Trump called appeaser by Pence as GOP slings dirt over Hamas – live

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld has claimed that Democrats plan to target Trump supporters by sending them to camps for “deprogrammming” after the 2024 election.

In a lengthy rant on The Five, Gutfeld said Maga supporters were rightly fearful because of “a group of elites that are already placing targets on people’s backs”.

His comments came after Hillary Clinton told CNN that Donald Trump’s base would need “deprogamming” from his “cult” in a wide-ranging interview about extreme polarisation.

Gutfeld claimed that Mr Trump had gone after “people in power” during his presidency, while Ms Clinton was targeting voters.

Jon Sopel writes for The Independent:

“The story of Kevin McCarthy is the parable of the appeaser; the man who keeps feeding morsels to the crocodile hoping it will eat sufficiently well that it won’t gobble him up in its deadly jaws, but – snap – eventually it does.

“And with one sickening crunch on Tuesday afternoon the teeth of the ultra-Maga Republicans in the House of Representatives sunk into McCarthy – and he was done; well and truly chewed up and spat out by the people he’d spent nine months bowing down to, accommodating, and trying to please.

“Unlike the UK system where the speaker is essentially a kind of referee – the neutral umpire upholding the Commons’ rules – it is more instructive to think of the speaker of the House of Representatives as akin to our prime minister. You are responsible for deciding what legislation to introduce, directing what the House committees investigate – and just like the PM, the speaker is chosen by the party that holds a majority. And after the 2022 midterms that was the Republicans (with the squeakiest of majorities). McCarthy’s long-cherished dream was within sight.”

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.

John Bowden has the full story.

White House official accuses GOP senator JD Vance of ‘shameful lies’A White House official has slammed Republican senator JD Vance for spreading “shameful lies” that US taxpayer dollars had funded a wave of unprecedented attacks by Palestinian militants that have claimed at least 200 Israeli lives.

Mr Trump repeated one of his favourite stories to the audience in Waterloo, claiming that the Russian president would not have invaded Ukraine on his watch.

“I said, ‘Vladimir, you and I are friends. We’re good friends. But if you go in, we’re gonna hit real hard’,” Mr Trump said.

“He said ‘no way you would do that, there’s no way’. I said ‘way’,” drawing a laugh from the crowd as he appeared to mimic a line from the 1992 Mike Myers comedy Wayne’s World.

Should he become speaker, he would be the highest-ranking elected Republican in the country and every Republican would immediately be tied with him. That might give Republicans who are from swing districts pause and ultimately lead to them not choosing Mr Jordan, regardless of what Mr Trump says.

At this point, the fact the House GOP conference has a slim majority goes without explanation. But for the most part, the focus has stayed on the 15 to 20 conservatives who at any given moment could sink Mr McCarthy or Republican legislative priorities.

Fewer people realise that Republicans have about just as many Republicans from swing districts who would not want to be associated with Mr Jordan or his antics, from leading a subcommittee on the “weaponisation of the federal government,” to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, to his questioning of the story of a 10-year-old rape victim in his state who sought an abortion in Indiana, to his vociferous defences of Mr Trump.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday took a swing at Donald Trump’s age and stamina, saying we don’t need “any more presidents” who have “lost the zip on their fastball.”

At a campaign event in his own state, the Florida governor blamed the former president for his defeat in by Joe Biden 2020 and suggested Mr Trump lacked the energy to lead the country again.

“We don’t need any more presidents that have lost the zip on their fastball,” Mr DeSantis said.

He added that the party’s nomination contest shouldn’t be a coronation, especially for “anybody that couldn’t even stop Joe Biden.”

Donald Trump’s longest-serving Chief of Staff has confirmed remarks made and previously denied by the former president, in which he branded wounded or killed US war heroes as “losers” and “suckers”.

General John Kelly, who served the Trump administration from 2017 until 2019, confirmed details of a damning 2020 article in The Atlantic as well as other offensive remarks made by Mr Trump while he was president.

The article, written by Jeffrey Goldberg, claimed that Mr Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 as it would ruin his hair, and did not understand the value of honouring the US war dead.

Lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in three separate defamation cases are set to sever ties with the 2020 election denier over millions of dollars in unpaid legal fees.

Law firm Parker Daniels Kibort LLC said in new court filings that Mr Lindell and his pillow company are several months behind on their legal bills in the three cases.

Now, the lawyers claim they can no longer afford to represent the notorious Donald Trump supporter in the absence of any payment.

Eric Garcia chronicles how the Ohio Republican, once called a ‘legislative terrorist’ who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, is now an odds-on favorite to replace Kevin McCarthy.