The former president and front-runner in the Republican primaries was met with both boos and cheers as he arrived at Williams-Brice Stadium for the Palmetto Bowl game between the University of South Carolina’s Gamecocks and Clemson University’s Tigers on Saturday.
He was invited to watch the game by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who succeeded Trump’s GOP rival Nikki Haley in the post after the former president named her U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2017.
newsweek.com – By Sean O’Driscoll – Former President Donald Trump had a constitutional right to make false statements about the 2020 election, his lawyers have claimed in court.
In a written submission on Wednesday, they said that the federal election interference case against Trump is based on his alleged “lies” and that lies and false statements are protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The Trump filing relies heavily on a 2012 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Alvarez that says Xavier Alvarez, an elected official, could not be prosecuted for his false claims that he was awarded a congressional medal for bravery. The Supreme Court said that he had a right to lie, including claiming to be a U.S. Marine who had fought for his country.
Trump was indicted on four counts in Washington D.C. for allegedly working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
ABC News – By Soo Rin Kim and Lalee Ibssa – Former President Donald Trump vowed this weekend to “root out” his political opponents, who he said “live like vermin” as he warned supporters that America’s greatest threats come “from within” — extreme rhetoric that echoes the words of fascist dictators like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, experts and Trump’s critics said.
A Trump campaign spokesman dismissed the backlash to his speech, at a Veterans Day rally in New Hampshire, but some historians said the parallels were alarming.
“To call your opponent ‘vermin,’ to dehumanize them, is to not only open the door but to walk through the door toward the most ghastly kinds of crimes,” writer and historian Jon Meacham said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Speaking to a packed crowd inside Stevens High School auditorium in Claremont, New Hampshire, on Saturday, Trump, who is seeking a second term in the White House, said: “We will put America first and today, especially in honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”
theeconomist.com – Europe had been moving towards the slaughterhouse for years, and by 1914 a conflict was all but inevitable—that, at least, is the argument often made in hindsight. Yet at the time, as Niall Ferguson, a historian, noted in a paper published in 2008, it did not feel that way to investors. For them, the first world war came as a shock. Until the week before it erupted, prices in the bond, currency and money markets barely budged. Then all hell broke loose. “The City has seen in a flash the meaning of war,” wrote this newspaper on August 1st 1914.
Could financial markets once again be underpricing the risk of a global conflict? In the nightmare scenario, the descent into a third world war began two years ago, as Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border. Today Israel’s battle against Hamas has the frightening potential to spill across its borders.
Yahoo News – The Republic – Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling – Donald Trump’s rants and tangents might work on the campaign trail, but they aren’t doing him any favors in his New York bank fraud trial.
Moments after the former president took the stand for the first time in the $250 million trial, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron was caught in a loop, imploring Trump’s legal counsel to “control” the unruly witness while becoming increasingly irate himself.
“I beseech you to control him, if you can,” Engoron said, warning Trump attorney Christopher Kise that if the lawyers can’t control Trump, he will. “I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”
Engoron also threatened that Trump’s lack of cooperation could be met with judgmental consequences.
“Mr. Kise, can you control your witness because I am considering drawing a negative inference on any question he might be asked?” Engoron said.
Kise refused.
Throughout his early morning testimony, Trump skirted and dodged direct questioning, at one point trying to bait the judge by misquoting Engoron’s cited appraisal of Mar-a-Lago and at another point throwing himself a little pity party, bemoaning that the judge will rule against him “because he always rules against me.”
Trump also took a moment to announce what his lawyers had in the works, exclaiming that “as this crazy trial goes along” they will call bankers to “explain what the process is.”
“In addition to the answers being nonresponsive, they’re repetitive. We don’t have time to waste. We have one day with this witness,” Engoron said.
wgnradio.com – by: Lauren Sforza, The Hill – An attorney for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is disputing Senate Democrats’ claim that his client did not pay back a “significant portion” of a loan used to purchase a luxury motorcoach.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) published a memo Wednesday on findings looking into a loan agreement between Thomas and Tony Welters, which was first reported by The New York Times in August. The committee staff reviewed documents related to the loan and determined Thomas “did not repay a significant portion of the loan principal” and paid only interest on the $267,230 debt.
The memo claimed the documents the committee reviewed, which were provided by Welters, suggested the loan for the motorcoach was forgiven. However, a lawyer for Thomas said in a statement that is inaccurate.
“The loan was never forgiven. Any suggestion to the contrary is false. The Thomases made all payments to Mr. Welters on a regular basis until the terms of the agreement were satisfied in full,” Elliot Burke said in the statement.
When reached for further comment, Wyden doubled down on the findings and called on Thomas to provide evidence to the committee that backs up his attorney’s statement.
“The committee’s investigation is clear: The person who loaned Justice Thomas $267,000 provided numerous documents indicating that a substantial portion of that debt was never repaid,” Wyden said in a statement.
“If Justice Thomas disputes that conclusion he has an obligation to provide proof to the committee. Carefully worded statements from high-priced lawyers are not a substitute for facts,” he added.
The memo conceded that more information concerning the loan may exist and that its information is based on what documents were provided to the committee.
“While additional documents pertaining to the loan agreement may exist and provide more clarity to the agreement, none of the documents reviewed by Committee staff indicated that Thomas ever made payments to Welters in excess of the annual interest on the loan,” it said.
theguardian.com – After every mass shooting the same questions seem to arise: how did the shooter get their gun? What were the warning signs? What’s the relationship between domestic violence and white supremacist ideology and mass killings? How can we stop this from happening again?
What few people ask, however, is why, after decades of high-profile mass shootings and nearly 50,000 gun-related deaths each year, we’re still trying to understand the causes of gun violence. Were it not for a nearly two-decade stoppage in federally funded gun violence research, we might have been closer to having these answers, says Garen Wintemute, an emergency room physician and longtime gun violence researcher.
abcnews.go.com – By Alexandra Hutzler, John Parkinson , and Lauren Peller – After three weeks without a speaker, House Republicans have another nominee for the top spot — the third this month.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer won the nomination for speaker in the fifth round of voting in a secret ballot Tuesday. While he clinched the nomination, he still lacks the GOP votes needed to win on the floor.
The chaotic battle for the gavel has dragged on after House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was nominated, but backed out when it became clear he didn’t have the votes. Last week, the conference dropped Rep. Jim Jordan as their nominee after his speakership bid failed for a third time on the House floor.
By Trip Gabriel – yahoo news – Former President Donald Trump said immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally were “poisoning the blood of our country” in a recent interview, language with echoes of white supremacy and the racial hatreds of Adolf Hitler.
Trump made the remark in a 37-minute video interview with The National Pulse, a right-leaning website, that was posted last week. It drew broader scrutiny Wednesday after liberal MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan surfaced the quote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Other commentators went on to point out that Trump’s attack invoked a theme of Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf,” in which the Nazi Party leader railed about what he claimed was the impurity of immigrants, Jews and interracial couples.
nbcboston.com – By Hannah Green – When a baby starts to cry, new parents have to play a guessing game to figure out why. Hunger? A dirty diaper? Or something more serious, like pain?
Apolline Deroche says some of that guesswork can be eliminated by an app her startup, Cappella, is aiming to launch in November that acts as an AI-powered baby cry translator.