Key events
Thousands of pro-Trump bot accounts on Twitter are promoting the former president while disparaging his likely opponents in the 2024 Republican primary, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The AP reports:
Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump’s critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
When it came to Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn’t beat Trump, but would be a great running mate.
As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter’s algorithms to maximize their reach.
The report could open a new avenue of investigation for House Republicans, who are scrutinizing social media companies’ business practices.
Last month, the House oversight hearing held a hearing to examine claims that Twitter had attempted to silence voices on the right. But experts dismiss claims of social media companies targeting conservatives, as the Guardian’s Kari Paul has reported.
Kira Lerner, the Guardian’s democracy editor, reports on how election lies played a role at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference:
In the exhibit hall, vendors displayed various styles of hats declaring “Trump won” and attendees referred to former president Donald Trump as the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
But on the event stage, most prominent Republican lawmakers at CPAC didn’t bring up Trump’s big lie. Instead they largely chose not to repeat his common talking point that rampant voter fraud cost him his re-election.
CPAC this year was seen as a crucial barometer of the likely contours of the 2024 fight. In that regard the majority of conservatives here aligned themselves closely with the former president. But they also chose not to relitigate the 2020 election and looked ahead to the 2024 contest, repeatedly calling Trump the former and future president.
Attendees said they noticed the absence of a talking point that has in the past, including at last year’s CPAC, been pervasive.
“There’s a lot of gaps in the topic list,” said Suzzanne Monk, a DC resident who donned a Maga hat and a T-shirt reading: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Trump.” “The election integrity issues are kind of soft. We could be hitting a lot harder.”
Failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake wins CPAC VP poll
Kari Lake, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate who has continued to peddle the lie that she won her race in Arizona last year, won the vice-presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Lake defeated other contenders with 20% of the vote, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis came in second place at 14% and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley trailed with 10%.
The results were even more notable given that Lake beat out several declared and likely candidates in the 2024 presidential primary. Haley has already launched her campaign, and DeSantis is expected to announce in the coming months.
Lake also bested former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former Vice-President Mike Pence, both of whom are considered likely presidential candidates.
Lake’s team responded to the straw-poll results on Twitter, saying, “We’re flattered, but unfortunately our legal team says the Constitution won’t allow for her to serve as Governor and VP at the same time.”
Lake has continued to push her baseless claim that she actually won the Arizona gubernatorial race last year, even though she has failed to produce any meaningful evidence to support that assertion.
An appeals court rejected Lake’s effort to challenge the election results last month, upholding a lower court’s ruling that she had failed to substantiate her accusations of widespread fraud.
The Maricopa county superior court judge, Peter Thompson, wrote in his ruling in December: “The court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.”
Results show that Democratic candidate and now-Governor Katie Hobbs defeated Lake by 17,117 votes.
David Smith
David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, reports on the diminished status of CPAC this year:
The Conservative Political Action Conference, which bills itself as the biggest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world, has been taking place for nearly half a century.
After a pandemic-enforced move to Florida and Texas, it returned to the Washington area this week. But proximity to the capital was no guarantee of relevance. The list of Republicans who decided to stay away was as striking as those who showed up.
The absentees included potential 2024 contenders such as the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis; the Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin; former vice-president Mike Pence; and Senator Tim Scott. Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel were also missing.
Even Fox News, once Trump’s loudest cheerleader, appeared to have given up the ghost and has been supplanted by the more extreme and fringy Newsmax.
It was a far cry from the days when CPAC commanded national headlines as the rehearsal dinner for Republican primary candidates. In 2015, the year before the last competitive Republican primary, the marquee event heard from nearly all the major candidates, including Jeb Bush.
Read the full report:
Ron DeSantis skipped the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, leaving Donald Trump to dominate the annual event.
In his CPAC speech, Trump did not directly criticize DeSantis, although he did attack those Republicans who “want to destroy our great Social Security system”.
“I wonder who that might be,” Trump said.
The remark was interpreted as a thinly veiled attack on DeSantis, who has recently backtracked on his past House votes supporting raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
Other than his indirect criticism of DeSantis, Trump’s CPAC speech also included multiple attacks on Joe Biden and promises of “retribution” against his political enemies.
“We are going to finish what we started,” Trump told supporters. “We’re going to complete the mission, we’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again.”
Read David Smith’s full report from CPAC:
DeSantis inches closer to presidential announcement with California speech
Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.
Republican Ron DeSantis delivered a speech yesterday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, as the Florida governor appears to inch closer to announcing a presidential campaign.
In his remarks, DeSantis’ condemned other states’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic and celebrated Florida as a “citadel of freedom throughout the United States and indeed throughout the world”.
Criticizing policies that required people to get vaccinated against coronavirus, DeSantis said: “Nobody in the state of Florida was going to be pushed to have to choose between the job they needed and the shots they didn’t want to take.”
The speech seemed like a dress rehearsal of sorts for DeSantis, who is expected to enter the 2024 presidential primary in the coming months. Polls currently indicate that DeSantis poses the largest threat to Donald Trump, who continues to lead in most surveys.
DeSantis did not make those plans official yesterday, but his busy schedule of events, combined with the release of his new book, indicate that a formal campaign launch could be just around the corner.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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Joe Biden will headline the 2023 International Association of Fire Fighters Legislative Conference. The union was the first major labor organization to endorse his presidential bid in 2020.
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Kamala Harris will travel to Colorado to speak at the Arvada Center for Performing Arts. The vice-president will participate in a discussion on the White House’s efforts to combat the climate crisis.
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Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 1.30pm ET. The White House press secretary will likely face questions over DeSantis’ speech.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
