Trump news – live: Trump denies calling to ‘terminate’ the Constitution in furious Truth Social post

Asked to respond to Trump’s threat to “terminate” the US Constitution during a radio interview on Monday, former vice president Mike Pence said he and other official took an oath to “commit ourselves to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“I think everyone that serves in public office, everyone that aspires to serve or to serve again, should make it clear we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which I believe by God’s grace I was able to do during not only my tenure as vice president but during those tumultuous days at the end,” Mr Pence said.

Those “tumultuous days” include Trump’s pressure campaign to get his then-vice president to subvert the outcome of the 2020 election, and a violent riot fuelled by Trump’s rejection of those results; Mr Pence was escorted out of the Capitol on 6 January, 2021, as a mob chanted “hang Mike Pence” as it stormed the halls of Congress. Hours later he presided over the certification of electoral college votes.

Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is being questioned by the a committee at the Washington DC Bar Board of Professional Responsibility to determine whether he violated attorney ethics rules with his federal court challenges to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidentuial election.

Disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox dismissed his legal challenge as “frivolous,” and that Mr Giuliani has “weaponized his law license” to “undermine the Constitution to which he, like all members of the District of Columbia Bar, took an oath to support.”

He was suspended from the New York bar last year for his “false and misleading” statements about the 2020 election.

Proceedings in the hearing are expected to last through this week. The committee then will draft a report and issue recommendations to the full board for disciplinary actions.

Today’s hearing is ongoing.

The former president’s disturbing suggestion that the US Constitution should be terminated was met with widespread backlash, including from members of his own party.

Apparently in reaction to the criticism, he took to his Truth Social again on Monday to claim he’d never said what he’d said two days before.

Former president Donald Trump on Monday is now claiming he never advocated for an end to America’s constitution despite having called for its’ “termination” just days ago.

A surprising new poll from Republican stronghold Utah signals trouble ahead for Donald Trump - with voters favouring Liz Cheney over the former president for 2024.

According to a recent poll, Republican voters in Utah - who overwhelmingly supported Mr Trump in both 2016 and 2020 - are beginning to pin their hopes on two of his most avowed rivals: outgoing Wisconsin Rep Cheney and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

In the poll by Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics, Republican respondents had the one-term president finishing third among a field of potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates, a result that has been echoed in recent surveys of both Democratic and Republican voters, showing the hold that the “Make America Great Again” president has on the GOP might indeed be slipping.

In the poll, Rep Cheney, who has built her brand of politics over the last few years around taking swipes at the twice impeached president for his conduct inside and outside the Oval Office, placed second as she picked up 16.4 per cent support from Utah GOP primary voters.

Liz Cheney and Ron DeSantis both ranked ahead of the former president in a state that he’d previously won in 2016 and 2020

Another Donald Trump tantrum – this time calling for the “termination” of the election rules in the US constitution in order to overturn the results of the 2020 election and reinstate him as president – has been met with another, almost weary, response from the White House.

Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed that he was the true winner of that presidential election, and it never takes much to get him to wade back into those waters. The trigger this time was the release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation over an October 2020 New York Post story concerning material found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden (the son of the current president). The emails show employees in the legal, policy and communications departments at Twitter at times disagreeing over whether to restrict the article under the company’s hacked materials policy.

From controversies to legal cases and social media rants, the former president has probably not begun his re-election bid in the way his team would want, explains Chris Stevenson in his latest.

From controversies to legal cases and social media rants, the former president has probably not begun his re-election bid in the way his team would want, writes Chris Stevenson

As a businessman and president, Donald Trump faced a litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations yet emerged from the legal scrutiny time and again with his public and political standing largely intact.

But he’s perhaps never confronted a probe as perilous as the Mar-a-Lago investigation, an inquiry focused on the potential mishandling of top-secret documents. The sense of vulnerability has been heightened in recent weeks not only by the Justice Department‘s appointment of a special counsel with a reputation for aggressiveness but also by the removal of a Trump-requested independent arbiter in the case and by judges’ unequivocal rejection of his lawyers’ arguments.

It’s impossible to predict how much longer the investigation will last or whether the Justice Department will take the unprecedented step of indicting a former president and current candidate. But Trump is no longer shielded from prosecution the way he was as president, and some legal experts regard the Mar-a-Lago investigation as centered on more straightforward factual and legal questions than the prior probes he has dealt with.

“Unlike many of these past investigations which involved these complex financial frauds where prosecutors have to explain to a jury why the conduct is even a crime to begin with, here prosecutors won’t have that difficulty, won’t have that challenge to explain what the crime is about” if charges are ultimately filed, said former Justice Department prosecutor Robert Mintz.

Read the full report here with The Independent.

As a businessman and president, Donald Trump faced a litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations yet emerged from the legal scrutiny time and again with his public and political standing largely intact

Donald Trump has denied making what was an explicitly antidemocratic statement suggesting “massive fraud” in the 2020 presidential election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

In another post on his Truth Social account on Monday, following up his statement from just two days ago, the former president claims that the “fake news” is “actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution.”

Here’s what he wrote on Saturday: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

In his post on Monday, he called reports that accurately captured what he wrote “disinformation and lies”.

Sacha Baron Cohen took aim at Kanye West and Donald Trump in a new Borat skit on stage at the 2022 Kennedy Center Honors.

The actor and comedian returned as Borat Sagdiyev during a segment of the night paying tribute to U2.

Baron Cohen began speaking as the character by pretending to mistake president Joe Biden, who was in attendence, for former president Trump.

“I am told the president of US today is here,” he said, per Deadline. “Where are you Mr Trump? You don’t look so good.”

Biden could be seen laughing alongside his wife, Jill, in the audience.

“Where has your blown-ass big belly gone? And your pretty orange skin without fail,” the character continued. “I see you have a new wife. Whoa whoa whooo wha! She is very erotic.”

Baron Cohen, who is Jewish, then turned his attention to antisemitism, while still in character as Borat.

“I must say I’m very upset about the antisemitism in the US today,” he said. “It’s not fair. Kazakhstan is the number one Jew-crushing nation. Stop stealing our hobby. Stop the steal. Stop the steal.”

Louis Chilton has more here.

Actor reprised his popular comedy creation on stage at the Kennedy Center Honors

MSNBC Morning Joe hosts found themselves flabbergasted at the news that Florida Gov Ron DeSantis has been short-listed for Time magazine’s Person of the Year award, finding himself alongside figures like Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky.

“His presence on the list is because he won reelection in massive landslide, he flipped Miami-Dade and much to the chagrin of a former constituent is on the cusp of really being the frontrunner for the Republican nomination,” explained Time executive editor Ben Goldberger on the MSNBC program, hinting at how “former constituent” - Donald Trump - has reportedly been enraged at the prospect that the Florida governor could challenge him for the GOP ticket in 2024.

A spokesperson for Donald Trump says that the former president plans to hold a phone call rally for Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker, a Republican he endorsed early on in the race but who failed to gain the necessary majority during the November midterms forcing him and Senator Raphael Warnock into a runoff election.

“If you want a big game day turnout for Herschel, you bring in President Trump,” said Liz Harrington on Monday while appearing on Real America’s Voice.