International
Trump poised to launch 2024 comeback bid
| By AFP | Camille Camdessus |
Former US president Donald Trump is expected to launch another White House bid Tuesday, even as another one of his fellow election deniers lost a key race in last week’s midterms.
The 76-year-old billionaire, whose 2016 win shocked America and the world, has summoned the press to his Florida mansion for a “very big announcement” at 9:00 pm Tuesday (0200 GMT Wednesday).
Known for his unpredictability, Trump could still change his mind at the last minute, but for months he has barely hidden his desire to vie for the presidency again in 2024.
And delaying the announcement now, as some of his advisers have reportedly suggested to him, would be awkward considering Trump’s repeated boast about the momentousness of his Tuesday address.
“Hopefully TODAY will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!” Trump posted overnight on his Truth Social platform.
‘Red wave’ crashes
But in a new sign that Trump and his hardcore followers do not lead the electoral juggernaut they once did, one of Trump’s staunchest supporters, the election denier and establishment skeptic Kari Lake, was projected to lose her race to be governor of Arizona.
The results have emboldened Trump’s Republican detractors and sapped most of his political momentum heading into the expected Tuesday campaign launch.
In 2016, Trump and the Republicans swept into power, taking control of the White House and maintaining their majorities in both chambers of Congress.
But Democrats won back the House of Representatives in a 2018 landslide after campaigning largely against Trump’s caustic style.
They completed their trifecta of US political power by taking the Senate and the White House in 2020.
President Joe Biden, whose victory Trump has refused to acknowledge, recently revealed he is planning to run for a second term, although he said he will make a final decision next year.
Trump departed Washington in chaos two weeks after his partisans stormed the US Capitol, but he chose to remain in the political arena, continuing to fundraise and hold rallies around the country.
Leading up to last week’s midterm vote, in which Biden’s Democrats had been expected to lose handily, Trump made denial of the 2020 election results a key litmus test for candidates to win his influential political endorsement.
But the predicted Republican “red wave” failed to materialize, and Democrats will maintain their control of the Senate.
In the still-undecided House, Republicans seem likely to eke out only a razor-thin majority.
Trump’s once-loyal wingman, former vice president Mike Pence, offered potent criticism late Monday, telling ABC News that Trump was “reckless” on the day of the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol and that he had told the president they had no authority to unilaterally block certification of the election, as Trump sought.
But Pence declined to say directly whether Trump should be president again. “That’s up to the American people, but I think we’ll have better choices in the future,” he said in the interview.
Florida showdown
Part of the conservative world has already turned to another possible White House contender who, like Trump, is a resident of Florida: Governor Ron DeSantis.
The 44-year-old rising star of the hard right has emerged in strong form after his resounding re-election victory in the southeastern state and appears poised to challenge the former president.
Tuesday’s announcement is widely seen as a way for Trump to take the wind out of the sails of potential rivals, including DeSantis and Pence, who is publishing his memoir on the same day.
For the moment, Trump retains an undeniable popularity with his base, a tide of die-hard fans in red baseball caps who continue to flock to his rallies.
Most polls likewise give him the lead in a hypothetical Republican primary — despite being impeached twice by the House of Representatives and facing discontent from corners of the Republican Party.
His White House pursuit will be hampered too by multiple investigations into his conduct before, during and after his first term as president — which could ultimately result in his disqualification.
Those include allegations of fraud by his family business, his role in last year’s US Capitol attack and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his private Florida mansion, which was searched by the FBI in August.
International
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday requested that the Supreme Court restore his freedom while he appeals the historic 12-year house arrest sentence he received for bribery and procedural fraud.
Uribe, the most prominent figure of Colombia’s right wing, was convicted last week by a lower court for attempting to bribe paramilitary members into denying his ties to the violent anti-guerrilla squads.
Since Friday, the 73-year-old has been under house arrest at his residence in Rionegro, about 30 km from Medellín. The judge justified the measure by citing a risk of flight.
However, Uribe’s defense team rejected that argument and formally petitioned the court to immediately lift the detention order, claiming it lacks legal basis.
Uribe, a dominant force in Colombian politics for decades, is now the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted and placed under arrest, found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice to prevent links to paramilitary groups.
He has repeatedly denounced the trial as politically motivated, blaming pressure from the leftist government currently in power.
His political party, Centro Democrático, has called for nationwide protests on August 7 in support of Uribe, who remains popular for his hardline stance against guerrilla groups.
Uribe has until August 13 to submit his written appeal. The case will then move to the Bogotá High Court, which has until October 16 to uphold, overturn, or dismiss the sentence. If the deadline passes without a decision, the case will be archived.
International
U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince
The poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean is currently engulfed in a deep political crisis and a wave of violence driven by armed groups — a situation that an international security mission led by Kenya is attempting to stabilize.
Due to the worsening security conditions, the U.S. government has suspended all official movements of embassy personnel outside the compound in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. State Department announced Monday in a security alert posted on social media platform X.
“There are intense gunfights in the Tabarre neighborhood, near the U.S. Embassy,” the alert reads, urging the public to avoid the area.
Tabarre is a municipality located near Port-au-Prince International Airport, northeast of the Haitian capital.
According to a July report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 3,141 people were killed in Haitibetween January 1 and June 30 of this year.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
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