Trump wanted Elon Musk to buy Truth Social, report reveals: Live

Judge Lewis Kaplan has approved Donald Trump’s $91.63m bond in the E Jean Carroll defamation case, staying the damages verdict pending the former president’s appeal.

Here’s our earlier reporting on the bond:

Despite their strained relationship, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he voted for Donald Trump today in the state’s presidential primary.

“Well I’ve said I’m gonna support the nominee,” he told reporters in Atlanta.

Georgia, Washington, Mississippi, the Northern Mariana Islands and Democrats Abroad will all hold primaries, while Hawaii is set to hold a Republican caucus.

Mr Trump’s victory for the Republican nomination and Mr Biden’s sealing of the Democratic nomination are all but guaranteed given that neither have any credible challengers left in the race.

“At the time of the call last summer, Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, faced a dim financial outlook,” the Post reports.

“In April, Trump had said in a financial disclosure filing for his presidential candidacy that his 90 per cent stake in the company was worth between $5 million and $25 million and that his income from it had been less than $200.”

The company now faces a brighter outlook after the Securities & Exchange Commission gave the green light to a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company.

Such a move would also drastically improve Mr Trump’s financial situation as he faces mounting legal costs.

Despite this, the Post says the former president continues to insist that Mr Musk, the second richest man in the world, who paid $44bn to buy Twitter, should still buy Truth Social.

Mr Trump started Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter after the January 6 Capitol riot.

Jury selection for a criminal trial on charges connected to hush money payments to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election is scheduled for 25 March. It is the first criminal proceeding against the former president – and the first ever against any former president – among the four criminal cases he faces in four jurisdictions.

The nation’s highest court will hear Mr Trump’s arguments on his “immunity” defence on 25 April, the final day for oral arguments in this year’s session, and one month after his trial in New York is scheduled to begin. A federal judge and appeals court have already shot down his attempts to evade criminal prosecution on charges connected to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

A ruling from the Supreme Court is likely to follow several weeks later.

CNN anchor Jim Sciutto has tweeted out a response he received from the White House in response to Donald Trump’s alleged praise of Adolf Hitler.

Sciutto reported that according to General John Kelly, former senior adviser to the former president, among his praise for autocrats and dictators, Mr Trump allegedly reserved some of his most unnerving praise for Hitler. “He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But… He turned it against his own people and against the world.”

“It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater,” Mr Kelly told Sciutto, “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing.

A statement sent to Sciutto by White House spokesperson Andrew Bates says: “Like President Biden has said, Adolf Hitler was a ‘demonic figure’ & the ‘Antisemitic bile’ chanted in Charlottesville is what drove him to run for President. No American should ever praise the genocidal monster who committed the Holocaust.

“Just like it is incumbent on all leaders not to associate with Neo Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Hundreds of thousands of American service members – heroes, not ‘suckers’ or ‘losers’ – gave their lives to defeat that evil. Admiring Hitler is an insult to their memory.

“President Biden is committed to bringing all Americans together based on our shared values, against the most horrifying ideologies in history.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office brought the suit, told ABC News after the judgement last month that she’s “prepared to make sure the judgment is paid”.

“I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day,” she added.