Trump mocks Haley as major donor deserts after South Carolina loss: Live

Donald Trump has wasted no time mocking Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley after Americans for Prosperity Action (AFP Action), the political arm of the conservative donor network led by billionaire Charles Koch, announced she would no longer support him. His campaign after his loss in South Carolina on Saturday.

APF Senior Advisor Emily Seidel said in a note yesterday: “With South Carolina's presidential election and Senate engagement really heating up this weekend, it's time to take stock of where we are — as we always do — and make sure we're optimizing our resources for maximum impact toward our goals. “

Trump savored the news and downgraded Haley from “birdbrain” to “braindead,” writing on Truth Social that “Charles Koch and his crew played for suckers from the beginning.”

Otherwise he has been busy sending out the usual messages of positive polling and releasing boilerplate about his legal woes.

Gustaf Glander Reports from Washington, DC:

At least one member of the Republican National Committee is trying to slow down Donald Trump's corporate takeover by keeping the group neutral until Trump is officially the presidential nominee and refrains from taking up his legal bills.

Henry Barber, a national committee member from Mississippi, has sent two draft resolutions for consideration at the RNC's upcoming March meeting in Houston. Barber said support for the resolutions is growing among RNC members, but he still doesn't have the supporters he needs, and any resolution would ultimately be nonbinding.

The move comes after Trump publicly called last week to replace the current chairs of the RNC and appoint one of his senior campaign advisers and his daughter-in-law Laura Trump to key roles. Laura Trump suggested earlier in the week that GOP voters would support a group paying her father-in-law's legal bills as he faces criminal and civil charges.

Donald Trump called himself a “proud political dissident” in his CPAC speech, days after comparing himself to Russian leader Alexei Navalny, who recently died under mysterious circumstances in a Siberian prison.

At National Harbor in Maryland, Mr. Trump said on Saturday, “Joe [Biden] And his henchmen trap you, it's an express train headed for slavery and destruction—it's moving at a speed that Joe doesn't understand, because Joe…I don't think he knows what's going on, to be honest. With you, but he's surrounded by some nasty fascists.

“Voting for Trump is your ticket to freedom. It's your passport to tyranny,” he argued. “This is your escape from the fast track to hell for Joe Biden and his gang. In many ways, we are living in hell right now.

Donald Trump said during a Black Conservative Foundation exhibition Friday evening that black voters are like him because of his many accusations and mugshots.

Katie Hawkinson The story is:

Donald Trump's continued presence on the US political scene has longtime allies worried about whether the US can be a reliable security partner, according to Fiona Hill, a former national intelligence officer and National Security Council official in the Trump administration.

Speaking at the Principles First Summit, a gathering of anti-Trump and pro-democracy conservatives in Washington, Ms Hill was asked about how Mr Trump would have reacted to the killing of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

The twice-impeached, disgraced former president, whose performance during a 2018 Helsinki press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin was so poor that he considered pulling the fire alarm to end it, may have actually reacted negatively to Navalny's death. I thought it made him worse.

“It's really about how he reflects,” he said.

The former president has yet to officially lock down the party's nomination, but is widely considered to be on the verge of doing so following his victory in the South Carolina primary this weekend, and very favorable polling for Tuesday's contest in Michigan.