Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) froze for almost 20 seconds while delivering his opening statement at a leadership press conference Wednesday afternoon, prompting murmurs of concern among his colleagues and the assembled press corps.
McConnell told reporters the Senate was on a path to complete work on the annual defense authorization bill and praised what he called “good bipartisan cooperation” before freezing midsentence and staring straight ahead without uttering another word.
The awkward and potentially scary moment prompted a couple members of his leadership team to reach out to see if he was OK.
“Are you good, Mitch?” asked Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), putting her hand on the back of his arm.
“Are you okay, Mitch?” asked Senate Republican Conference Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a doctor, who put his hand on McConnell’s right forearm. “Anything else you want to say?
“Let’s go back to your office,” said Barrasso. “Do you want to say anything else to the press? Let’s go back.”
McConnell, however, appeared reluctant to leave the press conference.
Barrasso then exchanged some remarks with one of McConnell’s aides and soon after led the GOP leader down the hall toward his office.
McConnell, who is 81 years old, returned to the press conference before the other members of his leadership team finished their remarks and took the first question from reporters, as he usually does every Wednesday.
CNN’s Manu Raju asked McConnell to address what happened, and whether it was related to health effects from suffering a concussion earlier this year.
“No, I’m fine,” McConnell answered.
“You’re fine, you’re fully able to do your job?” the reporter pressed.
“Yeah,” McConnell answered.
He then went on to answer reporters’ questions about an unraveling plea deal between federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden, the prospect of impeachment proceedings in the House and the schedule for considering the annual appropriations bills.
An aide to McConnell said the GOP leader “felt lightheaded and stepped away for a moment.”
“He came back to handle Q and A, which everyone observed was sharp,” the aide added.
McConnell was hospitalized earlier this year after falling and suffering a concussion at a private dinner on March 9 at the Waldorf Astoria.
He was discharged from the hospital after a few days and entered an in-patient rehabilitation facility. He returned home on March 25 to resume his rehabilitation work and was back at work in the Capitol on April 17.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) on Wednesday dismissed Republican discussions about opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, calling the conversations a “complete distraction.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during an interview Monday night said GOP-led investigations into Biden’s family are “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry,” then told reporters Tuesday that actions he sees “could rise to an impeachment inquiry.” He did not, however, launch such a probe.
The comments, nonetheless, have sparked a conversation about whether lawmakers should begin an impeachment inquiry into Biden, which is prompting pushback from Democrats.
“This is just a complete distraction, and Speaker McCarthy knows it,” Aguilar told reporters in the Capitol when asked for his reaction to Republicans now targeting Biden, after previously floating impeaching other administration officials.
“In the absence of talking about important policies that reduce cost for everyday Americans, this is what we’re left with,” he continued. “There’s no there there, but that’s not going to stop House Republicans from advocating things that they feel are harmful politically for the president.”
Republican-led committees in the House for months have been investigating Biden and his family’s business activities, with a particular focus on Hunter Biden, the president’s son. Last week, a House panel heard testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who allege that prosecutors slow-walked an investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes.
Also last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) released an FBI document of unverified claims of corruption connected to Hunter Biden’s work with Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
McCarthy on Tuesday said committees of jurisdiction will continue to investigate, but if the government denies lawmakers information they are requesting, “That would rise to an impeachment inquiry.”
The conversation about an impeachment inquiry involving Biden comes after Republicans have been at odds over who their first target for impeachment should be.
Lawmakers previously floated impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for the situation at the southern border and Attorney General Merrick Garland, citing testimony from the IRS whistleblowers.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), the chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, on Wednesday called attention to the wide net Republicans have cast when it comes to possible impeachments.
“The American people understand that this is a political sideshow, these are political games,” he said. “I mean look, House Republicans three months ago, four months ago, were talking about impeaching the Homeland secretary, then they talked about impeaching the attorney general, now apparently talk of an impeachment inquiry with respect to the president.”
“Apparently, the extreme MAGA Republican wing of the House Republican caucus would like to impeach every single federal official if they could, and I think the American people would far prefer that the Congress focus on real priorities and real issues that are impacting their daily lives. And certainly we will continue to do that. It would be the prudent course of House Republicans to do the same,” he added.
Romney, one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment, recently encouraged fellow Republicans donating to 2024 GOP presidential campaigns to pressure candidates who are not proving competitive to get out of the race so Trump doesn’t have to run against a larger field, which could give him an advantage in getting the party nomination.
“Who is a worse Senator, John 'The Stiff' Cornyn of Texas, or Mitt 'The Loser' Romney of Massachusetts (Utah?)?” Trump asked on Truth Social. “They are both weak, ineffective, and very bad for the Republican Party, and our Nation. With even modestly skilled opposition, they’ll lose their next Election. Who could ever forget Mitt proudly marching, with full mask, down a once proud Washington, D.C. street with BLM and Rioters? Likewise there’s Cornyn, always quick to surrender to the Dems, giving them anything they want?”
Trump last year strongly criticized Cornyn for negotiating bipartisan gun safety legislation, calling him a “RINO” — Republican in name only — and said he and other Republicans were helping facilitate the taking away of Americans' guns.
Cornyn said in May he will support someone other than Trump in 2024.
“We need to come up with an alternative,” he said on a call with Texas reporters. “I think President Trump’s time has passed him by and what’s the most important thing to me is we have a candidate who can actually win.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is appearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, just one day after a federal court struck down a Biden administration policy restricting migrants’ access to asylum.
The rule required migrants to first seek and be denied asylum in a country they passed through along their way to the U.S. and also blocked asylum seekers from seeking protection after crossing between ports of entry -- a practice protected under U.S. asylum law.
Mayorkas has been the focus of broad GOP criticism, including calls for impeachment, over the large numbers of migrants who have attempted to enter the U.S. since Biden took office.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned of "problematic behavior," from China during his visit to the Polynesian island of Tonga on Wednesday.
"What I think one of the things that we've seen is that as China's engagement in the region has grown, there has been some, from our perspective, increasingly problematic behavior," Blinken said, pointing to concerns over China's "unlawful maritime claims," "predatory" economic activity and investments that "promote corruption."
The comment follows Blinken's high-stakes trip to China last month, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping amid rising tensions between the countries. The trip to Tonga is Blinken's third visit to the Asia-Pacific region over the past two months, having also visited Indonesia.
The trip comes as part of the White House's efforts to push back on China's growing influence in the Pacific islands region and increase the U.S. presence. In a notice sent to Congress earlier this month, the State Department said it is planning a sharp increase in diplomatic personnel and spending for new U.S. embassies in the Pacific islands.
Meeting with Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi ‘Ofakivahafolau Sovaleni on Wednesday, Blinken dedicated a new U.S. embassy in Tonga that opened two months ago.
"We acknowledged a changing global landscape, the impacts of conflict and the strategic importance of the Pacific Island region," Sovaleni said.
He also told reporters that Tonga's growing partnership with the U.S. is rooted in a "shared respect for democracy, the rule of law, and the rights of freedom of others." Solvaleni said he and Blinken discussed the focuses of the partnership, including the climate crisis, education and defense.
When asked about Tonga's debt to China, Sovaleni said the country has officially started to pay off the debt and does not "have any problems or concerns," about it.
"When we talk about 'free and open,' we mean a region where all countries are free to choose their own path and their own partners; where problems are dealt with openly; where rules are reached transparency and applied fairly; where goods, where ideas, where people can move freely and lawfully," Blinken said.
The secretary of State will next head to New Zealand to meet with officials and watch the Women's World Cup soccer match between the U.S. and Netherlands. He will then visit Brisbane, Australia, to meet with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Australian counterparts.
Senate Republicans see impeaching President Biden ahead of the 2024 election as a risky political strategy that could turn off moderate voters and are hoping to wave their House GOP colleagues off from marching down that road.
GOP senators say the party is better off focused on how to improve Americans’ lives in the future instead of fighting messy battles to settle past political scores.
“Staying focused on the future and not the past is in my view the best way to change the direction of the country and that’s to win an election,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) told reporters Tuesday.
Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said Tuesday she would prefer to focus on national security policy, which the Senate is debating this week as it wraps up work on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
“I’m really focused on NDAA right now. I really want to see it get done and I want a bipartisan deal between the House and the Senate. I think that’s what we’re focused on,” Ernst told reporters. “We need to get our [appropriations] bills done, too. So, that’s what we’re going to focus on in the Senate.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday strongly signaled to reporters that the House could move forward with an impeachment inquiry.
“How do you get to the bottom of the truth? The only way Congress can do that is go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. “What an impeachment inquiry does, it gives us the apex of the power of Congress for Republicans and Democrats to gather the information that they need.”
However, McCarthy later said no decision had been made, raising doubts about whether he’d move forward with the step.
“I wasn’t announcing it,” he said. “I simply say … that the actions that I'm seeing by this administration, with holding the agencies from being able to work with us — that would rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry. We … still have a number of investigations going forward.”
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) declined to comment on McCarthy's impeachment push when asked about it on his way to the Senate floor.
Senate Republicans have generally kept their distance from the House Republican-led investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings and earlier this summer dismissed what they saw as a hastily filed motion by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach Biden for lacking evidence and due process.
“I know people are angry. I’m angry at the Biden administration for their policies at the border and a whole host of other things, but I think we also need to look at what’s achievable,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said last month in response to Boebert’s impeachment resolution.
“And with a Democratic majority in the Senate, I don’t think that’s achievable,” he warned.
Cornyn on Tuesday remarked that the House standards for impeaching a president have dropped in recent years.
House Democrats impeached former President Trump in December of 2019 and then again in January of 2021.
He told reporters that impeaching presidents is getting to be "a habit around here," and that's not a good thing.
“Unfortunately, what goes around, comes around,” he said.
Remembering when it backfired
Senate Republicans remember the last time a Republican-controlled House impeached a Democratic president in the fall of 1998, it backfired on their party in that year’s midterm election.
Democrats picked up five House seats that year, marking the first time in 64 years the president’s party didn’t lose any seats in Congress during a midterm election.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted twice to convict Trump on impeachment charges during two separate Senate trials, said it’s not unusual for lawmakers to launch baseless attacks against a major party’s nominee for president, as happened to him in 2012.
Romney said Biden should open up about his family’s business dealings to reassure the public.
“There are all sorts of accusations and allegations. I had something of that nature launched against me when I was running for president. I found the best way to respond was full disclosure and transparency. My guess is that’s the way to make it go away,” he said. “I’ll expect to see that from the Biden team.
Romney reminded his House colleagues that the “bar” for impeachment is “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
“That hasn’t been alleged at this stage, but we’ll see what develops. I certainly hope that that’s not going to confront us again,” he said.
Cornyn warned Tuesday that further lowering the bar for impeachment will set a precedent for future Congresses.
“Once a precedent is established around here, you can pretty well guarantee people will cite that as justification or lower the bar further. I don’t think it’s a healthy thing,” he said.
Even so, Cornyn acknowledged that House investigators have uncovered some troubling evidence shedding light on Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
“I’m very disturbed by some of the revelations in the House about the Biden family business,” he said.
Not eager for battle
GOP senators are not eager to get drawn into a protracted battle with Democrats over an impeachment trial that may wind up dividing their conference if House investigators fail to come up with compelling evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, the standard set by the Constitution.
Investigations by the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees into Hunter Biden’s business dealings and whether he received favorable treatment from the Department of Justice have failed to gain much public traction, or even support from Senate Republicans on the other side of the Capitol.
Trump on Monday vented his frustration with Senate Republicans for not showing much interest in pursuing Biden.
“Why hasn’t Republican ‘leadership’ in the Senate spoken up and rebuked Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats, Fascists, and Marxists for their criminal acts against our Country, some of them against me. How long does America have to wait for the Senate to ACT?” Trump demanded in a post to his social media site, Truth Social.
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Steve Daines (Mont.) told reporters Tuesday that it’s the job of the House, not the Senate, to investigate Biden.
“It will be up to the House to determine what the facts lead them to vote on in the future. That’s their job,” he said.
Some Republican senators, however, argued Tuesday that House Republicans are justified in moving forward with an impeachment inquiry.
“Considering what the House Oversight Committee is unearthing — we can’t help that the FBI didn’t do their job for five years — now they’re finding all this information out. They’re still digging and appropriately so,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who asserted that House investigators have found “pretty strong evidence of serious crimes.”
“Whether we like it or not, we may have to deal with it,” he said. “I think the Speaker is doing what he needs to do and what’s appropriate to do, quite honestly.”
Asked about his Senate Republican colleagues’ reluctance to wade into another impeachment fight, Cramer said: “I’m not eager to get on an airplane every Monday morning.”
“We don’t do this for our own convenience, we do this because we pledge an oath and we have a president who clearly has over the years been running a really awful family crime syndicate,” he said. “We’ve got to look into it.”
He said when Democrats controlled the House during the Trump administration, “We impeached the president twice with no evidence in the kangaroo court.”
House Republicans are set to meet as a group one final time ahead of the August recess on Wednesday amid tensions over the annual appropriations process, a push to expunge former President Trump’s impeachments and questions over who they might impeach in the Biden administration.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has shaken up the final question by suggesting in an interview on Fox News on Monday night that the impeachment targets could include the president himself.
He told Fox’s Sean Hannity that Republican-led investigations into Biden are “rising to the level of impeachment inquiry” and didn’t back away from the suggestion in remarks to reporters Tuesday.
The statements by McCarthy offer red meat to the GOP base and hard-line conservatives in the conference who are jumping at the chance to go after Biden amid anger over what many Republicans see as favorable treatment by the Department of Justice.
They also come as McCarthy is trying to soothe conservatives angered by the direction of federal spending.
It’s the latest balancing act for the Speaker, who is managing a razor-thin majority and must navigate differences between conservatives and more moderate members of his conference, some of whom do not support as steep of spending cuts and do not want to expunge Trump’s impeachment or impeach Biden.
“We’ve got a narrow majority and we’re trying to work our way to a consensus and hopefully we will,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chairman of the Rules Committee, said of the appropriations process.
McCarthy must also contend with Trump, the leading candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, whom he risks angering should he fail to schedule a vote to expunge his impeachments. That dynamic could grow if Trump is hit with his third indictment of 2023 this week.
Wednesday’s Republican conference meeting — its regular weekly gathering — provides McCarthy with one final opportunity to alleviate tensions and rally his GOP troops ahead of a critical week, and a long summer break.
Top of the legislative to-do list is appropriations, as Congress stares down a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown. The House is scheduled to vote on the first two of 12 appropriations bills this week, even as conservatives remain skeptical of leadership's efforts to cut spending.
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus put GOP leadership on notice Tuesday, announcing they want to review all 12 appropriations bills — and assess the overall price tag — before voting on any individual measures. All appropriations bills have been released by the Appropriations Committee, but two are still being marked up.
“We are united in the belief that we have to see what the entire cost is before we can start working on individual pieces of it. Because again, you will be left with a very small piece of that pie that we might have to take a lot of the spending out of,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), one of the Freedom Caucus members, said Tuesday.
That posture could make it tougher for McCarthy to pass the first two appropriations bills, which Democrats are expected to oppose because they were marked up at levels below the debt limit deal. If liberals are united in opposition, the Speaker will only be able to lose a handful of his members.
McCarthy brushed aside any concerns Tuesday.
“It’s your same question every week, and I haven't changed my opinion yet,” he told reporters.
The appropriations fight is at risk of being drowned out by Trump, with the former president on indictment watch and House conservatives pushing for a vote on expunging his impeachments.
Trump last week said the Justice Department informed him that he is a target in their investigation into his efforts to remain in office following the 2020 presidential election — which includes the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — a notification that often precedes charges being filed.
That news came within days of a Politico report that said McCarthy — in an effort to ease tensions with Trump after the Speaker questioned his strength as a candidate — promised to stage a vote on resolutions to expunge the former president's impeachments by the end of September, the constitutionality of which has been questioned by some.
McCarthy, who is in favor of expungement, denied ever vowing to hold a vote on the measures. But the report nonetheless resurfaced conservative calls to wipe away the impeachments, much to the chagrin of moderate Republicans.
“President Trump was wrongfully impeached twice — twice — and both of these impeachments must be expunged by the House of Representatives,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a lead sponsor of one of the expungement resolutions, said on the House floor Tuesday.
Those demands will likely grow louder if Trumps is indicted.
McCarthy risks angering Trump and his allies if he does not schedule a vote on the resolutions; but if he does, they would almost certainly fail amid opposition from moderates.
The risk of angering Trump and hard-line conservatives is especially acute as appropriations season heats up — a time when McCarthy is trying to unite his conference behind spending bills to avoid a shutdown.
Some conservatives, however, were pleased with McCarthy opening up the possibility of an impeachment inquiry, a move that could help simmer tensions between the Speaker and his right flank in the sprint to Sept. 30.
“I don’t think there’s any question that him speaking to that has caused a paradigm shift,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) said Tuesday.
As the House prepares to hear from a UFO whistleblower who claims the U.S. is concealing evidence of nonhuman craft, the question looms over members of Congress: Are we alone?
Many members insist they have not seriously considered the question or are keeping their concern focused on national security risks from not knowing the cause of UFO sightings.
But some members say they have seen enough to think that the unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) — a more recent term for sightings of strange objects or effects in the sky — are of nonhuman extraterrestrial origin.
“It’s either something extraterrestrial, or something extraterrestrial that they reverse-engineered,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a leader of Wednesday’s UAP hearing, said when asked about the possibility of the sightings being secret Chinese or Russian technology.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) also said he thinks the UAPs were of nonhuman extraterrestrial origin.
“Listen, God made a phenomenal planet with phenomenal people, even though we disagree, we have our own issues. I don’t think we’re the only ones in the universe,” Donalds said.
“Do I think that our federal government has hidden information from the American people? 100 percent. Not even close,” he added.
But while most of the focus around the UAPs is on whether their source is dangerous technology from adversaries such as China or Russia or extraterrestrial, some people have pointed to a third explanation behind the sightings.
“I’m a Christian and I believe the Bible,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). “I think that to me, honestly – I’ve looked into it. And I think we have to question if it’s more of the spiritual realm. Angels, or fallen angels. And that’s my honest opinion.”
Wednesday’s hearing will feature David Grusch, a former intelligence official who is now a whistleblower alleging that the government is concealing evidence of a crash retrieval program focused on wreckage of “nonhuman origin.”
“These are retrieving nonhuman origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will. Nonhuman exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” Grusch told NewsNation last month, going as far as to suggest that some crash retrievals have included recovery of “dead pilots.”
In the UFO enthusiast community, Grusch’s claims were a bombshell. But they did not land that way with all members of Congress.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brushed off a recent question about whether he believes in extraterrestrial life.
“I will continue to see, but I think if we had found a UFO, I think the Department of Defense would tell us, because they probably want to request more money,” McCarthy said. “I’m very supportive of letting the American public see whatever we have.”
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, also rebuffed concern about UAPs and their origins.
“There are so many things that we get an opportunity to dig into and talk about here. It’s really the reason why people run for Congress, is to help their constituents and to weigh in on serious things. And this is just not in my top 20 that constituents in my district are asking me about or talking about,” Aguilar said.
But there is some UFO and UAP alarm among leaders on the other side of the Capitol.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) spearheaded an amendment that was added to the chamber’s annual defense bill that would require government records related to UAPs be declassified and disclosed unless a review board says they must be kept classified.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently told The Hill that he is concerned about the national security implications of the UAPs and the whistleblower claims.
“Either A, they’re telling the truth or some version of the truth, or B, we have a bunch of people with high clearances and really important jobs in our government [who] are nuts. Both are a problem,” Rubio said.
But do not expect any hard answers in the meeting about whether Earth has been visited by aliens.
“I don’t think we’re gonna get into little green men,” said Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who is helping lead Wednesday’s UAP hearing.
The focus, he said, is on government transparency about UAPs.
“What does the government know? And why aren’t they telling the American people?” Moskowitz said. “Even just trying to get this hearing done — there are different factions of the government that tried to stop the hearing from happening. Why?”
Last year, a House Intelligence subcommittee held a rare open hearing on UAPs, with lawmakers seeking to destigmatize reporting of the sightings and stressing that they are a national security concern. But it did little to provide an explanation for the hundreds of recorded UAP encounters.
“I’m on the Intelligence Committee, and yes, we do have hearings on this stuff,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio). But while most of those are closed hearings, Wenstrup said they “might as well be open,” alluding to a lack of explanation about the encounters.
Despite the intense outside interest, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is leaving exploration of the topic to Burchett and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).
“I’m just gonna sit there. I’m gonna yield my time to Luna,” Comer said. “I’m just there to listen and learn.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said that bipartisan interest in UAPs is a “positive thing.” But as of last week, he had not deeply looked into the issue.
“With climate change and extreme fanaticism running loose on earth, other planets are seeming more and more attractive to people,” Raskin said. “So, I don’t blame them for wanting to have this hearing.”
Republican senators who don’t want to see former President Trump as their party's nominee are feeling increasingly anxious that special counsel Jack Smith is actually helping Trump's presidential campaign through his dogged pursuit of the former president.
They fear that another round of federal charges against Trump will only further boost his fundraising and poll numbers, solidifying his possession as the dominant front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary field.
And they worry that Smith’s effect on the Republican presidential primary is being magnified by prominent House Republicans and conservative media personalities who have rallied behind Trump, effectively blotting out the rest of the GOP presidential field.
“They wish he would go away,” said a Republican senator, who requested anonymity to comment on private conversation, of fellow GOP senators’ concerns that Smith is helping propel Trump to victory.
“They wish they would both go away,” the senator added, referring to Smith and Trump.
The senator said constituents are calling on colleagues to “stand by Trump,” essentially turning the GOP presidential primary into a referendum on the former president and his battles with the Biden Justice Department.
The senator said Smith is “absolutely” the best thing going for Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump had a 15-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in national polls March 30, when news of the former president’s first indictment in New York on 34 felony counts related to a hush money scheme became public.
Since then, his lead over DeSantis, his closest rival, has grown to 33 points, according to an average of recent national polls.
A second Republican senator said the Department of Justice will further boost Trump if it brings new charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s victory Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump already faces 37 counts in a federal indictment related to the classified documents found at his Florida residence.
“The things that one would have thought were disqualifying can be enhancing, can be improving your standing,” said the GOP senator, who also requested anonymity to comment on how Trump’s legal battles are energizing Republican voters to embrace his campaign.
“I should explain to my constituents who complain that the Democrats are out to ambush Trump: ‘No, they want him to be Republican nominee because he is the one who would lose,’” the senator added.
The senator said a new federal indictment against Trump “creates increased enthusiasm among his supporters and probably brings other voters along who see this as a rotten system.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who hasn’t yet endorsed any presidential candidate, said Trump is getting “stronger” because of the two indictments and the potential for additional charges from the Justice Department and the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney.
“I think he’s getting stronger,” he said, adding, “The primary gets less and less [competitive].”
Paul speculated that the Biden administration and its allies may be focusing prosecutorial firepower on Trump to boost him in the primary, because Democratic strategists believe Biden has a good chance of beating him again in a general election.
“Maybe that’s their strategy. Maybe their strategy is: 'Let’s keep indicting him. We’ll build him up because he’s the one candidate who won’t have appeal to independents.’ And that might be true,” Paul said.
The Kentucky senator said even Republicans who aren’t Trump fans feel angry and exasperated by the severity of the charges brought against him.
“More and more Republicans, even ones who have disagreements with him, are like: ‘Really, you’re going to indict him for trying to overturn the election?’” he said.
Paul said he thought the strategy of Trump allies trying to push alternate slates of Electoral College electors in the weeks after the 2020 election was “a stupid strategy.”
“I voted against it. I said at the time it was a dumb strategy. So I’m against that policy, but never in my right mind would I think that it’s a crime for [Trump] to say, ‘Let’s have an alternate set of electors,’” he said.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who has endorsed Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the 2024 presidential election and has repeatedly warned that Trump is a turnoff to swing voters, said the Department of Justice has only boosted Trump’s fundraising and standing in the polls.
“That seems to have happened so far,” he said. “He seems to have benefited every time that the Justice Department goes after him.
“I’m hoping that the dynamic changes in a way that Tim Scott starts to break out,” Thune said.
Trump’s campaign last week sent out a fundraising email to supporters within 24 hours of receiving a letter from Smith informing him that he is the target of a grand jury investigation related to the events of Jan. 6.
He asked his subscribers to “make a contribution to show that you will NEVER SURRENDER our country to tyranny as the DEEP State thugs try to JAIL me for life.”
Trump raised $35 million in the second quarter of this year, during which time he pleaded not guilty in separate criminal cases in Manhattan and the Southern District of Florida.
DeSantis reported raising $20 million in the second quarter.
Trump has repeatedly bashed Smith to rev up his core supporters.
He shot off a fundraising email immediately after learning that he had been indicted in early June for violating the Espionage Act and conspiring to obstruct justice because of his handling of classified documents after leaving office.
“We are watching our Republic DIE before our very eyes. The Biden-appointed Special Counsel has INDICTED me in yet another witch hunt regarding documents that I had the RIGHT to declassify as President of the United States,” he wrote June 8.
Trump’s strategy of villainizing Smith and the Department of Justice has proven especially effective with small-dollar donors; his campaign reported collecting $6.6 million within days of Smith announcing his first round of charges.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted twice to convict Trump of impeachment charges and wants his party to move away from the former president, said: “In the past, an indictment would be terminal for a candidate.”
“Donald Trump has proven that’s not the case. He was right: He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t make a difference,” he said.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who doesn’t think Trump can win a general election matchup against Biden, said the indictments have rallied Republican voters behind Trump "so far."
“But he hasn’t had a trial yet," he said. "That could change things."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign and former President Trump this week rolled out dueling plans for the U.S. military, with both GOP candidates' proposals light on details and heavy on gripes over Biden administration efforts.
While DeSantis’s proposition took aim at Pentagon diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, recruiting woes and policies impacting transgender service members, Trump’s plan focused largely on seeking reimbursements for U.S. aid to Ukraine, lambasting Europe for what he decried as only a “tiny fraction” of what Washington had contributed.
But as both candidates strive to stand apart from each other’s messaging, choosing to focus on different aspects of national security, experts say there appears to be little difference between the two proposals.
“There doesn't seem to be very much daylight between the two of them on a couple of different fronts,” said Katherine Kuzminski, an armed forces expert and society at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Former President Trump pumps his fist as he departs after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, on Saturday, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“I think there's a real focus on bringing resources back to the U.S. and not extending American leadership abroad. And then, certainly, when it comes to the domestic politics, the pushes for reform within the Department of Defense when it comes to DEI policies and transgender policy,” she said.
“There isn't really a debate between the two of them on these specific issues ... When you look at their policies, they're not actually all that different,” Kuzminski said.
Here are both candidate’s messages on the U.S. military and national security:
DeSantis’s culture war complaints
DeSantis’s plan, unveiled at a brief news conference last Tuesday in South Carolina, doubled down on past campaign promises to “rip the woke” out of the U.S. military and overhaul the institution.
The “Mission First” proposal includes potential six-month performance reviews for all four-star generals and admirals, and possible dismissals should anyone be found to have “promoted policies to the detriment of readiness and warfighting.”
He also pledged to rescind Biden’s executive order that allows transgender individuals to serve under their preferred sex, rip out DEI initiatives in the services or military academies, end Pentagon efforts to combat extremism in the ranks and reinstate personnel who were dismissed for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine as well as give them backpay.
In addition, he promised to end programs meant to prepare military installations and troops for future climate change, bashing the Pentagon for shifting, in part, to electric vehicles.
In an interview with CNN the evening after the press conference, DeSantis claimed his policy targets Pentagon efforts that hinder recruitment and said the military is currently suffering from America’s loss in confidence in the institution.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rolls out his military policy proposal during an event for his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, in West Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
“At this level, everybody has acknowledged these recruiting levels are at a crisis. ... I think it’s because people see the military losing its way, not focusing on the mission and focusing on a lot of these other things,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis isn’t straying far from his policy proposals already enacted as Florida governor.
While head of the state, he has banned higher education institutions from putting dollars toward diversity and inclusion programs, forbade the use of federal resources to teach students about sexual activity, sexual orientation or gender identity, and prohibited some teachings about race and U.S. history.
But Michael O'Hanlon, a security fellow at the Brookings Institution, called DeSantis’s stance a “missed opportunity” for the former Navy officer, who served in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Iraq.
“Cleary DeSantis is fighting the culture wars and he’s sort of staying true to his M.O.,” O'Hanlon told The Hill.
“I think it’s probably a missed opportunity for him. … He should be trying to show he is actually capable of developing serious views on the big strategic issues of the day, which are fundamentally not about diversity, equity and inclusion within the armed forces,” he said. “I think he ought to be engaging on China and Russia, how to solve the Ukraine, how to prevent war over Taiwan.”
And Kuzminski said there’s a misperception that the Florida governor is capitalizing on “wokeness” as a recruiting challenge in the U.S. military,
“That is the perception of some who may have served a long time ago, but the reality of military service is that it needs to reflect the population from which it's drawn,” she said. “That's a challenge that I think a President Trump 2.0 or President DeSantis is going to run ... into if they were to win the election.”
On Ukraine, Desantis has offered tentative comments on the conflict, insisting it wasn't a U.S. national security priority and downplaying the Russian invasion.
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests [such as] securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party, becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said in March.
He has since walked back his comments on the war being a “territorial dispute.”
A firefighter walks with of a resident through smoke coming from a house on fire, after cluster rockets hit a residential area, in Konstantinovka, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday, July 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
Trump’s Ukraine-Russia War focus
Trump, meanwhile, has long made pledges to cut back U.S. involvement in foreign wars, starting with campaign promises ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump coasted through the 2016 GOP primaries under his so-called “America First” foreign policy, intended to diminish Washington’s role on the world stage and focus more dollars at home than overseas.
During his presidency, he continued that line of thinking, calling for a reduction in service members serving abroad and criticizing the U.S. foreign intervention as being too expensive and ineffective.
Trump seems to be doubling down on that track with his plan for “Rebuilding America’s Depleted Military,” also released last week.
In a prerecorded video put out by his campaign, the former president focuses largely on foreign policy, repeating criticisms over Biden’s handling Russia’s war on Ukraine.
If reelected, he claimed, he would demand Europe pay the U.S. to rebuild its weapons stockpiles — which have pulled from heavily since February 2022 to help bolster Kyiv in its fight.
“Less than three years ago, I’d fully rebuilt the United States military and steered America into such a strong global position,” Trump boasted.
“Twenty-nine months later, the arsenals are empty, the stockpiles are bare, the Treasury is drained, the ranks are being hollowed out, our country has been totally humiliated, and we have a corrupt, compromised president, crooked Joe Biden, who is dragging us into World War III,” he said.
Trump also claimed Washington’s European allies were only giving a “tiny fraction” of the assistance to Ukraine compared to the United States, and suggested Biden was “too weak and too disrespected to even ask” for reimbursement.
Trump also said in a recent interview that he could end the war in 24 hours, a claim many found dubious.
O’Hanlon, who called Trump’s assertions on lagging European assistance to Ukraine “incorrect,” said he appears to be banking on his past arguments on making America first.
Kuzminski agreed that Trump’s campaign looks to be “hitting harder on making Ukraine repay us,” and “doubling down" on those statements.
While Trump hasn’t been as vocal on culture war issues in the military this time around, he has a well-documented history when it comes to his stance on transgender service members in the military.
In July 2017, he announced on Twitter, apparently out of the blue, that transgender individuals would no longer be allowed “to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”
That ban was eventually rescinded by Biden via executive order shortly after he entered the White House in January 2021.
