Trump news today: Trump headlines Turning Point event with Tucker and GOP allies as investigations close in

Donald Trump’s remarks – rambling, full of falsehoods, exaggerations, threats to democratic institutions and inflammatory statements targeting communities across the country – have concluded in Florida, where another lineup of Republican lawmakers and pundits will return to the Turning Point stage for more campaign-building speeches tomorrow.

Donald Trump has proposed reintroducing an even wider ban on people from majority Muslim countries from entering the US, the mass deportations of people living in the country, and ending birthright citizenship for the children of people who are in the US without legal permission.

Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign has fired roughly one dozen staffers, and more firings are expected in the coming weeks, according to NBC News.

Despite bringing in $20m within the first six weeks of the year, the campaign is looking to bring costs down, according to sources speaking with the outlet.

Those close to the campaign are reportedly blaming his campaign manager Generra Peck while polling is showing the campaign lagging behind frontrunner Donald Trump.

Donald Trump once again called the indictments against him a “continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time” and “election interference” that deny his election to the presidency in 2024, as he faces criminal charges for falsifying business records and a multimillion dollar fraud lawsuit in New York, federal charges for illegally withholding classified documents in Florida, and potential charges stemming from 2020 election interference.

He said the indictments are “making people go through hell” and “destroying their families”.

The former president falsely stated that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, and claims that the investigations against him are an attempt to “rig” next year’s election as he seeks another term in the White House.

“This is an attempt to win the 2024 election, but so far … it’s had the opposite effect. It’s lifted us to new heights. People know it’s all bull****,” he said.

Trump’s campaign raised $35m in the second quarter of 2023, nearly double the $18.8m he raised during the first three months of the year.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, has raised $72m during the second quarter.

Donald Trump called the US a “third-world hellhole” ruled by “perverts” and “thugs”, depicting a collapsing nation where the American dream is “dead” under his successor President Joe Biden.

He pointed to invisible “sick” and “sinister forces” that are “trying to destroy the nation from within,” he said in his grim remarks from the Turning Point Action Conference in Florida on Saturday.

He said he will use the power of the executive branch, if elected, to “reclaim” colleges and “choke off the money” to schools that are launching a “Marxist assault” on “Western civilization itself.”

“The days of subsidizing communist indoctrination … are over,” he said.

Students can pray in school whenever they’d like. Far-right US Rep Matt Gaetz, however, says he plans to introduce legislation “so that in every classroom in America, there will be time for students to pray if they want to,” a measure that could appear to violates the establishment clause of the US Constitution and mandate Christian prayer in schools.

He said that “beautiful” US Supreme Court “that Trump gave us” might end up upholding it, should it ever become law.

In a largely rambling speech around censorship to a crowd at the Turning Point Action Conference in Florida, Tucker Carlson joked that he was fired from Fox News for questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and the attack on the US Capitol.

He said there was never a national “conversation” about what happened in the election and its aftermath, and that anyone who questioned the outcome and the attack was “basically hounded out of public life in America,” whether they were “deplatformed,” jailed or fired from their jobs.

The crowd started to laugh and cheer.

“Pretty funny,” Carlson said, laughing. “Sorry, I was so into it I lost self-awareness for a minute.”

Carlson was fired from the network shortly after Fox settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787m to avert a blockbuster defamation trial. A former producer for his program also recently settled with the network for $12m, and the network also was sued by a man who was the subject of dozens of segments on his program accusing him of being a federal agent who incited the riots.

For the past two years, Ray Epps has been living a surreal nightmare, one born out of the same conspiracy theory universe that launched a riot in the halls of Congress, hundreds of criminal investigations, and a blockbuster defamation lawsuit against one of the most influential cable networks in the country.

The man in the middle of the right-wing conspiracy theory surrounding January 6 has accused Tucker Carlson of amplifying a “fantastical” story that has destroyed his family and his business, accusations that echo an historic $787m settlement between Fox and Dominion Voting Systems, which accused the network of spreading defamatory statements about the company in the election’s aftermath.

“It certainly is possible for us to prove a pattern of disregard for the truth,” attorney Michael Teter tells The Independent.

“I believe that this case is ripe for punitive damages, not just because of the willfulness on the part of lying about Ray and the egregious lies but also because there’s a past conduct here of disregard for the truth,” he says.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump booster among Republican candidates vying for the 2024 Republican nomination, painted an apocalyptic vision of the state of the contry in his remarks to a lackluster crowd at the Turning Point Action Conference in Florida on Saturday.

The 37-year-old far-right figure blamed “wokeism, transgenderinism and climatism” for the “poison” that fills what he characterized as a void in American society.

“At a time in our national history, when the things that used to fill our void, faith, patriotism, hard work, family, these things have disappeared, and that leaves a black hold in its wake,” he said.

His remarks largely echoed other speakers at the conference and statements from other far-right pundits who deny the accelerating climate crisis and scapegoat trans people for what he believes is American decline.

Ramaswamy also invented a baseless narrative about the January 6 attack, which he did not blame on bogus conspiracy theories or the actions of people who refused to accept the outcome of a democratic election.

“The truth is this: January 6 was the result of a pervasive culture of censorship across this country,” he said. “When you tell people they can’t scream, that’s when they start tearing things down.”

The speaking lineup at Turning Point USA’s Turning Point Action conference in Palm Beach, Florida wasted no time targeting transgender rights in their laundry list of grievances to rally attendees and tee up 2024 campaigns.

Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who unsuccessfully ran for chair of the Republican National Committee, opened the speaking lineup with a series of inflammatory claims about trans people and their families.

Ms Dhillon claimed that schools are “inflicting powerful psychological indoctrination on vulnerable children” and compared doctors who provide gender-affirming healthcare to Nazis.

She called transition healthcare the “Mengele-like experimentation on America’s children”.

Republican US Rep Byron Donalds also falsely claimed that the “radical left” wants to “drive a wedge” between parents and children” by affirming childrens’ genders.