Ex-president faces GOP backlash after endorsing Dr Oz – follow live

A GOP strategist who used to work with one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers is pointing to the crowd sizes at his recent rallies as evidence that the GOP base is slowly losing its enthusiasm for the former president.

Susan Del Percio appeared on MSNBC where she made the comments on Sunday to Weekends with Alex Witt guest host Cori Coffin. Ms Del Percio, a PR specialist and Republican strategist who served as deputy commissioner for finance and administration in the administration of ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said that dwindling crowd sizes at Mr Trump’s rallies in conservative areas were proof that the Trump brand was losing its staying power.

John Bowden reports.

Herschel Walker, who is running against Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, was asked on Fox Business yesterday about the Biden administration’s energy policy – and the answer he gave ranged from the unclear to the near incomprehensible. Take a look below.

Some Republicans have been concerned about Mr Walker’s strength in November given his chequered personal history and lack of political experience, and interviews like this have not helped assuage those fears. However, he appears to be polling even with Mr Warnock, and sometimes slightly ahead.

Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory is running in a hotly contested Republican primary for the chance to succeed retiring Senator Roy Blunt, and he has the disadvantage of facing a Trump-backed candidate in Tedd Budd, who has lately shown signs of gaining in the polls.

To try and slow Mr Budd’s momentum, Mr McCrory has released an ad touting his own conservative credentials on immigration while associating his rival with a wheelbarrow filled with faeces.

After Donald Trump’s former Russia adviser Fiona Hill gave a highly critical interview to the New York Times in which she drew parallels between him and Vladimir Putin, the former president has lashed out to accuse Ms Hill of getting by on her British accent.

After years of growing conspiracy theories about organised paedophilia and a Supreme Court nomination process that saw Ketanji Brown Jackson pilloried for supposedly being soft on child abusers, the right-wing media ecosystem is now going hard on the issue of children’s exposure to sex, particularly via school curriculums – and a recent Fox News guest took it to the next level.

Speaking to the network’s Mark Levin, storied playwright David Mamet declared that the problem isn’t just what children are being taught, but the fact that they’re exposed to teachers at all…

Former Trump administration Russia adviser Fiona Hill, who has spoken out at length about the former president’s attitude toward Vladimir Putin, has given an interview to the New York Times in which she recalls how it felt to witness the attack on the Capitol while knowing what she did about Mr Trump’s Putin-esque predelictions.

Read the full interview below.

The question of how to handle Donald Trump himself is the single most difficult decision hanging over the 6 January select committee, but according to Liz Cheney, there is no dispute among the committee’s members that the president and many of those around him knew that their actions after the 2020 election were unlawful.

Speaking on CNN this weekend, however, she would not be drawn on whether or not a criminal referral for the former president is in the works.

Read more below from Alex Woodward.

Donald Trump’s decision to back TV doctor Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate primary has raised eyebrows among many of his current and former allies, some of whom consider the on-air medic a risky choice.

Among those raising the alarm was Mo Brooks, the Alabama Congressman whom Mr Trump recently un-endorsed for urging supporters to stop fixating on the 2020 election (or, as many have pointed out, because he looks set to lose his own Senate primary).

Dr Oz’s controversial history is just one liability in both the primary and the November; also up there is his lack of political campaign experience, as well as his stances on issues like transgender equality and gun safety where he has historically differed from what now counts as Republican orthodoxy.

John Bowden reports:

A challenge to stop North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn running for re-election because of his support for 6 January rioters recently failed in court – but a similar effort focused on Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene may just have a shot.

A federal judge is expected to rule today on Ms Greene’s attempt to dismiss a case against her that alleges she violated the 14th amendment, and is therefore ineligible for elected office. It reads: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Read more on the case here.

At his weekend rally, Donald Trump told his supporters that with Republican majorities in Congress, the party would end “every last Covid mandate”, eliciting a huge cheer.

The ex-president has previously confused some of his more ardently anti-vaccine supporters with his endless boasting about the shots being developed during his administration, as well as with his eagerness to declare that he’s received the vaccines himself – something various other Republicans have declined to confirm, with still others claiming to be proudly unvaccinated.