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‘Where’s Trump?’: Ex-President Hasn’t Held Any Public Events Since Day After the Debate

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For the better part of a year Donald Trump has used his indictments, and civil and criminal court cases to complain about not being able to campaign despite maintaining a relatively light campaign schedule when he wasn’t in court. That has continued to this day, even as his legal issues are effectively on hold. But since the day after the June 27 debate, when he held a rally Virginia, the convicted ex-president has not held any public events – no rallies, no public speeches, no public trips to Chick-fil-A, just a few interviews, leading some critics to ask, “Where’s Trump?”

“This is what took me off and takes me off the campaign trail,” Trump told reporters in April, from a New York courthouse where his criminal business fraud trial was being held, as the Associated Press reported. “Because I should be in Georgia now. I should be in Florida now. I should be in a lot of different places right now campaigning. And I’m sitting here and this will go in for a long time. It’s very unfair that the judge is conflicted. As you know, it’s very unfair what’s going on. And I should be allowed to campaign.”

But when he hasn’t been in court he often hasn’t been out campaigning.

READ MORE: ‘You Keep Talking About Donald Trump’: Exasperated Fox Host Tries to Turn Dem Against Biden

Unlike President Biden, Trump doesn’t have a “day job,” as The Washington Examiner’s Benjamin Rothove observed nearly a year ago, in August of 2023 as the GOP primary was in full swing:

“Donald Trump doesn’t have a day job. There is no excuse for him not being on the campaign trail every single day. He simply isn’t trying to win. He’s burning all of his campaign cash on lawyers, and after the debate, GOP voters will see that they truly have better options.”

Trump’s golf course campaign has been the subject of some mockery on social media.

“Joe Biden has been to every top battleground state but one since the Super Tuesday primaries. He has also been on unannounced calls pushing negotiators toward a Gaza ceasefire, among other official White House duties,” CNN reported back in March. “Donald Trump has held one rally in a battleground state in those two and a half weeks, and shifted another to Ohio, in part to save on costs. He has also played in two golf tournaments at his Palm Beach golf club, among other activities at his club, like lunches with potential campaign donors that aides feel are about to start paying off big.”

READ MORE: ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ to Trump: Draft RNC Platform Spins Abortion and LGBTQ Issues

Trump’s desire to be on the links has not diminished since his presidency. According to the website TrumpGolfCount.com (archived), the then-president visited golf courses 298 times during his presidency (only thorough December 30, 2020) allegedly at a cost to taxpayers of $144 million.

Over the past eleven days, since the debate, Trump has held only one rally. According to CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere, in that time, Trump “has not left his golf course in New Jersey and has spent many hours on the links.”

Monday morning in a surprise MSNBC interview President Biden criticized Trump, saying the ex-president “hasn’t done a damn thing since the debate. He’s been riding around a golf cart for ten days down in Mar-a-Lago talking with his wealthy friends.”

Trump is expected to break that streak on Tuesday, at his golf course in Doral, Florida, which is currently under an excessive heat advisory.

By contrast, President Biden has made 18 “post-debate appearances,” according to The Independent, which slammed Trump for being “in hiding for 10 days.”

The Trump campaign appears nervous about the presumptive GOP nominee’s absence. Fox News Monday afternoon ran a headline that reads: “Trump focused on campaigning, as Dems are ‘in disarray’ amid Biden chaos.” It claimed, “Trump is prepping for two rallies, the announcement of his VP pick and the RNC convention, a campaign source says.”

READ MORE: ‘I Am Not Going Anywhere’: Fiery Biden Slams ‘Elites’ and Makes His Case in MSNBC Interview

 

 

 

 

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‘Grifters’: A MAGA Civil War Is Eating Away at Its Own Power

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A MAGA “civil war” is playing out across the right-wing ecosystem, sapping attention from the ideas that once powered the base and held GOP leaders to power. Now, the movement appears more consumed by infighting than achieving political goals.

MAGA is being drained of “its political muscle, leaving it defenseless as the Trump administration revisits policies previously opposed by the base,” according to Axios. The strength of MAGA “lies in its ability to rally influencers, politicians and activists behind a hard-charging conservative agenda.” But that “superpower is faltering amid a cascade of bitter personal feuds.”

The National Pulse’s editor-in-chief Raheem J. Kassam told Axios, “There’s no focus on anything philosophical or even ideological right now.”

READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label

“It’s all just a cacophony of grifters tussling over audience and ego,” Kassam said. “So, corporate America gets to wield power with the admin virtually unencumbered by scrutiny from the base.”

Serving up a series of examples, Axios reported that on issues such as artificial intelligence, marijuana, Venezuela, and redistricting — all of which “would have triggered significant MAGA backlash” earlier — there has been “mostly crickets.”

Trump reportedly will loosen federal regulations on marijuana soon — an act that once would have attracted MAGA influencers to scream about “pothead culture,” Axios noted. This time, however, the news “barely made a ripple on right-wing social media.”

The “America First” president seizing a tanker loaded with Venezuelan oil and refusing to rule out boots on the ground to overthrow the Maduro regime “barely pinged on MAGA’s radar.”

MAGA influencer CJ Pearson told Axios that “the movement is wholly consumed right now on personality clashes. That is a recipe for electoral doom, and it’s unfortunate to see the unity that we saw after Charlie [Kirk]’s death dissipate so quickly.”

READ MORE: ‘His Heart Just Ain’t in It’: Report Reveals Trump’s ‘Achilles Heel’

 

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‘Political Vendetta’: DOJ Blasted for Suing Fulton County Amid Debunked Fraud Claims

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President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, demanding records related to the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.

Trump “has increasingly pressured his administration to find widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite those claims having been debunked and dismissed in dozens of cases by the courts,” The Washington Post reported.

The lawsuit calls for Fulton County to hand over to DOJ “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”

READ MORE: ‘Wall of Resentment’: Trump’s ‘Affordability Weave’ Isn’t Working Says Columnist

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, according to the Post. “indirectly and without evidence accused Georgia officials of ‘vote dilution'” in a statement.

“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Dhillon said.

“At this Department of Justice,” Dhillon added, “we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

Trump in a recorded telephone call told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”

READ MORE: Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist

Two years later, a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on racketeering charges. The case ultimately was recently dismissed after setbacks and that Trump, having since become a sitting president, could not be indicted.

Democracy Docket, which covers voting rights, elections, and the courts, called the move “a major escalation in the Trump administration’s dangerous effort to revive President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that the election was stolen.”

The news site also reported that Kristin Nabers, the state director for All Voting is Local, said in a statement: “This administration’s unending obsession with the 2020 election results in Georgia uses outright lies to compensate for the fact that they lost.”

“With this terrible overstep of power, the DOJ is now weaponizing laws meant to protect voters for their political vendetta,” Nabers added.

Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics called it “More insane nonsense.”

READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label

 

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‘Wall of Resentment’: Trump’s ‘Affordability Weave’ Isn’t Working Says Columnist

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President Donald Trump’s “signature” weave — where he goes off-script and off-topic — is not working for Americans when it comes to affordability.

That’s according to CBS News correspondent John Dickerson, writing at The Atlantic.

His weave was “on display” this week during a speech that the White House promoted as focused remarks on the economy, but his comments included, Dickerson noted, “the topics of tariffs, U.S. Steel, fracking, wind turbines, electric-vehicle mandates, immigration, crime, gender policies, Obamacare, the Fed, his election victories, rare-earth negotiations, a D.C. terror attack, and ‘the lips that don’t stop’ of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.”

READ MORE: Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist

The problem, he noted is, “now that the engine of the U.S. economy is smoking, the American people are looking for a technician, not an improv comic.”

Trump is hitting “a wall of resentment,” according to Dickerson, who pointed to a Politico poll which, he noted, found that “nearly half of voters—including 37 percent of Trump’s own 2024 coalition—said that the cost of living is the ‘worst they can ever remember.'”

There’s more.

“Only 31 percent of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, a new AP/NORC poll found, down from 40 percent in March,” he reported. “It’s the lowest economic approval that AP/NORC has registered in either of Trump’s two terms. In a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, a majority of respondents said that his policies are driving up food and grocery prices.”

During times of crisis other presidents have worked to get results:

“Franklin D. Roosevelt passed 15 major bills in 100 days. Ronald Reagan, in the teeth of double-digit unemployment, pushed for sweeping tax cuts week after week. Bill Clinton built an economic ‘war room’ before he even took office, and his team introduced what has now become a political cliché: focusing ‘like a laser beam’ on the economy. Barack Obama instituted a morning economic briefing that put the issue on par with national security. Each practiced the same principle: If you can’t solve the problem fast, at least get caught trying.”

READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label

He say that now, Trump is trying. “Kind of.”

Despite talking about “affordability” during his Pennsylvania speech, he also knocked it.

“The president’s most focused message on affordability is that affordability concerns are a hoax. He used that word, or an equivalent, several times on Tuesday, as he has in Oval Office remarks, in a Cabinet meeting, and on social media.”

The “unavoidable truth, no matter how hard you weave,” Dickerson wrote, is that “his argument is weak because he has to overcome people’s lived experience.”

READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’

 

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