The 2024 presidential election is already in full swing, but first voters are settling a swath of critical races this fall. The balance of power in state and local governments is on the line in myriad ways, from the five states where trifectas are at stake to the fall’s sole race for supreme court.
Bolts has identified more than 170 items—and counting—to watch across 31 states, and why they matter, including key races for governors, DAs, mayors, and lawmakers, plus dozens of referendums.
We’ll add more races to this page through Election Day: Thousands of additional offices, boards, and ballot measures are all on the ballot all around the nation; this page is Bolts’ selection of important races to monitor. We will also update the page with results once they are known.
Most elections on this page are scheduled for Nov. 7, but there are some exceptions: Louisiana holds primaries on Oct. 14 and Nov. 18. Utah holds a special congressional election and mayoral races on Nov. 21. And some elections, such as Houston’s mayoral race, could extend into December with runoffs.
Finally, as millions head to the polls on Tuesday, many others will not have the chance because of harsh disenfranchisement laws. Our three-part series, “The Ghosts of the 2023 elections,” tells their stories.
She says that Attorney General Tish James is “not that bright”
I’m sure she’s just repeating what Trump says every day:
Habba, in a Newsmax interview Monday, said James doesn’t have a good case. However, Judge Arthur Engoron already ruled that the fraud occurred, and the ongoing trial is set to determine damages.
“She’s just not that bright. I’m sorry, I have to say it,” Habba said. “I’ve seen their case; I’ve seen their lawyers. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
She argued that what the judge ruled is fraud is actually industry standard behavior.
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“Just because a bank who’s giving you a loan says it’s worth what the loan amount is, which is what happens when anybody takes a loan out, they’re never going to say the real value,” she continued. “They’re going to say what they want to say and not a penny more, or what the loan amount is and not a penny more.”
“She needs to educate herself, maybe go to some — I don’t even know how to express how ridiculous this is,” Habba said. “It’s like being in a circus with a bunch of — I mean, what I want to say I can’t say on TV, but it’s crazy. You know, it’s just ridiculous. Anybody with a brain understands that this is just completely insane.”
G. Elliott Morris of 538 (the man who took Nate Silver’s place) has thoughts on the polls. I think you will find it reassuring:
Where does the 2024 election stand one year out?
We modeled six scenarios for the presidential race.
American voters cast 158 million ballots in the 2020 presidential election. Yet the winner was ultimately decided by about 43,000 voters across Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — the states that carried President Joe Biden over the 270 Electoral College votes he needed to win the presidency. The 2016 election, also closely contested, was similarly settled by about 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And if the 2024 election were held tomorrow, it would likely be very close too.
At least, that’s what the polls say. According to an average of national 2024 general election polls I’ve run using 538’s current polling average methodology, Biden and former President Donald Trump are currently neck-and-neck among likely voters, with Trump at 42.9 percent and Biden at 42.4 percent. Support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, both of whom have announced runs as independents, is hovering around 11 percent and 4 percent, respectively. Although there’s a long way to go before next November, these numbers suggest that 2024 at least starts out as a close election.
Today, 538 is also happy to release our live-updating average of polls of the national generic congressional ballot, which ask Americans which party they intend to support for Congress in 2024 without naming specific candidates. Since this is our first general election polling average of the 2024 cycle, we’ve also taken the opportunity to update our polling average methodology to adjust polls from partisan firms or sponsors (which tend to favor the party that releases them) and decrease the weight given to polls of all adults or registered voters in horse-race averages (we prefer likely voter polls for these averages). As of Monday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern, the average shows Democrats and Republicans locked in a dead heat for the House popular vote — Democrats technically lead by 0.4 percentage points, but that’s well within the margin of error for our average. That’s even closer than generic ballot polls were on Election Day 2022, when Republicans were leading our average by 1.2 points (they ended up winning by about 1.6 points, after accounting for uncontested seats).
When the polls are this close, it’s important to remember that which polls you include and how you average them could lead to different conclusions about who is currently “winning” or “leading” in a given race. The important takeaway is not who’s up or down, but that the election is close in the first place. We have much more confidence that an election, if it were held today, would turn on a knife’s edge than we do that Trump or House Democrats are leading.
Of course, the 2024 election will not be held today, so it’s incumbent on us to ask …
How useful are early polls?
The answer, frankly, is “not very.” For one thing, the two major parties have not officially selected their nominees. While Trump leads handily in both state and national polls of the Republican primary, there is still time for one of his challengers to turn their luck around — or for a major news event to significantly disrupt his campaign. Biden, too, has primary challengers, and there are persistent whispers that he still may decline to seek reelection due to his age. Neither party will officially pick its nominee until next summer; until that point, these polls are little more than hypothetical exercises.
The general election is also still a year away, leaving plenty of time for the polls to change. At this point in the campaign, most past presidential nominating contests have not had clear leaders, and it was anybody’s guess what issues would be most important to voters come the general election. That makes early polls of little use to campaigns and prognosticators. Research from political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien shows that, between 1952 and 2008, polls taken 300 days before the general election had no predictive value. In statistical terms, they found that polls have an R-squared value of roughly 0 in January of an election year. That’s basically the track record of an (untrained) monkey throwing darts at a dartboard. Plus, as of today, we’re currently 365 days out from the election — quite a bit further out than Erikson and Wlezien were even willing to look, given the variability of their data.
True, there is persuasive evidence that presidential vote preferences are more stable now than they were in the 20th century, and that could make early polls more predictive. But given how often early polls have misled us in the past, it would still be risky to place your faith in them this far in advance.
What about the Electoral College?
Another caveat still is that the national popular vote does not determine the winner of U.S. elections — either at the House or presidential level. It’s the states and congressional districts that do the deciding.
Since we don’t have very many state-level polls of the 2024 presidential election (and I wouldn’t really trust them if we did), the safest assumption at this point is that states will vote how they did in 2020, plus or minus some amount of (1) national shift toward or away from Biden and (2) state-level noise. We can only make guesses at these numbers right now, but I put together a bare-bones, no-polls model for the presidential election that can simulate a range of outcomes given various inputs for those two settings. Scroll down to the bottom of the article if you want to read my full methodology.
Let’s look at six possible scenarios for the 2024 election under this model:
–Scenario A is essentially the “2020 rerun” scenario: I take Biden’s state-level margins from the 2020 election and add the expected level of correlated noise.
–Scenario B is roughly what the national polls indicate today: a tied popular vote, plus noise again.
–Scenario D is another tied popular vote, but this time with the lower Electoral College bias as well.
–Scenario E uses the 2020 election as its starting point but increases the Electoral College’s bias toward Republicans by 1 point relative to the last election.
–Scenario F is the worst scenario for Democrats, simulating what would happen with a tied popular vote and a higher Electoral College bias.
Here is what the model says about how many electoral votes Democrats are likely to win in each scenario, and what odds of victory that translates to:
The 2024 election is likely to be close
Democrats’ range of electoral votes and chances of winning in six different sets of simulations of the 2024 presidential election
ELECTORAL VOTES FOR DEMOCRATS
SCENARIO
5TH PERCENTILE
95TH PERCENTILE
CHANCE OF WINNING
2020 repeat
222
388
61%
Tied popular vote
197
321
23
2020 with lower Electoral College bias
226
388
71
Tied popular vote with lower Electoral College bias
199
335
34
2020 with higher Electoral College bias
217
388
54
Tied popular vote with higher Electoral College bias
197
321
20
Based on a rough model of U.S. presidential elections that predicts future election results based on (1) historical year-to-year variance in state-level Democratic vote margins and (2) how correlated vote shifts are between states. The “percentile” columns show the upper and lower bound of our prediction for Biden’s electoral votes in each scenario.
As you can see, Biden is favored in the scenarios where he wins the popular vote by a 2020-esque margin, and Trump is favored in the event of a tied popular vote. But in each scenario, the underdog still has a respectable chance — at least 1-in-5 — of winning. Most simulations don’t point to an Electoral College landslide, either. The probability of a 365+ electoral vote win (on the magnitude of Barack Obama in 2008 or Bill Clinton in 1992) is less than 1-in-5 in all scenarios. In other words, neither party can assume an easy path to victory.
It’s worth re-emphasizing: It is still early days. The 2024 election will be decided on Nov. 5, 2024 — 365 days in the future. But all of the data we currently have points to another close race.
Famous? Infamous? What’s the difference? So long as Donald Trump can wiggle out of accountability yet again, this time for conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. His attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the federal charges brought against him over events leading to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Urging a federal judge to disregard Donald Trump‘s latest attempt to cast off his indictment in Washington, D.C., for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, prosecutors at the special counsel’s office argue Trump’s criminality “stands alone” in history and that even if he genuinely believed the 2020 election was stolen, he still used “fraud and deceit” as a means to achieve illicit ends.
In his 79-page motion filed Monday, Jack Smith challenges Trump’s attempts to rewrite history and recast himself as victim. What he did leading up to Jan. 6 was not “advocacy.” (Emphasis mine.)
Trump, prosecutors continued, has wrongly attempted to “rewrite the indictment” by coloring his defense with suggestions that his conduct was justifiable because, among other reasons, he only targeted election officials who “were the most informed politicians on the planet” and would “come to their own conclusions” without relying on his assertions of rampant fraud.
“He is wrong,” prosecutors wrote Monday, “lack of success provides no defense to a charge of conspiracy to defraud, much less any basis to dismiss the charge.
In the U.S., a defendant does not have to pull off a conspiracy successfully to be convicted of participating in one or leading one.
“Were it otherwise, defendants captured en route to a bank robbery could not be charged with conspiracy because their crime did not succeed,” prosecutors wrote. “Indeed, a conspiracy can be committed even if the object of the conspiracy is unattainable.”
Special counsel also urged presiding U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to reject Trump’s insinuations that his speech and conduct around Jan. 6 were “admirable” or that because others in the past had objected to election results through legitimate means, it excused his speech and conduct as alleged.
“[The] defendant stands alone in history for his alleged crimes. No other president has engaged in conspiracy and obstruction to overturn valid election results and illegitimately retain power,” Smith wrote.
Trump told “knowing lies” to subvert the 2020 election and “knowing lies are neither opinions nor pure advocacy,” the motion states.
“And in any event, the defendant could not use so-called advocacy as a cover for his scheme to obstruct a governmental function through deceit,” Smith continued. “Knowing deceit aimed at defeating a government function constitutes a violation of the defraud clause, notwithstanding his attempts to sanitize his conduct.”
Team Trump is throwing against the wall everything they can get their hands on to see what sticks, no matter how laughable: claims he was exercising free speech, claims the election was rigged, claims of being treated unconstitutionally (double jeopardy).
Trump’s chances in federal court are slim to none. Delay is his game and reelection his “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Plus, the judges are not his principal audience. He’s making himself a martyr to MAGA confederates who sacked the Capitol and to those who stayed home. He raised a mob once.
The South will rise again. The losers have been waiting for nearly 160 years. But their fearful leader couldn’t give shit about them. Donald Trump is the black hole at the center of his personal galaxy.
If Donald Trump wants admission to the dictators’ club with Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán and Kim Jong Un, he’ll have to prove himself worthy. That’s his plan.
You laugh? Just you wait. Right now he’s busy being prosecuted.
The former and would-be president’s antics on the witness stand Monday in his Manhattan financial fraud trial were as Michael Cohen predicted. Question his net worth and he’ll lose it. Trump was so fixated on maintaining his Richie Rich image that according to press accounts he never once mentioned the 2020 election being stolen from him. It’s that important to him.
Trump rambled. He blustered. He bragged. He insulted the judge and New York Attorney General Letitia James. New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron multiple times urged Trump’s attorneys to get their client under control. It was as useless as expecting a fussy two-year-old to behave in a fancy restaurant.
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks said of Trump’s courtroom misbehavior, “This is why we need cameras in the courtroom. Hearing reporters describe Trump’s testimony and loss of control is no substitute for seeing it for ourselves. Let elected and appointed officials know you want cameras in all his trials.”
“Part of what Trump accomplished,” Aaron Blake noted, “was setting a tone for his other cases, including the criminal ones. Nothing will come easy when you go after Trump.”
He’ll get even if you try. He’s planning on it already, the Washington Post reported:
Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.
The 14th Amendment may make Trump ineligible to run for president. But the Constitution says nothing about running for dictator.
“It is time to be very, very afraid,” wrote Post associate editor Ruth Marcus.
Slouching towards Lower Slobbovia
Trump already has an enemies list, “including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley,” say the Post’s anonymous sources. FBI and Justice Department officials are among his targets too, says another. And “Joe Biden,” of course, for having the temerity to beat him in 2020. And Biden’s family.
To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.
Trump plans to go full Queen of Hearts if not biblical. “This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Stubbornovsky the Last said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in October. “And that means I can do that, too.”
Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.
The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.
The New York Times reported in July that Trump plans to “alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”
What may be most alarming is the lack of alarm among Americans in general, much less mobilization. Trump’s MAGA foot soldiers? They hunger to be led by their man-child-king. The rest seem blissfully unaware that the Party of Trump has abandoned democracy save for going through the motions.
“This is the nightmare scenario that to millions of Americans is unfathomable but realistically possible,” Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and law professor at Pace University, told Salon. “It is also the scenario that millions of Americans look forward to with glee and the opportunity for retribution against the enemies of Trump.”
What’s a little pogrom if the tree of Trumpism needs watering?
The coalition of prodemocracy voters—I am one of them—is shocked at the relative lack of outrage when Trump says hideous things. (The media’s complacency is a big part of this problem, but that’s a subject for another day.) For many of us, it feels as if Trump put up a billboard in Times Square that says “I will end democracy and I will in fact shoot you in the middle of Fifth Avenue if that’s what it takes to stay in power” and no one noticed.
Trump hasn’t taken out billboards, but at his rallies and press events he’s shouting it all as loud as he can, and the people around him are making plans to carry out his wishes. Meanwhile, millions of voters are folding their arms like shirty children and threatening to sit out the election because they don’t like their choices. Some are threatening to withhold support, in particular, for Joe Biden if they don’t get their way about student loans, climate change, or policy toward Israel. They are living in a booming economy that is outperforming any other developed nation since the start of the pandemic on many measures—and they are miserable and angry about it.
Many voters resent hearing all of this. They think they are being bullied into a binary choice between two candidates they do not like, and so they engage in wishcasting: If only someone could beat Trump for the GOP nomination (no one will); if only Biden would step down (he won’t); if only America didn’t rely on the Electoral College (it does); and so on. Trump and Biden are headed for a showdown unless illness or death intervenes. Even if Trump goes to prison, the Republican Party has become so fully corrupted that he could likely still run and get the nomination anyway. And the Electoral College isn’t going anywhere, either.
Trump aims not to make the mistakes he made in his first term. He’ll make new ones. It’s not clear he’s capable of learning from his old ones, but his antidemocratic acolytes have.
“We don’t want careerists, we don’t want people here who are opportunists,” said Project 2025 director Paul Dans. “We want conservative warriors.”
The Faye Dunaway character in “Network” explained Howard Beale’s popularity: “The American people are turning sullen. They’ve been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression; they’ve turned off, shot up, and they’ve fucked themselves limp, and nothing helps. The American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them.”
Is Trump just Howard Beale? It’s as good an explanation as anything, I guess. But remember, Howard Beale was certifiably nuts.
The man is a disgraceful pig. His antics on the witness stand today were beyond outrageous. Lisa Rubin on NBC describes his testimony as “someone who was not in control of his id today.” He’s not in control of his id any day. And yet, he is leading in the battleground states right now because Joe Biden is old and foolish people have bought into his hype that he personally made the economy perfect when he was in office. (It wasn’t, they just have short memories.) It’s infuriating.
Meanwhile, his cult is so impervious to any facts that tarnish their Dear Leader that they are now living in an alternate universe. Look what happened in Florida this weekend:
Please listen to this message I delivered to the Florida GOP. If you agree with me then go to https://t.co/RzzpNHlC00 and support with a $20.24 contribution.
If the former president is convicted and sentenced — as many of his allies expect him to be in the Jan. 6-related trial held next year in Washington, D.C. — around 6 percent of voters across Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say they would switch their votes to Mr. Biden. That would be enough, potentially, to decide the election.
That could do it. But it’s almostparalyzingly depressing to realize that only 6% of voters who currently support Trump would reject him if he’s a convicted felon. It’s stunning. To bring back a common refrain during the Clinton impeachment, “what do we tell the children?”
Dan Pfeiffer does some useful analysis about the NY Times poll and the “double haters” in his newsletter:
I am still processing this poll and will have more to say in the coming days. But I do not want to sugarcoat it. While some of Trump’s gains among Black, Hispanic, and young voters may be hard to believe, numbers like these are broadly consistent with the trendlines in recent polls. This poll shows that not only can Trump win, he might now be a slight favorite to do so. Even if we don’t take the results literally, we should take them very, very seriously.
Instead of doom-scrolling and tweeting through our panic, we should see this poll as a roadmap on how to reconstitute the anti-MAGA majority. We have to persuade the voters we have lost since 2020. Here’s one place to start.
Who are the “Double Haters”
Every election cycle, the political press likes to identify a specific group of voters as the ones to decide the election. In past cycles, we have seen “Reagan Democrats,” “Soccer Moms,” and “Security Moms.” This entire process is more than a little silly. Voters are much more complex than the buckets into which pundits try to shove them. In recent years, our elections have been so close that every demographic group is make or break.
However, there is utility to identifying segments of the electorate to track progress and test messaging. The flip side of “everyone and everything matters because our elections are so close” is that making even marginal improvements among one segment of the electorate can have an outsized effect on the outcome.
For this upcoming election, a group of voters called “Double Haters” — voters who disapprove of both Biden and Trump — are the focus. Recent polls show why they are so critical and what Democrats can do to win them back.
Why the Double Haters Are Key
Unite the Country, a pro-Biden Super PAC, recently polled the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Trump won these states in 2016. Biden won them in 2020 and whoever wins them in 2024 will almost certainly win the election. While Biden and Trump are tied, Trump leads by 3 points among the “Double Haters.”
In 2016, Trump won this group by 17 points. In 2020, Biden won it by 7. Trump’s improved standing among the “Double Haters” helps explain why he is doing better in the polls than at any time in the last eight years.
Who Are the Double Haters?
According to the Unite the Country polling, the “Double Haters” have a few similar characteristics:
Educational Background: 49% of “these voters are more likely to have a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to the full sample (41%).
Partisan Lean: these voters lean more Republican (+12 GOP) than the total sample (+2 Dem).
Gender Composition: 51% are men compared to 47% in the total sample.
Voting Patterns: Trump won these voters by 17% in 2016, but Biden/Trump was a push among them.
In summary, the “Double Haters” are slightly more Republican, male, and college-educated than the overall electorate. This group also encompasses a large number of people who voted for Trump in 2016 but flipped to Biden in 2020. Holding onto those Trump to Biden voters is a strategic imperative.
One important note on this group: the “Double Haters” who voted for Biden in 2020 are not necessarily the same group of voters in this poll. It’s a fluid group; some folks didn’t approve of Biden then but might now, and the reverse could also be true.
How to Win Them Over
There are a myriad of reasons why these “Double Haters” could be down on Biden — there are Republicans who voted for Biden out of anti-Trump animus, Independents angry about inflation and the border, and younger progressives who disagree with the President’s approach to the crisis in the Middle East. Messaging to such a complex and contradictory group seems like a nearly impossible task. However, a new poll from Navigator Researchshows that turning the “Double Haters” into Biden voters is feasible.
Perhaps the simplest explanation of Biden’s political challenges is that he has done a lot of good, popular things, and almost no one knows about them. Navigator tested a series of messages about Biden’s various accomplishments, including allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug costs, the bipartisan law to rebuild roads and bridges, and efforts to create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
Guess what? All of this stuff is super popular. Medicare negotiating drug prices is supported by 77% of Americans, including 64% of Republicans. The bipartisan infrastructure law has the support of 73% of Americans and a majority of Republicans. Every accomplishment tested in this poll had majority support. It’s hard to overstate how impressive that is in a deeply divided, highly polarized country at a time when the President’s approval ratings are in the low 40s.
That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: according to the poll, a majority of Americans heard little or nothing about the accomplishments tested. There is a yawning knowledge gap.
Now for more good news (think of this as a positive sandwich); the poll shows that when people are told about what Biden has done, his approval rating goes up. The voters most likely to move are the “Double Haters.”
The Biden campaign and Super PACs like Unite the Country cannot do everything. We all have a role to play. I am confident you have “Double Haters” among your friends and family. I certainly do. The research shows voters are more likely to be persuaded by people they know. Let’s work to educate people about everything Biden has done to grow the economy, create jobs, and lower costs. The best language to use is in the Navigator Poll. When you see ads like the one above or this one from Future Forward, post it online or drop it into the group chat with your family and friends.
There is a clear roadmap to winning in 2024. It won’t be easy, but it can be done. If — and only if — we do the work.
I have had conversations among people I know in which they always start off bemoaning Biden’s age. It’s become the national political conversation. He’s old, old, old. But when you move past that and start to talk about the accomplishments of the administration which many of them are only vaguely aware of and then pivot to the monumental threat of the opposition the conversation shifts. The age thing has become a knee jerk response similar to how people would react to Hillary Clinton (in that case, either “but her emails” or “I just can’t stand that woman.”) It’s a testament to how successful the right continues to be at working the media.
I don’t think this is hopeless at all, as you know. But it will require Democrats who understand the stakes to inform those who have understandably withdrawn from politics that those stakes have never been higher.
Angry protesters paid Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a home visit over the weekend, chanting, “jail now!” They were echoing rising cries from across the country for the veteran Israeli leader to step down.
“He must resign!” shouted Moshe Radman outside Netanyahu’s home over the weekend.
Radman is one of the Israelis who’s been leading the protests against the country’s leader. Asked by CBS News what motivated him, he said it was Netanyahu “lying again and again and again.”
“A leader needs to think 100% about our soldiers and our country and 0% about himself,” he said. “This is for sure not Netanyahu.”
In one campaign ad from 2015, he said Israelis would head to the polls to “choose who will take care of our children.”
More than three dozen of those children are believed to be among the 241 people Israel says were taken hostage by Hamas.
The Oct. 7 terror attack was Israel’s biggest security failure in decades, and the prime minister has not apologized or taken any responsibility for the apparent lapses behind it.
“He thinks about 50 years ahead of time,” Tal Schneider, a political correspondent for The Times of Israel, told CBS News. “He doesn’t want to have anything on record saying he has responsibility for anything.”
Schneider said a loyal cult of support has kept Netanyahu in power — “a base of loyalists,” she said, in addition to his own political savvy.
“Netanyahu as a prime minister was compared to President Trump,” she said. “Netanyahu is much more sophisticated.”
But given the most recent polling, it’s unclear if Netanyahu’s political career will survive the next time Israelis are asked to elect a leader.
“Enough with it,” protest leader Radman told CBS News. “Our country deserves better. Our people deserve better.”
He’s hanging on by extending the attack on Gaza. Here you see how having a criminal strongman in charge can go wrong.
Cue the reporting about how Trump, a 77 year old conspiracist who is delusional about basic aspects of reality, is too cognitively impaired to be president. Right? Right? pic.twitter.com/3Gdp2tgOBc
Here’s a minute by minute of the morning session. Jesus H. Christ. Tens of millions of people want to put this psycho back in the White House:
“All rise.”
Court is now in session.
Justice Engoron alludes to the photographers, who are about to come in to photograph Trump and counsel at the defense table.
Note:
This will be the second time that Trump takes the stand in this trial.
The first time, Justice Engoron found him “not credible” — and in violation of his gag order.
Engoron remarked that they’re often referred to as a “gaggle” of photojournalist, a word usually used to describe “geese,” he notes.
NYAG’s counsel Kevin Wallace:
“The People call Donald J. Trump.”
The former president saunters to the witness stand.
Wallace’s questioning begins with Trump’s corporate structure and his personal beneficial ownership of it.
Asked whether he formed the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust when he ran for president in 2016, Trump said: “Pretty much when I won, I formed the trust.”
Asked why he appointed Don Jr. as the trustee, Trump answers: “He’s a hardworking boy, you know, young man. He’s done a very good job.’
Asked why he reinstalled himself as trustee before leaving the White House, Trump answered because he would go back to business.
Trump complains to the AG’s counsel that “you” and other “Democrat” prosecutors “were all coming after me from 15 different sides.”
Trump says all of the cases are “not good.”
“Weaponization, they call it,” Trump says.
Trump is shown his statement of financial condition from June 30, 2011 — and downplays its significance.
Pointing to the disclaimer, Trump said. “We would call it a worthless statement clause.”
“They were not really documents that the banks paid much attention to.”
Note:
Justice Engoron rejected Trump’s “worthless clause” defense in his pre-trial ruling.
Trump launches into a monologue.
“As this crazy trial goes along” Trump says the defense will call bankers and “they were explain what the process is.”
The judge interjects, notes that AG’s counsel has been “patient,” and instructs Trump to answer only the questions presented to him.
The judge’s pre-trial ruling on the “worthless” clause.
“Thus, the ‘worthless clause’ does not say what defendants say it says, does not rise to the level of an enforceable disclaimer, and cannot be used to insulate fraud as to facts peculiarly within defendants’ knowledge, even vis-à-vis sophisticated recipients.”
Trump swipes at Justice Engoron from the witness stand, going off on a tangent about the statute of limitations:
“I’m sure the judge will rule against me because he always rules against me.”
Engoron asks Chris Kise if that was necessary, before telling Trump:
“You can attack me, do whatever you want, but answer the question.”
Trump insists that his marquee properties were “underestimated,” like Mar-a-Lago, 40 Wall Street, Doral and others.
Trump falsely claims that the judge estimated Mar-a-Lago was worth $18 million. (Engoron didn’t; he cited an appraisal of the property from 2011.)
Engoron doesn’t take the bait, reminding Trump what the question was.
Engoron, interrupting another Trump speed: “Mr. Wallace, did you ask for an essay on brand value?”
Wallace: “No, your honor.”
Trump caricatures the AG’s case:
“Trump had no money. And he wrote up phony statements, and he defrauded banks,” even though they were represented by the best lawyers.
Wallace: I move to strike that answer. Granted.
Judge: “Mr. Kise, can you control your client? This is not a political rally.”
Kise eventually tells him: “You’re in control of the courtroom, not me.”
Kise doesn’t confer with his client, and Trump boasts about his financial statements.
Trump: “It’s a nice compilation of assets. It’s a great statement. […] It’s a lot of cash. […] The banks came to me. They wanted to make deals with me.”
Judge: “Stricken! Stricken!”
Q: “If anything, you think the valuations that they used were too low, is that correct?”
A: “Absolutely.”
Wallace shows Trump the estimated value of Niketown: $348.8 million.
Trump boasts about its location: “I’m between IBM and Tiffany.”
Trump: “It’s a holdup. It’s not a nice word. It’s a holdup site.”
Wallace: The question was…
Trump, explaining the value of Niketown:
If they want to expand anywhere, you have to go through my building.
Judge: Excuse me. Trump: Hold on. (continues with his speech)
Engoron:
“Mr. Kise, can you control your witness because I am considering drawing a negative inference on any question he might be asked?”
Kise urges the judge against that.
Engoron: “I beseech you to control him, if you can.”
The judge warns Kise that if he will control Trump if the lawyer doesn’t.
Kise and Alina Habba defend Trump’s answers, calling it responsive to the questions. Habba says Engoron’s here to “hear what he has to say.”
Engoron snaps: “I’m not here to hear what he has to say. He’s here to answer questions.”
He orders Kise and Habba to sit down.
Trump:
“This is a very unfair trial. Very, very unfair, and I hope the public is watching it.”
Questioning turns to 40 Wall Street’s valuation at $550.1 million on the 2014 financial statement.
Before that exchange, Trump gave a speech about the statute of limitations, possibly converting it to condominiums, and this remark:
“I got a lollipop in the lease. It’s a legal term, believe it or not.”
Q: Did you approve the valuation? A: I accepted it. […] Other people did it, but I didn’t say, make it higher or make it lower.
Wallace:
“I think we’ll take our break now,” adding that he’d appreciate it if Mr. Kise would talk with his client.
15 minute recess.
At one point earlier, Engoron threatened to excuse the witness if he didn’t respond to the questions he was asked.
We’re back.
Wallace keeps questioning Trump assets on his statements of financial condition.
Wallace asks Trump about valuations of his New York penthouse in 2014, which inaccurately tripled its size.
Trump concedes, while disclaiming responsibility for it:
“The number was too high. They lowered it after that.”
Trump:
“I thought it was too high. I don’t know what’s too high any more.”
He claims that the number wasn’t “too far off” when you add rooftop access.
Trump:
“They took 10,000 feet per floor, and they went times three. But they didn’t take out elevator shafts and different things.”
AG’s counsel moves on to Mar-a-Lago:
He shows Trump language describing it as an “exclusive private club.”
Asked if that was true, Trump responds: “Yes.”
(Whether it’s a club or a residence is a key issue in the case.)
The financial statements also notes that Mar-a-Lago is wholly owned by a limited liability company.
A little bit earlier, Trump was asked about a 2021 financial statement, and he responded that his focus was “China, Russia and keeping our country safe.”
He wasn’t president after Inauguration Day in 2021.
Asked whether he now believes Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.5 billion, Trump responds: “I think between a billion and a billion-five.”
NYAG’s counsel confronts Trump with the deed stating that “the Club and Trump intend to forever extinguish their right to develop or use the Property for any purpose other than club use.”
Trump parses: “‘Intend’ doesn’t mean we will do it.”
(That remark may rank up there in the annals of presidential testimony with Clinton’s: “It depends on what the definition of what ‘is’ is.)
Trump:
“I don’t think so. It says ‘intends.'”
If someone wanted to change it later, Trump says, “I believe they would have the right to do it.”
Trump is shown an interview of him saying that “the Mar-a-Lago Club is a great success. It will forever be a club.”
He says he said it as “bravado,” not “legal intent.”
Asked if he got tax benefits from it being a club, Trump answers yes.
Questioning turns to Trump’s property in Aberdeen.
Some additional context on the Trump Tower triplex here by @ChaseWithorn at Forbes, which spent years pressing Trump Org officials about property valuations.
Trump:
“Aberdeen is a very rich place. It’s an incredible piece of land, and it may be the greatest golf course ever built.”
Justice Engoron tells the NYAG’s counsel that he’s following his lead, and if he wants to let the witness “ramble” on with “unresponsive” answers, he’ll do that.
Kise defends what he describes as Trump’s “brilliant” response.
Trump:
“I have a lot of money, a lot more money than you thought.”
Are you aware of any valuations on the statements of financial condition from 2017 through 2021?
Trump:
“I’m worth billions of dollars more than the financial statements” — and anything “off” would be “non-material.”
(The judge rejected materiality arguments before trial.)
Trump returns to the “disclaimer clause” and “worthless statement clause,” in a lengthy monologue — again, an issue decided against him before trial and brought up apropos of nothing.
Trump says that the “disclaimer clause” is upheld by courts across the country, “except for this particular judge.”
Engoron lets the remark slide.
Trump, to the AG’s counsel Kevin Wallace:
“People like you go around to try to demean me, and try to hurt me.”
Wallace tells the judge he won’t move to strike because he has a lot of ground to cover.
After Trump repeats his talking points about the disclaimer clause, Wallace tells him he already said that.
“I’m trying to make you understand it,” Trump replies.
Trump: “Every court in the United States has upheld it,” referring to the disclaimer clause.
He invokes legal scholars who purportedly agree with him.
“It’s disgraceful,” he says, referring to the case.
Trump says of the NYAG: “I think that she’s a political hack.”
He says that the NYAG used this case to try to become the governor and to successfully become attorney general.
(Trump lost political motivation arguments before trial.)
Habba objects: “Asked and answered.”
Engoron: “No, it hasn’t been asked and answered. It’s been asked. It hasn’t been answered.”
Trump monologues on the disclaimer clause.
Judge: If you want to learn about the disclaimer clause, read my opinion — for the first time.
Trump: You’re wrong about the opinion.
Trump: “I think it’s fraudulent the decision. The fraud is on the court.”
Trump rails on about the “fraudulent” decision, claiming Engoron believed a political “hack” over him, referring to the NYAG.
Wallace: “Are you done?”
Especially given his repeated warnings earlier this morning, the judge has given remarkable latitude for all of this.
Q: Who from the Trump Organization was responsible from detecting fraud? A: Everybody.
Trump:
“Anybody sees something going wrong, come see me about it directly.”
Asked if anyone did that, Trump responds in the affirmative, and the AG’s counsel asks for an example. Trump responds to with a broad generality.
Trump:
“Come to see management, but come to see me directly. I don’t want that going on.”
This is in response to Trump Org’s engagement letter with Mazars, which held management responsible for “preventing and detecting fraud.”
Referring to the document, Trump says: “I’d love to read this your honor. Can I do that?”
Engoron: “No, not at this point.”
Trump: “Shock”
It might go without saying, but Trump’s “shock” remark was said with mocking sarcasm.
Trump’s shown an article by Forbes.
He scoffs: “Forbes. They’re owned by China. Now, they sold it to Russia.”
Trump, hammering home the point:
“I have very little respect for Forbes.”
(Forbes broke the news that Trump inflated the size of his New York penthouse and recently knocked him off the billionaires list.)
The AG’s counsel plays an audio clip of the interview, which was mostly inaudible.
Kise asks if the judge made any of it out.
He didn’t.
They move on.
Asked if the barely audible conversation refreshes his recollection of the fact that he spoke to Forbes, Trump answers no.
Wallace shows Trump evidence showing that 40 Wall Street ran a cash flow deficit of $8.7 million in March 31, 2015.
Trump says they made a lot of investments to the building.
“I spent a lot of money on fixing the building up.”
Trump, on NYAG Letitia James:
“She doesn’t even know what 40 Wall Street is.”
NYAG is visibly cackling at the remark for a bit, then puts her head down to compose herself.
These two dots show the NYAG’s office in relation to 40 Wall Street.
(They’re right next to each other.)
Q: “Mr. Trump, are you the one who told a reporter for the Wall Street Journal that there was a $600 million appraisal for 40 Wall Street?
Trump says he doesn’t remember something from 12 years ago.
The AG’s counsel shows an email from Don Jr. to Trump Org execs on 1/22/12, which says, in part, “djt told [the reporter] the 600 [number] so he will be happy if that gets printed.”
Trump concedes he was the “djt” his son referred to in the email.
