Fake News indeed, because of its continuing insignificance, the Iowa primary caucuses did get over-analyzed by MSM and only signals the 2024 electoral extremes that may deflect from a long-term restoration of democracy. Trump diehards think Iowa caucus was rigged — even after his massive victory
Also Trump believes that he’s too famous to be a rapist and “claims that he was an A-List celebrity in the 90s and that an alibi is absurd” in his second defamation case, that he tried to postpone to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral, only for it to be revealed and noted by the judge, that he had scheduled a campaign event for the same period.
Many Iowans had not yet had a chance to cast a vote when The Associated Press and TV networks projected Trump as the winner, half an hour after the caucuses began. The early call prompted a backlash.
www.nytimes.com/...
Turnout fell far short of the last contested Republican caucuses, in 2016, when nearly 187,000 Iowans helped choose their party nominee.
This year, only about 110,000 people participated. The low turnout could be another mark against a quirky process that has come under intense criticism in recent years.
[...]
The caucuses — with their 7 p.m. meeting time and extended process — bear little resemblance to voting in most of the country. They also attract only a fraction of the participation: Roughly 15 percent of the nearly 720,000 registered Republicans in Iowa took part this year.
Even in more robust years, the caucuses have a dismal record of picking the Republican nominee. In the seven contested Republican races since 1980, only two winners in Iowa have captured the party’s nomination: Senator Bob Dole of Kansas in 1996 and Gov. George W. Bush of Texas in 2000.
www.nytimes.com/...
Trump’s fickle finger of fake award.
NEW YORK (AP) — After a big victory in the Iowa caucus, former President Donald Trump is expected in court Tuesday to face another legal challenge: a trial to determine how much more he owes the writer E. Jean Carroll for denying that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s and accusing her of lying about her claims.
Jury selection begins Tuesday morning at a federal court in Manhattan. Opening arguments could take place by afternoon in what is essentially a second penalty phase of a legal fight Carroll has already won.
apnews.com/...
In 2019, the longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine publicly accused Trump of raping her in the dressing room of a luxury department store in the 1990s — an account that Trump denied in stark and derogatory terms.
Last year, Carroll won a sexual abuse and defamation case against him, and the jury ordered Trump to pay her $5 million.
Now she’s taking him to court again.
The trial starting Tuesday — which will begin with the selection of a jury and is expected to last around three days — concerns comments that Trump made about Carroll while he was in office. He said she was peddling a false rape accusation and suggested she was motivated by money.
“I’ve never met this person in my life,” he said at the time. “She is trying to sell a new book — that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.”
Trump is not required to attend the trial personally, but he is expected to be in court on Tuesday before heading to New Hampshire for a campaign rally.
[...]
Because of the narrow focus of the trial, Kaplan has severely curtailed the scope of the evidence Trump can offer. The judge wrote in an opinion that “Mr. Trump is precluded from offering any testimony, evidence or argument suggesting or implying that he did not sexually assault Ms. Carroll, that she fabricated her account of the assault, or that she had any motive to do so.”
That means that although Trump has indicated that he may testify in his own defense, he will be unable to say in court what he has repeatedly claimed in public: that he didn’t rape Carroll and that she fabricated her accusations.
www.politico.com/...
UPDATE IN TRUTH SOCIAL RANT
The only right, honest, and lawful thing that Clinton-appointed Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has so far been unable to see clearly because of his absolute hatred of Donald J. Trump (ME!), can do is to end this unAmerican injustice being done to a President of the United States, who was wrongfully accused by a woman he never met, saw, or touched (a photo line does not count!), and knows absolutely nothing about. I have been considered an A-List celebrity for many decades, so even decades ago, since no one knows which date or dates to refer to, because the accusing woman can’t say the day, month, season, year, or decade, it would have been impossible for me to walk into a crowded department store (surrounded by buildings I own), right opposite the cashiers’ checkout desk, without being written about on Page Six, and every other outlet at the time. Remember, those gossip columnists were, perhaps, even more vicious and obsessed than the Internet of today.
In his second post, he added:
Page Two: She changed her FALSE “Monica Lewinsky-type” story on the DRESS, which she taunted us with, after it was proven to have no connection to me. She has been “all over the place” on the timing of this alleged “incident,” which never took place, and is being coached by Lunatic Radical Left Democrat operative attorney, Roberta Kaplan, who has sued me before, and just lost. I am the only one who has been injured by this attempted EXTORTION. E. Jean Carroll, who was down on her luck and failing in life, nastily calling her African American husband “an Ape,” and her Cat, “Vagina,” has gained money and fame she so badly wanted. It is my duty to America to right this egregious wrong, a case which was started based on no facts, no dates, no nothing, just fabricated lies and political shenanigans.
He concluded the three-post social media thread with:
Page Three: My lawyer said in the first “trial,” and Judge Kaplan should have put them together, that it was “beneath me,” as a President of the United States and Leading Candidate to assume Office again, with her having no evidence, facts, or credible story, or even knowing when the so-called act took place, to attend the first trial. Judge Kaplan should put this whole corrupt, Crooked Joe Biden-directed Election Interference attack on me immediately to rest. He should do it for America, because a President of the United States was accused of doing something he did not do by an UNKNOWN, TO HIM, woman seeking fame, fortune, and publicity for her ridiculous Book!
www.mediaite.com/...
Also his lawyer bails: