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‘Biggest Threat to Our Survival’: Experts Blast No Labels and Third Party Candidates as Manchin Tests the Waters
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, on Monday shared a stage with former Governor Jon Huntsman, Republican of Utah, at an event hosted by No Labels.
No Labels insists it is neither a political party nor engaging in a “spoiler” effort to take votes away from President Joe Biden and hand Donald Trump the 2024 election, despite its goal of having a third party presidential and vice presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
Manchin at times has been President Biden’s greatest challenge on the left. The West Virginia politician is a coal baron in his spare time, earning millions from the pollutant.
Monday night at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, home of several presidential debates, Manchin refused to say if he planned to run for president on a third party ticket, but defiantly made clear he hadn’t ruled it out.
“I’ve never been in any race I’ve ever spoiled. I’ve been in races to win,” Manchin said, as CNN reported. “And if I get in a race, I’m going to win.”
“Sitting beside former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman,” CNN added, “Manchin railed against withering bipartisanship in Washington, DC, saying the ‘business model’ of the two major parties ‘is better if you’re divided.’ Huntsman offered a similar critique, as the men complimented one another’s work and blamed the ‘extremes’ of the Republican and Democratic parties on Capitol Hill for holding up popular legislation.”
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Manchin’s allegation ignores President Joe Biden’s historic accomplishments, signing into law many bipartisan bills despite having a slim majority in the House and an evenly-split Senate during his first two years, and now a GOP majority in the House and effectively just a one-seat majority in the Senate.
“We’re here,” Manchin claimed, “to make sure the American people have an option.”
Except the American people have options: A Democratic nominee, likely President Joe Biden, and a Republican nominee, yet to be determined but currently, likely Donald Trump.
Mother Jones‘ David Corn wrote on Monday that No Labels “says it is not a political party,” which “means it does not have to reveal the donors that have pumped tens of millions of dollars in recent years into its coffers. Parties must disclose their funders; nonprofit outfits, as No Labels claims to be, do not. But in several states, No Labels has established an affiliate that explicitly declares it is a political party, and some of these groups, particularly the party it set up in Florida, have deep Republican roots.”
Referring to a potential third-party presidential candidate, Corn added, “Democratic and Never-Trump Republican strategists … cite polls to contend that such a move would likely draw more votes from President Joe Biden than Donald Trump, assuming these current front-runners end up being the nominees.”
Monday night on MSNBC, Corn told Joy Reid many of the Republicans donating to No Labels support Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
.@DavidCornDC on the No Labels political organization: “They’re equating Joe Biden, as extreme as Donald Trump, the guy who tried to overthrow the election, and kind of the government.” #TheReidOut pic.twitter.com/yTGIp5Jj0j
— The ReidOut (@thereidout) July 17, 2023
Liberal and conservative experts are lashing out at No Labels this week.
“The seductive allure of a third party candidate who is sold as being above the political fray has swung elections in the past. 2024 is too important for a repeat. A vote for any candidate other than the Democratic nominee is a vote for Trump,” warned former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, now a professor of law and MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst.
Dave Wasserman, the U.S. House editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, in late 2016 pointed the finger at third party candidate Jill Stein, placing blame for the election of Donald Trump at her feet. Trump had lost the popular vote but took the White House via an Electoral College win, in particular in three states.
“Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016,” he tweeted. He posted the number of votes Stein won and compared them to Trump’s margin of victory in 2016 across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, suggesting had Stein not, run Hillary Clinton – who won the popular vote – would also have won the Electoral College and the presidency.
Jill Stein is now officially the Ralph Nader of 2016.
Stein votes/Trump margin:
MI: 51,463/10,704
PA: 49,678/46,765
WI: 31,006/22,177— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 1, 2016
Indeed, just days after the 2016 election, even before Wasserman’s tweet, Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen wrote: “Millions of Americans, dissatisfied with both candidates and unwilling to choose between the lesser of two evils, registered their protest by voting for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, helping hand a number of critical swing states, and the presidency, to Donald Trump. ”
Conservative commentator Bill Kristol on Tuesday tweeted, “No Labels’ 63 page policy booklet has no mention of…Ukraine, the most important foreign policy challenge facing us, the central front in the global fight for liberal democracy and against brutal dictatorship. Didn’t want to upset their Trump-friendly donors, I suppose…”
Pointing to the Mother Jones report, The Lincoln Project notes, “No Labels’ own polling has shown: a third-party candidate would pull more from Biden than Trump in 2024. There’s not a scenario where their spoiler doesn’t secure a second term for Trump.”
The Lincoln Project also put out an ad denouncing No Labels.
There’s a reason why Trump is on record supporting No Labels – even he sees through their facade. We, Trump, and the whole world recognize that the true goal of No Labels is to help Trump back to the White House, not to promote “bipartisanship” and “unity.” https://t.co/YTLigmGOdj
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 18, 2023
David Rothkopf, the foreign policy, national security and political affairs expert and commentator, blasted No labels.
“A vote for a No Labels candidate is not just a vote for Trump, it is a vote for the end of democracy, for authoritarianism in the US, for a pro-Putin, anti-NATO, pro-corruption, pro-1%, anti-the rest of us government.”
READ MORE: Trump Gets Bad News From Georgia Supreme Court
Former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer: “The No Labels 2024 campaign is about money and relevance. The organization pays a company called HarrisX for its polling. HarrisX is owned by Mark Penn who also happens to be married to Nancy Jacobson, the founder of No Labels.”
A very defensive Jacobson insisted No Labels is “not a party,” while NBC News’ Vaughn Hilliard held her feet to the fire as she ducked his question about why they refuse to reveal their donors – which political parties are required to.
After a back and forth on the issue, Hilliard pointedly told Jacobson, “you’re registering as a political party.”
“That’s just language,” she replied.
Nancy Jacobson says No Labels won’t help Trump win but didn’t offer any metric on how it would determine whether to stand down.
The group doesn’t reveal its donors and isn’t publicly discussing its deliberations over whom it may recruit to run on its planned bipartisan ticket. pic.twitter.com/e95FWmFGXm
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 18, 2023
“Entirely possible that a 2024 third-party candidate could, intentionally or not, tip this nation toward a fascist Presidential autocracy,” NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss announced Monday.
Describing what’s at stake, constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe, University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and a former professor of law at Harvard Law School on Tuesday denounced third party candidates including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and, should he decide to run, Senator Manchin.
“Third party candidates like RFKJr, Cornel West, possibly Joe Manchin, are the biggest threat to our survival as a free people who govern ourselves.”
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
