Trump to appear for speech
▶ Ex- POTUS to address conservative forum in Florida
Former US president Donald Trump will give a speech later in February to a gathering of political conservatives in Orlando, Florida, a source familiar with the plans said Saturday, his first extended public address since leaving the White House on January 20.
The appearance is scheduled for Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference ( CPAC), one of the country’s largest annual gatherings of political conservatives.
Trump will be “talking about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement,” the source told AFP
He is also expected to challenge the “disastrous amnesty and border policies” of his successor, President Joe Biden, the source added.
Trump, who was impeached for an unprecedented second time for his role in fomenting the January 6 assault on the US Capitol, nevertheless remains a potent force in US politics.
Three- quarters of Republicans want Trump to play a prominent role in the party, according to a poll from Quinnipiac University this week.
Since reluctantly departing the White House on January 20 and ceding to Biden – despite his constant but unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen – Trump has largely kept to himself . at his Mar- a- Lago estate in Florida.
Stripped of his Twitter megaphone, he called into friendly cable TV news programs this week after the death of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, musing on far- right channel Newsmax about the possibility of a future political run.
“I won’t say yet but we have tremendous support. And I’m looking at poll numbers that are through the roof.”
“Let’s say somebody gets impeached, typically your numbers would go down, they would go down like a dead balloon. But the numbers are very good, they’re very high,” he said.
And in perhaps a preview of what might come at CPAC, Trump issued a statement Tuesday ripping into top Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who had delivered a scathing rebuke of the former president despite voting to acquit him of inciting an insurrection.
“The Republican Party can never again be respected or strong with political ‘ leaders’ like Sen. Mitch McConnell at its helm,” Trump said in the statement.
“Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”
Biden, who is trying to steer the US through the COVID- 19 pandemic and an economic crisis, has tried to avoid discussing Trump, at one point calling him “the former guy.”
US President Joe Biden’s attorney general nominee Merrick Garland will tell the Senate on Monday he plans to prioritize civil rights and combat domestic terror if confirmed as the top US justice official, according to remarks released on Saturday.
The Justice Department’s mission to enforce the 1957 Civil Rights Act “remains urgent because we do not yet have equal justice,” said Garland, whose confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin Monday.
“Communities of color and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system; and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change,” he said.
Garland, 68, serves as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, one of 13 federal appeals courts. Former president Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2016, but the Republicancontrolled Senate at the time refused to hold hearings on the nomination.
Garland’s confirmation this time around is considered a near- certainty, as several key Republican senators have endorsed him.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Garland will inherit the beginnings of a probe into the deadly storming in January of the US Capitol by former president Donald Trump’s supporters, as well as the challenge of preventing future domestic attacks.
In his remarks, Garland called the January 6 riot a “heinous attack” on the peaceful transfer of power, and said that “battling extremist attacks on our democratic institutions also remains central” to the Justice Department’s mission 150 years after its founding.