Election 2024 Live Updates: Latest Trump News – The New York Times
House Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC allied with Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, announced on Sunday that it would spend $186 million on TV and digital advertising for the 2024 cycle, its largest investment in the group’s history. It will spend across 58 markets, both in Republican-held districts President Biden carried in 2020 and Democratic districts former President Donald J. Trump won.
Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in an interview on CBS that a report detailing whether Israel has violated international law in its war with Hamas should be made public. “We need more transparency,” he said. Mr. Van Hollen is one of a growing number of Democrats who has grown increasingly vocal in his criticisms of Israel’s methods of war, as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza grows more dire and aid workers have been killed.
John F. Kirby, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said on CBS that the U.S. position to continue providing military aid to Israel is not contradictory to President Biden’s calls for restraint in its military operation in Gaza and more humanitarian aid. Israelis “live in a tough neighborhood” and “under threat from Iran-back groups,” Kirby said. But “how they defend themselves matters.”
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, said on “Fox News Sunday” that a civil action against President Biden should be taken for his purported failure to address the border crisis through deporting and detaining those who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without permission. “He’s in a direct violation of laws passed by Congress,” Abbott claimed.
Representative Mike Turner of Ohio said on CNN that he did not think Speaker Mike Johnson was “at any risk” of being removed from his post this year, after his Republican colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to bring his speakership to a vote.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a close ally of President Biden, said he disagreed with rescinding arms deliveries to Israel amid reports of a possible attack from Iran, calling it “essential for Israel’s defense.” He added that conversations about the release of Israeli hostages, delivery of more humanitarian aid to Gaza and a cease-fire between the two countries were ongoing.
Maggie Haberman and
Maggie Haberman reported from New York, and Michael Gold from Palm Beach, Fla.
Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking at a multimillion-dollar fund-raiser on Saturday night, lamented that people were not immigrating to the United States from “nice” countries “like Denmark” and suggested that his well-heeled dinner companions were temporarily safe from undocumented immigrants nearby, according to an attendee.
Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made the comments during a roughly 45-minute presentation at a dinner at a mansion owned by the billionaire financier John Paulson in Palm Beach, Fla., a rarefied island community.
Guests were seated outdoors at white-clothed tables under a white tent, looking out on the waterway that divides the moneyed town from the more diverse West Palm Beach, a mainland city, according to the attendee, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the private event but provided an extensive readout of Mr. Trump’s remarks.
Dozens of wealthy donors helped write checks that the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee claim totaled more than $50 million, an amount that would set a record but had not been verified. Campaign finance reports encompassing the date of the event won’t be available for months.
Some of Mr. Trump’s comments were standard fare from his stump speeches, while other parts of the speech were tailored to his wealthy audience.
About midway through his remarks, the attendee said, Mr. Trump began an extensive rant about migrants entering the United States, at a time when President Biden has been struggling with an intensified crisis at the Southern border.
“These are people coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from just unbelievable places and countries, countries that are a disaster,” Mr. Trump told his guests, according to the attendee. The former president has made a similar claim the heart of his campaign speeches.
He then appeared to refer to an episode during his presidency when he drew significant criticism after an Oval Office meeting with federal lawmakers about immigration during which he described Haiti and some nations in Africa as “shithole countries,” compared with places like Norway.
“And when I said, you know, Why can’t we allow people to come in from nice countries, I’m trying to be nice,” Mr. Trump said at the dinner, to chuckles from the crowd. “Nice countries, you know like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
He continued, “And you know, they took that as a very terrible comment, but I felt it was fine.”
Mr. Trump went on to say that there were people coming from Yemen, “where they’re blowing each other up all over the place.”
During his rallies, Mr. Trump frequently laments migrants from a list of countries from Africa, Asia and the Middle East as he stokes fears around the surge at the border, which he blames for a spike in crime, blame that has not been supported by available data.
At the dinner, Mr. Trump also lamented the surge of migrants, particularly from Latin America, saying that gang members “make the Hell’s Angels look like extremely nice people.”
“They’ve been shipped in, brought in, deposited in our country, and they’re with us tonight,” Mr. Trump said.
“In fact, I don’t think they’re on this island, but I know they’re on that island right there. That’s West Palm,” Mr. Trump said, gesturing across the water, according to the attendee. “Congratulations over there. But they’ll be here. Eventually, they’ll be here.”
Asked to comment, a Trump campaign official pointed to an official readout of the former president’s event, including that he had discussed the border crisis and the tax cuts that he enacted while in office. The official did not address the specific quotes and did not respond to a question about whether the campaign was disputing them.
Mr. Paulson’s estate sits along the waterway that separates the town of Palm Beach — a wealthy community on a barrier island that, according to the Census Bureau, is 93.8 percent white — from West Palm Beach, where nearly a third of residents are Black and a quarter are Hispanic.
Mr. Trump blamed his successor, Mr. Biden, for the influx of migrants and mocked him and aides for what Mr. Trump said were bad decisions made around the Resolute Desk, which has been used by two dozen presidents.
“The Resolute Desk is beautiful,” Mr. Trump said. “Ronald Reagan used it, others used it.”
He then denigrated Mr. Biden, sounding disgusted, according to the attendee: “And he’s using it. I might not use it the next time. It’s been soiled. And I mean that literally, which is sad.”
The attendee who witnessed the moment said that dinner guests laughed and that Mr. Trump’s remark was interpreted as the former president saying that Mr. Biden had defecated on the desk.
Mr. Trump also sought to point to parts of his record that could appeal to the wealthy donors in attendance. He highlighted the tax cuts under his administration and asked attendees about whether they had a preference for that measure or his regulations that allowed them to take advantage of specific write-offs, according to the attendee.
“The most successful people in the whole country are in this room,” Mr. Trump said.
He ended his remarks with a grave assessment of America’s future that has characterized his campaigns for the presidency, but with a more apocalyptic tenor in 2024.
“This could very well be the last election this country ever has,” Mr. Trump said, using a line that has become standard at his rallies. “July 4 is not as important as this as far as I’m concerned.”
House Majority PAC, the Democratic super PAC allied with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, said on Sunday that it would spend $186 million on television and digital advertisements for this year’s elections — the largest early investment in the group’s history.
The hefty expenditure will cover 58 media markets in 45 districts, targeting Republican seats in districts that President Biden carried in 2020 as well as Democratic seats in districts that former President Donald J. Trump won. As part of that spending plan, $40 million will go toward digital advertisements, the group said on Sunday. Details of the ad buy were first shared with CNN.
In an interview on Sunday, the House Majority PAC president, Mike Smith, described the group’s plan for this election year as “an offensive strategy.” Democrats need to win just four seats to clinch a House majority, and they have said that doing so depends on races in New York and California. The group is spending the most in those states to unseat vulnerable Republican freshmen and to maintain the ample — and costly — messaging needed to break through to voters.
“The significant investment is the seriousness of which we are taking this election,” Mr. Smith said. “The core districts that are going to make or break whether or not Democrats win or lose the majority this fall are kind of consolidated, and a lot of them take place in the most expensive media markets in the country.”
Mr. Smith also noted that the group had invested early in advertisements in states like Ohio, Montana and Michigan, where there are a handful of competitive U.S. Senate races and tight margins for the presidential race. It is particularly focused on appealing to voters in districts with substantial Black, Hispanic or Asian American populations, in addition to swing districts.
Cash-flush Democrats are doling out hefty sums to protect vulnerable candidates ahead of a tough election in November. Atop the ticket, President Biden and his allies have out-raised Republicans so far: The president’s re-election campaign said it had $192 million on hand, a sum that includes funds raised by the national party and allied groups. As Mr. Trump fought to close the fund-raising gap, his campaign boasted of a $50 million haul from a high-dollar fund-raiser he hosted on Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla.
But Democrats have not shied away from the need for candidates farther down the ballot to outperform Mr. Biden, whose sagging approval ratings could present a drag. Asked if such a large, early investment was a reflection of the perceived challenges that Democrats will face sharing a ticket with the president, Mr. Smith said that the investment was not a response to presidential polling.
“It has less of a reflection on anything other than the fact that we need four seats to win,” Mr. Smith said. “We’re not taking anything for granted and we’re making the investments known now, across the battlefield.”
The advertisements will largely focus on reproductive rights, the economy and perceived Republican “extremism” that has hampered progress in Washington. The advertisements will start running on Monday. The number of markets and how much the group will spend may vary from initial placement as the campaigns continue and groups reassess their priorities.
Michael Whatley, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, did not directly answer questions about the integrity of the 2020 election in an interview on Sunday, underlining the challenges that Republicans face in crafting a message for the presidential election in November without re-litigating the previous one.
In an interview with Chris Stirewalt on NewsNation, Mr. Whatley said he believed there were “irregularities” and “issues that we saw across the country” during the 2020 election.
“We need to have election integrity,” he said. “This is about making sure we have the rules of the road in place in 2024.” He added that he favored measures like checking voters’ IDs at the polls and requiring signed absentee ballots over others like implementing ballot drop boxes, which were widely used in 2020. “These are things that are supported by the vast majority of Americans, and poll after poll after poll want to have election security, want to know that their vote is going to be count and protected,” he said.
His comments came amid a staffing overhaul at the Republican National Committee after the resignation of Ronna McDaniel, its former chairwoman. Many longtime staff members were laid off or asked to resign and reapply for their positions. And officials applying for posts at the committee have been asked directly in interviews whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen.
Asked about it on Sunday, Mr. Whatley said, “The only litmus test I have is, Do you support President Trump and the rest of our Republican nominees, and will you work 24/7 for the next seven months to make sure that we win this election cycle?”
Mr. Whatley, the former chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party who served as general counsel at the Republican National Committee before becoming chairman, has focused much of his work over the past four years on election integrity. Former President Donald J. Trump handpicked Mr. Whatley to helm the national committee alongside his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. Both were elected unanimously in March.
The drastic restructuring of the national committee also demonstrates the extent to which national Republicans are aligning with Mr. Trump as he prepares for a rematch with President Biden. Polls show a close race between the two candidates, with Mr. Trump slightly ahead in most battleground states.
Still, many Republicans have warned that Mr. Trump’s talking points about the 2020 election and false claims that it was “stolen” could alienate key voting groups. Pressed again about whether he believed the outcome of the last presidential election was legitimate, Mr. Whatley pointed to his membership in North Carolina’s Electoral College.
“I proudly cast my ballot for Donald Trump,” he said. “The Electoral College number came back, Joe Biden is the president and we are working all day, every day now to make sure that we are going to win this election in 2024.”
Reporting from Palm Beach, Fla.
For several hours on Saturday evening, drivers on a typically scenic stretch of Palm Beach, Fla., had their views of the coast obscured by a line of luxury vehicles whose owners were mingling inside a mansion across the road.
The shoreline-blocking Range Rovers, Aston Martins and Bentleys hinted at the deep-pocketed donors attending a fund-raising dinner for former President Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, which it and the Republican National Committee said had raised more than $50.5 million.
The event, hosted by the billionaire John Paulson at his home, followed a concerted push by the Trump campaign to address a longstanding financial disparity with President Biden and Democrats as both parties gear up for the general election.
The reported total, which cannot be independently verified ahead of campaign finance filings in the coming months, is nearly double the $26 million that President Biden’s campaign said it raised last month at a celebrity-studded event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, senior advisers to the former president who are effectively his campaign managers, said in a statement that the total made it “clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5.”
Mr. Trump’s event, just down the road from his home at Mar-a-Lago, was in some ways a less flashy affair than its Democratic antecedent, one that traded Hollywood star power and New York City energy for a warmer clime, an abundance of palm trees and the manicured lawns typical of an island refuge for the moneyed elite.
But expectations ahead of the dinner were high, with Mr. Paulson and Trump campaign advisers vowing to outdo the Biden event. An invitation obtained by The New York Times suggested a contribution of $814,600 or the comparatively more modest $250,000.
The money raised, according to the invitation, will be directed to the Trump 47 Committee, a shared fund-raising agreement among the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and roughly 40 state parties. Such joint accounts can take in checks of as much as $814,600.
Mr. Trump, who has long had a penchant for superlatives, had predicted on his social media site, Truth Social, that the dinner would be the “biggest night in Fund Raising of ALL TIME!!!”
The former president arrived shortly before 7 p.m. with his wife, Melania Trump, who has made sparse appearances at political events during her husband’s third presidential campaign. “This has been some incredible evening before it even starts,” Mr. Trump said before posing for a photo with Mr. Paulson and entering the house.
Around 100 people were expected to attend the dinner, with a number of billionaires on the guest list.
Among the event’s co-chairs were familiar megadonors and Trump allies, including Rebekah Mercer, a major donor to Mr. Trump in 2016; Linda McMahon, a former Trump cabinet official; and Robert Bigelow, who backed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in the Republican primary but in February donated $5 million to Mr. Trump’s super PAC.
Not all of those who wrote checks opted to attend. John Catsimatidis, a New York grocery store chain owner with a long history with Mr. Trump, was a co-chair of the event but said other commitments kept him from being present.
Under the shared fund-raising agreement, the first $6,600 of any contribution will go to Mr. Trump’s campaign. The next $5,000 will go to his Save America PAC, the political account he has used to pay his legal bills. (That amount is the maximum contribution allowed to Save America under federal rules.) The R.N.C. will get the next $413,000, and then will come dozens of state parties.
Mr. Trump and his team have effectively taken over the R.N.C., installing new leadership, pushing through layoffs and restructuring the national party’s operations to align it more closely with the campaign.
Fund-raising has been a major focus of the overhaul, particularly as Mr. Biden and Democrats have banked cash and built a significant financial advantage over the last several months.
The Biden campaign said earlier on Saturday that it, the Democratic Party and affiliated committees had raised more than $90 million in March, and that together they had $192 million on hand going into April. The Trump campaign said it and the Republican National Committee had raised $65.6 million in March, the former president’s best fund-raising month so far, and that they, along with their shared accounts, had $93.1 million on hand.
Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement that the Democratic fund-raising numbers stood in “stark contrast to Trump’s cash-strapped operation.”
Mr. Biden’s totals were helped in part by the glamorous event in front of 5,000 donors at the storied Radio City Music Hall. Mr. Biden and two of his Democratic predecessors, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, were interviewed by the late-night host and comedian Stephen Colbert.
A number of musical guests, including Queen Latifah, Lizzo and Lea Michele, entertained the crowd.
The special guests billed on the invitation for the Trump fund-raiser were three of his former primary rivals who have since become campaign surrogates and joined him on the trail: Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
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