The '24 Seven - 3/4/24
The top seven stories shaping the race for the White House
Hello, and welcome to The ‘24 Seven - 24sight’s daily roundup of the top seven stories shaping the race for the White House. If you see something I missed or have suggestions, drop me a note - tom@24sight.news.
More from the election most Americans don’t really want …
1 BREAKING: Supreme Court keeps Trump on ballots
The Supreme Court decided Monday morning that the 14th Amendment ban on anyone who engaged in insurrection against the U.S. does not bar former President Donald Trump from appearing on primary ballots. The court decided unanimously in favor of Trump.
The full decision can be read here.
The justices were skeptical of Colorado’s arguments when they heard oral arguments in the case last month, signaling they were likely to ensure Trump stays on the ballot there.
The 14th Amendment decision marks the first of the high court’s key decisions in the 2024 race (and the aftermath of the 2020 election and January 6th). The court announced last week it would weigh Trump’s claim that a president enjoys total immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office. The move could push the federal trial for Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election into the middle of the final stretch of the race this fall, or past the election.
2 Haley Win
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has already beaten former President Donald Trump in the Washington, D.C. Republican primary, the AP projects. (The primary day in Washington is Tuesday, but early voting has been under way for almost two weeks and the AP based its determination on voting results released by the D.C. Republican Party.)
Fifteen states and the District hold their primaries tomorrow, Super Tuesday. Haley still looks highly unlikely to win the Republican nomination, but also has no apparent reason to drop out of the race either. In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Haley took a swipe at the Republican National Committee, where Trump is working to install his campaign team, declining to say if she would endorse Trump - a possible violation of the party’s requirement that candidates sign a pledge to endorse the eventual nominee. Trump did not sign the pledge to support the eventual nominee and refused to participate in the party’s debates.
3 Both sides
Americans really don’t want to vote for either President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump, according to the results from the latest Associated Press/NORC poll. Specifically, more than half of voters have some level of concern about Biden and Trump’s mental fitness and abilities to fulfill the demands of the job if elected. Biden is 81 years old and Trump is 77 and both men have routinely displayed the wear and tear that comes with age and the demands of the presidency.
This comes on the heels of the latest New York Times/Siena poll which showed deep concerns among voters with Biden’s age which dominated inside-the-beltway talk over the weekend.
Veteran conservative talk show host
writes in his newsletter “If the election were held today, Trump would win” — which is as much a reminder of the politics of the moment as the fact that polls are snapshots in time. Voting doesn’t start until October.4 Under control
Axios reports that Trump’s third campaign team, it’s most disciplined and cohesive since he started running for office more than eight years ago, is working hard to keep him on a script tightly focused on issues like immigration and the economy.
But Trump famously has a hard time staying on a scripted message — earning the moniker “TelePrompter Trump” to demark the rare moments when he would stick to the script.
He also struggled at times in a pair of get out the vote rallies this past weekend while reading from the TelePrompter in North Carolina and Virginia. He referred to a Biden “kime” (appearing to drop the “r” in “crime”), said he wants the country to be “respectered” (apparently adding an “r” to “respected”), and made an indiscernible comment regarding “Saudi Arabia and Russia” in this clip taken by Acyn on X.com.
5 The State of the Union
Biden is scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address Thursday night. Biden used his last annual address to lay out his policy goals (and goad Republicans on whether they would join him in supporting Medicare and Social Security.) It’s Biden’s final state of the union before the general election.
Related, Vice President Kamala Harris called Sunday for a cease fire in the ongoing Israel/Hamas War.
6 Money race
The clock is running down for Trump to pay a pair of hefty fines in two cases — $83.3 million owed to advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in a defamation ruling and upward of $460 million to the state of New York in Trump Organization business fraud trial.
Which likely helps explain Trump’s recent pivot to wooing more donors. Trump’s top aides, dispatched to the RNC, have promised not to use the national party’s coffers to pay his legal bills anymore. But Trump buried the hatchet with the well-heeled conservative group, the Club for Growth, Friday.
24sight broke the news Friday night of Trump’s comments at the gathering, where he said that he and McIntosh “were back in love, we’re in deep deep love.”
7 Paid subscriber chat this week
I’ll send out details on our next chat this week for paid subscribers where we’ll do our level best to answer your questions about all the forces shaping the race. You can find last week’s chat here — it’s an added benefit for paying subscribers of 24sight. If you dig our work (and are not already a paying member) please think about upgrading to paid - $5/month, $60/year. The old journalism industry is ailing, but the need and desire for news continues apace.