2024 Election

The Joe Biden presidential campaign is positioning the 2024 election as a referendum on democracy. But a new poll suggests that defending America’s constitutional system of checks and balances is no longer an electoral slam dunk.  A startling 39 percent of Americans, including 74 percent of Republicans, think it’s a decent idea for Donald Trump to act as a dictator for a day to begin his prospective second term, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey released Wednesday.  In a series of…

NEW YORK (AP) — An oversight board is criticizing Facebook owner Meta’s policies regarding manipulated media as “incoherent” and insufficient to address the flood of online disinformation that already has begun to target elections across the globe this year.The quasi-independent board on Monday said its review of an altered video of President Joe Biden that spread on Facebook exposed gaps in the policy. The board said Meta should expand the policy to focus not only on videos generated with artificial intelligence, but on…

During an interview aired Sunday, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo gave former President Donald Trump a chance to explain away his remarks in a December town hall that he’d only be a dictator on “day one.” Trump brushed it off: “It was with Sean Hannity, and we were having fun, and I said ‘I’m going to be a dictator,’ because he asked me, ‘Are you really going to be a dictator?’ I said ‘Absolutely, I’m going to be a dictator for one day.’” Facing dozens of felony counts in four criminal cases, Trump has plans to…

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley showed up on Saturday Night Live‘s cold open to ask Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) about his refusal to get on the debate stage with his lone remaining GOP primary challenger. “My question is: Why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” she asked during a faux CNN town hall event in her home state of South Carolina, which is next in line in the primary calendar. Trump’s response was loud and confused: “Oh my God, it’s her: The woman who was in charge of security on…

In the middle of last year, several of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, including some of his 2024 campaign’s senior staff, started noticing an ominous trend in independent polling and in internal Republican survey data: A significant share of swing voters in key states — even some Republicans — say they would not want to vote for a freshly-convicted criminal.  The trend spooked them enough that, in recent months, some of these officials and political allies have directly warned Trump of possible looming…

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his allies spent nearly $170 million for him to get utterly humiliated in his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination.  According to newly released Federal Election Commission filings, Never Back Down, the primary super PAC backing DeSantis, had spent $131 million backing his campaign by the end of 2023. His campaign had spent $28 million by that time.    DeSantis withdrew from the race earlier this month following a campaign-ending second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses,…

Robert Kennedy Jr. and a super PAC backing his 2024 presidential campaign have raised $50 million, according to new federal election records released Wednesday. Half of that staggering cash haul has come from two people.  Timothy Mellon, a Republican megadonor who backed Donald Trump’s failed 2020 reelection campaign, has donated $15 million to the pro-Kennedy super PAC, American Values 2024. Mellon is an heir to the Mellon banking fortune. Gavin de Becker, who leads Kennedy’s private security team, has…

Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift hasn’t even endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection yet. That hasn’t stopped members of MAGAland’s upper crust from plotting to declare — as one source close to Donald Trump calls it — a “holy war” on the pop mega-star, especially if she ends up publicly backing the Democrats in the 2024 election. According to three people familiar with the matter, Trump loyalists working on or close to the former president’s campaign, longtime Trump allies in right-wing media, and an array of…

Maryanne Trump Barry, the sister of former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, died on the morning of November 13, 2023. That evening, Trump held a lavish “Gala VIP Dinner” for people who bought at least $4,700 worth of “Trump Cards” — an NFT collection of digital trading cards that depict various portraits of Trump as a superhero, a cowboy, or a god. “I wish I looked as good as those NFTs,” Trump said that night, standing behind a white podium with “COLLECT TRUMP CARDS” embossed in gold.…

This month, Donald Trump’s lawyers have argued in a federal appeals court that he, as a former American president, is “absolutely” immune from criminal prosecution, possibly even if he were to order the assassination of his political enemies. But the arguments that Trump’s lawyers are currently litigating in public are just a preview of Trump and his allies’ private plans to dramatically expand presidential immunity, if he defeats Joe Biden in the 2024 election. According to two sources who have discussed the topic…