Spineless Mitch McConnell Immediately Bends the Knee to Trump

He took his time, but ultimately Senator Mitch McConnell has fallen in line and endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024.

The Senate minority leader and longtime leader of the Senate Republican caucus said in a statement to The Washington Post Wednesday, “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States.”

McConnell announced his decision just minutes after Trump’s lone remaining challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race after only winning one of Super Tuesday’s 16 state contests. McConnell himself announced last week that he will step down as GOP leader in November.

The endorsement was long sought after by Trump, with coordinated efforts from staffers for both politicians seeking to secure a rapprochement. Trump and McConnell have not spoken since December 2020, when the Senate minority leader recognized Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Over the years, McConnell and Trump have had an acrimonious relationship, to say the least. McConnell has privately and publicly criticized Trump for his role in fomenting the January 6 riots, although he didn’t vote to convict Trump afterward in impeachment proceedings. Trump has called McConnell a “dumb son of a b----” and remarked that he would like to replace McConnell as majority leader if he were reelected president.

Trump has also made racist attacks against Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, an Asian American, despite the fact that Chao served as Trump’s secretary of transportation, and accused McConnell of conflicts of interest, alleging that Chao has ties to China that compromise McConnell. But, as Senator Ted Cruz can attest, attacks on one’s spouse can easily be forgiven in Trump’s Republican Party.

Super Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary on the surface went well for Joe Biden, as he was able to pick up the delegates from all 16 states.

But in seven states, voters had the option of selecting an “uncommitted” or “no preference” option instead of voting for Biden, Marianne Williamson, or Dean Phillips—and the results shattered expectations.

In six of the seven states, the “uncommitted” or “no preference” option received 6 percent or more of the vote, which could translate to deciding votes in November’s tightly contested election. In Minnesota, 15.7 percent of Democratic voters chose to vote “uncommitted” rather than back the president. And in North Carolina, a key state in 2024, nearly 12 percent of voters also showed up to the polls and chose to vote “uncommitted” instead.

The “uncommitted” vote is picking up steam in large part thanks to organizers urging the president to reverse his support for Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza and call for an immediate cease-fire. In Michigan, the effort resulted in more than 100,000 votes for “uncommitted,” or about 13 percent of the vote, a significant margin in a state that Biden only won by 154,000 votes in 2020.

Meanwhile, also on Super Tuesday, in the territory of American Samoa, Jason Palmer, who wasn’t even on many state ballots, won with 51 votes out of the 91 votes cast. Palmer called for a cease-fire in Gaza and withholding military aid to Israel in a video posted to X (formerly Twitter) in February.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris called for a temporary cease-fire on Sunday, Biden’s policy toward Israel’s attacks on Gaza hasn’t changed on the ground, with Israel’s bombing campaign continuing unabated. And Trump’s most recent comments signal staunch support for Israel, with the former president answering Fox & Friends about whether he approved of Israel’s actions with “You’ve got to finish the problem.”

Eight years later, Donald Trump still can’t admit that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

During a Super Tuesday special on the Right Side Broadcasting Network, Trump got an unexpected reminder of his 2016 loss from host Brian Glenn (who happens to be Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend), which sent him down a rabbit hole that his advisers have urged him to avoid.

“Let’s talk about winning that popular vote. How would that make you feel to win the popular vote?” Glenn asked.

“Well, look, we have a couple of problems in this country. Number one, mail-in voting. Mail-in voting will always be dishonest. OK? And it’s a shame that we have it,” Trump started, slamming a process that he has used several times to cast his own votes, including twice in the 2020 primary elections.

“Jimmy Carter did a report, along with a couple of other senators that were respected Democrats, Republicans. It [was] like a commission. And the end result of the report was, ‘Never go to mail-in voting. It will always be dishonest.’ That was a long time ago,” he continued.

“France fairly recently switched from mail-in voting to one day, paper ballots, voter ID, very simple. One-day voting. I mean, these elections where they take 61 days and then they want an extension and, you know, they use machines to count it fast. But nobody ever had a—I mean, they last weeks longer. And then you wonder what’s happening and how come that material was moved and it was there. And where is it now?” the GOP front-runner rambled, before adding, “We have to have fair elections.”

But Glenn couldn’t leave it alone.

“So you feel like this time you’re making some really good inroads?” the far-right host asked.

“I do, and the big thing is we have to stop the cheating. I don’t need votes. We have all the votes we need. We have to stop the cheating. Because I actually think that. I actually think we would win the popular vote if it was, if God came down and was your vote counter where it would be honest. I think we win the popular vote. But they’ve cheated for years,” Trump concluded.

The rest of the dizzying segment included a bit in which Trump referred to the 2016 border as a “baby border” compared to today’s situation—despite the fact that Trump’s presidency focused on building “the wall” in the interim and Trump managed last month to kill a bipartisan border security bill.

He also returned to measuring himself against his old enemy, President Barack Obama, claiming the forty-fourth president “won a lot less” than he did.

It’s worth noting that Trump lost the popular vote—and the vote in general—in 2020 too. Despite his repeated claims that the election was fraudulent, no one, including people Trump hired, has found any evidence to back up that conspiracy.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley abandoned her long-shot bid for the White House on Wednesday. Her departure makes it official: Donald Trump owns the Republican Party.

The decision comes after Nikki secured only 89 delegates this entire Republican primary season, with Trump sweeping nearly every election on Super Tuesday.

“I am filled with gratitude for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all over our great country, but the time has now come for us to suspend our campaign,” Haley said in a speech that pinpointed debt, socialism, and “America’s retreat” from the international stage as reasons for the country’s struggles.

She then bizarrely heralded former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and congratulated Donald Trump on becoming the presumptive Republican nominee come July.

“Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said, quote, ‘Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind,’” Haley said. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”

Haley did not endorse Trump in her resignation speech Wednesday, instead urging the former president to earn the support of all Republican and independent voters.

Haley was the last major Republican contender to the former president, despite polling gaps that sometimes placed Trump more than 50 percentage points ahead of her, according to aggregated polling data by FiveThirtyEight. Still, the former ambassador was able to drill a sore spot into the Trump campaign, festering insecurities in the typically boorish and bombastic GOP front-runner that took the form of fierce anti-Haley messaging.

Unlike many other Republicans this primary season—especially Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, the last recent major contenders to drop out—Haley revealed herself as one of the few candidates willing to at least somewhat criticize Trump. Despite still promising to pardon him, she also called him a liar, questioned his mental fitness, and argued that Trump used his office to “buddy up with dictators.”

She also took aim at Trump’s legal woes, blasting his victim mentality in particular. “There were a couple more court cases and a couple more judgments, and now he’s been talking about being a victim,” Haley said on Monday. “At no point is he ever talking about the American people.… All he’s doing is talking about himself.”

But Haley’s run was not without controversy. In the final months of her campaign, Haley obviously struggled in her answers to placate both moderate Republicans and increasingly radical voters on the far right, even when it came to answering point-blank questions with obvious answers, like the cause of the Civil War.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how the government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said during a town hall in December, notably failing to mention slavery in a long-winded answer.

In January, Haley tried to brush off that failure by playing the “Black friend” card, explaining that she “knew half of South Carolinians saw the Confederate flag as heritage and tradition” and that “the other half of South Carolinians saw it as slavery and hate.”

That same month, Haley—the daughter of Sikh Indian immigrants—tried to argue that America was not and never had been a racist country, despite several passages in her 2012 autobiography, Can’t Is Not an Option, that recount apparent discrimination on the basis of her race.

Regardless of her inability to wrangle her own truths to national voters, Haley’s ability to offer an intraparty alternative to Trump’s politics proved an incredible boon to her campaign. In January CBS News/YouGov matchups between the top Republican contenders and President Joe Biden, Haley came out head and shoulders above her competition, leading with 54 percent of the vote against Biden’s 45 percent thanks to support from moderates, independents, and voters with college degrees. That was a much wider margin than Trump, who was predicted to win against Biden by just two percentage points with 50 percent of the vote.

Some also initially predicted that Haley would have a baked-in advantage against her primary opponent as Trump faced challenges in Colorado and Maine over his eligibility to run on the ballot due to the January 6 insurrection. But the Supreme Court threw cold water on that idea on Monday when it blocked those efforts.

Ultimately, Haley proved to be the final obstacle to Trump before the former president faced down Biden again in a grueling general election rematch. And although she fought the good fight against a Republican conference that largely wanted nothing to do with her, Haley’s resignation proves that the current iteration of the GOP prefers a man who is on the line for 91 criminal charges, has been found liable for rape and defamation, and found guilty of bank fraud that was likened by a judge to Bernie Madhoff’s Ponzi scheme—over everybody else.

Trump wasted little time ripping Haley apart after her announcement, writing on TruthSocial that she got “TROUNCED.”

“At this point, I hope she stays in the ‘race’ and fights it out until the end!” Trump mocked, before extending an invitation to Haley’s supporters to “join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”

Biden also extended an olive branch to the stranded voters, pushing a message of unity with the moderate conservative demographic.

“I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO… I hope and believe we can find common ground,” the president said in a statement.

This story has been updated.

Senator Bob Menedez’s charges just keep adding up.

A new superseding federal indictment on Tuesday charges the senior Democratic senator from New Jersey and his wife, Nadine, with obstruction of justice, adding to previous indictments alleging the couple accepted bribes in exchange for using Menendez’s political position to benefit the governments of Qatar and Egypt.

It’s not the first Qatar-related indictment for Menendez. A superseding indictment in January already accused him of accepting lavish gifts in exchange for helping to secure an investment from a company with ties to Qatar to help New Jersey business tycoon Fred Dabies.

The latest charge claims that Menendez and his wife, Nadine, accepted bribes to help the government of Qatar itself, engaging in a corrupt relationship with Dabies and two other New Jersey businessmen, Wael Hana and Jose Uribe. Senator Menendez faces a dozen new counts, and 16 charges total, including obstruction of justice, bribery, and extortion.

The bribes came in the form of gold, cash, mortgage payments, a luxury vehicle, payments from a low- or no-show job, and other considerations, according to the latest indictment.

When Menedez was first indicted in October, he announced that he would not resign. While he has not yet made clear his reelection plans, he faces a tough primary challenge this June, with Representative Andy Kim and the state’s first lady, Tammy Murphy, both taking him on. Meanwhile, Menendez’s trial is due to start in May. A February poll shows him behind both Kim and Murphy.

After losing the second defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, Donald Trump has a new demand for Judge Lewis Kaplan: Reduce the $83.3 million penalty, or do the whole trial over again.

In a motion filed in court on Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys argued that Kaplan had overstepped by curtailing the bombastic disruptor’s testimony, limiting his answers to just a handful of pre-reviewed questions in an attempt to limit Trump’s courtroom outbursts and to streamline an off-the-rails trial.

“This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted,” the motion reads.

Trump’s team also claimed that the harm inflicted upon Carroll was “garden variety,” and that the columnist’s legal team failed to tie the harassment she endured after going public with sexual assault allegations to the GOP primary front-runner. All in all, Trump’s lawyers requested the judge downsize the self-purported billionaire’s penalty to a fraction of the jury-ordered figure, describing some of the fines as “grossly excessive.”

The filing is, frankly, a long-shot bid, and Carroll’s team has already opposed the motion, calling one of his arguments “laughable.”

Meanwhile, Trump insisted in interviews Tuesday that he has “a lot of money” and doesn’t “worry about money,” despite trying to worm his way out of his legal comeuppance—of which Carroll’s judgment amounts to just one small part. Trump has twice asked Kaplan to delay requiring payment to Carroll. The first time was last month, and Kaplan denied but asked Carroll’s attorneys to respond. In a filing last week, Carroll’s lawyers blasted Trump’s legal reasoning for reducing the fine, saying it “boils down to nothing more than ‘trust me.’”

Trump asked again on Monday, requesting a reduced bond of $24.475 million. Kaplan shut him down again.

A 1,439-page document dump from a settlement involving Donald Trump ally Kenneth Chesebro reveals the inner machinations of the so-called architect of Trump’s 2020 fake elector scheme.

Text messages between Chesebro and another Trump lawyer, Jim Troupis, reveal a man hunting down every possible loophole in an effort to undermine the electoral transfer of power.

“Republicans have 26 states,” Chesebro messaged Troupis on January 3, 2021. “McConnell should not allow a vote either, because Republicans electing Pence would look illegitimate—would seem like Pence froze the process to become acting president instead of Pelosi.”

“Republicans electing Harris would be a horror,” he added, noting that “McConnell would need to protect his caucus from such a Hobson’s choice.”

Three days later, Chesebro attended the Capitol riot, tagging along with a group including InfoWars’ Alex Jones. In private messages, Chesebro celebrated having helped devise a plot to prevent Joe Biden’s peaceful succession.

But hours later, his messaging had changed, instead trafficking conspiracies that the riot had been instigated by “antifa” rather than Trump’s MAGA crowd. The following day, Chesebro turned his ire onto former Vice President Mike Pence, whom he wanted to publicly blame for the fringe plan’s failure, claiming Pence had given Trump and his allies false hope.

“He had top-flight advice available to him more than a month ago,” Chesebro wrote on January 7, 2021. “I sketched what we had in mind for alternate electors, with Pence not opening envelopes. I detected no enthusiasm for any deviation from the [Electoral Count Act].”

“I now think Pence had decided by then not to do anything to press the envelope or create a test case, but decided to not be straight with the president.”

“If I’m right, Pence gave him false hope,” Chesebro continued. “He allowed Trump to hear of valid legal theories from Rudy [Giuliani] and [John] Eastman which gave him hope, which was crushed when Pence suddenly crushed them at the end.”

In other delusional messages, Chesebro wrote that Trump could potentially defuse the tension after the riot by inviting Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris over for coffee on the morning of the forty-sixth president’s inauguration and by making “a few well-placed jokes.”

Last month, Chesebro was caught lying to Michigan prosecutors about his social media presence ahead of and during the scheme to overthrow the 2020 election, hiding an account with dozens of posts that reveal his role in the plot and illustrate a far more aggressive election subversion strategy.

Chesebro has struck a plea deal in Trump’s Georgia election interference case and has so far managed to skirt charges in other states affected by the fake elector scheme thanks to his cooperation with prosecutors. But all that could change with the attorney’s true opinions and dirty laundry in the air.

In an announcement Tuesday, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced that she will not be running for reelection in November.

The move comes as polls show her in a distant third behind Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake, who ran a losing campaign for governor of Arizona in 2020. Sinema chose to leave the Democratic Party in 2022 and become an independent, and until Tuesday’s announcement, was running for reelection without a party affiliation.

In a delusional video posted on X (formerly Twitter), Sinema pretended like she did a ton of good during her time in office.

In reality, Sinema’s stances against popular Democratic legislation, such as raising the minimum wage, drew opposition from Democrats who saw her as betraying the party as well her constituents. Perhaps most memorably, she made a thumbs down gesture to vote against an amendment to add a minimum wage increase to President Biden’s coronavirus relief bill in 2021. At the time, she drew ire for what many thought was a misguided attempt to copy the late Senator John McCain, who made a similar gesture in 2017 to save the Affordable Care Act from Republicans.

Replace Sinema PAC, formed to defeat her in the 2024 election, released a statement after her announcement.

“We started this effort to Replace Sinema over two years ago to hold Sinema accountable for betraying the Arizonans who elected her. Sinema obstructed President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, got in the way of fundamental rights like abortion care and voting, and did the bidding of her wealthy donors who fund her luxury lifestyle. We succeeded in first pushing her out of the party – by making clear she couldn’t win a Democratic primary – and now we’ve also helped push her out of the Senate. Good. Arizonans deserve better. We now must put all of our efforts into helping elect Ruben Gallego, a pro-choice champion who will fight for Arizonans every day, over MAGA extremist Kari Lake. Game on.”

Sinema’s departure from the Senate ends a career full of betrayal of her own constituents, who believed they were electing a Democrat, as well as the rest of the country. In addition to blocking a minimum wage increase, she also famously helped reshape the Inflation Reduction Act for the worse, pressuring Democrats to remove proposed tax overhauls for the wealthy.

Even outside of the policy realm, she wasn’t much better. She was allegedly a very demanding boss, giving her staff a 37-page guide to working for her that included buying her groceries, fixing her internet, and even making sure her airline preferences were fulfilled. She reportedly kept up an active Facebook marketplace account mostly selling her exercise clothing and equipment. And then there’s that fact that she spent roughly $210,000 of her taxpayer-funded budget on private air travel, ironic considering that earlier in her career, she was once a member of the environmentally conscious Green Party.

What’s next for Sinema after her Senate term runs out this year? A lucrative career in lobbying to cap her six years as corporate America’s darling? A vanity presidential campaign from corporate-backed No Labels, whose donors also gave to her aborted Senate campaign? Regardless of where she goes, at least one person is sorry to see her go: noted senator’s daughter Meghan McCain.

This article has been updated.

Despite the uncommitted votes against Joe Biden in Michigan, and despite polls showing a majority of Americans support an immediate cease-fire and even ending arms exports to Israel, Donald Trump doesn’t think Israel’s actions are the problem.

Trump made a phone call to Fox & Friends Tuesday morning and gave an impromptu interview to hosts Lawrence Jones and Brian Kilmeade. After being asked whether he is “on board with the way the IDF is taking the fight in Gaza,” Trump responded, “You’ve got to finish the problem.”

“You had a horrible invasion, it took place, it would have never happened if I was president, by the way,” Trump began. He then went on to claim that “Iran was broke” during his presidency and would not have been able to send money to Hamas or Hezbollah.

He went further in claiming that “they wouldn’t have done it to me,” and that the invasion took place because of a lack of respect for Biden. Continuing on his rant, he claimed Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine on his watch, either. In his mind, each of these conflicts wouldn’t have happened “if things went right” in 2020.

It’s not the first time Trump has said Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine on his watch. Despite Trump’s assertions, however, even his own former advisers have criticized his dealings with Russia and Ukraine, claiming that the former president actually emboldened Putin.

Regarding Israel, Trump has softened his tone toward the country after he was forced to make an about-face from his initial remarks in October, when he said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “let us down” by failing to prevent the October 7 attacks. In any case, a Trump victory in November doesn’t seem likely to stem the continuing violence resulting from Israel’s war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of 31,052 Palestinians and about 1,139 people in Israel.

A Hitler-quoting, gay-bashing, conspiracy-flouting antisemite is on track to cinch the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination in the battleground state of North Carolina.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is up for election in the state’s primary election on Tuesday. He has so far pulled ahead by double-digit percentage points over his GOP opposition, Bill Graham, according to a February High Point University Survey Research Center poll.

That’s in spite of the fact that the Trump-endorsed candidate quoted Adolf Hitler in a 2014 Facebook post that normalizes the German dictator’s stance on racial pride.

“History who said it #1; ‘Pride in one’s own race—and that does not imply contempt for other races—is also a normal and healthy sentiment. I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves... They have the right to be proud of their past, just as we have the right to be proud of the civilization to which we belong,” the post (which is still up) read.

Then, at a Moms for Liberty summit in July, Robinson fervently defended his choice to quote the genocidal leader of the Nazi Party, implying that doing so without context is not akin to endorsing his words or actions.

“Whether you’re talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you’re talking about Chairman Mao, whether you’re talking about Stalin, whether you’re talking about Pol Pot, whether you’re talking about Castro in Cuba, or whether you’re talking about a dozen other despots all around the globe; it is time for us to get back and start reading some of those quotes,” Robinson said, adding, “It’s time for us to start teaching our children about the dirty, despicable, awful things that those Communist and socialist despots did in our history.”

Again, the Facebook post quoting Hitler is still up with none of this additional context.

Robinson has drawn immediate comparisons to Trump for his bombastic orations and loyal GOP following, and like Trump, he has a laundry list of controversies.

In other posts, Robinson has minimized the horrors of the Holocaust, claimed a “satanic marxist” had made the movie Black Panther to pull “shekels” out of Black audiences, likened women getting abortions to murderers, and derided gay people as “filth” and “maggots.”

He has also expressed archaic views about women’s role in society, telling a Charlotte-area church in 2022 that Christians are “called to be led by men.”

“God sent women out … when they had to do their thing, but when it was time to face down Goliath, [He] sent David. Not Davita, David,” Robinson said at the time.

And yet, Robinson’s gubernatorial win would turn the state’s executive branch—its last Democratic holdout—red, effectively locking Democrats out of a state they had once predicted would be their stronghold in the South.

Robinson’s likely opponent come November will be Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic favorite.