Doctors Say Trump Is Displaying Clear Signs of Cognitive Issues
Victor Tangermann – March 8, 2024
At 81 years old, president Joe Biden has attracted significant voter misgivings over his age and mental acuity.
But his rival in the upcoming presidential election, Donald Trump, may be dealing with much more acute cognitive issues.
Experts are becoming increasingly worried over Trump’s condition, Salon reports, with the former president struggling to form coherent sentences and even once again confusing Biden with his predecessor Barack Obama during a rally in North Carolina this month.
“Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented,” psychologist and former Johns Hopkins Medical School professor John Gartner, who wrote a book about Trump’s mental health, told Salon.
“This is a tale of two brains,” he added. “Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”
“In my opinion, Donald Trump is getting worse as his cognitive state continues to degrade,” Gartner said. “If Trump were your relative, you’d be thinking about assisted care right now.”
Others agreed.
“It is meaningful because the confusion of people, in contrast to the occasional forgetting of names, is a sign of early dementia, as noted by the Dementia Care Society,” licensed psychologist and founder and executive director of the Washington Center For Cognitive Therapy Vincent Greenwoodtold the publication.
As for Trump mispronouncing words like “Venezuela” or “migrant crime,” experts tend to agree he’s exhibiting early signs of “paraphasia,” speech disturbances caused by brain damage, and “not just aging,” as Greenwood argued.
And others, like clinical psychologist and Cornell University senior lecturer Harry Segal, who specializes in mental health disorders, offer a more nuanced assessment — though not one that inspires much confidence in Trump.
“Since this is an intermittent problem, it suggests that when Trump is especially stressed and exhausted, he suffers cognitive slippage that affects the way he associates words or their meaning,” he told Salon. “Note, though, that Trump’s pathological lying is itself a form of mental illness, so these cognitive lapses are literally sitting atop what appears to be an already compromised psychological functioning.”
Putin’s big message on International Women’s Day: Your job is to make babies
Joshua Zitser – March 8, 2024
Putin’s big message on International Women’s Day: Your job is to make babies
In his International Women’s Day address, Vladimir Putin emphasized the importance of having kids.
The Russian president reiterated that 2024 is the “year of the family” in Russia.
Putin has repeatedly leaned on Russia’s women to have more children to fix its demographic crisis.
International Women’s Day on March 8 is a big deal in Russia.
It’s observed as a national holiday, on which workers get the day off work, TV stations highlight the achievements of Russian women, and Russian President Vladimir Putin makes an address.
In this year’s speech, Putin had a clear message about what a Russian woman’s purpose in life should be: having kids.
“You, dear women, are capable of transforming the world with your beauty, wisdom, and generosity of spirit. But most of all, thanks to the greatest gift bestowed on you by nature — childbirth,” he said.
Putin said becoming a mother was an “amazing purpose for a woman,” according to a translation by The Moscow Times.
“Family remains the most important thing for any woman, no matter what career path she chooses or what professional heights she attains,” he added, per an official Kremlin translation.
He said this involved the “tireless” effort of looking after children.
In the address, Putin also restated that 2024 is the year of “the family” in Russia.
Putin signed an executive order last year to name this year as the year of baby-making.
“If we want to survive as an ethnic group — well, or as ethnic groups inhabiting Russia — there must be at least two children,” Putin said at a tank factory, according to Reuters.
High interest rates and macroeconomic instabilities are adding pressure on the private sector.
Russia’s economy appears resilient after two years of war with Ukraine, but a rising number of companies in the country are in trouble.
The number of companies in Russia that have gone bankrupt has soared in the first two months of 2024, Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.
In January, 571 companies in Russia declared bankruptcy — a rise of 57% from 364 a year ago, Kommersant reported, citing data from the federal register for bankruptcy.
In February, 771 companies declared bankruptcy — 60% higher than the 478 that did so a year ago.
Russia has imposed two moratoriums on bankruptcy in recent years. The first came during the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020; the second came after the West imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The moratoriums expired in 2021 and late 2022, respectively.
Ilya Torosov, Russia’s first deputy economy minister, told Kommersant that this is merely a return to pre-pandemic levels.
On-the-ground difficulties in Russia
The uptick in corporate bankruptcies highlights the difficulties faced on the ground in Russia. It also stands in contrast to the rosy official statistics the Kremlin releases, which show that Russia’s GDP grew 3.6% in 2023.
Thanks to government spending, Russia’s wartime economy is resilient — but high interest rates are biting. The Bank of Russia has hiked interest rates up to 16% to cool the economy and tame inflation.
“Companies are experiencing problems with refinancing as the effects of monetary tightening are starting to kick in,” Bartosz Sawicki, a market analyst at Conotoxia, a Polish fintech firm, told Business Insider.
Apart from war-related sectors such as arms production, the Russian economy looks “far from rosy,” Sawicki said.
“Although Russian companies are doing their utmost to dodge sanctions, international trade has become a significant issue for plenty of them,” Sawicki wrote in an email.
“The private sector also feels the pressure of macroeconomic instabilities, which deepen as the economy is on the verge of overheating,” he added.
It could get worse.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime is coming under tightening Western trade restrictions, including secondary sanctions against companies doing business with the country.
Putin has also pledged to give Russians billions of dollars in lifestyle upgrades weeks before they head to the ballot for the country’s presidential election later this month.
While it’s unclear where the extra budget for Putin’s promises will come from, the Russian leader has proposed changes to the tax system that are designed to result in more taxes from high-income individuals and businesses — which could put even more pressure on private companies.
Russia’s presidential election is set to take place over three days, from March 15 to March 17. Putin is expected to win the election against three opponents.
Who are the Russian dissidents still serving time after Alexei Navalny died behind bars?
Dasha Litvinova and Katie Marie Davies – March 8, 2024
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, center, attends a rally in Moscow on Sunday, Jan. 28, 2018. During his 24-year rule, Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone from tolerating dissent to suppressing any challenger. Most Russian opposition politicians are in prison or exile. (AP Photo/Evgeny Feldman, File) Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza gestures while standing in a glass cage in a courtroom during the announcement of the verdict on appeal at the Moscow City Court on July 31, 2023. Kara-Murza was convicted of treason last year over a speech denouncing the war in Ukraine. He is serving a 25-year prison term in a Siberian prison colony, the stiffest sentence for a Kremlin critic in modern Russia. (AP Photo, File) Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition activist and former municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district, gestures and smiles as he stands in a defendant’s cubicle in a courtroom prior to a hearing in Moscow, on Dec. 9, 2022. Most Russian opposition figures are currently either in prison or in exile abroad. Still, many persist in challenging the Russian authorities, including by speaking out from behind bars. (Yury Kochetkov/Pool via AP, Pool, File)Andrei Pivovarov, the former head of the Open Russia movement, stands behind glass during a court session in Krasnodar, Russia, on June 2, 2021. Pivovarov, serving four years for running a banned political organization, must clean his solitary cell for several hours a day and listen to a recording of prison regulations, says his wife, Tatyana Usmanova. (AP Photo, File)Lilia Chanysheva makes a heart gesture as she stands in a cage during a hearing in Kirovskiy District Court in Ufa, Russia, on Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Chanysheva, who used to head imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s office in the Russian region of Bashkortostan, was convicted of extremism charges and sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. (AP Photo, File)Oleg Orlov, the co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights organization Memorial, gestures while standing in a glass cage after he was taken into custody in the courtroom during a court session for a new trial on charges of repeated discrediting the Russian military, in Moscow on Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024. (AP Photo, File)exei Gorinov holds a sign “I am against the war” standing in a cage during hearing in the courtroom in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 21, 2022. Gorinov, a former member of a Moscow municipal council serving seven years for speaking against the war in Ukraine, suffers from a chronic lung condition. His health deteriorated during six weeks in solitary confinement, and he is still recovering. (AP Photo, File)
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to secure his fifth term in power this month on the heels of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death in prison, which devastated Kremlin critics and spurred concerns about the safety of other imprisoned dissidents.
The charges against Kara-Murza, who has been behind bars since his arrest in 2022, stem from a speech that year to the House of Representatives in Arizona, where he denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The 42-year-old political activist, who started out as a journalist, was an associate of Russian opposition leader and fierce Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015.
In 2011 and 2012, Kara-Murza and Nemtsov lobbied for passage of the Magnitsky Act in the United States. The law was in response to the death in prison of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had exposed a tax fraud scheme. The law has enabled Washington to impose sanctions on Russians deemed to be human rights violators.
Kara-Murza has twice survived poisonings he blamed on Russian authorities. He has rejected the charges against him as punishment for standing up to Putin, and likened the proceedings to the show trials under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Since September 2023, Kara-Murza has been serving his sentence in solitary confinement in the Siberian city of Omsk. In January, he was moved to another penal colony in the city and was put in solitary again. That move has been widely seen as an attempt to pressure a man who, even behind bars, remained a vocal critic of the Kremlin and its war in Ukraine.
ILYA YASHIN, SERVING 8 ½ YEARS
One of the few well-known Kremlin critics to stay in Russia after the start of the war, Ilya Yashin, 40, was arrested in June 2022 while walking in a Moscow park. He was sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison after he was convicted for spreading false information about Russian soldiers.
The charge stemmed from a YouTube livestream in which he talked about civilians slain in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. After Russian forces withdrew from the area in March 2022, hundreds of corpses were found, some with their hands bound and shot at close range.
Yashin, member of a Moscow municipal council, was a vocal Navalny ally and a close associate of Nemtsov’s. He is serving time in Russia’s western Smolensk region.
His harsh sentence didn’t silence Yashin’s sharp criticism of the Kremlin. Yashin’s associates regularly update his social media pages with messages he relays from prison. His YouTube channel has over 1.5 million subscribers.
“So far the authorities have failed to shut me up,” he said in a letter from prison to The Associated Press in September 2022.
ANDREI PIVOVAROV, SERVING 4 YEARS
Andrei Pivovarov, 42, headed the opposition group Open Russia, which authorities declared an “undesirable” organization before it was disbanded in 2021. Days later, as he attempted to leave the country, Pivovarov was pulled off an airliner due to take off from St. Petersburg for Warsaw.
The authorities accused him of carrying out activities of an “undesirable organization.” He rejected the charges as politically motivated and driven by his plans to run for a seat in the parliament in the 2021 election. While in pretrial detention, he still managed to run a campaign, but didn’t get on the ballot. In July 2022, when the war in Ukraine was in full swing, Pivovarov was sentenced to four years in prison.
In a written interview conducted when he was behind bars in December 2022, Pivovarov told the AP that his sentence did not come as a surprise.
“By the summer of 2022, the political field was completely purged. Those who hadn’t left ended up behind bars just like me,” Pivovarov wrote.
He has been serving time in isolation in a remote penal colony in Russia’s northwestern Karelia region.
LILIA CHANYSHEVA, SERVING 7 ½ YEARS
Lilia Chanysheva, the 42-year-old former head of Alexei Navalny’s office in the Russian Bashkortostan region, was arrested in November 2021. A court ruling several months earlier had designated Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and its regional offices as “extremist organizations.”
Following a closed-door trial, Chanysheva was sentenced to 7 ½ years in prison in June 2023 after being found guilty of calling for extremism, forming an extremist group and founding an organization that violates rights. She was also fined 400,000 rubles (about $4,700).
Chanysheva rejects the charges as politically motivated. Russian media reported this week that the authorities are now seeking a harsher sentence of 10 years for the former activist.
The 70-year-old co-chair for the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial was charged over an article he wrote denouncing Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In 1995, when Chechen rebels in the city of Budyonnovsk took thousands of people hostage in a hospital, Orlov was among the human rights activists who offered themselves as hostages in exchange for the release of civilians.
Orlov was convicted and sentenced to a fine of 150,000 rubles (about $1,500 at the time) in October 2023, significantly less than the lengthy prison terms some other Russians have received for criticizing the war. Underscoring Putin’s low tolerance of criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, the prosecution appealed the fine and sought harsher punishment.
In a statement, Memorial called Orlov’s sentence “an attempt to drown out the voice of the human rights movement in Russia and any criticism of the state.”
ALEXEI GORINOV, SERVING 7 YEARS
Alexei Gorinov, a member of a Moscow municipal council, was the first person to be sentenced to prison under the law penalizing the spread of “false information” about the Russian military after the invasion of Ukraine.
He was arrested in April 2022 after criticizing the war at a municipal council meeting. A YouTube video showed him voicing skepticism about holding a planned children’s art competition in his constituency while “everyday children are dying” in Ukraine. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The long sentence for a low-profile activist shocked many. In written comments to AP from behind bars in March 2023, Gorinov, 62, said “authorities needed an example they could showcase to others (of) an ordinary person, rather than a public figure.”
Gorinov has a chronic respiratory condition and had part of a lung removed before he was imprisoned. His health deteriorated during six weeks in solitary confinement in a penal colony in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. He is still recovering.
Legal expert: Trump lawyer begging for “mercy” suggests he’s “having difficulty” coming up with bond
Igor Derysh – March 7, 2024
Donald Trump; Alina Habba Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers asked a judge on Tuesday to delay enforcing the $83 million defamation penalty a jury handed down in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trial.
Trump attorneys Alina Habba and John Sauer asked New York Judge Lewis Kaplan to extend the stay of the ruling, which is set to expire on Monday. Trump will have to pay Carroll or put up $91 million in cash bond needed to appeal the ruling.
In New York, a defendant must pay a cash bond of 110% of the judgment to appeal the ruling of a civil case.
“Requiring President Trump to post a bond or other security before this Court’s ruling on his stay motion threatens to impose irreparable injury in the form of substantial costs (which may or may not be recoverable),” the attorneys wrote.
The letter asked the judge to extend the stay through at least Thursday.
“Habba is asking Judge Lew Kaplan — who has yet to rule on Trump’s request to stay enforcement of the $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll judgment as his post-trial motions are resolved — for some mercy,” tweeted MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin. “Specifically, she notes that the existing stay expires Monday and asks that if Kaplan does not rule by tomorrow, he should at least stay enforcement of the judgment for three business days after that ruling.”
Rubin added that the letter suggests “Trump could be having difficulty arranging for a bond of $91-plus million.”
“Expecting that Kaplan will deny his request for a longer stay, he is trying to buy himself time to obtain one or free up sufficient cash,” she wrote.
The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman told CNN on Thursday that the repeated requests for a delay suggest “there is clearly a problem so far in acquiring a bond.”
“It doesn’t mean that they won’t get there, but I’m not sure what a couple of more days delay is going to do. And the judge has already said no delay previously,” she said.
Habba previously argued in a filing that “requirement of a bond would be inappropriate … where the defendant’s ability to pay the judgment is so plain that the cost of the bond would be a waste of money.”
E. Jean Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan rejected that argument in a letter to the judge.
“Trump offers no alternative means other than his own unsubstantiated say so that he will have $83.3 million available when Carroll prevails on appeal,” the attorney wrote.
Judge Kaplan issued an order on Monday stating that a ruling on the stay request will be “rendered as promptly as is reasonably possible.”
“Without implying what that decision will be or when it will be made, however, it will not come today,” he wrote.
Biden’s allies are begging him to fight harder. The State of the Union is his chance to do so.
Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN – March 7, 2024
A handful of Democratic governors made their way through a gaggle of their colleagues last month to tell President Joe Biden directly what they’ve been stressing behind the scenes: He needs to be fighting harder.
The Democrats told Biden that he needed to show more of the fire that was on display in a closed-door meeting with governors when Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte handed him a letter demanding more action on the southern border. Biden flashed a smile, according to two of the governors standing there.
“State of the Union,” Biden said, teasingly.
That fighting attitude is anticipated to be on display during Thursday’s primetime speech, in which the president is expected to go much further than he is used to in bashing corporations for gouging consumers and racking up profits. But with anger about rising prices driving so much of the bad vibes surrounding the economy — even the Cookie Monster X account posted about shrinkflation on Monday, prompting a response from the White House — Biden is going where he long resisted, in an effort to redirect the fury that has been weighing him down in the polls.
Leading Democrats say it’s far past time.
Two dozen top Democratic officials and operatives who spoke to CNN said they’re tired of reading that the president is cursing about Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, or hearing reports that he told donors that Vladimir Putin is “a crazy SOB” and that MAGA Republicans are worse than segregationists. They want to see that passion and fire out in public as assurances that the president’s behind-the-scenes demeanor doesn’t match the public perception of the 81-year-old commander-in-chief are wearing thin.
“A lot of times you need to hear it from the candidate,” said Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota who’s eagerly thrown himself into becoming one of the president’s most active defenders. “Joe Biden’s a nice guy. People get that. One of the things people wonder, ‘Is he tough enough to take these things on?’”
Plus, Walz said, it would push back against the concerns that Biden is too old.
“I think it helps. He’s still going to be his age, but I think it helps to make the case on this,” Walz said. “Punch [Trump] a little bit. He earned it.”
Multiple Democratic officials told CNN they are hesitant of how much of to say, weighing the risks of calling even more attention to what Biden isn’t doing by going public.
But privately, many talk longingly about wanting to see more passion and pride – political theatrics, sure, but ones that they argue are crucial – at a moment when exhaustion with the process is pervasive and the Democratic worries over a second Trump administration are high. Biden’s effort in standing up for democracy shouldn’t top out with a few sly digs on Seth Meyers’ late-night show, they insist. They argue he shouldn’t give a forceful speech marking the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and assume that will fill out his energetic quota for over two months.
“People do want to see that he’s a fighter, which he is. Anything that presents the contrast, which I think that would help do, I’d be for,” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a longtime friend of Biden.
Planning for traps
At a moment when polls show majorities of Democrats don’t think Biden should be running for reelection, and with the biggest national audience he is likely to get outside of the summer convention, Biden and his aides are hyper aware of the importance of Thursday’s speech. They know every word and stutter and shuffle will be picked over as much as any of the policy proposals, and the drafting has been going until late into the evening in the West Wing.
Top Biden advisers insist that their favorite moment from last year’s speech – when he got Republicans to boo cutting Social Security and Medicare, punctuating the moment with “I enjoy conversion” – was not at all planned.
This time around, aides acknowledge that the political pressure has them workshopping options to not leave Biden’s fate up to another improvisation and the hope that he will have another smooth off-the-cuff response.
Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz isn’t sure the State of the Union is the right forum for Biden to come out in full force, “but after that, I think he’s going to have to be gloves off.”
Biden aides love to scold and shame reporters for coverage they think is unfair or over-torqued. Schatz said the president and his aides need to move past that to get negative stories about Trump covered by getting Biden to take the swings.
“We don’t have time to rewrite the rules of engagement in journalism. We just have to work with what we have,” Schatz said. “He’s personally going to have to make that case, and not assume that people are organically going to get it, either from surrogates or via osmosis.”
Biden aides acknowledge he’d look stronger if he fought more
For months, Biden campaign aides have been talking about the need to step up, and the obvious benefit they see in him doing it. People look strong when they’re picking fights, is how one senior Biden campaign official summarized the thinking to CNN all the way back in January – and they know the president needs to look stronger than he does.
They have found this easier said than done, and not just because Biden is trying to maintain the chances of getting a few outstanding bills through Congress, including avoiding a shutdown and sending more aid to Israel and Ukraine.
“The real Joe Biden is: ‘We’re red states, we’re bluestates, but we’re the United States of America,’” said Gov. John Carney, who’s known Biden for decades and attributes that sensibility to their shared Delaware roots. “But he also is feisty.”
President Joe Biden talks with Delaware Gov. John Carney following a dinner reception for governors and their spouses on February 11 in Washington, DC. – Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
And while Biden has enjoyed needling Trump while knowing he’ll probably get a response, his inclination is to present a calm demeanor for the sake of trying to insert more civility into politics – like the laudatory statement about Sen. Mitch McConnell he pushed to release last week after the Kentucky Republican announced he would be stepping down as minority leader. Biden did rile up many core Democrats by putting out any statement praising McConnell and by not mentioning things like his role in overturning Roe v. Wade by ensuring that Antonin Scalia’s and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seats went to conservatives.
“A statement like that, you have to wonder if Joe Biden gets it,” one enraged high-level Democratic operative complained to CNN.
Most of the fiercest statements to come out of Biden’s campaign so far have been attributed to staff members or written largely by others in his name. Aides say realistic management of the president’s time is a basic consideration: busy running the country, he cannot be constantly running to microphones to blast Trump.
“President Biden is on offense, demonstrating whose side he’s on and calling Republican officials out for choosing rich special interests over middle class families, choosing extreme attacks on basic reproductive health care over Americans’ freedoms, and choosing fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol by opposing the toughest bipartisan border security legislation in modern history,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt followed up with a statement noting similar points and that “the president and vice president will absolutely continue holding Donald Trump accountable and communicating directly to voters how much is at stake in this election.”
Tactically skipping some fights
But on several issues with huge potential for wavering voters, Biden can’t say much at all.
Trump’s kaleidoscope of indictments and court cases is one of the former president’s greatest political liabilities and a popular line of attack from Nikki Haley. But Biden is committed to making clear the independence of the Justice Department and courts.
He has more to say about Netanyahu and the situation in Gaza that American voters might be interested in, but White House aides are wary of how scrupulously every word attributed to the president is being read both by the Israeli government and Arab leaders in the region.
Biden’s habit of pulling back the curtain on these thoughts and others at fundraisers isn’t just because he gets comfortable in front of a friendly crowd. It’s an occasionally tactical decision to try to get his comments into the media bloodstream while preserving a sliver of plausible distance.
Just because going harder lights up Democrats already obsessing about the race and plays well online doesn’t mean it’s the best strategy for winning over the moderates and Republicans turned off by Trump that Biden is hoping to be a palatable enough alternative for, especially over a long campaign that can already feel like a slog with still eight months to go.
For now, the campaign has been leaning on a format for videos for its new TikTok and other social media accounts: Hand Biden an iPad and record him watching and reacting to a video of the latest Trump comment that the campaign wants to highlight. It’s what one campaign aide called “the real digital equivalent of ‘Let Biden be Biden.’” Biden’s mostly exasperated reactions from watching the videos tend to be fresh, but the comments he makes after to sum them up are scripted and modulated.
And for all the people complaining that Biden can seem like an elderly man sleepwalking on the job, aides feel like they have plenty of time to ratchet up the outrage.
That only goes so far.
“You can’t be at an 11 out of 10 in terms of being alarmed for eight months in a row – so I understand the need for him to peak at the right time, and to make those arguments when the maximum number of voters are paying attention.” Schatz said. “But a lot of times politicians are advised not to be too rough, because it can harm, it can backfire, because it can backfire. In this case, people really know what they think of Joe Biden as a human. So, he’s got a lot of runway here to be as tough as necessary.”
15 promises Donald Trump has made so far in his campaign for a second term
Piper Hudspeth Blackburn and Abby Turner – March 6, 2024
Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has made a number of promises on the campaign trail, including rolling back car pollution rules, building 10 new cities and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate President Joe Biden and his family.
While some of Trump’s plans are lacking in detail, here are some of the policies he says he would enact if elected for a second term.
Immigration
Trump has made immigration and the border a central campaign issue, successfully pressuring Republicans to reject a major bipartisan border deal last month and making a trip to the southern border on February 29, where he touted his previous hard-line immigration policies.
In a Des Moines Register op-ed published roughly a week before winning the Iowa caucuses in January, Trump vowed to use the “Alien Enemies Act to remove known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States.”
“We will shift massive portions of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement — including parts of the DEA, ATF, FBI, and DHS,” he wrote.
In a video posted on Truth Social in late February before his border visit, Trump also promised to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
After the Israel-Hamas war began last October, Trump also promised to terminate the visas of “Hamas’ sympathizers.”
“We’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities and get them the hell out of our country, if that’s OK with you,” he added.
Drug cartels
The former president has also made waging “war” on drug cartels a priority for his second term. If elected, Trump said in his November 2022 campaign announcement that he would ask Congress to ensure that drug smugglers and human traffickers can receive the death penalty for their “heinous acts.”
Trump also vowed to “take down” drug cartels by imposing naval embargos on cartels, cutting off cartels’ access to global financial systems and using special forces within the Department of Defense to damage the cartels’ leadership.
Education
Trump announced plans in a September 2023campaign video to close the Department of Education and send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.”
“We want them to run the education of our children, because they’ll do a much better job of it,” he added.
The former president has also promised to “put parents back in charge and give them the final say” in education. In a January 2023 campaign video, the former president said he would give funding preferences and “favorable treatment” to schools that allow parents to elect principals, abolish teacher tenure for K-12 teachers, use merit pay to incentivize quality teaching and cut the number of school administrators, such as those overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Trump also said in that campaign video that he would cut funding for schools that teach critical race theory and gender ideology. In a later speech, Trump said he would bring back the 1776 Commission, which was launched in his previous administration to “teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children.”
The former president said he would charge the Department of Justice and the Department of Education with investigating civil rights violations of race-based discrimination in schools while also removing “Marxists” from the Department of Education. A second Trump administration would pursue violations in schools of both the Constitution’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses, which prohibit the government establishment of religion and protect a citizen’s right to practice their own religion, he said.
Health care
Last November, Trump promised to replace the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, in a series of posts on Truth Social. A Trump-backed effort to repeal andreplace Obamacare failed in 2017 after three Republicans senators joined with Democrats to vote against the bill.
“Getting much better Healthcare than Obamacare for the American people will be a priority of the Trump Administration,” he said.
“It is not a matter of cost, it is a matter of HEALTH. America will have one of the best Healthcare Plans anywhere in the world. Right now it has one of the WORST!,” he continued. He also doubled down on his vow during a speech in early January.
Trump also vowed in a June 2023 campaign video to reinstate his previous executive order so that the US government would pay the same price for pharmaceuticals as other developed countries. Some of the former president’s pharmaceutical policies were overturned by Biden.
Gender care
“I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” Trump said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference last March.
Trump added in a campaign video that he would issue an executive order instructing federal agencies to cut programs that promote gender transitions, as well as asking Congress to stop the use of federal dollars to promote and pay for gender-affirming procedures. The former president added that his administration would not allow hospitals and health care providers to meet the federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare if they provide chemical or physical gender-affirming care to youth.
Justice system
Trump has promised to use the Department of Justice to attack critics and former allies. In several videos and speeches, the former president also laid out plans to gut the current justice system by firing “radical Marxist prosecutors that are destroying America.”
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said in June 2023 remarks. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”
Trump said in a campaign video last year that he would reinstate a 2020 executive order to remove “rogue” bureaucrats and propose a constitutional amendment for term limits on members of Congress.
To address what he labeled the “disturbing” relationship between technology platforms and the government, the former president said in a January 2023 video that he would enact a seven-year cooling off period before employees at agencies such as the FBI or CIA can work for platforms that oversee mass user data.
Trump added in multiple campaignreleases that he would task the Justice Department with investigating online censorship, ban federal agencies from “colluding” to censor citizens and suspend federal money to universities participating in “censorship-supporting activities.”
In a September 2023 speech at the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit in Washington, DC, Trump also touted plans to continue appointing conservative judges.
“I will once again appoint rock-solid conservative judges to do what they have to do in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia; Samuel Alito, a great gentleman; and another great gentleman, Clarence Thomas,” he said.
Trump has also pledged to “appoint U.S. Attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros District Attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States.”
In a September 2023 speech in Washington, DC, Trump also announced that he would appoint a task force to review the cases of people he claimed had been “unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration.” Trump noted that he wanted to “study the situation very quickly, and sign their pardons or commutations on day one.”
It’s a move that could lead to potential pardons of many rioters from the January 6, 2021, insurrection – which he suggested he would do at a CNN town hall in May 2023.
Crime
Trump said in two February 2023 campaignvideos that if “Marxist” prosecutors refuse to charge crimes and surrender “our cities to violent criminals,” he “will not hesitate to send in federal law enforcement to restore peace and public safety.”
Trump added that he would instruct the Department of Justice to open civil rights investigations into “radical left” prosecutors’ offices that engaged in racial enforcement of the law, encourage Congress to use their legal authority over Washington, DC, to restore “law and order” and overhaul federal standards of disciplining minors to address rising crimes like carjackings.
Addressing policies made in what Trump calls the “Democrats’ war on police,” the former president vowed in a campaign video that he would pass a “record investment” to hire and retrain police, strengthen protections like qualified immunity, increase penalties for assaulting law enforcement officers and deploy the National Guard when local law enforcement “refuses to act.”
The former president added that he would require law enforcement agencies that receive money from his funding investment or the Department of Justice to use “proven common sense” measures such as stop-and-frisk.
Foreign policy
Trump has continued his attacks against member countries of NATO, a European and North American defense alliance. At a South Carolina rally last month,Trump said he would not abide by the alliance’s collective-defense clause and would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if a member country didn’t meet spending guidelines.
“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”
The former president has also previously pledged to end the war in Ukraine, though he’s offered no details on how he would do so.“Shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled,” Trump said at a New Hampshire campaign event last year, adding in another speech that it would take him “no longer than one day” to settle the war if elected.
Trump further addressed his strategy of stopping the “never-ending wars” by vowing to remove “warmongers,” “frauds” and “failures in the senior ranks of our government,” and replace them with national security officials who would defend America’s interests. The former president added in a campaign video that he would stop lobbyists and government contractors from pushing senior military officials toward war.
Trump said in multiple campaignvideos that he would spearhead an effort to build so-called “Freedom Cities” to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”
In his plan, the federal government would charter 10 new cities on federal land, awarding them to areas with the best development proposals. The former president said in a campaign video that the Freedom Cities would bring the return of US manufacturing, economic opportunity, new industries and affordable living.
In the March 2023 video, Trump added that the US under a second Trump administration would lead in efforts to “develop vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles for families and individuals,” not letting China lead “this revolution in air mobility.” The former president said these airborne vehicles would change commerce and bring wealth into rural communities.
Electric vehicles
Trump has promised to roll back new car pollution rules at the Environmental Protection Agency that could require electric vehicles to account for up to two-thirds of new cars sold in the US by 2032. Biden’s electrical vehicle-related policies, Trump claimed at a Michigan rally last September, “spell the death of the US auto industry.”
“On day one, I will terminate Joe Biden’s electrical vehicle mandate, and I will cancel every job-killing regulation that is crushing American autoworkers,” Trump added.
Energy
Trump has promised to reduce energy prices by increasing domestic production. In several campaign appearances, he has laid out plans to end delays in federal drilling permits and leases.
“We’re going to ‘drill, baby, drill’ right away,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, during a victory speech after winning the state’s Republican caucusesin January.
At a South Carolina rally in February, he pledged to remove limits on American natural gas exports.
Trade
At the same rally in South Carolina,Trump pledged to impose “stiff penalties on China and other trade abusers.”
“It’s called you screw us, and we screw you,” Trump said.
Under his proposed “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” the former president said if other countries impose tariffs on the US, the country would impose “a reciprocal, identical” tariff right back.
It was the same pledge Trump made in a campaign video in 2023: to impose the same tariffs that other countries may impose on the US on those countries. The goal, the former president said then, is to get other countries to drop their tariffs.
As part of a larger strategy to bring jobs back into the US, Trump also said he would implement his so-called “America First” trade agenda if elected. By setting universal baseline tariffs on a majority of foreign goods, the former president said Americans would see taxes decrease as tariffs increase. His proposal also includes a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, as well as stopping China from buying up America and stopping the investment of US companies in China.
The former president has particularly focused on China, vowing in a January 2023 campaign video to restrict Chinese ownership of US infrastructure such as energy, technology, telecommunications and natural resources. Trump also said he would force the Chinese to sell current holdings that may put national security at risk. “Economic security is national security,” he said.
Economy
Trump has promised to extend the cuts from his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, notably the TCJA’s individual income tax breaks. The former president has also talked about reducing the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 15%.
“I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest tax cut in history,” the former president said last month at the Black Conservative Federation’s Honors Gala in South Carolina. “We’ll make it permanent and give you a new economic boom.”
Trump has also pledged to repeal Biden’s tax hikes, “immediately tackle” inflation and end what he called Biden’s “war” on American energy production.
Second Amendment
“I will take Biden’s executive order directing the federal government to target the firearms industry, and I will rip it up and throw it out on day one,” Trump said at the 2023 National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action leadership forum last April.
The former president also promised in the speech that the government would not infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights and that he would push Congress to pass a concealed carry reciprocity.
Equity
“I will create a special team to rapidly review every action taken by federal agencies under Biden’s ‘equity’ agenda that will need to be reversed. We will reverse almost all of them,” Trump said in a campaign video.
Trump added in multiple campaignvideos that he would revoke Biden’s equity executive order that required federal agencies to deliver equitable outcomes in policy and conduct equity training. If elected, Trump said he would also fire staffers hired to implement Biden’s policy, and then reinstate his 2020 executive order banning racial and sexual stereotyping in the federal government.
CNN’s Tami Luhby, Kate Sullivan and Kristin Holmes contributed to this report.
Maggie Haberman Offers ‘Pretty Brutal’ Prediction For 2024
Lee Moran – March 7, 2024
Maggie Haberman on Wednesday warned what to expect ahead of the 2024 election in November as Donald Trump all but sewed up the GOP nomination following Super Tuesday.
“It’s going to be a very long general election,” The New York Times journalist told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
“I think it’s going to be a pretty brutal eight months,” she added.
Haberman noted how Trump will face a criminal trial in his hush-money case later this month. The trial is scheduled to start on Mar. 25.
“That may be the only trial he faces this year. He has three other indictments in three other places but that alone is unprecedented,” she continued. “It is almost unfathomable to me what else could happen this year, but even the next two months are going to be shocking.”
“Yeah, indeed they are,” responded Collins.
Earlier in the interview, Haberman detailed the months-long concerns that Trump’s team has had about campaign cash and the former president’s reported desire to debate President Joe Biden, even though Trump refused to do the same with his Republican primary rivals.
Letters to the Editor: Dear Trump supporters: You’re better than this, right?
Los Angeles Times Opinion – March 7, 2024
Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 5. (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)
You don’t need me to tell you that the former president is a liar, a cheat, a fraud, a bigot, a bully — I could go on. You know this and ignore it.
What I want you to consider is, what does this say about you? Is this the kind of person your parents taught you to be or to support? Are these the values you grew up with? I doubt it, or there would be a lot more evil in the country than there already is.
Yet you succumb to this man’s act. You are better than this.
I am writing this not to get out the vote for President Biden, but rather to ask you about your own motives. I may even vote for Republican Nikki Haley if she is nominated — at least she is honest.
For most of us, our family histories didn’t begin in America. We are a country of immigrants. To elect a person such as Trump is to spit in the faces of ancestors who struggled to come to this country to escape rulers like him.
Deborah Coplein, Newark, Del.
..
To the editor: Imagine having elected politicians with the courage to abandon some of the least popular presidential candidates in history rather than to go along to try to hang on to their own power.
Imagine them choosing presidential candidates who will offer choices based on statesmanship in international affairs.
Imagine presidential candidates able to think straight and understand that the needs of the nation may be larger than their egos.
Imagine the same politicians forced to run in districts not designed to keep them in office without real competition.
Imagine them all striving to create a true liberal-versus-conservative debate based on actual issues rather than name calling, ideology and fear.
Imagine the effective and honest democracy all this would create.
Philip Borden, Rancho Palos Verdes
..
To the editor: Most patriotic Americans agree that stopping Trump is the obligation of all citizens and should be for all politicians.
If Biden is the patriot that he would like us all to believe he is, then he should ask Republican Nikki Haley to be his vice presidential running mate.
Doing so would certainly bring the country together in a way never seen before and demonstrate his commitment to putting country first.
How Trump’s Crushing Primary Triumph Masked Quiet Weaknesses
Michael C. Bender – March 7, 2024
Former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference gathering at the Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor, Md., Feb. 24, 2024. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)
Donald Trump’s daunting level of Republican support helped him vanquish a field of presidential primary rivals in under two months.
But he still hasn’t won over one small but crucial group of voters — the men and women who cost him a second term in 2020.
His overwhelming primary victories, including more than a dozen Tuesday that pushed Nikki Haley from the race, have masked his long-term problems with voters who live in the suburbs, those who view themselves as moderates or independents, and Republicans who backed Joe Biden in 2020.
On Tuesday, Trump lost suburban precincts in Virginia despite carrying the state by a staggering 28 percentage points. In North Carolina, his 51-point victory was tempered by much narrower margins in the highly educated and affluent suburbs around Charlotte and Raleigh.
While many Republican strategists anticipate that most Haley voters will eventually support the party’s nominee, Trump’s failure to bring these voters into the fold less than four years after they helped block him from a second term in the White House raises pressing questions about what he can do in the next eight months to win them over.
He has not seemed especially concerned about this challenge, recently threatening to excommunicate his rival’s donors from his political movement. On Wednesday, he posted on social media that Haley “got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion,” even as he invited “all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”
Trump’s inability to broaden his support stands among the biggest threats to his party’s efforts to reclaim the presidency. Notably, Haley appeared to be a stronger November candidate: Polls including a recent New York Times/Siena College survey suggested that she would have had an easier time unseating Biden.
Throughout the Republican primary race and in this week’s Super Tuesday contests, Trump amassed blowout winning margins. Voters rallied around him even as he accumulated 91 felony charges in four criminal cases and looked past their party’s disappointing elections under his leadership in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
His victory last month in Iowa, the first nominating contest, was declared before many caucusgoers had even weighed in, a fitting metaphor for the air of inevitability he proudly carried into the race. The Republican primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina drew record turnout, thanks mostly to Trump voters, and he swept every Super Tuesday state except Vermont, where Haley won thanks to the tiny state’s large percentage of college-educated voters.
“That’s the big lesson from the primary states so far: There are a significant number of Republican voters who wanted a choice in this primary process, and they are people the former president has to win over by the time November comes around,” said Rob Godfrey, who served as a top aide to Haley when she was governor of South Carolina and as a senior adviser to Gov. Henry McMaster’s reelection campaign in 2022. “He can do it if he runs a disciplined campaign on policy and not personality, and one that focuses on the perceived failures of his opponent.”
Trump’s campaign expects to focus heavily on turning out supporters but will look for ways to reach out to disaffected Republicans. The former president has been looking to again calibrate his position on abortion rights, with Republicans still feeling the backlash of the overturning of Roe v. Wade by a conservative Supreme Court majority he helped usher in.
Two Unpopular Nominees in Waiting
Biden, for his part, is struggling to hold his winning 2020 coalition together. He is significantly less popular than he was four years ago, and polls show that Democrats are skeptical of his second campaign.
Just 83% of voters who backed Biden in 2020 said they would do so again this year, a stark contrast from the 97% of Trump voters planning to stick with the former president, according to the Times/Siena poll released last week.
Biden’s age, his support for Israel in its war in the Gaza Strip and lingering economic unease have chipped away at his support among young Democrats, Black voters and progressives.
“We can learn a little bit from these primaries — for one, Trump has reenergized his base,” said Adam Geller, a longtime Republican pollster who has worked for past Trump campaigns and super political action committees. “But beyond that it remains to be seen, because all the public polls show that moderate general-election voters aren’t ready to give a bouquet of roses to either Trump or Biden quite yet.”
But while many of Biden’s challenges revolve around policy, Trump faces more persistent doubts about his personality and temperament that have trailed him for years.
Cory Barnett, 48, a physician in Nashville, Tennessee, who usually backs Republicans, said he would rather see a second term for Biden than for Trump. He voted Tuesday for Haley even though he knew the former president was on a clear path to the nomination.
“I actually feel like I’m throwing away my vote today,” he said. “It’s just a personal statement, I guess.”
Shying Away From Trump in the Suburbs
Trump has repelled suburban moderates since his takeover of the Republican Party in 2016. He has yet to draw them back.
In the suburbs, Trump split the vote with Haley in Iowa and New Hampshire, even though he won both states with ease. He carried the suburbs in South Carolina, but by a smaller margin than his overall victory in the state.
Those trends continued Tuesday in Virginia, where Haley won suburban precincts by 1.8 percentage points despite losing the state by 28 points.
In North Carolina, where Trump scored an easy victory by 74% to 23%, he finished only 7 points ahead in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte and its suburbs. Haley also cut heavily into his edge in Durham, Orange and Wake counties, highly educated, affluent suburban areas where Democrats see an opportunity to compete in the state.
“Trump can’t expand his reach beyond the MAGA base,” two of Biden’s top campaign aides, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Julie Chávez Rodríguez, wrote in a memo Wednesday. “In exit poll after exit poll, he has consolidated support only among the most conservative voters.”
In Minnesota, where Trump won by 40 points, Haley finished within 10 points of him in Hennepin and Ramsey counties, which include Minneapolis, St. Paul and the first ring of the cities’ suburbs.
Trump’s loss in 2020 was driven in part by independent voters, who soured on him after helping him win his 2016 campaign. The most recent Times/Siena poll showed independent voters split, 42% to 42%, in a rematch between Biden and Trump, but primary results signal persistent struggles for the former president with these voters.
In New Hampshire in January, Haley won independents by 58% to 39%, according to exit polls. On Tuesday, she narrowly won independents in Virginia by 49% to 48%.
Lillard Teasley, 60, a small-business owner in Nashville who calls himself a conservative, said he was not supporting Trump on Tuesday but suggested that could change in November.
“I’m anybody but Biden,” he said.
Disagreement on Abortion and the 2020 Election
A small yet significant share of Republicans continue to express concerns about Trump’s criminal cases, which remain pending after several financially damaging setbacks for him in civil suits.
CNN exit polls Tuesday found that 1 in 5 Republican primary voters in California and nearly 1 in 3 in North Carolina said Trump would not be fit for the presidency if he were convicted of a crime. An overwhelming majority of these voters backed Haley on Tuesday.
“There are a lot of Republicans and independents voting against Trump, even though they know he’s going to win,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican pollster. “That tells me there is a real weakness in the party for Trump.”
The Super Tuesday results highlighted other softness for Trump. He lost to Haley among Republican primary voters in Virginia who oppose a nationwide abortion ban, an issue that has driven independents and even some moderate Republicans to Democrats, exit polls show.
The same polls found that she also won Republican primary voters in California, North Carolina and Virginia who said Biden had fairly won the 2020 election and those who said immigrants in the country illegally should be given a chance to apply for legal status. A majority of the party disagreed that Biden’s victory was legitimate and preferred deportation as an immigration solution. Trump carried both groups by overwhelming margins.
Republican strategists expect most of the party’s primary voters to support Trump in the general election, pointing to exit polls that found that 4 in 10 of Haley’s voters in New Hampshire and South Carolina had backed Biden in 2020.
That data point, however, could also underscore Trump’s weaknesses.
In 2020, roughly 9% of Republicans said they had voted for someone other than Trump for president. That was about double the share of Democrats who said they had backed someone other than Biden in that election.
On Tuesday, roughly 1 in 3 Republican primary voters in California, North Carolina and Virginia told pollsters they would not commit to supporting the party’s nominee in November.
Roughly three-fourths of those voters backed Haley.
