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Why Nikki Haley urges Republican voters to hold off on supporting Donald Trump

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 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley urged Republican voters to hold off on supporting former President Donald Trump until they know if he’s going to be convicted in any of the four criminal trials pending against him.

“I think the American people deserve to know what the situation is going to be,” Haley said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Former President Donald Trump currently faces four sets of criminal charges, two federal cases and state-level cases in Georgia and New York.

But Haley on Sunday went beyond targeting Trump over his sweeping indictments. Seeking to upset the former president in the South Carolina Republican primary on Feb. 24, Haley also said Trump should not be trying to block a congressional border bill. Instead, the former South Carolina governor told CNN a new border security plan should be passed as soon as possible.

Haley also used the interview to clarify recent comments she made about states and seceding, telling CNN that no state has the right to leave the country.

Haley on Sunday warned that, as Republican voters select their 2024 nominee to potentially face off against President Joe Biden, “For the next year, (Trump is) going to be sitting a courtroom.”

“I think it speaks for itself that he’s saying he’s going to be spending more time in a courtroom than he’s going to be spending on the campaign trail. We’ve got a country in disarray and a world on fire.”

Haley spoke on CNN days after a federal judge announced the indefinite delay of a March 4 scheduled trial in which Trump is accused of trying to steal the 2020 election from Biden. The trial is being delayed because Trump’s pre-trial appeals are taking up so much time.

Trump also faces three other criminal trials: A hush money case in New York state, a classified documents case in Florida and another election fraud case in the state of Georgia.

Trials in those cases are proposed for March, May and August, but pre-trial maneuvering could delay any or all of them.

Meanwhile, sandwiched between those potential trial datesthe Republican nominating convention starts July 15 in Milwaukee.

Trump in recent weeks has pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. and other Republican leaders to kill a long-awaited bipartisan border security bill by arguing that Biden already has the power to stop illegal crossings.

But the former president’s critics have argued that Trump simply wants to stop lawmakers from working with Biden on major border legislation ahead of the election.

Haley, for example, told CNN on Sunday that said Trump “is absolutely playing politics” with the border.

“He shouldn’t be getting involved telling Republicans that wait until the election because we don’t want this to help Biden win. We can’t wait one more day.”

Trump allies immediately hit back at Haley following her interview.

“Nikki Haley reeks of desperation,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, adding “it’s clear she knows she has no shot” and “is now auditioning for a cable news contract when her 15 minutes are over.”

Haley faced her own criticism on Sunday, too. The former United Nations ambassador sought to clean up recent comments she made suggesting that states – specifically Texas – could secede from the Union, an issue that helped trigger the Civil War.

In a recent radio interview, Haley said that “if Texas decides they want to do that, they can do that.” She said “if that whole state says, ‘We don’t want to be part of America anymore,’ I mean, that’s their decision to make.”

She also added: “Let’s talk about what’s reality. Texas isn’t going to secede.”

But Haley this week told CNN said she was referencing comments made during her 2010 campaign for South Carolina governor, and that she did not mean to express support for secession and the country breaking apart.

“The Constitution doesn’t allow for that,” Haley said.

She said lawmakers should understand the frustration that some state officials feel over the authority of the federal government, citing Texas and its treatment of the U.S.-Mexico border as a prime example.

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Bernie Sanders blasts Democratic Party following Kamala Harris loss

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a scathing statement on what he called the Democratic Party’s “disastrous” campaign after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to former President Donald Trump.

The independent, who caucuses with Democrats, said it “should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

“First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders continued in his statement. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

The longtime progressive champion, who ran for president in 2016 and 2020, reflected on the ways Americans continue to experience economic instability, from income and wealth inequality to a lack of guaranteed paid family and medical leave.

“Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government’s all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children,” Sanders said.

Sanders, who won reelection Tuesday to a fourth six-year term in the U.S. Senate, cast doubt about the party’s ability to learn its lesson.

“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not,” Sanders said.

Sanders said “very serious political discussions” are now merited about the path forward for “those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice,” before ending his statement with, “Stay tuned.”

Harris conceded the election in a speech on Wednesday at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she said. “The fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people — a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation — the ideals that reflect America at our best.”

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Kamala Harris delivers powerful concession speech after loss to Donald Trump

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Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the nation from Howard University, her alma mater, publicly conceding defeat in the presidential election to Donald Trump.

“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for,” she said. “But hear me when I say — the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

She urged her supporters to accept the results of the election

“We owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States,” she said.

The Associated Press called the presidential race Wednesday morning around 5:30 a.m. ET after Trump won 276 electoral votes to Harris’s 223, although Trump declared victory at 2:30 a.m. ET during a speech to supporters at an election party in Florida. Harris did not address supporters or the country on Tuesday night as the election results were coming in.

“While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign,” she said Wednesday. “The fight — the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and for the dignity of all people.”

In a message directed specifically at young voters, Harris said, “Sometimes the fight takes a while, that doesn’t mean we won’t win. This is not a time to throw up our hands, this is a time to roll up our sleeves.”

Harris called President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday to congratulate him, and during the reportedly brief conversation they discussed the “importance of a peaceful transfer of power and being a president for all Americans,” a senior Harris aide told CNN. Trump’s campaign communications director, Steven Cheung, said Trump “acknowledged Vice President Harris on her strength, professionalism and tenacity throughout the campaign, and both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country.”

President Biden also congratulated Trump over the phone on Wednesday, and invited Trump to meet with him at the White House in the near future. Biden will address the nation on Thursday.

Harris launched her presidential campaign at the end of July after Biden withdrew from the race following Democratic calls for him to drop out due to his June debate performance. Harris locked up the Democratic nomination within two weeks but had about 100 days to sway voters compared to Trump, who announced his intention to run in November 2022 and clinched the Republican nomination in mid-March.

The Harris campaign focused on helping middle- and lower-class families, making housing more affordable, bringing down the cost of health care and protecting reproductive rights. But the campaign seemed to struggle with connecting to working-class voters, with the Teamsters union declining to endorse either candidate for the first time in almost 30 years.

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Opinion: America will regret its decision to reelect Donald Trump

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A presidential campaign defined by personal hatreds , threats of political violence and two foiled assassination attempts ended on Tuesday in a mostly orderly election. No matter what the results ultimately show, Americans’ commitment to a fair and peaceful vote is a thumb in the eye to authoritarians both at home and abroad.

By Max Burns, opinion contributor, The Hill

That’s about all the joy Democrats (and lovers of democracy) will find in yesterday’s election results. The fleeting optimism that washed over the party after Ann Selzer’s storied Iowa poll showed Kamala Harris unexpectedly leading Donald Trump by 3 points has crashed back to reality. In its place is the realization that democracy’s worst-case scenario is unfolding in real time.

Our democratic institutions are not ready for what comes next. Neither are the American people.

The Trump who will walk into the White House on Jan. 20 is a man steeped in unsettled vendettas , who came within a hair’s breadth of a string of federal felony convictions that he is now empowered to wipe away with a self-pardon — as if those offenses and so many others had never even happened. Trump will see his priorities as he has always seen them: party over country and self over all.

A man with 34 felony convictions can’t win the presidency in a nation where trust in institutions is high. It’s only in a culture where the justice system has long since lost its legitimacy that a man with such a thick criminal record as Trump glides by relatively unremarked. That one man can so effortlessly game American institutions to his own benefit says as much about the decrepit state of America’s institutions as it does about the moral decrepitude of the crook.

The nine years of the Trump era have taken a bat to our democracy, and Trump’s MAGA movement has exploited the nation’s systemic weakness at every turn. Political misinformation flooded social media networks owned by Trump’s key allies, or by Trump personally. Meanwhile, Trump and compliant Republican lawmakers torched public trust in the courts — first by appointing an ethically vacant Supreme Court, and later by urging his followers to hate and distrust not only the judges who tried him but the entire “rigged” justice system.

Trump is now set to return to the White House, and he’s made no secret of his lofty goals for a second term: gutting the civil service , destroying the independence of the Justice Department and seeking political and legal revenge on his lengthy list of personal enemies . Judging by yesterday’s election returns, a majority of Americans are eager to see Trump do exactly that.

The former and future president now inherits a nation deeply weakened by his own toxic brand of politics. Our divided and exhausted nation will now need to fend off the constant extralegal whims of a president who is also, thanks to the Supreme Court, functionally immune from prosecution for any act he undertakes. If Trump’s first term was any indication, we won’t need to wait long for our next constitutional crisis.

Believers in the rule of law are in for a rough four years, because though Trump contradicted himself countless times during this marathon campaign, he never wavered in his distaste for the rule of law or his admiration for strongman autocrats . Members of the press can expect Trump to at least try making good on his oft-repeated pledge to rewrite the nation’s press freedom and libel laws . The rest of us will be along for the bumpy and chaotic ride.

It matters that Trump won his office in a free and fair election. It matters that free people voluntarily chose to cloak Trump in power he will almost certainly abuse in far-reaching and destructive ways. Our country made the choice to walk down the dark path of Trump’s resentments and conspiracies. We will come to regret it.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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