Election 2024: Sununu says he will still support Trump even though he believes he ‘contributed’ to an insurrection. (2024)

Speaker Mike Johnson on Fox News Sunday explained why he pushed through a warrantless surveillance bill that allows law enforcement to search the private communications of U.S. citizens who are believed to have ties to suspected foreign spies or terrorists, saying the warrant requirement would have added “a huge time delay” in U.S. efforts to curb terrorism. Mr. Johnson said he and former President Trump “agree on the necessity of” the surveillance program, despite Mr. Trump’s earlier call to “kill” the bill before the speaker managed to pass it on Friday with a bipartisan vote.

Most Democratic criticism of President Biden’s Israel policies has been from his left. This morning, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania lodged some from his right, telling CNN — in reference to Biden’s saying the U.S. would not support an Israeli offensive against Iran — that it was “astonishing that we are not standing firmly with Israel.” While increasingly criticizing Israel’s policies in word, Biden continued to send weapons that Israel is using in Gaza.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat of Michigan, was asked on NBC News whether she was concerned that Donald Trump’s effort to “straddle the line” on abortion would make the issue less potent for Democrats. “I think your phraseology, ‘straddle the line,’ is generous,” she said. “He’s lied. He’s lied over and over again to the people of this country.”

Representative Mike Turner, the Ohio Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on NBC that the Biden administration has failed to take a strong enough position against Iran that could have deterred it from staging an attack on Israel. “This administration continues to look the other way and failed to recognize that this is escalating and they’re going to have to step up to the plate,” Mr. Turner said.

Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota and a former Planned Parenthood executive, warned that the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law that prohibits “obscene” or “lewd” materials from being sent over mail, could be interpreted to limit women’s access to abortion pills, should former President Donald J. Trump be elected in the fall. “He said just a couple of days ago is that these state bans are working the way they should,” Ms. Smith said. “Ask a woman in Arizona or Texas whether she thinks this is working for her.”

Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said he had received a “commitment” from Speaker Mike Johnson that a national security bill providing aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan would receive a vote on the House floor, but that the timing was still unclear. “My preference is, this week,” Mr. McCaul said on CBS’s Face The Nation.

Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican who has criticized Donald Trump in the past and supported Nikki Haley in the primary, suggested on ABC News that nothing could stop him from voting for Trump now. He said he believes Trump “contributed” to an insurrection, he said, and doesn’t like that, but getting a Republican in the White House is more important than anything else, even if Trump is convicted of felonies.

Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, condemned President Biden for criticizing Israel’s way of conducting the war in Gaza and calling for restraint in its response to Iran's Saturday attack. “It is clear that President Biden is being influenced by the Hamas wing of the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Mr. President, don’t. Stop it. Support Israel. With respect, go to Amazon and buy a spine online. Peace through weakness never works.”

Senator John Kennedy also called Iran’s proxy military groups in the Middle East “prostitutes” and the Islamic Republic “a pimp” in painting a stark picture of the region and encouraging President Biden to side with the Jewish state unconditionally. “Iran hates Americans. Iran hates Jews. Iran wants to kill Americans and Jews,” Mr. Kennedy said on Fox News. “If we turn the other cheek to them, we are going to get it in the neck.”

Kari Lake, running in the Republican primary for Senate in Arizona, said at an event on Saturday night that her campaign raised over $4 million last quarter, nearly twice what she tallied in the last three months of 2023. Ruben Gallego, who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, raised $7.5 million.

Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday endorsed Dave McCormick, who is expected to be the Republican candidate for Senate in the state. In 2022, Trump criticized McCormick, who was running against the candidate then preferred by the former president, Mehmet Oz.

President Biden has shrunk former President Donald Trump’s lead to one percentage point in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll. How did he do it? Largely it appears by coalescing Democrats. Biden is now winning 89 percent of his 2020 supporters compared with 83 percent in February.

Sununu says Trump ‘contributed’ to an insurrection, but will still have his support.

It is a transformation that has repeated itself time and again within the Republican Party, and one that Mr. Sununu previewed in January, when he was campaigning for Ms. Haley but said he would support Mr. Trump if he won the nomination.

“No one should be surprised by my support,” he said on Sunday. “I think the real discussion is, you know, Americans moving away from Biden. That’s how bad Biden has become as president. There’s just no doubt about it, right? You can’t ignore inflation. You can’t ignore the border and say that these issues in the courthouse are going to be the one thing that brings Biden back into office.”

The interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Mr. Sununu on why he was supporting a man who he said had “contributed to the insurrection” on Jan. 6.

Mr. Sununu affirmed that he still believed that. But he said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Republican governor would support a Republican nominee, and suggested that Mr. Stephanopoulos was out of touch with public opinion if he thought concerns about democracy or felony convictions would sway voters.

“You believe that a president who contributed to an insurrection should be president again?” Mr. Stephanopoulos asked.

“As does 51 percent of America, George,” Mr. Sununu said. “I mean, really. I understand you’re part of the media, I understand you’re in this New York City bubble or whatever it is, but you got to look around what’s happening across this country.”

He went on: “It’s not about just supporting Trump. It’s getting rid of what we have today. It’s about understanding inflation is crushing families. It’s understanding that this border issue is not a Texas issue, it’s a 50-state issue that has to be brought under control. It’s about that type of elitism that the average American is just sick and tired of, and it’s a culture change. That’s what I’m supporting.”

Inflation has declined sharply from its 2022 peak, but was higher than expected in a report released last week.

Mr. Sununu said that Americans’ desire for “culture change,” a phrase he used eight times but did not concretely define, outweighed concerns about Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election or the four criminal trials he faces, the first of which begins this week.

While Mr. Trump as the Republican nominee wasn’t what he wanted, “we’ll take it if we have to,” Mr. Sununu said. “That’s how badly America wants a culture change.”

Mr. Stephanopoulos pushed back once more.

“So just to sum up, you would support him for president even if he was convicted in classified documents,” he said. “You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he’s lying about the last election. You’d support him for president even if he’s convicted in the Manhattan case. I just want to say, the answer to that is yes, correct?”

“Yeah,” Mr. Sununu said. “Me and 51 percent of America.”

A consultant for R.F.K. Jr. attacked a Black ally of Trump in a hom*ophobic post.

She referred to Mr. Johnson as an “open flaming Feminine closet gay” in the post. On Saturday, The New York Times obtained a screenshot of the post, which was first reported by Politico.

“How is he gonna lead heterosexual black men to the Republican Party?” she wrote in a caption.

Reached by phone on Sunday, Ms. Stanton-King asked how a reporter for The Times got her number and then hung up.

Ms. Stanton-King, whom Mr. Trump pardoned for her role in a car-theft ring, ran as a Republican and lost her race for a U.S. House seat in Georgia during the 2020 election.

Mr. Kennedy’s campaign did not immediately comment.

It was the second time in less than a week that a political consultant for Mr. Kennedy had put the campaign in the position of having to defuse a potential political land mine.

Earlier in the week, video emerged of Rita Palma, a ballot access consultant, calling President Biden the “mutual enemy” of Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy’s supporters. She posted on X that she had attended two “Stop the Steal” rallies after the 2020 election, including the one on Jan. 6, 2021, that escalated with the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

In the video, Ms. Palma discussed a hypothetical scenario in which Mr. Kennedy peeled away enough votes in the November election so that neither of the two major-party candidates — Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump — could reach 270 electoral votes, the number needed to win the presidency.

Each state delegation in the U.S. House would then get one vote to decide the presidency, she said, potentially helping Republicans to tip the election toward Mr. Trump.

Mr. Kennedy’s campaign fired Ms. Palma in the face of criticism over her remarks, which CNN first reported and were confirmed by The Times.

Mr. Johnson, the target of Ms. Stanton-King’s attack, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In February, Mr. Trump headlined a gala hosted by the Black Conservative Federation in Columbia, S.C., telling the group that he believed that the four criminal cases he is facing have earned him support from Black voters because they saw the historic unfairness of the justice system reflected in his legal woes.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Stanton-King, a former reality television star and an author, was convicted in 2004 on a federal conspiracy charge stemming from her role in a car-theft ring. She received a pardon from Mr. Trump in 2020 after serving two years in prison and six months of home confinement.

One month after being pardoned, she announced that she would run against John Lewis, the civil rights leader and longtime Georgia congressman. He died a few months later.

In that race, Ms. Stanton-King drew scrutiny after she repeatedly posted QAnon content and obscure hashtags, such as “#trusttheplan.” They were later removed from social media.

So was another online post in which Ms. Stanton-King compared the L.G.B.T.Q. movement to “pedophilia.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says He Won’t Seek the Libertarian Nomination for President

“Mr. Kennedy has many areas of alignment with the Libertarian Party, including a strong stance on civil liberties and keeping the country out of foreign wars,” a spokeswoman for his campaign, Stefanie Spear, said in a statement. “Mr. Kennedy, however, is not contemplating joining the Libertarian ticket.”

His decision was first reported on Saturday by ABC News. “We’re not going to have any problems getting on the ballot ourselves, so we won’t be running Libertarian,” he told the outlet.

Mr. Kennedy, a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and son of the former attorney general and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, began his campaign last year as a Democrat. In the fall, he decided to run as an independent instead.

Last month, he announced his running mate: Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer and investor who had helped bankroll a super PAC’s Super Bowl ad backing him.

In his final rally before his New York trial begins, Trump again cast himself as a political victim.

The case, which Mr. Trump also called a “communist show trial,” was brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and has nothing to do with Mr. Biden.

As he often does, Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cast himself as a victim of political persecution who is protecting his followers from a similar fate.

“I’m proud to do it for you,” he said of going on trial, speaking to a large crowd of his supporters who had waited for hours before gathering in a windswept field in Schnecksville, Pa. “Have a good time watching.”

There will not be television cameras in the courtroom. But Mr. Trump has sometimes held news conferences after his court dates, using them as an extension of the campaign trail, and he is expected to continue holding rallies on weekends, as he has for months.

Mr. Trump’s rally on Saturday began as Iran was launching an aerial attack on Israel in retaliation for a deadly Israeli airstrike two weeks ago.

The former president, who often portrays himself as Israel’s staunchest ally, offered prayers and support for the country. Then, as he often does, Mr. Trump effectively blamed Mr. Biden for the conflict in Gaza and insisted it would not have happened if he had won in 2020.

“They’re under attack right now,” Mr. Trump said of Israel. “That’s because we show great weakness.”

Several minutes later, members of the crowd began chanting, “Genocide Joe,” a phrase more commonly associated with progressives protesting Mr. Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he backed Israel’s right to defend itself after a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. But, as the chants died down, he seemed to agree with them. “They’re not wrong,” he said.

Mr. Trump repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 election and that Democrats cheated him out of a victory several times. Mr. Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020 by more than 80,000 votes.

“They cheat like hell,” Mr. Trump said of his political opponents, an allegation of voter fraud that has not been supported by evidence. He continued by sowing doubts about the integrity of the election in November, telling his supporters: “When you see them cheating, you get out there and start screaming. Start screaming.”

Mr. Trump also criticized a gag order imposed on him in the Manhattan case, in which he has been accused of covering up a sex scandal surrounding the 2016 campaign.

That order prevents Mr. Trump from publicly attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff and prosecutors, though not the judge or Manhattan’s district attorney.

“I will be forced to sit fully gagged. I’m not allowed to talk,” Mr. Trump said. “Can you believe it? They want to take away my constitutional right to talk.”

News Outlets Urge Trump and Biden to Commit to Presidential Debates

Media organizations rarely weigh in so explicitly on the campaign plans of presidential candidates. The statement underscores just how much uncertainty surrounds whether this year’s debates will occur.

Mr. Biden has declined to commit to the three debates scheduled for September and October. His allies have expressed concerns about the Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan group that has organized the events since 1988, and its ability to enforce its rules when Mr. Trump participates.

Mr. Trump has promised to debate and regularly taunts Mr. Biden for not following suit. But in 2020, Mr. Trump forced the cancellation of the second scheduled debate by pulling out at the last minute. Last year, Mr. Trump refused to debate his Republican primary opponents, and he has accused the debate commission of pro-Biden bias.

If no debate is held in 2024, it would break a streak that dates back to the Jimmy Carter-Gerald R. Ford election of 1976. Presidential debates remain America’s largest mass gathering outside of sports: In 2020, an average of 68 million people tuned in for the two Biden-Trump debates, significantly more than watched the party nominating conventions.

The news outlets’ plans to issue a joint statement were reported by The New York Times last week.

In addition to ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News, the following news organizations also endorsed the statement: The Associated Press, C-SPAN, NewsNation, NPR, PBS NewsHour, USA Today and Noticias Univision, the news division of the Spanish-language network.

(A spokesman for Newsmax volunteered to The Times last week that the right-leaning news channel was in agreement with the statement, although it is not an official signatory.)

The statement noted that dates and eligibility requirements for this year’s matchups were previously announced by the debate commission.

“Though it is too early for invitations to be extended to any candidates, it’s not too early for candidates who expect to meet the eligibility criteria to publicly state their support for, and their intention to participate in, the commission’s debates planned for this fall,” the statement reads.