Doug Burgum drops out of 2024 presidential race – latest

The White House has condemned former president Donald Trump for calling the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah “very smart” in remarks on Thursday night in Florida.

His comments came less than a week after militant group Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Speaking at a “Club 47 USA” event in West Palm Beach on Wednesday (11 October), the former president said: “Can you imagine national defence people, and they said ‘gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn’t attack from the north because that’s the most vulnerable spot’.

“And I said ‘Wait a minute. You know Hezbollah’s very smart. They’re all very smart.’ The press doesn’t like it when I say that. You know, I said that about President Xi of China, 1.4 billion people, he controls it with an iron fist. I said ‘he’s a very smart man’.

“They killed me the next day… ‘He said he was smart’. What am I gonna say… But Hezbollah, they’re very smart.”

READ MORE

President Joe Biden has been interviewed by Department of Justice prosecutors who’ve been looking into how documents with classification markings ended up at his Delaware homes and a Washington, DC office he used while out of government, the White House has said.

In a statement, White House spokesman Ian Sams said the “voluntary interview,” which started on Sunday and finished on Monday, was part of the probe being overseen by Robert Hur, the former Maryland US Attorney who was tasked with investigating the documents at locations linked to Mr Biden.

Mr Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland this past January, has spent the last nine months interviewing various figures connected with Mr Biden’s term as vice president, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a former assistant, Kathy Chung.

Both Mr Blinken and Mr Chung played roles in packing Mr Biden’s office in late 2008 and early 2009 during the transition between the Obama administration and the Trump administration.

Mr Sams, the White House spokesperson, referred questions from The Independent to the Department of Justice while noting that Mr Biden and the White House have cooperated fully with Mr Hur’s efforts.

READ MORE

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr took to the stage in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Monday to unveil his vision for ending hundreds of years of two-party rule, a technical hitch with the teleprompter briefly threatened to derail his big moment.

“I need my speech”, he complained as he disappeared from view, stage right. “It’s upside down.”

In the Netflix sci-fi hit Stranger Things, the “Upside Down” is the name given to a mysterious alternate dimension that exists parallel to the known world. In other words, an apt description for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

Kennedy is often described as paranoid, delusional and dangerous. And that’s just by his own family.

But in his supporters’ eyes, a Kennedy presidency offers the chance to rewrite the rules in Washington, DC to create a more equitable system for all.

READ MORE

A former US general took to Twitter on Sunday to remind Republicans laying blame on the Biden administration after Hamas militants launched the deadliest attack on Israel in decades that Donald Trump shared classified intelligence from Israel with Iran-allied Russia when he was president.

Retired army general Mark Hertling shared a story about allegations the former president told top Russian officials that Israel had successfully hacked Isis computers in order to gain intelligence about bomb plots against the West in a meeting at the White House in 2017.

At the time, the former president’s actions reportedly ignited fears by Israel that Russia could have passed the information to its ally Iran, which has long been a supporter of the Palestinian cause.

Mr Trump reportedly leaked the information in a meeting in the Oval Office in May 2017 with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and the then-Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Amid uproar over the revelation, Mr Trump insisted he had every right to give Russia the information.

He tweeted: “As president, I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled WH meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against Isis and terrorism.”

READ MORE

Mike Pence led the charge for the foreign interventionist wing of the 2024 Republican primary against their isolationist rivals this weekend as new hostilities erupted between Israel and the Hamas militants of the occupied Gaza Strip.

It was a banner weekend for that wing of the GOP, whose members among the 2024 primary field spent their hours one-upping each other with rhetoric endorsing an unmitigated Israeli response against the Palestinian militant group that launched attacks across the country.

Mr Pence made his remarks in Iowa, where he is battling for a surprise victory (or at least a decent-enough showing) in the first-in-the-nation caucuses. Calling out Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis by name, he accused them of supporting America’s retreat from a global military, diplomatic and economic footprint he argued was previously responsible for tamping down on unrest around the world.

His rebuke, he said, was directed at “voices of appeasement like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis that I believe have run contrary to the tradition in our party that America is the leader of the free world.”

“This is ... what happens when you have leaders in the Republican Party signaling retreat on the world stage,” charged the former vice president.

READ MORE

Former UN Ambassador and GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has joined a chorus of Republicans accusing Iran of funding a terror attack against Israel despite there being no evidence to support their claims.

Republicans have been pushing the narrative as a way to tie the attack in Israel to Joe Biden.

Their claim goes like this: Joe Biden gave Iran $6bn to facilitate a prisoner exchange; Iran then used that money to fund Hamas‘s Saturday attack on Israel that left hundreds dead and wounded.

NBC News’ Kristen Welker challenged that narrative during an interview on Sunday with Ms Haley on Meet the Press.

Earlier in the show, Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured the public that the money given to Iran in the prisoner swap was frozen, and has remained frozen, until Iran withdraws it for use in humanitarian endeavors.

A Republican lawmaker has dismissed the possibility that Donald Trump could replace Kevin McCarthy as House speaker.

Rep Ken Buck, who voted last week to oust Mr McCarthy as speaker of the House of Representatives, insisted the former president doesn’t stand a chance of taking the gavel after far-right Republicans including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz floated the idea he could be appointed to the role.

When asked on ABC’s “This Week” about some Republicans calling for Mr Trump to become the next speaker, Mr Buck said “that’s not going to happen”.

“It shouldn’t happen, and we have a lot of talent inside the House,” he said.

“We’ll settle this inside the House Republican conference, and we will elect someone who’ll have the unity and the backing of the full conference.”

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has refused to say whether Donald Trump should be disqualified for the GOP’s 2024 nomination after his comments suggesting that the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff should be executed for treason.

During NBC’s Meet the Press on 8 October, Ms Haley, a former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, called his comments “irresponsible” but did not say whether she believes his comments are disqualifying.

“I think any man or woman who served our country deserves our highest respect,” she said. “They sacrifice a lot. Their families sacrifice a lot. And we should honour them every chance we get.”

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat of New York University said Ms Haley’s refusal to outright condemn Mr Trump’s increasingly violent rhetoric offers a grim warning of a growing tolerance for authoritarian violence.

“Apparently the idea of executing Milley is now the Party Line,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We are living through real-time preparation for an authoritarian crackdown. We are in phase of ‘getting the public used to the idea of violence.’ Having authoritative voices like Haley endorse violence is key.”

READ MORE

Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced he will end his run for the White House as a Democrat and instead become an independent 2024 presidential candidate.

“I’m here to declare myself an independent candidate for President of the United States,” the anti-vaxxer scion of America’s most famous political family said on Monday.

“But that’s not all, I’m here to join you and make a new Declaration of Independence for our entire nation,” Mr Kennedy added. “We declare independence from the corporations that have hijacked our government.”

Mr Kennedy originally positioned himself to run against Joe Biden, but the Democratic National Committee is not holding debates and is fully supporting the president’s run for a second term in the Oval Office.

Mr Kennedy made the official announcement at Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, with campaign signs reading “Declare your Independence”.

READ MORE