Trump news latest: Ex-president’s candidate loses in Nebraska as Musk says Twitter should unban him

Donald Trump has mostly scored well with his endorsements this cycle, but Charles Herbster’s failure in the Nebraska primary has put a dent in his numbers. And as the Washington Post’s Dave Weigel points out, the facts behind the endorsement make his loss all the more meaningful:

As he makes the rounds to promote his book A Sacred Oath – though it is promoting itself more than adequately – former defence secretary Mark Esper has been describing what it was like trying to understand Donald Trump’s thought processes.

Asked by Nicole Wallace when he first realised what Donald Trump was like, Mr Esper described a 2019 conversation at the president’s Bedmister golf club during which the two men discussed Afghanistan.

“The president goes on this soundtrack, as I call it, of wanting to withdraw from Nato and badmouthing Angela Merkel. Next it’s pulling all Americans out of Africa, we move to South Korea and withdrawing troops…clearly this is an eye-opener for me that he is focused on these things, and again, outside the bounds of what conventional wisdom would be in, in my view, traditional Republican foreign policy.”

A Rolling Stone story that Donald Trump asked national security aides if China was targeting the US with a “hurricane gun” has added yet another entry to the long list of bizarre questions the ex-president is alleged to have asked his staff. It has also drawn a similar anecdote from MIles Taylor, a former Homeland Security staffer who has turned against Trump publicly in recent years.

In a startling Twitter threat, he recounts a bizarre story from around the time of the same hurricane in which Mr Trump first wondered why hurricanes spin the way they do, suggested flying down to the Carolinas via helicopter to see the wreckage despite the fact that the hurricane hadn’t yet landed and a helicopter couldn’t fly him that far – prompting an extended monologue on the fact that helicopters apparently break down too often because they “have too many parts”.

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The Mayor of London has said Donald Trump’s period as US president led to a significant rise in racial abuse directed at him.

Sadiq Khan, speaking at Stanford University near San Francisco on his US trade mission, said temporary and permanent banning of Mr Trump from Twitter led to a sharp drop in such abuse.

“During those four years he was president, that led to me having to receive police protection and a lot of racial abuse,” Mr Khan said in comments carried by the BBC.

Former Donald Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn accused the Biden administration of targeting him after the US Army concluded that he violated the Constitution by accepting payment from the Russian government.

Mr Flynn, who received a presidential pardon by Mr Trump, said, the Department of Defense is prosecuting him by “tagging my pay for what they call a violation of something called the Emoluments Clause”.

“It’s just another dig, another means to embarrass, they just want me to shut up,” he said interview on the far-right Real America’s Voice network. “They’re just going to reach into my retirement and take some money out.”

The army is seeking to recoup $38,557 after a investigation determined that in 2015 he failed to obtain the necessary approval before accepting payment from “an entity substantially owned or controlled by a foreign government ”.

“The Army has determined that you did not obtain the necessary approvals before engaging in employment activities with Russia Today (RT), a foreign government controlled entity,” the army said.

London mayor Sadiq Khan has blamed the former US president Donald Trump for a rise in racial abuse directed at him.

Addressing students of Stanford University in California, Mr Khan said that he received at least 233,000 “explicitly racist or racialised social media messages” since he was elected as London’s mayor in 2016.

Partly blaming Mr Trump for a 1,892 per cent rise in the abuse against him, Mr Khan told the audience that the banning of Mr Trump from Twitter led to a sharp drop in such abuse.

“During those four years he was president, that led to me having to receive police protection and a lot of racial abuse,” he was quoted as saying by the BBC. “

”In the last year of him being president, once he was banned from Twitter, I received the least racial abuse of any time over five years.”

The feud between the two started when Mr Trump, elected six months after Mr Khan began his tenure as London mayor in May 2016, criticised him for his response to the London Bridge terror attacks.

Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene has been asked by a Democrat lawmaker not to parrot the propaganda of the Russian president after she contested a $40bn (£32.4bn) aid package for Ukraine on Tuesday,

She claimed that the Biden administration was using this to cover up its crimes as members of the US House of Representatives began debating the aid package.

Ms Greene said: “$40bn dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”

“An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”

Democrat lawmaker Jamie Raskin, denounced her for her comments and said: “Here’s a formula for the destruction of democracy: repeating Putin’s propaganda and disinformation and appeasing imperialist assaults on sovereign nations.”

Jack Dorsey said that he “agrees” that there should not be permanent bans on individual Twitter users. He said it was a “business decision” that should not have been made.

“And we should always revisit our decisions and evolve as necessary. I stated in that thread and still believe that permanent bans of individuals are directionally wrong,” he said in response to a tweet from Dan Primack, a business editor at Axios.

Mr Dorsey added: “There are exceptions (CSE, illegal behaviour, spam or network manipulation, etc), but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work, which I wrote about here after the event (and called for a resilient social media protocol)”.

It came after Mr Musk told Financial Times in an interview he would reverse the ban on the former president if his purchase of the social media giant goes through.

Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who was backed by the state’s outgoing governor, has won the Republican primary for Nebraska governor.

He defeated the Donald Trump-backed Charles Herbster, who is a millionaire businessman embroiled in scandals for groping multiple women.

“We live in the greatest place on the planet, right here in Nebraska,” Mr Pillen said in a victory speech late Tuesday as a crowd cheered and chanted, “Let’s go, Jim!” He said his opponents had called to concede.

Mr Pillen is a hog farm owner and veterinarian. He defeated eight challengers, including Brett Lindstrom, a state senator and Omaha financial adviser who was generally viewed as a more moderate choice.

In his victory speech, Alex Moonet said: “I am honored the voters of West Virginia’s new Second Congressional District have chosen me to carry the conservative banner as we begin the sprint to November.”

“Tonight is a monumental night for West Virginians, and I look forward to being their trusted conservative voice in Congress.”