Barely 48 hours after criticizing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ new six-week abortion ban, former President Donald Trump took credit for it and other hardline Republican abortion bans across the country. The GOP presidential frontrunner also took a victory lap for being “able to kill Roe v. Wade.”

"After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the 'shock' of everyone, and for the first time put the pro-life movement in a strong negotiating position over the radicals that are willing to kill babies even into their 9th month, and beyond," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday morning.

“Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to,” he added. “Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing. Thank you President TRUMP!!!” he added.

These utterly-unhinged remarks starkly contrasted with those he made in the immediate aftermath of the GOP’s historic faceplant in the November 2022 midterms, blaming pro-life Republicans — although not specifically the far-right candidates he endorsed — for the party’s loss.

The ex-president remained vague about the hot-button issue as poll after poll showed overwhelming support for abortion access, but recent criticism from leading pro-life groups seeking federal abortion bans evidently has driven Trump to shift his tone again.

For the former president, it’s a highwire act: Total abortion bans might have widespread support during the upcoming Republican 2024 primaries, but cause problems in the general election for whoever becomes the party’s nominee, as exit polls showed it did for Republicans in 2022.

At the controversial May 10 town hall with CNN, Trump dodged questions about whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if elected president in 2024 and how many weeks after pregnancy a woman should have access to abortion.

However, in an interview with The Messenger, published last Monday, Trump knocked DeSantis, who is widely expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign soon, for his “harsh” new abortion restriction.

“If you look at what DeSantis did, a lot of people don't even know if he knew what he was doing. But he signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh,” he said.

Asked whether strict abortion restrictions would cost the GOP dearly in 2024, when he called into the far-right cable network Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight on Tuesday, Trump praised his own appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices, whose Dobbs ruling he said gave the pro-life groups the “power of negotiation.”

"First of all, I'm the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade, and everybody said that was an impossible thing to do," Trump said. "It's been now brought back to the states, and what I've done is I've given the pro-life people — who are wonderful people and loving people — I've given them the power of negotiation, because now they're able to negotiate something that's going to be very important, and I put them in a position now."

"DeSantis, or Ron DeSanctimonious as I call him, he came out with the six weeks ‘Florida abortion ban]. Other people agree with it, and a lot of people don't, Trump continued, characteristically invoking his contingent of phantom yes-people.

The former president also claimed without evidence that he could map out an abortion proposition that everyone would be happy with: “We’re in a position now, and I’m going to be leading the charge…where we can get something that the whole country can agree with.”

DeSantis fired back on Tuesday at a news conference after inking legislation to combat human trafficking.

“Protecting an unborn child when there’s a detectable heartbeat is something that almost 99 percent of pro-lifers support,” DeSantis told reporters. “As a Florida resident, you know, he didn’t give an answer about, ‘Would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did, that had all the exceptions that people talk about?’”

The Florida governor laid into Trump at an event in Iowa over the weekend, urging Republican voters to reject Trump’s “culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years,” as well as his penchant to “focus the election on the past or on other side issues” or else “the Democrats are going to beat us again.”

Approached by reporters for comments on Trump’s criticism of DeSantis’ nascent abortion law, former Vice President Mike Pence, a vocal advocate of federal abortion bans, broke with his former boss, according to the Associated Press.

“For my part, I disagree with President Trump about the heartbeat bill,” Pence said. “I truly do believe that we ought to advance the cause of life at the state level, but I also want to say, I also believe there is a role at the federal level to advance the sanctity of life.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is enduring almost-daily attacks on Truth Social in his quest to convince conservatives that he is more electable in 2024 than former President Donald Trump. But when asked directly on Monday to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election -- a chance to hit his chief rival where it would hurt -- DeSantis evaded the question.

“You said during an event in Iowa over the weekend that the GOP needs to reject a culture of losing. Do you acknowledge that Trump lost and there wasn’t all this fraud he talks about?” a reporter asked DeSantis at a press conference on Monday.

"When I look at the last however many election cycles, 2018 we lost the House ... We lost the Senate in 2020, Biden becomes president, and it's done a huge amount of damage, very unpopular in 2022,” DeSantis said, criticizing President Joe Biden without mentioning Trump.

“We were supposed to have this big red wave, and other than in Florida and Iowa, I didn't see a red wave across this country. And so I think the party has developed a culture of losing. I think there's no accountability,” he added.

Former President Donald Trump has refused to concede the 2020 election, falsely insisting as recently as last Wednesday that he won. With most Republican voters convinced that the 2020 election was rigged, DeSantis’ non-answer Monday underscored his latest efforts to sidestep the delicate issue in his bid to win over some of the MAGA faithful while scooping up the never-Trump votes.

It remained unclear if DeSantis, who called on the GOP to reject the “culture of losing,” could posit himself as a winner and Trump as a loser without angering Trump voters, whom he had since courted with his “anti-woke” policies.

Although DeSantis has struggled to directly and concisely say that Trump was second best in the 2020 presidential election, a super PAC supporting him, Never Back Down, has in messages to supporters.

Alex Conant, a conservative consultant who worked in Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign, told Politico that DeSantis would come face-to-face with that question again on a grander and less friendly stage than a presser.

“First question at first debate: Raise your hand if you think Trump won the 2020 election,” Conant said, painting a hypothetical situation at the upcoming 2024 Republican presidential primary debates. “If a candidate can’t dispose of a fake issue like who won the election, how can voters expect them to handle the real issues?”

Then, Conant added, “You need to respect Trump’s voters, but that doesn’t mean lying to them.”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican political strategist and publisher at The Bulwark, a Never-Trump news and opinion website, also painted a grim outlook to Politico of DeSantis’ chances if he continues to dodge the topic of the former president’s fixation on an election he lost.

“He’s going to be boxed in by the fact that he’s basically making an electability pitch,” Longwell said. “And the trouble with the electability pitch is you’ve got to say, ‘Donald Trump lost, and I can win.’”

Trump derided DeSantis as politically inept in an interview with The Messenger on Monday, saying, “He's got no personality. And I don't think he's got a lot of political skill.”

Shortly after that, Trump took to Truth Social to blast DeSantis and the Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets Fox News and New York Post, labeling both tools that his RINO critics are wielding to obstruct a second Trump presidency.

“Just watching FoxNews. They are sooo bad, just like the Globalist Wall Street Journal and the now, way down, New York Post. They are desperately pushing DeSanctimonious who, regardless, is dropping like a rock. He’s even down 20 points in Florida, which was third worst in Covid, & where I got 1.2 million more votes than he did. RINO Mark Thiessen, a Bush flunky, is constantly on pushing DeSanctus, giving bad info. Even said I “lost Iowa last time around,” I won BIG. He sucks, & so does FoxNews!” he wrote.

Former President Donald Trump has drawn backlash from GOP Senators and Republican rivals, both prospective and declared, for the lies and conspiracy theories he propagated during his hour-plus appearance at the controversial CNN town hall on Wednesday night.

From the “hello,” a combative Trump delighted the Republican New Hampshire audience — and the MAGA faithful tuned in from home — with a litany of false and misleading claims and attacks on old enemies, often talking over CNN's Kaitlan Collins, whom he called a “nasty person” for good measure.

The leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate lied about everything from the 2020 elections, January 6, 2021, and his legal joust with renowned writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he was found liable for sexually harassing and defaming, to the present state of the U.S. economy and his post-White House retention of hundreds of classified documents.

But among Trump’s many controversial remarks, what irked some Senate Republicans were his call for GOP lawmakers to allow the US to default on its debt, his criticism of U.S. aid to Ukraine, and his refusal to call Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” for his unprovoked invasion of the Eastern Europe nation, a conflict that has claimed 354,000 lives so far, per Reuters.

The strongest criticism from Republicans in the upper chamber of Congress came from Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who CNN journalist Manu Raju asked if Trump’s remarks on the Ukraine war and his refusal to condemn Putin concerned him.

"Of course it does. That’s why I don’t intend to support him for the Republican nomination," Young responded.

"I think President Trump’s judgment is wrong in this case. President Putin and his government have been engaged in war crimes. I don’t believe that’s disputed by most who have looked into this, and he’s an enemy of the United States, our values, our interests, and the security of the American people," Young added.

When Raju asked Young why he won’t support Trump, the senator responded, “Where do I begin?”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who drew ridicule for fleeing the U.S. Capitol on January 6 after riling up the invading pro-Trumo mob earlier with a fist salute, said Putin was “probably” a war criminal, according to CNN.

“if the goal is to try to get some kind of a negotiated peace, you know I understand the ex-president’s position,” Hawley added, cushioning his near-criticism there.

Hawley insisted, though, that the US won’t default and that there was nothing Trump, who isn’t the president, could do about it.

"He’s not the president, so he doesn’t have a vote on it currently," he said. "We’re not going to default."

When asked about Trump’s remarks suggesting an inclination to pardon January 6 rioters, including the far-right pro-Trump Proud Boys militia, if he’s re-elected, Hawley replied, “If you’re asking me do I think we should pardon people who engaged in rioting behavior? No.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), an avid Trump supporter, quietly pushed back Trump’s call for “Republicans out there” to set a course for a U.S. debt default “if they don’t give you massive cuts.”

“I think that most Americans are supportive of us addressing the debt before we raise the debt ceiling,” Graham said.

On Trump’s Putin comments, Graham added, "Well, I think he’s a war criminal, and I think the president is trying to articulate a position I want to end the war, and, you know, if you start making certain statements about the protagonist, it’ll be hard to find a peaceful solution.

"My view is the best way to end this conflict is to make sure you don’t start another war. And if Putin is given a pass, then the likelihood of more bad behavior goes up."

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) said lawmakers would do all they could to avert a default and denounced Trump’s pro-debt default entreaty as a campaign bluster.

“I forget who said it, but you know, you campaign in poetry and you govern in prose. Clearly, candidates talk about things differently than people who are trying to get to a deal. And I just think most members of Congress, most Republican members understand that the jobs are a little different,” Johnson said.

After the town hall, Never Back Down, a super PAC reportedly backing Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ widely-expected White House bid, slammed Trump for trafficking in “nonsense” and embers of the past instead of “important conservative issues.”

“The CNN town hall was, as expected, over an hour of nonsense that proved Trump is stuck in the past. After 76 years, Trump still doesn’t know where he stands on important conservative issues like supporting life and the 2nd Amendment. How does that Make America Great Again?” the communications director for Never Back Down, Erin Perrine, said in a statement.

The CEO of Never Back Down, Chris Jankowski, blasted Trump, too: “The Trump town hall on CNN is a true marriage of equals: A candidate who has lost his luster appearing on a network that’s lost its ratings. Both ignore a key fact: 2024 isn’t 2016. The old gimmicks and tired lines don’t work anymore.”

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who ran against Trump for president in 2016 and is reportedly mulling another run in 2024, warned that Trump could giftwrap Ukraine for Putin if he’s re-elected president.

"Donald Trump says he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours tonight on CNN," Christie tweeted. "Despite how ridiculous that is to say, I suspect he would try to do it by turning Ukraine over to Putin and Russia. #Putin'sPuppet."

Another former Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who announced his 2024 presidential campaign in late April, hammered Trump for his Ukraine war comments, too.

“Trump reminded everyone tonight of his support of Russia and his willingness to sell out Ukraine. A weak position that will not win the war,” he tweeted.

The town hall audience was also caught in the blast radius of criticism. New Hampshire's Republican Governor, Chris Sununu, called the MAGA crowd "embarrassing" for applauding Trump while he insulted Carroll.

“As the camera pans through that audience, I knew pretty much everybody,” the governor said. “They’re all Trump supporters. So the audience was absolutely filled with Trump supporters. So I wasn’t surprised to hear the support.

“But when you’re talking about a serious issue like that, and laughter and mocking and all that, it’s completely embarrassing, without a doubt, and it doesn’t shine a positive light on New Hampshire.”

During the months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority declared Roe v. Wade — the decades-old landmark ruling that established abortion as a constitutional right — “egregiously wrong” and erased it, Republicans have pushed to restrict women’s reproductive freedoms further, enacting bans on abortion that begin as early as six weeks after pregnancy.

One such act is unfolding in South Carolina, one of just two states where women could face criminal charges and be sentenced to death for getting an abortion.

According to CNN, the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, on Friday officially summoned state lawmakers back for a special session next week — just a day after their legislative session ended — to take up several bills, one of which would ban most abortions at six weeks.

Dubbed the “Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act,” the bill would ban most abortions upon the detection of cardiac activity in a fetus; that’s as early as six weeks of pregnancy, when most women don’t yet know they are pregnant, CNN noted.

The bill permits exceptions of up to 12 weeks for rape, incest, and if the person seeking an abortion is less than 17 years old. Exceptions are also offered for “medical emergenc[ies],” “to prevent the death of the pregnant woman,” or “to prevent the serious risk of a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Republican lawmakers are said to be confident that the state Supreme Court won’t kill their abortion ban bill after the court’s only female justice, Kaye Hearn — who wrote for the majority in the court’s ruling early this year that struck down a similar six-week abortion ban bill South Carolina passed in 2021 — retired and was replaced.

Democrats, who oppose the bill, brought over 1,000 amendments into the South Carolina House floor on Thursday chamber in preparation for a debate on the ban. House Speaker Murrell Smith (R-Sumter) has poured cold water on hopes that the Democrats’ effort would yield results.

“We are not going to be breaking,” Smith said. “So bring supper, dinner, breakfast, lunch, whatever for days or however long you want to get through amendments, but we’re going to get through that bill and have a final vote on that bill.”

While the Democrat’s longshot efforts to loosen, or get rid of, the bill is, at least, still ongoing, those of their colleagues in Louisiana have all but ended.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Republican lawmakers in Louisiana rejected the rape and incest exception packages their Democratic colleagues proposed to loosen the state’s near-total abortion ban.

The ban, a trigger law that went into effect immediately after Roe v. Wade was overturned, bans almost all abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest — legislation the Biden Administration has since branded "extreme" and "radical."

“I simply do not understand how we as a state can tell any victim that she must be forced by law to carry her rapist’s baby to term, regardless of the impact on her own physical or mental health, the wishes of her parents, or the medical judgment of her physician,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, a pro-life Democrat who supports exceptions for rape and incest, said on Thursday.

“As I have said before, rape and incest exceptions protect crime victims. We must do all that we can to protect them and sadly, the committee failed to do so today,” Edwards added.

Rep. Delisha Boyd (D-102), who authored the abortion ban bill to include the exceptions, “said the state is not truly ‘pro-life’ if it does not protect all children, including those who currently are forced to carry their rapist’s child to term — which can lead to further trauma and health complications,” stated the AP.

Despite the dire health consequences of restricting abortion — which caused voters the most concern after inflation, 2022 midterm exit polls showed — Republicans have remained steadfast in their anti-abortion crusade. However, some top conservative pols fear it would cost them at the polls.

“Abortion was a big issue in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and so the guidance we’re going to give to our candidates is, you have to address this head-on,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, toldFox News Sunday in late April.

A Gallup poll found in February that most Americans were dissatisfied with the country’s post-Roe abortion statutes, with 74 percent of Democrats and 44 percent of Independents wanting less draconian laws.

The latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that most Republicans — 86 percent, to be exact — supported abortion restrictions of up to three months, a window far longer than several Republican-controlled states, including Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.

House Oversight Committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) was grilled on Fox News over his long-running investigation into the Bidens, which has so far failed to substantiate right-wing allegations of “influence peddling” by President Joe Biden.

The committee on Wednesday released a 36-page interim report comprising bank records that showed companies — which Comer and his GOP colleagues claimed are tied to the Bidens — received over $10 million from overseas in business dealings.

Comer and his GOP colleagues described the records, obtained through subpoena, as questionable but stopped short of declaring the financial activity it contained potentially illegal. The report also failed to outline any “specific corrupt action Mr. Biden took in office in connection with any of the business deals his son entered into,” the New York Times reported.

Comer also dodged questions in a press conference on Wednesday about why the GOP’s much-touted investigation had failed to implicate their central target, President Biden.

“I don’t think anyone in America … would think that it’s just a coincidence that nine Biden family members have received money,” he told reporters.

Thus, the report failed to elicit the positive public response that House Oversight Republicans hoped it would, even on Fox News.

When Comer appeared Thursday morning on Fox and Friends, host Steve Doocy expressed skepticism at the glaring lack of evidence in the Oversight Committees’ report to support the claims of wrongdoing by President Biden that Republicans have long since propagated.

“I know the Republicans said that the smoking gun were these financial records that you were able to subpoena and got your hands on,” Doocy said, referring to the committee’s report.

“Your party, and Republican investigators, say that's proof of influence peddling by Hunter and James [Biden], but that's just your suggestion. You don't actually have any facts to that point. You've got some circumstantial evidence. And the other thing is, of all those names, the one person who didn’t profit is ― there is no evidence that Joe Biden did anything illegally,” Doocy told a red-faced Comer.

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera put Comer on blast, too, tweeting Wednesday that the committee’s “angry allegations are vague and general and do not point to specific crimes. It still comes down to put up (that evidence) or shut up.”

A former Trump adviser, Sebastian Gorka, also dismissed Comer’s report as devoid of a “smoking gun” that irrefutably showed then-Vice President Biden changing or implementing policy for financial gain.

"It doesn't make any difference in the eyes of the general public until there is the smoking gun of, yes, a piece of paper, saying 'I, Joe Biden, changed this policy regarding Romania or Ukraine because of the money,'" Gorka told Breitbart politics editor Emma Jo-Morris in a podcast Thursday morning, per Newsweek.

A spokesperson for the White House, Ian Sams, dismissed Comer’s report as the product of cherry-picking, selective leaking, and baseless innuendo in a statement to news media outlets.

“Congressman Comer has a history of playing fast and loose with the facts and spreading baseless innuendo while refusing to conduct his so-called ‘investigations’ with legitimacy,” Sams said. “He has hidden information from the public to selectively leak and promote his own hand-picked narratives as part of his overall effort to lob personal attacks at the President and his family.”

In a Wednesday appearance on Hannity, Comer slammed news media outlets for what he perceived was more coverage of career fabulist Rep. George Santos (R-NY)’s 13-count federal indictment than House Oversight Republicans’ report.

“The mainstream media, for the most part, didn’t cover [the report] at all, and instead covered the George Santos stuff, [which] is further proof that this media is covering for Joe Biden,” Comer said.

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) blasted the criminal charges against him as a “witch hunt” — and vowed to remain in office, despite bipartisan calls for his resignation — after his release from federal custody on a $500,000 bond Wednesday.

The embattled freshman, infamous for fabricating his life story, addressed a crowd of reporters outside federal court in Central Islip after his arraignment on 13 federal charges, including fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress.

In a rambling speech that elicited laughter and boos from the media present, Santos denounced the federal inquiry as harassment, insisted he wouldn’t resign and pledged to run for reelection, and raised recent baseless far-right allegations against President Joe Biden and his family.

Overseeing a paper-thin 222 - 213 majority, House Republican leaders stood by Santos, declining to discuss a potential ouster despite the contrast between his charges and their purported aversion to corruption, as well as the growing calls from within their own ranks for Santos’ resignation.

“I think in America, you’re innocent ’til proven guilty,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday after multiple outlets broke the news of Santos’ indictment, according to HuffPost.

On Wednesday, McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju that he wouldn’t support Santos’ reelection bid, saying, “I think he has other things to focus on in his life."

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who previously slammed the Manhattan indictment of former President Trump, emphasized the importance of respecting the legal process when a reporter asked if Santos should resign.

“In America, there’s a presumption of innocence, but they’re serious charges. He’s going to have to go through the legal process. … [T]hat court process is going to play itself out,” Scalise said.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the chairwoman of the House Gop Conference — who heartily endorsed Santos in the 2022 midterms and stayed silent as revelations emerged that he had made up his resume — also waxed lyrical about trusting the process and suggested the GOP would do nothing more about Santos in the short term.

“As I’ve said, from the very beginning, on questions on this subject, this legal process is going to play itself out,” she said.

However, several House Republicans, including Santos' fellow Long Island colleagues, broke with their leaders and demanded the freshman resign immediately.

"I think he needs to go right away, and I hope that he resigns," Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) told CNN. "He's a complete embarrassment. The nation's focusing on solutions that matter, not George Santos."

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) told Axios on Tuesday that “the sooner [Santos] leaves, the sooner we can win the seat with someone who isn’t a liar.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) called for Santos’ immediate expulsion and “a special election initiated at the soonest possible date” in a tweet Wednesday.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) on Wednesday said that Santos should resign, calling his indictment and subsequent arraignment “a distraction” and “a punch line for a lot of commentary regarding the Republican Party that we don't need.”

House Democrats heightened their calls for Santos to resign, blasting him for co-sponsoring the House GOP’s bill on covid unemployment fraud, which is now one of the federal charges he is facing.

“You can't make this up: House Republicans are beginning floor consideration *today* of a bill that would defund efforts to crack down on unemployment fraud. On the same day that one of their own members was hit with a criminal indictment for unemployment fraud,” Rep. Don Beyer said in a tweet Wednesday afternoon.

Santos has largely ignored the new calls for his ouster. He's still grifting off his own disgrace. In a tweet after leaving the courthouse, the Republican pleaded with his followers for their financial “support to keep me fighting for freedom.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has expressed uncertainty that the GOP will regain control of the Senate in 2024, warning on Monday that the party could still “screw this up” despite a favorable map and needing to gain only two seats.

“No, no – I’m not,” McConnell responded with a chuckle when CNN’s Manu Raju asked over the phone whether the Republican leader is confident his party can take back the upper chamber after four years in the minority.

He added: “I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen. Let’s put it that way.”

The remarks closely echoed the concerns McConnell expressed before the 2022 midterms, when Democrats defied historical precedent to flip a Senate seat and increase their slim majority, despite issues like inflation and Biden’s low approval numbers putting them on the back foot.

In that cycle, the then-National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), with whom McConnell clashed on policy and strategy, allowed voters to freely choose their preferred candidates in the primary, with the understanding that the national party would then support them in the general election.

The hands-off strategy backfired when far-right Trump-backed candidates Blake Masters, Don Bolduc, and Herschel Walker succumbed to defeat in Arizona, New Hampshire, and Georgia, respectively — races that pundits had believed Republicans would win.

“We do have the possibility of screwing this up, and that gets back to candidate recruitment,” McConnell said. “I think that we lost Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire [in 2022] because we didn’t have competitive candidates.”

This time, however, McConnell said he was working with the present NRSC chair, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), to influence which candidates compete in the upcoming Republican primaries, even if it meant going against the far-right flank of the GOP.

“We don't have an ideological litmus test,” McConnell told Raju. “We want to win in November.

“We’ll be involved in any primary where that seems to be necessary to get a high-quality candidate, and we’ll be involved in every general election where we have a legitimate shot of winning – regardless of the philosophy of the nominee,” McConnell added.

McConnell also said that Republicans have prioritized winning in four key states, the first three of which Trump won by more than 50 percent in 2020: Montana, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

West Virginia Republican governor Jim Justice, one of the red state's most popular Republicans, announced his 2024 Senate bid in late April, setting up a potential challenge for incumbent Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)’s seat.

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has announced a reelection bid, as has Senator John Tester (D-MT), setting up a likely clash with Freedom Caucus House Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), who is reportedly mulling a Senate run.

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) is also running for reelection in 2024, and Democrats hope that failed far-right gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano will run against him, a potential match-up alarming Republicans, especially former President Donald Trump, who backed him in 2022, according to Politico.

When Raju asked whether McConnell is worried about a potential Mastriano Senate bid, the Republican leader talked up hedge fund executive David McCormick, the Republican who lost to Trump-backed TV doctor Mehmet Oz but is reportedly eyeing a Senate bid.

“I think everybody is entitled to run,” McConnell said. “I’m confident the vast majority of people who met Dave McCormick are going to be fine with him.”

The Kentuckian didn’t express as much optimism for the upcoming races in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada races — battleground states Trump lost in 2020. McConnell said the GOP would need to field quality candidates to compete there.

“I didn’t mention Wisconsin; I think clearly you’d have to have an outstanding candidate. And I think there are some other places where with the right candidate, we might be able to compete – in Nevada, Arizona,” he said.

McConnell also poured cold water on earlier concerns that estranged Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who abandoned the Democratic party to become an Independent in December, would run in 2024 as a Republican, saying, “We would love to have had her, but we didn’t land her.”

The 81-year-old lawmaker also refused to comment on his political future, dodging Raju’s question about whether or not he planned to run again when his term is up in 2026.

“I thought this was not an interview about my future,” McConnell said. “I thought it was an interview about the 2024 Senate elections.”

The cadre of pro-Trump lawyers behind a conspiracy-laden lawsuit that sought to overturn Michigan’s 2020 presidential election results, including ex-Trump attorney Sidney Powell and conspiracy theorist Lin Wood, committed “misconduct” and should face disciplinary action, according to the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission.

The commission, which serves as the investigative arm of the Michigan Supreme Court, made the request in a formal complaint it filed with the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board last week against Powell, Wood, and seven other lawyers: Howard Kleinhendle of New York; Emily Newman of Texas; Brandon Johnson and Julia Haller of Washington, D.C.; and Gregory Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom, and Stefanie Junttilla Lambert of Michigan.

The attorneys used their “Kraken” lawsuit to promulgate the false claim that a shadowy foreign organization — backed by billionaire philanthropist George Soros and the Clintons — stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump in Michigan and several other states.

U.S. District Judge Linda Parker dismissed the sham lawsuit and imposed sanctions on the lawyers, including a $175,000 payment in court costs incurred by Detroit and Michigan and the mandatory completion of 12 hours of legal education.

The federal judge referred her sanctions to other attorney disciplinary boards nationwide for possible disciplinary action against the attorneys, including probation, suspension, or disbarment, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Powell and the others appealed Park's sanctions at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, accusing the federal judge of targeting them for their political views. The matter is currently pending before the court.

In its complaint dated May 1, the nine-member Attorney Grievance Commission accused Powell, Wood, and the others of "bringing or defending” a “frivolous” lawsuit and partaking in “prejudicial” conduct that is “contrary to justice, ethics, honesty, or good morals."

The commission began its review after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and Attorney General Dana Nessel filed complaints requesting the lawyers be disbarred for their efforts to “disenfranchise Michigan voters and undermine the faith of the public in the legitimacy” of the state’s 2020 election.

In response to the commission’s complaint, the Attorney Discipline Board will convene a panel of three attorneys to “conduct trial level proceedings” on the matter before making a decision, the board’s website states. If the board finds the Trump-allied attorneys guilty of misconduct, it could demand their disbarment.

Hagerstrom, one of the attornies named in the complaint, blasted the Democratic Party for the development, noting that he had “moved on a long time ago.”

“It seems that (Democrats) want to keep us alive for some reason. Maybe it helps them politically,” Hagerstrom said, per Bridge Michigan.

In a statement to the outlet, Lambert touted never having “a bar grievance until the instant matter” and said she looked forward to “providing the State Bar with full transparency” and “examining Benson and Nessel under oath as part of her public hearing.”

Nessel, in his complaint, fingered Lambert as one of the brains behind “a coordinated plan to gain access to voting tabulators” in three counties to find evidence of fraud, Reuters reported.

In February, a Texas judge dismissed a petition by the State Bar of Texas’ Commission for Lawyer Discipline accusing Powell of violating legal ethics in her election subversion role for Trump and his allies.

Several former Trump lawyers — including ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, the architect of Trump’s failed fake elector scheme — have also faced state bar reviews.

A New York court suspended Giuliani’s license to practice law in the state in June 2021. Last December, a disciplinary panel of the Washington, D.C. bar recommended that Giuliani face “only one sanction, and that’s the sanction of disbarment” for filing a failed lawsuit in Pennsylvania to block the certification of the state’s 2020 presidential election results.

Georgia Republicans have passed a new law that allows for the removal of locally-elected prosecutors from office, which could include the Atlanta-area district attorney probing efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

The law, Senate Bill 92 — sponsored solely by Republicans — will establish a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission. The commission will have the authority to boot district attornies considered to have shown a “willful and persistent failure” to prosecute crimes that they are “by law required to prosecute,” according to the Guardian.

The commission will consist of eight people: six current or former prosecutors and two attorneys. The commissioners will convene on July 1 and start taking complaints on October 1, the Associated Press reported.

Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, signed the bill into law Friday at the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office in Savannah. In a press release issued the same day, Kemp praised the bill as a means to hold “incompetent prosecutors” accountable for what he said was their failure to prioritize public safety.

"As hardworking law enforcement officers routinely put their lives on the line to investigate, confront, and arrest criminal offenders, I won't stand idly by as they're met with resistance from rogue or incompetent prosecutors who refuse to uphold the law," Kemp said.

“The creation of the PACQ will help hold prosecutors driven by out-of-touch politics than commitment to their responsibilities accountable and make our communities safer,” he added.

Critics have blasted the bill as part of a nationwide Republican effort to control or outs Democratic and liberal-leaning prosecutors who they deem “woke,” soft on crime, or adamant about prosecuting certain crimes, such as abortion, which several Republican-led states have banned since Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade.

Georgia Democrats and voting rights activists have accused Kemp and the Republican-dominated legislature of attempting to use the bill to impose their will on areas that are predominantly Democratic.

“Georgia voters’ ability to provide critical input into the criminal legal system is now under threat following the signing of SB 92 into law—the latest effort in Governor Kemp’s harmful, anti-democratic agenda,” Esosa Osa, the deputy executive director of Fair Fight Action, a voting rights organization, wrote in a public statement.

The bill came as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis weighed criminal charges against Trump and his allies for alleged election interference efforts in 2020, adding to concerns that the new law could be to silence or crack down on prosecutors handling politically sensitive cases.

Willis herself has decried the bill as “racist” at a hearing, pointing out the curious timing of its passage by Republicans. She said the bill had come after voters in 2020 elected fourteen minority district attornies, who “now represent the majority of the constituents in the state of Georgia,” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Republican lawmakers swiftly attacked Willis for her characterization of their bill. "For you to come in here and try to make this about racism, that this bill is directed at any district attorney or solicitor because of racism, is absurd, and it's offensive," said GOP state Senator Bill Cowsert. "It's a racist statement on its own."

Trump also took aim at Willis in a tirade on his Truth Social platform last month.

“The Racist District Attorney in Atlanta, Fani T. Willis, one of the most dangerous and corrupt cities in the U.S., is now calling the Georgia Legislature, of course, RACIST, because they want to make it easier to remove and replace local rogue prosecutors who are incompetent, racist, or unable to properly do their job,” he wrote.

Trump has repeatedly denounced Willis’ investigation — which roared to life after the then-president pressured a top Georgia election official over the phone to “find” enough votes to reverse his loss in the state — as a “political witch hunt.”

A court filing on Friday revealed that eight of the sixteen “fake electors” in Georgia who sought to erroneously declare Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election had accepted immunity deals in Willis’ investigation into the matter.

Georgia Republicans have named criminal reform-minded Democratic District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who serves Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties, as a target for the controversial Senate Bill 92. Gonzalez has faced criticism from Republicans for refusing to issue charges for simple marijuana possession and abortion-related crimes.

“[Senate Bill 92] is not an oversight bill. It’s an overstep on the part of the legislature to undermine the voice and vote of the people who elected us as DAs based on our approach and what they felt they wanted, in terms of the way that justice should be done in their community. This just takes all of that away,” Gonzalez told Bolts Magazine.