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Incoming president hails incumbent as ‘a good, hard working, religious man’ and backs him to hang on to gavel ahead of Friday’s crucial vote
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Donald Trump has endorsed the current speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, for re-election ahead of Friday’s crucial vote when Congress returns from its holiday recess.
Speaker Johnson, who narrowly averted a government shutdown before Christmas, hopes to hold onto the gavel but needs the support of 218 lawmakers so cannot afford more than one GOP rebellion, given his side’s slim majorty of 219 to 215.
Taking to Truth Social to call for Republican unity, the president-elect backed the incumbent by hailing Johnson as “a good, hard working, religious man.”
“He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN,” he said. “Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement.”
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court has upheld a ruling against the president-elect after he challenged a jury’s verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming former magazine columnist E Jean Carroll.
“Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings, and has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial,” three appellate judges wrote in their decision Monday.
Trump’s key endorsement ahead of Friday’s vote to determine who wields the gavel sends a clear signal to House Republicans to line up behind Johnson, who has faced some resistance from the GOP’s far-right flank after inter-party chaos nearly derailed a must-pass spending bill hours before a government shutdown.
Representatives will decide who holds the gavel to lead the House with a slim Republican majority
Elon Musk has been branded a “national security risk” by a former US army general, who cited his concerns over the tech billionaire’s close ties with the Chinese government.
Lieutenant General Russel L Honoré, who retired in 2008, highlighted Musk’s history of appeasing and praising the Chinese Communist Party and his multiple business deals with the party, particularly in the modern space race.
In a scathing op-ed, published in The New York Times, Honoré noted that Musk and his company SpaceX already face federal reviews for failing to provide details of meetings with foreign leaders, but said that such infractions were “just the beginning of my worries.”
Mike Bedigan has more.
Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré highlighted the tech billionaire’s history of appeasing and praising the Chinese Communist Party and his multiple business deals with it
After carefully tip-toeing around the growing tensions that have rocked the GOP in recent days, Fox News appears to have finally found a narrative it can sell to right-wing viewers about the MAGA civil war currently ongoing over the thorny issue of immigrant visas.
According to the conservative cable news giant, “infighting” is “how politics ought to work” and Democrats who were “giddy” over the right tearing itself apart over highly-skilled immigrant workers are the “real losers” while MAGA is merely having a “civilized debate” over the matter.
Got that guys?
Justin Baragona has a full report.
“The only real losers in the wake of this kerfuffle are the Democrats and liberal talking heads who hoped that they were watching MAGA tear itself apart,” a Fox News columnist argued this week.
Here’s what Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan had to say about today’s appeal’s court ruling in a short statement to The Independent:
“Both E Jean Carroll and I are gratified by today’s decision. We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”
Here’s the current House GOP leader’s typically grovelling response to the president-elect’s post just now.
And here’s US Attorney General One America News presenter Matt Gaetz’s take:
As tensions flare between Musk and the president-elect’s MAGA allies, Trump himself posted what appeared to be a personal message to the SpaceX and Tesla boss on Truth Social over the weekend claiming that fellow billionaire Bill Gates had asked to come to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump suggested the Microsoft co-founder had requested an invite to his Florida estate and encouraged Musk to join them.
“Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!!” the Republican wrote.
Trump then signed the message “DJT”, as is his custom.
Here’s Kelly Rissman to attempt to get to the bottom of it.
President-elect’s cryptic message comes amid his ‘first buddy’ Elon Musk’s feud with other MAGA allies over H-1B visas
A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling against the president-elect after he challenged a jury’s verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming a former magazine writer.
Monday’s decision from a three-judge panel with New York’s 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals follows a May 2023 verdict awarding E Jean Carroll $5m for the former president’s ongoing defamation by denying claims that he sexually assaulted her in a department store in 1996.
In January, a second jury in a separate trial ordered Trump to pay Carroll more than $83m in damages for his defamatory statements about the former Elle magazine writer.
Trump argued the verdict from the 2023 judgment should be tossed out on his claims that the trial judge should not have let jurors hear testimony from two other women who accused him of sexual misconduct.
One of those women, Jessica Leeds, testified that Trump groped her on a plane in the late 1970s.
Another woman, former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff, said Trump forcibly kissed her at Mar-a-Lago in 2005.
Trump’s lawyers also said jurors also should not have listened to his comments on the so-called Access Hollywood tape, on which the president-elect brags about grabbing women’s genitals.
“Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings, and Trump “has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial,” appellate judges wrote in their decision on Monday.
Here’s the very latest from Alex Woodward.
A jury awarded the former Elle columnist $5 million in her first defamation trial against the former president
Here’s the latest from the president-elect on Truth Social in which he rages about this year’s election, slipping in digs about Black Democrats Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey and the Reverend Al Sharpton and claiming voter fraud in California, before finally getting to the point and calling for Republicans to stick together and get behind House speaker Mike Johnson (so long as the latter does his bidding, presumably):
“We are the Party of COMMON SENSE, a primary reason that we WON, in a landslide, the magnificent and historic Presidential Election of 2024. ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, 312 ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES, AND THE POPULAR VOTE BY MILLIONS OF VOTERS (Despite large scale voter fraud taking place in numerous states, including California, where votes are ridiculously still being counted, or under review!), ALL WON WITH EASE, CALM, & PROFESSIONALISM. Republicans are being praised for having run a “legendary” campaign! Democrats are being excoriated for their effort, having wasted 2.5 Billion Dollars, much of it unaccounted for, with some being used to illegally buy endorsements ($11,000,000 to Beyoncé, who never even sang a song, $2,000,000 to Oprah for doing next to nothing, and even $500,000 to Reverend AL, a professional con man and instigator, who agreed to “interview” their “star spangled” candidates, Kamala and Joe). We ran a flawless campaign, having spent FAR LESS, with lots of money left over. They ran a very expensive “sinking ship,” embracing DOJ & FBI WEAPONIZATION against their political opponent, ME. BUT IT DIDN’T WORK, IT WAS A DISASTER!!! LETS NOT BLOW THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY WHICH WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN. The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all of the destructive policies of the last Administration. Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!!!”
Here’s more from Alex Woodward.
Representatives will decide who holds the gavel to lead the House with a slim Republican majority
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has said that he does not think President-elect Donald Trump has permanently changed the Republican Party.
Sununu, a moderate member of the GOP, said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that he does not imagine someone will take Trump’s place as leader once his term is over.
“Trump is Trump. There’s no ‘Trump-lite.’ There’s no ‘Trump 2.0’ coming up,” he said.
“I always say that Trump is who he is because he’s built up himself in the American psyche for 40 years. I mean, really since the 80s.”
Andrea Cavallier has more from Sununu.
The moderate Republican governor said he does not think President-elect Trump has permanently changed the GOP
The North Korean leader has vowed to implement its “toughest” anti-US policy yet, state media reported on Sunday, less than a month before his old pen pal takes office as US president.
Trump’s return to the White House raises prospects for more high-profile diplomacy with North Korea.
During his first term, Trump met Kim three times for talks on the North’s nuclear program.
Many experts, however, say a quick resumption of Trump-Kim summitry is unlikely as the American will first focus on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
North Korea’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine also poses a challenge to efforts to revive diplomacy, experts say.
During a five-day plenary meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that ended on Friday, Kim called the US “the most reactionary state that regards anti-communism as its invariable state policy”.
Kim said that the US-South Korea-Japan security partnership is expanding into “a nuclear military bloc for aggression”.
He continued, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA): “This reality clearly shows to which direction we should advance and what we should do and how.”
The KCNA said Kim’s speech “clarified the strategy for the toughest anti-US counteraction to be launched aggressively” by North Korea for its long-term national interests and security.
It did not elaborate on what the anti-US strategy would entail, however.
It did say Kim set forth tasks to bolster military capability through defense technology advancements and stressed the need to improve the mental toughness of North Korean soldiers.
The previous meetings between Trump and Kim not only put an end to their exchanges of fiery rhetoric and threats of destruction but led to the development of personal connections.
Trump once famously said he and Kim “fell in love.”
But their talks eventually collapsed in 2019 as they wrangled over US-led sanctions on the North.
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