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Acquitted again by Senate, Trump still a powerful force in Republican politics – TheChronicleHerald.ca

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By John Whitesides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It is still Donald Trump’s Republican Party – at least for now.

The vote by 43 of the 50 Republican senators to acquit Trump on the charge of inciting last month’s deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, with only seven voting for conviction, highlights just how powerful a grip he has on the party he remade in his image over the past five years.

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The former president, who has largely stayed out of sight at his Florida home since leaving the White House on Jan. 20, commands fervent loyalty among his supporters, forcing most Republican politicians to pledge their fealty and fear his wrath.

But after two impeachments, months of false claims that his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged, and an assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters that left five people dead, Trump is also political poison in many of the swing districts that often decide American elections.

That leaves Republicans in a precarious position as they try to forge a winning coalition in the 2022 elections for control of Congress and a 2024 White House race that might include Trump as a candidate.

“It’s hard to imagine Republicans winning national elections without Trump supporters anytime soon,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and aide to Senator Marco Rubio during his 2016 presidential primary race against Trump.

“The party is facing a real Catch 22: it can’t win with Trump but it’s obvious it can’t win without him either,” he said.

Trump has not signaled his long-range political plans for after the trial, although he has publicly hinted at another run for the White House and he is reportedly keen to help primary challengers to Republicans in Congress who voted to impeach or convict him.

“Whether he does run again is up to him, but he’s still going to have an enormous amount of influence on both the direction of the policy and also in evaluating who is a serious standard-bearer for that message,” one adviser said. “You can call it a kingmaker or whatever you want to call it.”

Trump has maintained strong support from Republicans in polls even since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Just days after the riot, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 70% of Republicans still approved of Trump’s job performance, and a later poll found a similar percentage believed he should be allowed to run for office again.

But outside his party he is unpopular. A new Ipsos poll published on Saturday showed that 71% of Americans believed Trump was at least partially responsible for starting the assault on the Capitol. Fifty percent believed he should be convicted in the Senate with 38% opposed and 12% unsure.

Trump’s defenders in the Senate argued that the trial was unconstitutional because Trump had already left office and that his remarks ahead of the riot were protected by the constitutional right to free speech. But a majority of senators including seven Republicans rejected that view.

Democrats said many Republican senators were afraid to vote with their conscience to convict Trump out of fear of retribution from his supporters.

“If this vote was taken in secret, there would be a conviction,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was among the Republicans who voted to acquit Trump on Saturday, though he later slammed the former president as “practically and morally responsible” for provoking the violence.

His position illustrated how some Republican leaders are trying to distance themselves from Trump and limit his influence without triggering the full-blown fury of Trump and his supporters.

Trump’s continued sway was evident, however, in House of Representatives Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s visit last month to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where they huddled on strategy for the 2022 congressional elections.

That visit came just three weeks after McCarthy had enraged Trump by saying he bore responsibility for the Capitol riot. McCarthy later backtracked, saying he did not believe Trump provoked the assault.

POLITICAL BACKLASH

The few lawmakers who have broken with Trump have suffered a stinging backlash.

Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives and one of 10 who voted for Trump’s impeachment, quickly faced an effort by conservatives to remove her from her leadership post. She survived it, but Trump has vowed to throw his support behind a primary challenger to her.

In Arizona, which backed Biden and elected a Democratic senator in November, the state party censured three prominent Republicans who had clashed with Trump while he was in office – Governor Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of the late Senator John McCain.

When Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska was threatened with censure by his state party for criticizing Trump, he suggested it was down to a cult of personality.

“Let’s be clear about why this is happening. It is because I still believe, as you used to, that politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude,” Sasse said in a video addressed to the party leadership in Nebraska. He was one of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on Saturday.

The fissures have led to an open debate in conservative circles over how far right to lean. At Fox News, the cable news network that played a key role in Trump’s rise to power, Fox Corp Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch this week told investors the outlet would stick to its “center right” position.

Trump tore into the network after its early, and ultimately accurate, election-night projection that he lost in Arizona, presenting an opportunity for further-right video networks to draw disaffected Trump supporters.

“We don’t need to go further right,” Murdoch said. “We don’t believe America is further right, and we’re obviously not going to pivot left.”Dozens of former Republican officials, disillusioned by the party’s failure to stand up to Trump, have held talks to form a new center-right party, though multiple congressional Republicans rejected the idea. [L1N2KH07V]

Advisers say Trump himself has talked about forming a breakaway Patriot Party, exacerbating Republican divisions.

While Trump maintains control over the party for now, several Republican senators said during the impeachment trial that the stain left by the deadly siege of the Capitol and Trump’s months of false claims about widespread election fraud would cripple his chances of winning power again in 2024.

“After the American public sees the whole story laid out here … I don’t see how Donald Trump could be reelected to the presidency again,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who also voted for a conviction, told reporters during the trial.

With Trump out of office and blocked from Twitter, his favorite means of communication, some Republicans said his hold on the party could fade as new issues and personalities emerge.

Republican Senator John Cornyn, a Trump ally, said the former president’s legacy had suffered permanent damage.

“Unfortunately, while President Trump did a lot of good, his handling of the post-election period is what he’s going to be remembered for,” Cornyn said. “And I think that’s a tragedy.”

(Reporting by John Whitesides; Additional reporting by David Morgan and Steve Holland; Editing by Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis)

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

– Source:
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Trump's claims on crime rates clash with police data – NBC News

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Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and “migrant crime.”

Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.

But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels.

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FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.

NBC News analyzed crime data to evaluate Trump’s assertions about the topic.

U.S. and big city crime rates

Trump’s campaign often refers to crime levels, regularly pointing the finger at Biden.

“On Joe Biden’s watch, violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city,” the campaign said in a news release published this month on its site.

Trump himself has made similar remarks.

“Four years ago, I told you that if crooked Joe Biden got to the White House, our borders would be abolished, our middle class would be decimated and our communities would be plagued by bloodshed, chaos and violent crime,” Trump said in a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We were right about everything.”

Government figures don’t support that characterization.

Reported violent crime dropped 6% across the board when comparing the last three months of 2022 to the same period in 2023, the FBI reported.

The reported drops were especially pronounced in the big cities that Trump often assails, many of which have Democratic mayors. Violent crime dropped by 11% in cities with populations of 1 million or more, according to FBI data, while murders dropped by 20%, rape was down 16%, and aggravated assault fell by 11%.

Reached for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to other reports indicating that certain types of crimes increased in specific cities.

At the national level, the reported rate of violent crime in 2022, the most recent full year with comprehensive FBI data, was 380.7 offenses per 100,000 people. That’s lower than the overall reported violent crime rate from 2020 — the last full year Trump was in office — when the figure was at 398.5.

The lowest reported violent crime rate of Trump’s presidency was in 2019, when the metric was at 380.8 — in line with the 2022 rate.

The FBI said it will release more comprehensive 2023 crime data in October, just before the election.

The Trump campaign, reached for comment, cited certain categories of violent crime, such as motor vehicle theft, as having increased during the Biden administration, according to FBI figures.

“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”

New York City crime

Trump, who was born and raised in New York but now lives in Florida, often rails against what he portrays as an increasing crime rate in his former hometown.

Those references to soaring violence have only increased as he faces criminal charges in New York accusing him of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in that case, must also post a $175 million bond to prevent state Attorney General Letitia James from collecting the judgment from a New York civil fraud case.

“I did nothing wrong, and New York should never be put in a position like this again,” Trump posted on Truth Social about the civil judgment in all capital letters. “Businesses are fleeing, violent crime is flourishing, and it is very important that this be resolved in its totality as soon as possible.”

In a separate post, he claimed that “murders & violent crime hit unimaginable records” in the city.

However, major crimes in New York City are down this year by 2.3%, according to police department data comparing year-to-date figures to the same period in 2023.

Those figures for last year were also far below the highs from recent decades. In 1990, more than 527,000 major crimes were reported, compared to more than 126,000 last year, according to New York police data — a drop of more than 75%.

In 2001, more than 162,000 major crimes were reported in New York. The figure dropped by more than 20% over the next two decades.

At the same time, New York City data indicates that the number of major crimes increased in the past few years, though reported violent crimes like murder and rape were down last year from previous years.

‘Migrant crime’

Trump’s dehumanizing language about migrants has become a mainstay of his political speeches since he first sought office in 2015.

In a news release this month, his campaign said the “border Crisis has created a tragic surge in violent crime against innocent American citizens at the hands of some of the world’s most violent criminals.”

Trump has also focused his energy on high-profile cases such as the death of Laken Riley, who was killed in Georgia while jogging. The suspect is a Venezuelan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.

“Every day, innocent citizens are being killed, stabbed, shot, raped and murdered because of Biden migrant crime,” Trump said in a video posted to his campaign’s X account last week.

However, there is no evidence of a migrant-driven crime wave in the U.S., according to local police department data.

Crime reports have decreased in several major cities targeted by Texas’ Operation Lone Star, a program backed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that flies or buses migrants from the state to Democratic-run cities across the U.S.

Several of those cities — New York, Chicago, Washington and Philadelphia — have had decreases in year-to-date reported crime totals compared to the same period last year.


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Federal government promising a 'renters' bill of rights' in upcoming budget – CBC.ca

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government will introduce new measures — including a new “bill of rights” — that he says will help protect those who rent their homes as part of the upcoming budget.

Trudeau said the new measures are specifically geared toward younger people, who are renting more than previous generations.

“It’s about changing the rules of the game in a way that meets young people where they are,” he said on Wednesday.

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Ottawa will work with provinces and territories to develop a “renters’ bill of rights” that would introduce a national standard lease agreement and implement requirements for landlords to disclose an apartment’s pricing history to allow tenants to negotiate their rent.

The new measures will also include a $15-million fund for provincial legal aid organizations that help tenants fight against “renovictions” and landlord abuse.

The Liberals are also proposing to change federal rules so that making rental payments on time will count toward someone’s credit scores, something Trudeau said is meant to help renters looking to one day buy a house.

“If you look at someone who pays a $2,000 [per month] mortgage, they’re getting recognition and credit for that from their bank as part of their credit score,” the prime minister said.

“But if you’re paying $2,000 a month on rent, you get no kudos.”

Typically the government doesn’t discuss what is in an annual budget until it is introduced in the House of Commons. But the announcement was made weeks prior to the release of the Liberals’ next budget, which is slated to drop on April 16.

Releasing tidbits from the budget ahead of time is part of a new communications strategy for the Liberals, sources told CBC News. Trudeau and his ministers are expected to make a number of similar announcements in the run-up to the budget, the sources said.

WATCH | Trudeau says new measures aim to help tenants: 

Liberals promise ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to fight housing crisis

5 hours ago

Duration 2:07

The Liberals are looking to create a ‘renters’ bill of rights’ to help deal with Canada’s housing crisis. Justin Trudeau says the plan is geared toward younger people suffering from a rising cost of living. The Conservatives call the measures meaningless.

Before revealing the planned rental measures on Wednesday, Trudeau took a moment to plug the April 16 fiscal plan, saying that the budget will be about “fairness.”

“For Canada to succeed, we need everyone to succeed,” he said.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland joined Trudeau for his announcement and hinted about further announcements ahead of budget day.

“Over the coming days and in the April budget, we are going to launch a no-holds-barred plan to wrestle down the cost of owning and renting a home,” she said.

Wednesday’s announcements came on the same day that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released a report that found a surge in new apartment construction drove housing start increases in several major Canadian cities last year.

But the report also cautions that demand continues to outweigh supply.

The opposition Conservatives, who have enjoyed a healthy lead in recent polls, have made housing — and other cost-of-living issues — a key point of attack against the governing Liberals.

Following his announcement, Trudeau was asked whether he thinks he bears any responsibility for people feeling left behind in the current economy and whether the new measures would be enough to convince younger people to support him in the next election.

In response, Trudeau suggested that a recent rise in the cost of living is not unique to Canada.

“Young people who are key to our present, and obviously key to our future, are seeing a system that is stacked against them. That’s true in Canada but also true elsewhere around the world,” he said. “What we’re focused on now is making sure that young people can see their success in the economy.”

Opposition parties criticize Liberal announcement

Scott Aitchison, the Conservative housing critic, said Wednesday’s announcement was Liberal posturing that won’t get results.

“Today’s photo op is just another set of meaningless measures that won’t result in building the homes Canadians need,” he said in a statement.

NDP housing critic Jenny Kwan criticized the announcement for not going far enough.

“The Liberals are so out of touch with what Canadian renters are experiencing that they keep offering half-measures instead of a real action,” Kwan said in a statement.

The NDP is calling on the government to invest more in affordable housing while temporarily preventing for-profit firms from buying designated affordable-housing spaces.

WATCH | Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget: 

Liberal government promises better protections for renters in upcoming budget

9 hours ago

Duration 11:39

The Liberal government unveiled three new proposals Wednesday to better protect renters in Canada. Power & Politics speaks to Marci Ien, minister of women, gender equality and youth, about the proposed protections.

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