Trump

Guardian - As president, Donald Trump “made it very clear” that he thought Ukraine “must be part of Russia”, his former adviser Fiona Hill says in a new book about US national security under threat from Russia and China.  “Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia,” Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.  “He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state.”

Trump and Mike Johnson push for ban on non-US citizens voting – despite it already being illegal

Occupy Democrats -  Donald Trump is slammed with a Friday disaster as the share prices for Trump Media, owner of Truth Social, plummet below $30 — a stunning collapse that means the company has lost half of its market cap. But it gets so much worse for Trump... This is the fifth straight day this week that Trump's social media stock has dropped. In the last week alone, share values have dropped by close to 25% meaning that billions have been erased. At one point, the market cap was over $7 billion. The reason for the humiliating drop in value is twofold. It was revealed recently that Truth Social lost a staggering $58 million last year after managing to generate just $4 million in revenue. The business is an absolute turkey.

James Romoser, Legal Editor, Politico - As Trump prepares to begin his first criminal trial on Monday in New York, the tolerance of his tirades is perhaps the most glaring sign of the judicial system’s Trump exceptionalism. But it’s far from the only example. Over the past year, in ways large and small, in criminal cases and civil ones, Trump has consistently been given more freedom and more privileges than virtually any other defendant in his shoes.Some judges in Trump’s cases may have afforded him unique leeway in hopes of avoiding any appearance that they are meddling in the 2024 campaign. Indeed, Trump’s role as a presidential candidate — one who is always eager to play the martyr — complicates the task of prosecutors and judges eager to lower the temperature of the proceedings. Penalizing Trump before he’s ever convicted of anything could stir a backlash and trigger more heat, not less.Trump supporters surely bristle at the notion that he’s getting any preferential treatment. After all, he is facing dozens of felony counts across four criminal cases, and a series of massive civil judgments has damaged his reputation and his wealth. But the fact is that no other person in America — if charged with the diverse panoply of malfeasance that Trump has been accused of — would enjoy the same procedural and structural advantages that Trump has harnessed, to great effect, as his legal troubles reached a fever pitch over the past 12 months.