Trump news – live: Facebook gives Trump his account back after he agrees to give DNA in E Jean Carroll case – The Independent

Former president Donald Trump’s political committees have lined his coffers with almost $1m obtained from donors over the last two years, even as he failed to put much of the receipts towards electing Republicans in last year’s midterm elections.

According to Federal Election Commission filings reviewed by The Independent, Mr Trump’s self-dealing has brought $905,570 in funds from his Save America Political Action Committee and his nascent 2024 presidential campaign committee into his family’s businesses’ pockets from 20 January 2021 — the day Mr Trump left office — to the end of 2022.

Andrew Feinberg has the story:

The Trump administration and its allies regularly asked for tweets to be taken down by the social media platform, something the GOP has accused Democrats of doing.

“It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done,” while Mr Trump was president, a former aide in the administration told Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”

“Everybody worked the refs,” a Twitter source told the outlet. “Usually with the Republicans, most of the time rather than saying, ‘Why are you taking things down?’ it was, ‘You need to put things back up.’ It was, ‘Put me back, put me back.’”

Former Fox News host Lou Dobbs has criticised Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders for not mentioning Donald Trump during her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

“I think that was a great insult to Trump – not mentioning his name. To not mention his name, to talk about ‘new leadership’ … it was a shame,” he said on Steve Bannon’s War Room broadcast.

Perhaps no series of remarks angered Republicans during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday evening than when he referenced how some Republicans want to let Social Security and Medicare expire.

Mr Biden and Democrats have hammered Republicans for supposedly wanting to cut the two entitlement programs which offer money and health insurance to senior citizens and are wildly popular.

“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans — some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” he said.

Democratic US Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticised Twitter for its refusal to permanently suspend an influential account linked to anti-LGBT+ smears and threats of violence, including bomb threats at children’s hospitals.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on 8 February, the New York congresswoman questioned former executives at the social media platform why “Libs of TikTok” was allowed to falsely suggest that Boston Children’s Hospital was performing hysterectomies on transgender children, claims that allegedly fuelled threats and harassment towards the hospital and its staff.

Ms Ocasio-Cortez asked Twitter’s former head of safety Yoel Roth why the account was not suspended “despite inspiring a bomb threat due to the right-wing incitement of violence against trans Americans.” Mr Roth said that “regrettably” the account remained active.

Donald Trump is attacking the Club for Growth, a conservative group typically aligned with the GOP establishment, after he was not invited to a donor retreat in his new home state of Florida.

The group is holding a summit with a guest list ripped from polling of the likely 2024 GOP field, with one notable exception — Mr Trump himself. Other invited attendees include Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pompeo.

“Club for Growth endorsed 24 candidates during the 2022 midterms, LOSING 25% of them. On the other hand, President Trump was 233 WINS out of 253 races!” the former president claimed on Truth Social.

In another post, he added: “The Club For NO Growth, an assemblage of political misfits, globalists, and losers, fought me incessantly and rather viciously during my presidential run in 2016. They said I couldn’t win, I did, and won even bigger in 2020, with millions of more votes than ‘16, but the Election was Rigged & Stollen [sic].”

Mr Trump continued: “They asked to get together on Endorsements of candidates, we did, and had MANY WINS & NO losses. Relationship broke up over my Endorsement of certain great people in Alabama & Ohio. I won them all!”

The social media giant said in January that the one-term president would have his suspension lifted “in the coming weeks” and confirmed it on Thursday morning.

Donald Trump‘s former lawyer Michael Cohen said he was meeting yet again Wednesday with New York City prosecutors who have spent years examining the former president’s financial dealings.

Cohen stopped briefly to talk with reporters as he entered the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He said it was the 15th time he had met with prosecutors.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently convened a new grand jury to hear evidence related to payments Cohen helped arrange in 2016 to two women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Trump.

“I don’t know why I’m here yet. We’ll find out as soon as I get upstairs,” Cohen said.

Cohen was previously one of Trump’s top lieutenants, acting as a liaison with the media and handling some of his legal and business affairs. But after federal prosecutors charged Cohen with tax evasion and criminal campaign finance violations, the two have become enemies.

Donald Trump’s political action committees have spent nearly $1m at Trump-owned properties since the former president left office, according to Federal Election Commission filings reported by HuffPost.

The money was spent at properties such as Mr Trump’s hotel on Central Park in New York City and his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

The former president (and current 2024 candidate) attempted to capture headlines and public attention with a long thread of live commentary meant to accompany his political foe’s address. Few saw it, however, as the former president remains inactive on Twitter after being unbanned by Elon Musk.

“Having a hard time getting the words out, even though the Fake News will credit him with one of the Great Speeches of all time. I really want to see him improve. Come one Joe, you can do it!” he wrote in one Truth Social post.

But that was far from the extent of the ex-president’s attempts to hug the spotlight on Tuesday. While Mr Biden spoke, his 2024 campaign released a flurry of press releases — eight in total — touting various accomplishments and goings-on of the Trump presidency.

Mr Trump also attacked Mr Biden and his campaign for supposedly coordinating with social media companies to censor conservatives — though there’s no evidence that’s true, beyond some instances where the Biden campaign sought to have explicit images of the president’s son removed from Twitter.