Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at the Hyatt Hotel in Coralville, Iowa, on December 13
Published December 28, 2023
When news broke that a top aide to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was joining former President Donald Trump’s campaign last month, Trump advisers were livid, believing the aide was promoting himself, without permission of the campaign’s top brass.
Senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita called the newest team member, Brian Swenson, and “ripped into him,” according to two sources familiar with the conversation. The message was clear: If you want to keep your job, stop running your mouth, the source said. Swenson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The episode was indicative of how Trump’s 2024 team has sought to focus the messaging and the media that surrounds the chaotic world of the front-runner for the GOP nomination. His team is viewed by both outside political operatives and current and former Trump officials as his most disciplined to date. Led by seasoned Republican strategists LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the team has sought to prevent the kinds of internal leaks that were ever-present during 2016 and throughout Trump’s presidency from damaging the former president as he seeks to regain the White House.
“They know they aren’t able to control him, he will always say and do what he wants,” one source familiar with the team’s dynamic told CNN, noting that Trump is known to ignore prepared remarks and solicit outside advice from a wide net of allies, often without the knowledge of his closest advisers. “But they can try to control everyone around him.”
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SOURCE: www.edition.cnn.com
RELATED: The return of US isolationism
Published December 24, 2023
The United States is less than a year away from its next presidential election. Although former president Donald Trump faces numerous civil and criminal indictments, he will most likely be the Republican Party’s nominee for the third election in a row. Incumbent President Joe Biden will run for re-election from the Democratic Party, hoping that the country’s strong economic performance will ease voters’ concerns about his age and fitness for office.
The 2024 presidential election campaign comes at a moment of uncertainty in international politics. The United States and China are searching for a new footing, Israel continues its invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’s terrorist actions and war crimes and Ukraine continues to mount a successful armed resistance to Russia’s illegal invasion. The Indo-Pacific security architecture is also changing, with new initiatives such as AUKUS and the Quad bringing Australia closer to the United States as a central player in the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy.
The outlook of a second Trump presidency for US allies in the Asia Pacific is grim. Trump has a serious chance of being re-elected. He is the face of the Republican Party, and current polling shows Trump neck-and-neck with Biden. Although horserace polls this far in advance of the election are notoriously unreliable, the signals they are sending should not be ignored.
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SOURCE: www.eastasiaforum.com
RELATED: Republicans appeal Trump Colorado ballot disqualification to US Supreme Court – attorney
Published December 28, 2023
WASHINGTON, Dec 27 (Reuters) – The Colorado Republican Party on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after Colorado’s top court disqualified former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican primary ballot, an attorney for the Republican group said.
The appeal comes after the Colorado Supreme Court on Dec. 19 disqualified Trump because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. The court barred Trump under a U.S. constitutional provision prohibiting anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding public office.
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SOURCE: www. reuters.com
