Despite winning the Electoral College in 2016, Trump couldn't admit he had actually lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, instead claiming without evidence that she had received millions of illegal votes. Trump made his baseless election fraud accusations again going into the 2020 election and escalated them after Joe Biden was declared the winner, with Trump and many of his supporters refusing to acknowledge his defeat. The widespread belief among Republicans that the election was illegitimate culminated in a “Stop the Steal” rally headlined by Trump on Jan. 6, the day Congress met to officially certify Biden as the winner of the election.
MyPillow's outspoken Trump-supporting chief executive was censored during an interview at CPAC – an event branded “America Uncanceled” – after he launched into conspiracy theories linking the coronavirus vaccine with the devil. Mike Lindell was speaking on Sunday to Liz Willis, the host of conservative YouTube channel Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), when he delivered a somewhat meandering set of conspiracy theories relating to the pandemic, the presidential election and Israel. “In Israel right now, from the prime minister on down, we don't know what happened, but obviously, he congratulated Biden, but after that, we got a little suspect,” Mr Lindell said during the segment that was edited out by RSBN on their YouTube channel.
The leader of Taiwan's main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT) said on Tuesday he is in no rush to travel to China to meet President Xi Jinping, and that Beijing's proposals to get Taiwan to accept Communist rule had "no market" on the island. The KMT ruled China before retreating to Taiwan at the end of a civil war with the Communists in 1949. While ties across the Taiwan Strait have improved dramatically in the last three decades, Beijing continues to claim Taiwan as its own territory.
The penal colony where Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been sent to serve his two-year sentence is "one of the worst" in Russia, former inmates and prisoners rights groups have said. Mr Navalny was reported to have arrived at penal colony No. 2 in the town of Pokrov, three hours outside Moscow, on Sunday. Transfers of inmates within Russia's penitentiary system can take days or weeks and relatives often only discover the whereabouts of a prisoner after he or she has arrived at a prison.
FBI Director Chris Wray is set to testify for the first time since the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, with lawmakers likely to press him on whether the bureau adequately communicated with other law enforcement agencies about the potential for violence that day. Questions about the FBI's preparations for the riot, and investigations into it, are expected to dominate Wray's appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The violence at the Capitol made clear that a law enforcement agency that revolutionized itself after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to deal with international terrorism is now scrambling to address homegrown violence from white Americans.
Boeing and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) announced Tuesday local time that they've completed the first test flight of a pilotless fighter-like jet devised to operate alongside crewed aircraft. Why it matters: The "Loyal Wingman" combat drone is serving as the foundation for the Boeing Airpower Teaming System being developed for the company's global defense customers. It has the potential to "revolutionize the RAAF's air combat tactics playbook," per The Drive.
Utah senator Mitt Romney says he “took a fall” while visiting his grandkids in Boston over the weekend, knocking him unconscious and sending him to the hospital. Sen @MittRomney has a black eye and stitches, says he took a fall while visiting his son in Boston, “I took a fall, knocked me unconscious but I'm doing better.” Joked: “I went to CPAC, that was a problem...”
One hundred seventy members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a bipartisan letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging President Joe Biden's administration to address "troubling" human rights issues as it formulates policy for dealings with Turkey. The letter, dated Feb. 26 and made public on Monday, notes that NATO ally Turkey has long been an important U.S. partner but says the administration of President Tayyip Erdogan has strained the relationship.
European Union plans for a coronavirus vaccine passport could be opened up to British tourists and other non-EU holidaymakers, Brussels said on Monday. Ursula von der Leyen said the EU-wide “Digital Green Pass” would be proposed this month and that it could be a first step towards a virus passport for travel from outside the bloc. The Digital Green Pass should facilitate Europeans' lives.
Republican lawmakers in Georgia muscled legislation through the state House on Monday that would roll back voting access, over the objection of Democrats and civil rights groups gathered at the Capitol to protest. The bill comes after record turnout led to Democratic wins in Georgia's presidential election and two U.S. Senate runoffs. House Bill 531 passed the lower legislative chamber by a vote of 97-72.
A Fox News anchor set the record straight for her colleague and former Republican Jason Chaffetz, who claimed that the New York Times has been holding back in its coverage of sexual assault allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. During a Fox News segment on Monday, Mr Chaffetz, who is now a Fox News contributor, hit out at The New York Times, saying it has been “far behind” in covering the swirling allegations regarding the Democrat politician. We will see what the media does.
Alibaba and Ant Group founder Jack Ma has lost the title of China's richest man, a list published on Tuesday showed, as his peers prospered while his empire was put under heavy scrutiny by Chinese regulators. Ma and his family had held the top spot for China's richest in the Hurun Global Rich List in 2020 and 2019 but now trail in fourth place behind bottled water maker Nongfu Spring's Zhong Shanshan, Tencent Holding's Pony Ma and e-commerce upstart Pinduoduo's Collin Huang, the latest list showed. His fall out of the top three comes "after China's regulators reined in Ant Group and Alibaba on anti-trust issues," the Hurun report said.
Two Americans suspected of helping former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn skip bail and escape to Lebanon in December 2019 have been extradited to Japan. Michael Taylor and his son Peter had been held in a suburban Boston jail since May. They were handed over to Japanese custody on Monday and arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday. Ghosn, who led Nissan Motor Co. for more than two decades, was arrested in 2018, and charged with under-reporting his future compensation and breach of trust in diverting Nissan money for personal gain.
China's vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccine to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press. With just four of China's many vaccine makers able to produce at least 2.6 billion doses this year, a large part of the world's population will end up inoculated not with the fancy Western vaccines boasting headline-grabbing efficacy rates, but with China's humble, traditionally made shots.
Duterte, whose six-year term ends next year, has been reading the names of government employees and officers implicated in graft and corruption in his TV appearances to highlight his campaign against abuses and irregularities. But Duterte, a former government prosecutor who has threatened drug suspects with death and is known for his expletives-laden outbursts, has faced criticisms for abusive behavior himself. In his televised remarks Monday night, Duterte lashed out at Vice President Leni Robredo for criticizing the government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak and vaccination campaign.
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Rudy Giuliani, who was Donald Trump's personal lawyer, has been suspended from YouTube again for spreading election misinformation. After the November 2020 elections, the former mayor of New York was one of the high profile allies of Mr Trump who made unsubstantiated voter fraud claims. Mr Giuliani handled the legal challenge to election results with several cases across the US but remained unsuccessful.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Sen. Ted Cruz after he mocked her during his CPAC speech. Ocasio-Cortez again criticized Cruz for fleeing Texas during the recent electrical-grid collapse. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at Sen. Ted Cruz after the Texas Republican mocked her in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, on Friday.
The plane laden with vaccines had just rolled to a stop at Santiago's airport in late January, and Chile's president, Sebastián Piñera, was beaming. The source of that hope: China – a country that Chile and dozens of other nations are depending on to help rescue them from the COVID-19 pandemic. China's vaccine diplomacy campaign has been a surprising success: It has pledged roughly half a billion doses of its vaccine to more than 45 countries, according to a country-by-country tally by The Associated Press.
Iranian lawmakers on Monday visited an impoverished southeastern province that has been roiled by recent unrest, state-run media reported, the government's most visible step yet to address rising popular resentment in the region. Five members of parliament, including from the influential committee for national security and foreign policy, arrived in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan to investigate the turmoil, state-run IRNA news agency reported. Last week, border guards shot at fuel smugglers trying to cross into Iran from Pakistan, killing at least two and sparking protests across the city of Saravan.
The United States wasted billions of dollars in war-torn Afghanistan on buildings and vehicles that were either abandoned or destroyed, according to a report released Monday by a U.S. government watchdog. The agency said it reviewed $7.8 billion spent since 2008 on buildings and vehicles. Only $343.2 million worth of buildings and vehicles “were maintained in good condition,” said the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which oversees American taxpayer money spent on the protracted conflict.
Volvo says it will make only electric vehicles by 2030. The Swedish automaker said Tuesday that it is phasing out the production of all cars with internal combustion engines — including hybrids. “There is no long-term future for cars with an internal combustion engine,” said Henrik Green, Volvo's chief technology officer.
The Supreme Court rejected two lawsuits filed by the Trump ally Sidney Powell. It extends the extraordinary losing streak for lawsuits seeking to overturn 2020 election results. President Joe Biden was inaugurated more than a month ago.
Israel's Supreme Court on Monday dealt a major blow to the country's powerful Orthodox establishment, ruling that people who convert to Judaism through the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel are also Jewish and entitled to become citizens. The landmark ruling, 15 years in the making, centered around the combustible question of who is Jewish and marked an important victory for the Reform and Conservative movements. These liberal streams of Judaism, which represent the vast majority of affiliated American Jews, have long been marginalized in Israel.
China appears to be moving faster toward a capability to launch its newer nuclear missiles from underground silos, possibly to improve its ability to respond promptly to a nuclear attack, according to an American expert who analyzed satellite images of recent construction at a missile training area. Hans Kristensen, a longtime watcher of U.S., Russian and Chinese nuclear forces, said the imagery suggests that China is seeking to counter what it may view as a growing threat from the United States. The U.S. in recent years has pointed to China's nuclear modernization as a key justification for investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming two decades to build an all-new U.S. nuclear arsenal.
“How about we skip ‘he won’t win’ cycle and not do 2016 all over again. Trump can absolutely win another presidential election.”
“With independents deserting him, there is simply no path for Trump to get back into the White House — except as a tourist.”
“They might as well cancel the 2024 primaries...because there is no way he can lose.”
“The next Republican presidential primary will be heavily shaped by Trump — whether or not he decides to run again.”
“Donald Trump will not be running for president again. He will, however, continue to tease the possibility of a 2024 run.”