Trump doubles down after DC hearing: ‘Most people agree that we’re entitled to immunity’ – live | Donald Trumpthedigitalchaps

A group of four Republican former military pilots who are currently serving in the House have called on Lloyd Austin to resign or be fired for not promptly notifying Joe Biden of his hospitalization.

“This failure to notify the proper officials is an extraordinary breach of protocol, and at most, dereliction of duty,” August Pfluger, Jake Ellzey, Mike Garcia and Scott Franklin wrote in a letter to the president. “It is unacceptable and unconscionable that the principal cabinet member responsible for U.S. national security would be absent without notice of leave, designating an alternative chain of command, or making relevant Members of Congress and the Executive Branch aware of such an absence.”

They continued:

Secretary Austin’s duties require his availability at a moment’s notice to respond to potential national security crises. We believe Secretary Austin’s blatant violation of the Pentagon’s Principles of Information and serious lapse in judgment warrants his immediate resignation, as well as the resignation of any staff involved in covering up his hospitalization. If he does not resign, he should be immediately dismissed.

The White House has said Biden does not plan to ask Lloyd for his resignation.

Pentagon says defense secretary Austin was hospitalized after complications from prostate surgery treatment – report

Greg Pence, a Republican congressman for Indiana and former vice-president Mike Pence’s brother, will not run for re-election, he said on Tuesday.

He is the 16th House Republican to announce their departure during or at the end of their current term. He did not give a reason for standing down.

“In 2017, I ran for Congress because I was Ready to Serve Again. As a former Marine Officer, I approached the job with purpose,” he said in a statement posted to X.

“After three terms, I’ve made the decision to not file for reelection. To the voters in Indiana’s 6th district – it is a privilege and honor to represent you”.

The reviews are in on Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s state of the state speech this morning, and the widely held view among critics is that it was aimed more at voters in Iowa.

The Republican presidential hopeful, who needs a decent showing in next week’s Iowa caucuses to retain any hope of catching the runaway leader Donald Trump in the primary race, began with attacks on Joe Biden and his favorite hobby horse topics, the economy, immigration and crime.

He spoke of the southern border, Washington DC, San Francisco, Illinois, Chicago and California before his first mention of Florida, a boast of how many manufacturing jobs he claimed to have generated in his home state.

Some issues in Florida important to voters, including the soaring cost of home insurance, were relegated to towards the end of his speech, as was the taking of credit for the legislature’s removal of sales tax on many baby items, a Democrat-led initiative.

Lauren Book, leader of Florida’s Senate Democrats, was unequivocal in her assessment of DeSantis’s address, saying it “fails to grasp the reality Floridians are living with – and struggling with – on a daily basis”.

The Guardian’s Oliver Milman has news of developments in Georgia, where Donald Trump is facing felony charges for election interference:

One of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in his Georgia election interference case has alleged that Fani Willis – the district attorney leading the proceeding – has been “engaged in a personal, romantic relationship” with one of the top prosecutors she brought in for the case.

In a court filing seeking to have charges against him dismissed, an attorney for Michael Roman – an ex-staffer of the former president – has accused Willis of intentionally failing to disclose a relationship with the prosecutor, Nathan Wade, and personally benefiting from his appointment to the case.

The filing offers no evidence of the relationship, instead stating “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship”. It alleges that the supposed couple have used legal fees from the case to fund trips to Florida, Napa Valley and a cruise to the Caribbean.

Read the full story:

Democrats in Maine have voted down a Republican effort to impeach Shenna Bellows, the top election official who removed Donald Trump from the state’s presidential ballot.

A House vote along party lines defeated the move 80-60, the Associated Press reports. Bellows called the impeachment measure “political theater” and has promised to abide by any legal ruling on her decision to keep Trump off Maine’s 5 March primary ballot.

Maine’s supreme court is set to hear an appeal.

Republicans say her decision disenfranchised more than 300,000 voters in Maine who chose Trump in the last election. “She is not a judge. She is not a jury. And I believe that the people feel absolutely disenfranchised,” state House representative Katrina Smith said.

The day so far

Indicted senator Menendez says he ‘received nothing’ from Qatar after new charges

While he dedicated much of his remarks after the appeals court hearing to criticizing Joe Biden, Donald Trump did make a somewhat revealing comment on why it is necessary for presidents to have immunity from prosecution.

“You can’t have a president without immunity … as a president, you have to be able to do your job,” Trump said. Special counsel Jack Smith contends that Trump’s attempt to meddle with the 2020 election results in key states, among other tactics, were not part of his presidential duties, and he is therefore able to be prosecuted.

Trump, however, compared the argument to his predecessor Barack Obama’s use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists, which some legal scholars have warned may have been unlawful.

“If I wasn’t given immunity, then other presidents would be talked about today. President Obama with the drone strikes, which were very bad. There were mistakes, terrible mistakes … You really can’t put a president in that position,” he said.

The Trump administration had its own record of questionable drone strikes.

Trump then shifted to recounting all the ways in which Joe Biden failed as president.

It was as good a summary as any of how the former president will campaign against the current one, assuming Trump, as expected, again wins the Republican nomination.

Trump kicked his diatribe off by remarking on Biden’s, “horrible job he’s done at the border, where our country is being destroyed”, eschewing his recent rhetoric that has been compared to things white supremacists say.

He next shared his thoughts on Biden’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The lowest moment, I think, in the history of our country was Afghanistan, the way we withdrew, not that we withdrew, but the way we withdrew with shame, we surrendered,” Trump said. Left unmentioned was his own administration’s role in paving the way for the pullout, which has left lasting damage on Biden’s approval ratings.

Despite presiding over a botched response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, a key message Trump will bring to voters in the months to come is that the country and the world were less racked by crisis and hardship during his presidency, and he used his remarks to press that point.

“You wouldn’t have inflation but much more importantly, you wouldn’t have had the Ukraine situation with Russia, you wouldn’t have had the attack on Israel. You’d have a much different economy right now, have a great economy and we would be respected all over the world, the way we were just three years ago,” Trump said.