Trump super PAC launches advertisement attacking Nikki Haley in New Hampshire
From CNN's Kristen Holmes
The super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump is back with a new television advertisement attacking Nikki Haley on immigration in New Hampshire, as the former South Carolina governor sees a rise in polling ahead of the key early voting state’s primary.
MAGA Inc. is currently spending $1.3 million a week on advertisements in New Hampshire ahead of the primary later this month.
“Drug traffickers, rapists poison our country, but Nikki Haley refused to call illegals criminals,” the narrator says during the 30-second spot before a clip of Haley from 2015.
“We don’t need to talk about them as criminals, they’re not,” Haley says in the short clip.
“Illegals are criminals, Nikki, that’s what illegal means. Haley even opposed Trump’s wall and Haley repeatedly pushed amnesty for illegals. Nikki Haley — too weak, too liberal to fix the border,” the ad ends.
The new ad follows Trump’s campaign placing their first TV ad in New Hampshire attacking Haley.
That 30-second spot focused on immigration attempts to tie Haley to President Joe Biden’s policies as the Trump campaign continues to hammer the Biden administration over security at the US-Mexico border and illegal immigration.
What Haley's campaign is saying: “Nikki passed one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration bills in the country back when Trump was still a New York City liberal. Trump should spend more time explaining why he never fulfilled his signature promise to build a wall instead of desperately trying to mislead voters with easily debunked ads," Haley spokesperson Nachama Soloveichik said.
The Trump campaign believes the ads will be effective because “immigration is the number one issue in New Hampshire,” a Trump campaign adviser told CNN.
30 min ago
Trump rallies Iowa voters for a definitive win as Haley and DeSantis aim to dent his dominance
From CNN's Jeff Zeleny, Kit Maher and Eric Bradner
As Donald Trump campaigned in Iowa over the weekend, he warned his supporters against feeling their votes are not needed, given his commanding lead in the race.
“Forget polls that show we’re 35 points up,” Trump told supporters at a weekend rally in Mason City. “Pretend we’re one point down.”
This comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley work to deny the former president the kind of definitive win that would all but cement his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.
Iowa’s opening role in the presidential nominating contest has long been to narrow the field, as much as to choose the ultimate nominee. An overwhelming victory could all but launch the former president on an unstoppable march to the nomination. But a far less impressive win – or even a surprising defeat – could open the door to a far longer nominating fight, raising questions about Trump’s electability.
“I think his only danger is that people think that he might not need their vote and that’s not true,” Brenna Bird, Iowa’s attorney general and one of Trump’s top supporters, said in an interview. “The caucuses are all about the ground game. The only thing that matters is who shows up and votes on caucus night.”
“What you’re able to do in Iowa is going to reverberate all across this country,” DeSantis told supporters at a campaign stop in Waukee – a line he has repeated as he traveled around the state in his final push, imploring Republicans to make a careful choice with the general election in mind. “I don’t think Donald Trump ultimately can win an election.”
CNN’s Steve Contorno, Veronica Straqualursi, Alayna Treene, Ebony Davis, Ali Main, David Wright and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.
30 min ago
Biden will visit South Carolina in hopes that the state can recharge his reelection bid
From CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere, Priscilla Alvarez and Betsy Klein
South Carolina catapulted Joe Biden to the top of the Democratic primary in 2020, and on Monday, the president returns hoping the state – and its Black voters – can help recharge his reelection bid.
The state’s February 3 Democratic primary is not competitive. But with many Black voters saying in polls and Democratic focus groups they feel disengaged and disenchanted with the political process, South Carolina – far from a battleground in the general election – will be the first electoral test of how deep a hole Biden is actually in.
With his campaign trailing in early polling of the general election and some even in his administration thinking he is too weak to be mounting a reelection, Biden has been trying to get the country to agree with him that the future of democracy depends on his winning. He made that argument on Friday in an impassioned speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and his army survived a brutal winter and went on to win the Revolutionary War.
But by heading to the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, he is reaching for a very different and painful part of American history – and making a very explicit attempt to start winning back the Black support that has drifted away from him, in a place he will say has become a warning of what extremism can lead to.
Analysis: Trump toggles between the courtroom and campaign in the final week before 2024 voting begins
From CNN's Stephen Collinson
Donald Trump is turning the last dash to the Iowa caucuses into a showcase for his claims of political persecution as he seeks to suck oxygen from his trailing Republican opponents.
Trump’s expected juggle of courtroom appearances and campaign events this week will stand as an metaphor for an entire election overshadowed by the former president’s legal entanglements.
His strategy of anchoring his campaign on his falsehood that he won the 2020 election – which is at the heart of two of his four looming criminal trials – and his explicit calls for “retribution” have helped make him the strongest front-runner for a presidential nomination in years. It has also complicated efforts by his chief rivals – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who meet in a CNN debate this week – to disqualify him as strong nominee.
While Trump’s rhetoric puts off many Americans, his refusal to accept decorum and to recognize the constraints of the rule of law is a key part of his brand among disaffected grassroots Republican voters. By setting Trump – who faces 91 criminal charges across four separate cases – on the road toward a third straight nomination, Iowa’s January 15 caucuses would encapsulate the fateful collision between the ex-president’s legal plight and the 2024 election.
Trump’s increasing autocratic mindset, which pulsated through his weekend events, meanwhile appeared to justify President Joe Biden’s warning last week that his predecessor could destroy US democracy if he wins in November – the core theme of the president’s campaign.
The next few weeks are likely to show the extent to which the nation’s future remains entwined with Trump, who’s making clear how he’d be an even more untamed force in a second term, in which he’d likely seek to end federal cases against him.
This week alone, he’s expected to arrive in Washington, DC, for a key appeals court hearing in his federal election interference case and is also expected in New York for closing arguments in a civil fraud trial.
Trump rivals step up attacks: Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are battling to become the top alternative to former President Donald Trump, who continues to dominate the GOP primary. DeSantis and Haley are set to face off in a CNN Republican presidential primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday.
The super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump is back with a new television advertisement attacking Nikki Haley on immigration in New Hampshire, as the former South Carolina governor sees a rise in polling ahead of the key early voting state’s primary.
MAGA Inc. is currently spending $1.3 million a week on advertisements in New Hampshire ahead of the primary later this month.
“Drug traffickers, rapists poison our country, but Nikki Haley refused to call illegals criminals,” the narrator says during the 30-second spot before a clip of Haley from 2015.
“We don’t need to talk about them as criminals, they’re not,” Haley says in the short clip.
“Illegals are criminals, Nikki, that’s what illegal means. Haley even opposed Trump’s wall and Haley repeatedly pushed amnesty for illegals. Nikki Haley — too weak, too liberal to fix the border,” the ad ends.
The new ad follows Trump’s campaign placing their first TV ad in New Hampshire attacking Haley.
That 30-second spot focused on immigration attempts to tie Haley to President Joe Biden’s policies as the Trump campaign continues to hammer the Biden administration over security at the US-Mexico border and illegal immigration.
What Haley's campaign is saying: “Nikki passed one of the toughest anti-illegal immigration bills in the country back when Trump was still a New York City liberal. Trump should spend more time explaining why he never fulfilled his signature promise to build a wall instead of desperately trying to mislead voters with easily debunked ads," Haley spokesperson Nachama Soloveichik said.
The Trump campaign believes the ads will be effective because “immigration is the number one issue in New Hampshire,” a Trump campaign adviser told CNN.
As Donald Trump campaigned in Iowa over the weekend, he warned his supporters against feeling their votes are not needed, given his commanding lead in the race.
“Forget polls that show we’re 35 points up,” Trump told supporters at a weekend rally in Mason City. “Pretend we’re one point down.”
This comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley work to deny the former president the kind of definitive win that would all but cement his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination.
Iowa’s opening role in the presidential nominating contest has long been to narrow the field, as much as to choose the ultimate nominee. An overwhelming victory could all but launch the former president on an unstoppable march to the nomination. But a far less impressive win – or even a surprising defeat – could open the door to a far longer nominating fight, raising questions about Trump’s electability.
“I think his only danger is that people think that he might not need their vote and that’s not true,” Brenna Bird, Iowa’s attorney general and one of Trump’s top supporters, said in an interview. “The caucuses are all about the ground game. The only thing that matters is who shows up and votes on caucus night.”
“What you’re able to do in Iowa is going to reverberate all across this country,” DeSantis told supporters at a campaign stop in Waukee – a line he has repeated as he traveled around the state in his final push, imploring Republicans to make a careful choice with the general election in mind. “I don’t think Donald Trump ultimately can win an election.”
CNN’s Steve Contorno, Veronica Straqualursi, Alayna Treene, Ebony Davis, Ali Main, David Wright and Kate Sullivan contributed to this report.
South Carolina catapulted Joe Biden to the top of the Democratic primary in 2020, and on Monday, the president returns hoping the state – and its Black voters – can help recharge his reelection bid.
The state’s February 3 Democratic primary is not competitive. But with many Black voters saying in polls and Democratic focus groups they feel disengaged and disenchanted with the political process, South Carolina – far from a battleground in the general election – will be the first electoral test of how deep a hole Biden is actually in.
With his campaign trailing in early polling of the general election and some even in his administration thinking he is too weak to be mounting a reelection, Biden has been trying to get the country to agree with him that the future of democracy depends on his winning. He made that argument on Friday in an impassioned speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington and his army survived a brutal winter and went on to win the Revolutionary War.
But by heading to the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, he is reaching for a very different and painful part of American history – and making a very explicit attempt to start winning back the Black support that has drifted away from him, in a place he will say has become a warning of what extremism can lead to.
Donald Trump is turning the last dash to the Iowa caucuses into a showcase for his claims of political persecution as he seeks to suck oxygen from his trailing Republican opponents.
Trump’s expected juggle of courtroom appearances and campaign events this week will stand as an metaphor for an entire election overshadowed by the former president’s legal entanglements.
His strategy of anchoring his campaign on his falsehood that he won the 2020 election – which is at the heart of two of his four looming criminal trials – and his explicit calls for “retribution” have helped make him the strongest front-runner for a presidential nomination in years. It has also complicated efforts by his chief rivals – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who meet in a CNN debate this week – to disqualify him as strong nominee.
While Trump’s rhetoric puts off many Americans, his refusal to accept decorum and to recognize the constraints of the rule of law is a key part of his brand among disaffected grassroots Republican voters. By setting Trump – who faces 91 criminal charges across four separate cases – on the road toward a third straight nomination, Iowa’s January 15 caucuses would encapsulate the fateful collision between the ex-president’s legal plight and the 2024 election.
Trump’s increasing autocratic mindset, which pulsated through his weekend events, meanwhile appeared to justify President Joe Biden’s warning last week that his predecessor could destroy US democracy if he wins in November – the core theme of the president’s campaign.
The next few weeks are likely to show the extent to which the nation’s future remains entwined with Trump, who’s making clear how he’d be an even more untamed force in a second term, in which he’d likely seek to end federal cases against him.
This week alone, he’s expected to arrive in Washington, DC, for a key appeals court hearing in his federal election interference case and is also expected in New York for closing arguments in a civil fraud trial.
