped deliver him the speakership,” the Politico said in an analysis of trends.
Probably McCarthy will choose sides at the near end of the primary, Republican Dan Meuser said, suggesting the Speaker is subtly clearing a path for his members to rally behind the former president by the end of the primary.
“Hey, you’re with DeSantis right now. That’s OK. We get that. You’re with Mike Pence, Tim Scott. But in the end, we’ve got to come together with who’s going to be our winning candidate,” Meuser was quoted as saying by media reports.
Several Republican lawmakers feel a McCarthy endorsement so early before the primaries kickin could result in a potential disunity and infighting across different factions within the party.
McCarthy will find it difficult in the coming months to thread the needle. The speaker, it might be recalled, backtracked last week after questioning whether Trump was the strongest candidate for the party to run in 2024.
For the Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, things are quite different.
McConnell and Trump have a history of serious differences and he was never expected to back the latter and he’s been more focused on winning back the Senate.
McConnell has taken painful paths to yank himself off Trump, though that distance from the former president is too cold for comfort and untenable.
On the contrary, McCarthy’s relationship with Trump has often affected his standing with his more conservative members.
Politico claimed that McConnell is facing a much more favorable electoral 2024 map than McCarthy, who’s in a tossup battle to hold onto the House.
McCarthy has a razor edge majority of five members, margin in the house quite tenuous for the party.
More than a dozen Republican-held battleground seats are in the deep blue, high-turnout states of New York and California.
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua/IANS)
If one looks at the Joe Biden friendly turf nationwide, only 18 House Republicans sitting in that green have made an endorsement in the 2024 primary.
New York Republican George Santos backed Trump in May, on the eve of his being indicted on a string of federal charges considered a death knell for his re-election.
Conservatives among the party feel that McCarthy and his leadership team are highly focused on their conference’s work before next November, against their fate with voters.
It’s not just McCarthy staying out of the primary. His two deputies, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Majority Whip Tom Emmer, have also not endorsed Trump.
