Trump testifies in E Jean Carroll defamation trial: Live updates

Speaking to conservative radio host Steve Deace in his first interview since dropping out of the Republican primary, Mr DeSantis said he saw a “lack of enthusiasm” among GOP voters in the Iowa caucuses last week and that declining appeal among moderates is “a huge warning sign” for the Republican Party’s 2024 hopes.

Martha McHardy has the story:

Even as Donald Trump seeks his third straight Republican presidential nomination, his live appearances still present an unsolved riddle for many news outlets: How do you cover him?

The question hung in the air as CNN, MSNBC and some streaming outlets started — then stopped — showing Trump’s speech following Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. There was little hand-wringing at Fox News Channel and Newsmax, networks that appeal to Trump supporters. They carried the former president’s remarks in full.

Outlets weigh whether an event’s newsworthiness justifies live coverage when there’s a risk Trump will make false statements that are difficult, if not impossible, to correct in real time — or go completely off script with something entirely unexpected.

And as a year of campaign and courtroom events loom, news executives will face similar decisions again and again.

Nikki Haley is fighting on in the Republican presidential primary, but the mood among Washington’s Republicans is clear: this race is over.

While Speaker Mike Johnson has been on the Trump train for months, the leadership of the Senate Republican caucus has long been a source of resistance to some of the harder-right aspects of Trumpism and Donald Trump’s rhetoric which flirts with the kind of authoritarian yearnings often expressed outright by his supporters.

If any of that resistance remains, it’s not showing this week as Republicans react to a second victory by the former president in the primary contest; this time in New Hampshire, where he won an 11-point victory over Nikki Haley, his last remaining prominent challenger. Ms Haley did better than some polling expected, but still heads into a contest in Nevada and her home state of South Carolina after that without a single clear victory over Mr Trump or even Ron DeSantis, who has now dropped out.

With New Hampshire in the rearview mirror, Mr Trump’s last remaining foes within the Republican factions on Capitol Hill are joining the voices declaring the 2024 primary effectively over.

John Bowden reports on the mood in Washington, DC:

“Anybody that makes a ‘Contribution’ to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday evening.

“We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!” he added.

Ms Haley responded to the former president’s threat, writing on X: “Well in that case . . . donate here. Let’s Go!”

Thursday might be remembered as the day Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lost the plot, the message and his power to Donald Trump.

For the past few months, Mr McConnell has dispatched Senator James Lankford, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, to negotiate a deal with Democrats to add restrictions on immigration in exchange for more Ukraine aid to repel Russia’s aggression.

Republicans know Democrats would not normally agree to these types of restrictions if a Republican were president or Democrats would filibuster them if Republicans had the majority. So they are using the fact that Democrats desperately want money for Ukraine to extract as much as possible from Democrats.

But on Wednesday, Punchbowl News reported that Mr McConnell told the Senate Republican conference that “politics on this have changed” since Mr Trump wanted to run on immigration and “we don’t want to do anything to undermine him.”

Those remarks immediately threw the Senate Republican conference into chaos.

Before he was called to the witness stand, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan instructed the former president’s attorney that she can only ask him whether he stands by his previous deposition testimony, and if he has ever instructed anyone to hurt Ms Carroll.

While the jury was out of the room, as the judge and attorneys discussed what he could actually say, Mr Trump interrupted Ms Habba to repeat that he never met Ms Carroll and doesn’t know her. The judge told him to keep his voice down and told him he was not permitted to speak.

And in an extraordinarily brief exchange after only three questions from his attorney, Mr Trump testified that he stands by his previous deposition “100 per cent”.

Alex Woodward has been closely following the case, and field this report:

Donald Trump is once again glossing over the fact that he doesn’t actually have to be in court for his civil trials, and could easily be out on the campaign trail…

Here’s what he wrote on Truth Social:

I just left the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan, the place that Crooked Joe Biden and his Thugs want me to be. It is a False Accusation case, financed and pushed by Political Operatives for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE. I would rather be campaigning in Nevada and South Carolina, but it’s going smoothly, and we’re winning it all. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

The former president is in court of his own volition.

By the time votes were counted in New Hampshire on Tuesday, ex-South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was vowing to continue her quixotic primary run against former president Donald Trump. “It’s time to put the negativity and chaos behind us,” she told supporters, as news of her second-place finish rolled in.

The conventional wisdom of how this year’s Republican primary has gone goes something like this: After the 2022 midterms, Trump was on the out in favor of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis won the hearts of GOP tastemakers with his anti-woke crusading and anti-media pugilism. He was the natural MAGA successor, famously labeled “DeFuture” by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Then DeSantis went on an unexpected journey. He barely defeated Haley in Iowa, and lost to Trump by double digits. It seems the Florida governor’s fortunes soured when Trump’s legal problems gained momentum.