Donald Trump Suddenly Ramps Up Attacks on Rival Nikki Haley

Despite leading the polls with more than 60 percent, Donald Trump is apparently feeling the heat in the increasingly narrow GOP primary race, devoting the better part of Tuesday night to a TruthSocial binge dedicated to his rival Nikki Haley.

The GOP front-runner made a dozen posts in a handful of hours devoted to Haley, attacking her policy stances and her favorability ratings. In another post, Trump shared a photoshopped image slapping Haley’s face onto Hillary Clinton’s body.

It’s another sign that Haley is beginning to pose a serious threat to the former president—at least from his perspective.

Earlier this month, Trump’s campaign spent some serious moolah to dismiss Haley’s potential candidacy. In one ad wielding Nazi rhetoric, a Trump-allied super PAC MAGA Inc reissued a Trump claim that immigrants are “poisoning our country” and chastised the daughter of Sikh Indian immigrants for refusing to call undocumented immigrants “illegals.”

“Illegals are criminals, Nikki. That’s what illegal means,” the ad said, slamming Haley as “too liberal” on immigration.

As of the beginning of the year, the Trump-aligned super PAC spent nearly $3.5 million in anti-Haley advertising, largely criticizing the former South Carolina governor for flip-flopping on her position on an unpopular gas tax in the state, according to a report from The Daily Beast.

Haley’s slow-burning success on the ballot poses a serious if unconventional threat for Trump, particularly as the former president contends with several states removing him from the GOP ballot entirely on the basis that he violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seems to have lost all steam from what was once predicted to be a fireball campaign against the increasingly fascist GOP favorite. As of Tuesday, Haley officially surpassed DeSantis’s waning poll numbers, barely nabbing the number two spot by a margin of 0.3 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Senator Ted Cruz has endorsed Donald Trump for president, a move that has everyone rolling their eyes given the men’s decidedly acrimonious history.

The Texas Republican announced his support for Trump Tuesday night. “I’m a big believer in letting democracy play out,” Cruz said on Fox News. “Well, last night it played out, and I gotta say, Trump’s victory was across the board.”

“At this point, I believe this race is over. So I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States. I look forward to supporting him enthusiastically.”

It’s ironic Cruz said he believes in “letting democracy play out,” considering he was caught on tape calling for a congressional commission to challenge the results of the 2020 election. Cruz repeatedly pushed Trump’s false and baseless claims that the vote had been rigged.

But before Cruz was such a major Trump toady, the two men were regularly at each other’s throats when running against each other during the 2016 Republican primary.

Trump called Cruz a liar and insulted his wife and father. Cruz, for his part, called Trump a “bully,” a “liar,” and a “coward.”

Media outlets including CNN and MSNBC were quick to remind Cruz of his own previous admonishments.

But once it was clear Trump would secure the nomination, Cruz changed his tune dramatically. He fell in line behind Trump and has been happy to support him ever since.

Cruz’s latest endorsement of Trump isn’t surprising, given how many conservative and far-right goals Trump achieved during his term. But it’s a pretty poor reflection on Cruz and what he’s willing to stand up for.

One of Donald Trump’s lawyers may have already blown his defense in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial, when she violated some of the judge’s rules during her opening statements on Tuesday.

Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan issued an order last week barring Trump and his lawyers from saying certain things. They are prohibited from making comments about Carroll’s “past romantic relationships, sexual disposition, and prior sexual experiences,” and they cannot argue that Trump did not sexually abuse or rape Carroll or act with actual malice when making his comments about her.

But on Tuesday, Trump attorney Alina Habba kicked things off by immediately insinuating that Trump hadn’t sexually assaulted Carroll.

“President Trump defended himself when publicly accused—” Habba began, when Carroll’s lawyer cut her off with an objection.

“Don’t go much farther,” Kaplan warned Habba.

Habba proceeded to argue that Carroll actually wanted all the attention she has gained since 2019, when she accused Trump in her memoir of raping her in a department store dressing room. Habba claimed that Carroll has been enjoying her newfound fame and is just complaining about a few mean tweets.

“The evidence I will show you will show you that Ms. Carroll’s conduct has caused this media frenzy,” Habba said.

Habba’s arguments don’t hold water, though, because they mimic what Trump said about Carroll. The former president insisted that Carroll made up the assault allegations to boost book sales—and his comments have already been deemed defamatory.

Kaplan had actually reminded the jury before opening statements began that they were not trying to determine whether Trump assaulted and defamed Carroll but just how much Carroll is owed in damages. “This trial is not a do-over of the previous trial that established those facts,” he said.

Habba also argued that Carroll was “fully enjoying the attention.”

“We will ask Ms. Carroll to confirm that she felt she was in a cocoon of love after the publication,” Habba said.

Carroll has been open about the backlash she faced after revealing Trump assaulted her in the mid-1990s. During her first trial against him in April, Carroll testified that she was fired from Elle magazine after 27 years over the revelation. She got so many death threats that she bought bullets for a gun in her possession. And once the trial started, more people began insulting her online, calling her a “liar, slut, ugly, old.” Not exactly the “cocoon of love” that Habba claims.

The jury in that trial unanimously found Trump liable for sexual abuse and battery against Carroll in the mid-1990s and for defaming her in 2022 while denying the assault. He was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages. Kaplan ruled in September that since Trump has already been found liable for sexual abuse, his 2019 comments are by default defamatory. Tuesday’s trial is to set damages, and Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is so desperate not to criticize Donald Trump that she went as far as to call him innocent in a case where he’s already been found guilty.

“You’re the only woman in this race. How do you feel about your party’s front-runner being held liable for sexual abuse?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked Haley on Tuesday.

“First of all, I haven’t paid attention to his cases, and I’m not a lawyer,” Haley responded. “All I know is that he’s innocent until proven guilty, and when he’s proven guilty, and he’s sitting in a courtroom—that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve got investigations on Trump and Biden.”

“Forgive me, but a lot of people in the Republican Party blow it all off and say that it’s all a witch hunt,” Bash pressed.

“Some of the cases have been political.… Look, if he’s found guilty then he needs to pay the price, he needs to do what he’s supposed to,” Haley continued. “Every one of these cases, they need to be heard out, he needs to defend himself. If he’s found guilty, he’s gonna pay the price. If he’s not found guilty, then we move forward. What I will tell you is that I’m focused on the economy, the border, and education, and getting our country back on track.”

“If he’s sitting in a courtroom, that goes back to what I’m saying,” Haley added, seemingly suggesting that the several dozen criminal charges against the Republican favorite are unnecessary diversions. “We can’t continue to be distracted. We can’t continue to be in chaos. We have a country to save.”

But that answer conveniently (and rather blatantly) overlooks the fact that Trump has been found liable—the civil case version of guilty—by a court of law.

In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, awarding Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages. He was then found liable for defaming Carroll in a second case. The judge even went on the record to clarify that yes, the liable verdict means that Trump did rape Carroll, based on the common definition of the word.

This isn’t Trump’s only legal woe of course, and it’s not the only one where he was found guilty.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron has already found that the Trump Organization and its top executives, which includes Trump and his adult sons,  committed bank fraud. Engoron is deliberating the final damages owed and whether the Trump Organization can continue to operate in the Empire State. The fraud is so massive that last week, he asked lawyers with the New York attorney general’s office how Trump’s financial strategy compared to Bernie Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.

Trump is currently on the line for 91 criminal charges in four other separate legal cases. On Monday, the GOP front-runner lost a good chunk of his legal representation, including star attorney Joe Tacopina, who filed a declaration to remove his law firm from representing the former president on unknown grounds.

Idaho Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill to ban books that mention homosexuality, a broad definition that could include two characters of the same gender just holding hands.

The House of Representatives State Affairs Committee passed the bill 11–2 on Monday, along party lines. House Bill 384 now goes to the chamber floor for a vote.

The bill would ban all visual, audio, and written material that depicts “nudity, sexual conduct, or sado-masochistic abuse and that is harmful to minors” from schools and public libraries. These would be classified as “obscene materials.”

Obscenity laws are particularly hard to enforce, because definitions of obscenity still largely come down to individual interpretation. As a result, there will likely be more reports of material that should be banned, made by people who are either more conservative or just nervous about accidentally breaking the law.

Republican Representative Julianne Young, who sits on the committee, claimed that the proposed law would target “acts” of homosexuality, which could apply to characters of the same gender holding hands.

The measure says anything overtly sexual is harmful to minors, and specifically states that sexual conduct includes all acts of homosexuality. Any facility that violates the bill would be required to pay $250 in statutory damages, as well as legal fees and additional damages to the person who reported the offending material.

During Monday’s hearing, multiple library workers warned that this bill would prove devastating to libraries. One worker pointed out that libraries’ budgets are not big enough to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in damages and legal fees from all the lawsuits that could result from this bill.

“One thing I’ve learned is, there is something offensive about everything to someone,” she said.

Another library worker pointed out that many libraries employ people who are 16 or 17 years old. Under the bill, those teenagers would no longer be able to work in libraries.

“Homosexuality does not equate to obscenity. It is your choice to sexualize children’s books,” she said.

At one point, Republican Representative Kevin Andrus said he had gotten a lot of emails from people concerned that the bill would require encyclopedias to be moved into the adult section of libraries. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Jaron Crane, said that encyclopedias do not violate the bill because they have “literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”

Unfortunately, Crane’s defense doesn’t hold much water. Republican-led states have increasingly banned books that discuss race, gender, and sexuality. Most recently, a school district in Florida banned five dictionaries, eight encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not because those books mention sexual conduct.