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Republican presidential candidate John Castro has no campaign office in New Hampshire, no campaign staff, has met with no voters in the first-in-the-nation primary, and his campaign fund boasts a whopping $670.

The tax-lawyer-turned-social-media-political-activist claims former President Donald Trump is costing him votes and donations, and he is suing the New Hampshire Secretary of State to keep Trump off the ballot. 

Castro brought his low-budget road show to the United States District Court in Concord on Friday to argue before Judge Joseph Lapante that he has the legal standing to engage in the lawsuit by virtue of being a presidential candidate.

But Trump’s lawyers said Castro’s presidential campaign was a stunt meant to create cover for the lawsuit. After Friday’s evidentiary hearing, Trump attorney Jonathan Shaw told NHJournal that Castro’s presidential campaign isn’t real, and his lawsuit ought to be dismissed.

“I think the evidence is clear he has no campaign. What he has is a desire to manufacture standing. He has a theory that by pretending to be a political contender, he has standing. And he’s wrong,” said Jonathan Shaw, one of the Trump’s lawyers.

The Trump campaign, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office, and the New Hampshire Republican Party all oppose Castro’s lawsuit. 

Castro is behind 27 federal lawsuits aimed at Trump, arguing the former president should be barred from office under the 14th Amendment. Castro argued Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, were akin to partaking in an insurrection, and he ought to be barred from holding office under the Constitution.

Castro claimed that because he is a presidential candidate who paid the $1,000 fee to the New Hampshire secretary of state to file his nomination, he stands to lose if Trump is allowed to run. However, state GOP attorney Bryant Gould said during the hearing that Castro presented no evidence of any Trump voter or donor who would switch to back him if Trump were out of the race.

“That’s the end of the game for you,” Gould said.

Under questioning on the stand, Castro admitted to LaPlante that his presidential campaign was not about winning but all about stopping Trump.

“One might look at your campaign and say your main goal is to establish the impermissibility of the Trump campaign, isn’t that right,” LaPlante asked,

“Yes,” Castro agreed.

Castro’s active social media feed includes tweets going back to 2021, in which he vows to run for president so that he will have legal standing. Standing is the legal principle that people must have good reason to bring a lawsuit, essentially that they have to have a dog in any particular fight. A person with standing can prove they are being harmed in some way.

Brendan O’Donnell, the lawyer for the secretary of state, told LaPlante during the hearing that Castro has no proof he is harmed by Trump’s campaign. There is no proof to his theory that any Trump voters or donors will switch to backing Castro.

“All we have is speculation,” O’Donnell said.

Rick Lehmann, another lawyer representing Trump, told LaPlante that Castro’s Potemkin campaign is an effort to manufacture standing. Castro, the tax lawyer, isn’t harmed by Trump’s candidacy, but Castro, the GOP candidate, is harmed because Trump takes away votes and donations under the theory. 

“He thinks he’s figured out how to pick the lock,” Lehmann told LaPlante.

At the end of Friday’s hearing, LaPlante said he will have a ruling this week to decide if Castro’s lawsuit can proceed. If LaPlante agrees with Castro, that could mean an injunction against the secretary of state prohibiting Trump’s candidacy. Trump is due in New Hampshire on Monday. He has not yet filed his nomination for the primary.

Outside the courthouse, Castro said he was engaging in what he called “lawfare” to keep Trump off the ballot in key swing states and push his candidacy forward. In the coming days, Castro plans to meet with voters, hire staff, and even campaign for the nomination.

The right time to launch will be once Trump gets kicked off the ballot in a state where he is suing, Castro said. That would cause global headlines for Castro’s run.

“Once that happens, it will really open up the campaign,” Castor said.

Castro said he was emulating Trump, leveraging the lawsuits to get free media attention for himself and his campaign.

“I didn’t get to where I’m at in life by burning money. I’m very calculating about how I do things,” Castro said.

Castro claims he is self-funding the camping with revenue generated by his tax law firm, and he has been tied up meeting tax deadlines for his business and has been unable to stump. 

The 27 federal lawsuits are Castro’s main campaign expense, he said during the hearing. He said the campaign had paid all of the federal filing fees to bring the complaints. Each lawsuit has cost his campaign $402 to file, meaning Castro’s presidential campaign has forked up at least $10,000 just to bring all 27 lawsuits. 

It also came out during the hearing that Castro originally planned to self-fund his campaign with a $20 million loan. Castro believed he would be getting a $180 million investment for his AI tax software and planned to use stock in the next company to fund his presidential ambitions. That deal did not work out, and he has been running on a tighter budget since.  

Donald Trump’s New Hampshire second-in-command was at the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill, and he recorded a message for law enforcement protecting the Congress.

Go kill yourselves.

“I have a message. If you are a police officer and you are going to abide by unconstitutional bullsh*t. I want you to do me a favor right now and go hang yourself,” said Dylan Quattrucci, currently New Hampshire Deputy State Director for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

“Cuz you’re a piece of sh*t. Go f*** yourself,” Quattrucci said in the video, originally posted to his mother’s Facebook account. 

The video was shot on the evening of January 6 as members of the mob were being turned out of the Capitol Building by police officers after hours of violence. In the months that followed the attack, four of the police officers who responded to the Capitol to protect members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence would end up taking their own lives.

Pat Sullivan, executive director for the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, has not seen the video but is not a fan of Quattrucci’s Jan. 6 message.

“It doesn’t sound like a message anyone should be putting out,” Sullivan said. 

The mob had failed to stop Vice President Mike Pence from certifying the election for Joe Biden, which would have been unconstitutional. Quattrucci’s subsequent rise in state politics, however, went unhindered. The young activist is now an active figure in the Trump campaign, taking the post shortly after he graduated from law school.

Quattrucci did not respond to NHJournal’s request for comment.

NBC News reports that campaign finance records show he began working for the Trump campaign in May and made $6,500 in June, the most recent records available.

Matthew Bartlett is a Nashua, N.H. native who worked for the Trump administration and resigned on January 6 in response to the day’s events. He called Quattrucci’s video “one of the most disgusting messages I have seen from one of the most disgraceful days in our country’s history. This person should not be embraced in politics or public discourse, he should be deeply ashamed.”

Trump faces 91 criminal indictments in multiple venues, many connected to an alleged scheme to steal the election. Despite that, Trump remains far and away the most likely GOP candidate to win the nomination for president. Many in the party fear his wrath, and seemingly his operatives like Quattrucci. GOP insiders contacted about the video by NHJournal declined to publicly criticize Quattrucci.

Salem Police Officer Mike Geha, president of the New Hampshire Police Association, said his members work every day to keep Granite Stater’s safe and generally do not pay attention to political noise. While Geha would rather stay out of politics, he also had little time for Quattrucci’s comments.

“I can’t defend him for what he said,” Geha said.

If there is missing context for Quattrucci’s statement that police officers should kill themselves, he should come out and make that clear, Geha said.

Quattrucci has been dodging questions about his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 for weeks since WMUR first reported on his now-deleted tweets from the riot. None of the tweets and photos appeared to be coming from inside the Capitol Building, but Quattrucci seemed to get close.

One tweet included a photo of the crowd outside the building from a raised vantage point, like the top of the steps outside the entrance. “We’re not gonna take it,” Quattrucci wrote, possibly referring to Twisted Sister’s metal anthem from the 1980s.

Other Quattrucci tweets from Jan. 6  included, “Mike Pence is a traitor to America” and “I’m bleeding for my country. You’ll have to kill me to stop my #FightForTrump.” That last tweet accompanied a photo presumably showing Quattrucci’s hand with a minor cut on a finger. 

The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said Democrat Steve Marchand lied about his role in a political scheme targeting his opponents in Portsmouth.

Marchand, a progressive Democrat who once served as Portsmouth mayor and sought his party’s nomination for governor, will not face criminal charges, the office said in a letter. Instead, it issued a letter of warning to Marchand for his involvement in Preserve-Portsmouth.com and other websites that targeted sitting city council members in the last municipal election.

“It’s pretty bad,” said Peter Whelan, one of the Portsmouth councilors targeted.

Whelan, Councilors Susan Paige Trace, Ester Kennedy, Greg Mahanna, Petra Huda, and Mayor Rick Becksted were all targeted by anonymous websites, fliers, and robotexts operated by Marchand, according to Myles Matteson with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

“It was shameful. There were robotexts sent by the thousands,” Whelan said.

Trace said the attorney general’s investigation revealed there was an effort to mislead the voters of Portsmouth.

“It’s about being transparent and behaving in an honorable manner,” Trace said.

All of the candidates targeted by Marchand were defeated. Current Portsmouth Mayor Deaglan McEachern declined to comment, as he had not seen Matteson’s letter.

“I didn’t have any interaction with the (Marchand) in my campaign,” McEachern said. “I have no idea what the former mayor was doing or not doing.”

Marchand did not respond to a request for comment. His attorney, Joseph Foster, is currently out of the country and unable to be reached.

Marchand’s bogus website was built to mirror a legitimate site with a similar name, Preserve Portsmouth, and purported to support the same city council candidates the original site endorsed. But it falsely described them as far-right Trump supporters. According to documents obtained by the Attorney General’s Office, Marchand wanted to depress voter turnout among Republicans in order to benefit Democrats on the ballot.

Marchand initially lied to investigator Anna Croteau when she questioned him about his part in the campaign, according to Mattson’s letter.

“When she first asked about Preserve-Portsmouth.com, you stated that you had heard of the website. You denied you had ever claimed responsibility for the website but noted that other people had been saying you were responsible for it,” Matteson wrote.

However, Croteau already had screenshots of a text conversation in which Marchand took credit for the content of the websites.

“To be very clear, I am the one to create the content,” Marchand wrote.

Matteson’s letter states the Attorney General’s Office has records of Marchand’s communications with at least four other people about the campaign, in which he stated the goal was to create guilt by association aimed at the targeted candidates, linking them to Trump in the mind of Portsmouth voters.

“(i)s really meant to help get Democrats who gave Becksted and others a vote in 2019 to really think about what they are doing in 2021,” Marchand wrote.

Whelan suspects the true purpose of the campaign was to get rid of council members who oppose development in the historic sections of the city. Marchand’s record as mayor includes changing zoning ordinances to make development easier, Whelan said. Whelan wants to know who Marchand was working with and for, and who funded the operation.

“Somebody spent a lot of money to do this,” Whelan said.

The attorney general’s report found that while Marchand would have violated campaign finance law by not disclosing who was behind the websites, fliers, and robotexts if it could be proved that he acted in concert with others. However, Marchand claimed, eventually, that while he acted alone in creating the content he did not set up the websites. Matteson noted the claim he acted alone was the last of many explanations Marchand offered to investigators.

New Hampshire law on campaign finance transparency allows a narrow exemption for individuals engaged in advocacy. Marchand was cautioned, however, that if he continues to engage in similar campaigns he could lose the exemption and face possible prosecution.

Last year, Portsmouth Democrat Committee Chair Shanika Amarakoon and New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley issued a statement condemning Marchand’s campaign.

“We cannot let our local elections be undermined by national-style political tactics. The city councilors who were attacked, after all, are our neighbors. While we may not agree with all of their decisions, they did not deserve this attack, and we do not stand for it,” Amarakoon and Buckley wrote.

MANCHESTER — Mike Pence kept saying during his trip through New Hampshire — on a chilly Wednesday in December where he was followed by national media — that he isn’t running for president. 

At least not yet.

The former Vice President is looking to help elect Republicans in the 2022 mid-term races as part of an effort to push back on President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. After that, he might be open to the possibility of his own presidential run.

“Now more than ever, every American should be focused on the 2022 elections, and that’s where we’re entirely focused,” he told CNN’s Michael Warren. “Come 2023, we’ll do what my family always does; we’ll reflect, and we’ll pray, and we’ll go where we feel we’re called.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence visits The Simply Delicious Bakery in Bedford, N.H.

Pence certainly looked like a presidential candidate, calling into local talk radio shows and making a half-dozen campaign stops in a single day. In between a morning stop at the Simply Delicious Bakery in Bedford and a state senate fundraiser in the evening, Pence was the featured speaker at a Heritage Action for America event in Manchester. He talked foreign affairs, national security, and what he called out-of-control Washington spending. Heritage Action is the political arm of the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation, and boasts millions of grassroots volunteers who stand at the ready to get behind the right candidate.

Pence took aim at Biden’s foreign policy, calling the withdrawal from Afghanistan a disgrace that damaged the country’s standing. That loss of standing could be setting the stage for another disaster in the Ukraine, where Russian troops appear ready to invade.

“The reality is, weakness arouses evil,” Pence said.

Pence said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to invade Ukraine will need to be met with military force. That means the U.S. needs to start arming the Ukrainian military, as President Donald Trump did.

“(The Obama-Biden Administration) sent blankets and military meals in boxes, but we sent arms to Ukraine so they could defend themselves,” Pence said. “I met Vladimir Putin. I saw what he did in Crimea. I think it is going to take action [to stop an invasion],” Pence said.

Boasting about Trump’s arming the Ukrainian military is problematic for Pence. While it’s true the Trump administration approved offensive weapons for the Ukraine government the Obama administration refused to sell them. Trump later ordered arms shipments held up in an attempt to get the Ukraine government to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

Pence also teed off on Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan, which he dubbed ‘Build Back Broke’ after several tries at a slogan. He said the spending plan would shift America into a socialist society, and it needs to be stopped.

“It would be an unmitigated disaster for American families and American workers and I came to say we’re not going to let it happen,” Pence said. “We gotta shut down their big-government, socialist agenda right now.”

Pence made several stops in New Hampshire, including The Riverside Room, a small venue in Manchester’s mill district. The capacity crowd was made up of party insiders like New Hampshire GOP Committee Chairman Stephen Stepanek, and congressional candidates like Jeff Cozzens and Matt Mowers. 

Mowers said Pence could be a strong contender in the 2024 race, but he’s not going to commit to any candidate, yet.

“It depends on who gets on the race,” Mowers said.

And the “who” on everyone’s mind at the campaign events is former President Trump, who injected himself into Pence’s Granite State appearance. His Save America PAC released a statement during Pence’s visit referencing the 2020 election. It linked an interview Pence gave CBN News in which he said he believed there were “irregularities” in the 2020 election. It’s a comment he’s made several times in the past, though he also says he did the right thing certifying the election.

“Good man, but big mistake on not recognizing the massive voter fraud and irregularities,” Trump said in his press release.

In the First Congressional District GOP primary, the candidates have their eyes on the prize. Beating incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas? Not yet. The big prize in the primary is the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

“He’s still the guy, he still matters substantially. He’s still the leader of the Republican Party,” said Rep. Fred Doucette (R-Salem), Trump’s 2016 campaign state co-chair.

On Monday, candidate Gail Huff Brown announced her endorsement by Linda McMahon, best known for her role in creating the WWE empire. It’s a “get” for Huff Brown’s campaign because McMahon served as Trump’s Small Business Administrator.

“With Gail, New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District is in good hands. As a working mother and grandmother, she knows what it’s like to balance a family and a career,” McMahon said.

Huff Brown has previously been endorsed by K.T. McFarland, the Trump administration’s first Deputy National Security Advisor. McMahon’s backing gives her another connection with Trumpworld. And she’s likely to need it.

Huff Brown is in a battle with former Trump administration communications staffer Karoline Leavitt and former Trump State Department staffer Matt Mowers for the top spot in the primary. Trump endorsed Mowers in the 2020 NHGOP primary.

Leavitt has run hard on her Trump connections and continued loyalty to the former president, even denying Trump lost the 2020 election. When contacted Monday, she repeated the unfounded claim that Trump defeated Joe Biden.

“I am the only candidate who has the courage to say what the majority of Republican voters here in New Hampshire know – there is absolutely no way Joe Biden legitimately won more votes than Donald Trump,” Leavitt said. “Granite Staters want a homegrown fighter, and that is why I am in this race.”

Mowers said Monday he would love to get Trump’s endorsement yet again.

“I was honored to receive President Trump’s endorsement and to serve in his administration as Senior White House Advisor at the State Department where I implemented the America First agenda. I would proudly accept his endorsement again,” Mowers said. 

Huff Brown, on the other hand, has a far more tenuous Trump connection. She spent 30 years doing TV news, mostly in the Boston market. But she describes her more recent experience as “serving alongside her husband Scott Brown as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.”

Trump’s endorsement will be a game-changer for the primary race, Doucette said. However, he is skeptical Trump will weigh in, and he says his advice would be for Trump to stay out of the race for the time being.

“If I were to advise him, all three (Leavitt, Mowers, and Huff-Brown) are solid Trump people,” Doucette said. “How can you pit one against the other?”

Tom Rath, a longtime NHGOP strategist and a Trump skeptic, isn’t sure the former president’s endorsement would mean much in the race.

“This isn’t a state that typically puts a lot of stock in endorsements of candidates,” Rath said. “We like our candidates to be grounded in the districts in which they run.”

It’s hard to see a potential Trump endorsement coming in this race unless Trump sees an advantage for himself, Rath said. He sees a race that comes down to a contest between different shades of pro-Trump candidates, and there is unlikely to be an emergent centrist candidate who is anti-Trump.

And why would there? Polls show Trump remains popular among NHGOP voters, with a net +64 approval rating in October’s Granite State Poll from the UNH Survey Center. However, that same poll found Trump’s polling among all voters underwater with 57 percent of voters disapproving to 34 percent approving of the former president.

New England College Provost Dr. Wayne Lesperance said Trump’s endorsement is not going to move the needle for Huff Brown or Mowers voters, but it could help Leavitt, who polls show isn’t as well known as the other two.

“It will help one of the lesser-knowns the most if it came to them. But for a Mowers or Huff Brown it’s not impactful,” Lesperance said.

Trump’s record on endorsements is mixed at best. According to Politico, many in the GOP are frustrated with Trump’s endorsements, which seem based on whims rather than a coherent political strategy. And the candidates he’s backing this cycle have been struggling early.

“If he spent a little more time and resources vetting and researching where he can have an impact and a little bit less time s—-posting, he could actually help his own legacy and move the ball forward,” a Republican strategist told Politico.

Huff Brown has another problem positioning herself as the Trump favorite: Her husband’s denunciation of Trump’s behavior surrounding the January 6 Capitol riot.

“Absolutely, I mean he bears responsibility. I think his presidency was diminished as a result of this, and I think he’s paying a price. He’s been impeached twice. He was impeached for those actions,” Brown said in a May interview on CNN.

Asked about the impact Scott Brown’s comments might have, campaign spokesperson Nina McLaughlin told NHJournal: “Gail has been a long and strong supporter of President Trump. She worked hard for nearly four years to advance his America First agenda. She would welcome his endorsement.”

Rath said Trump has always operated based on personality, rather than any political ideology. While a Trump endorsement can bring a wealth of donors and support to the candidate who wins his favor, it can also backfire. If Democratic voters don’t have a primary race to worry about, Trump’s endorsement could cause problems for his candidate with New Hampshire’s open primary system.

“He might activate Democrats to vote in the GOP primary,” Rath said.

New Hampshire Democrats greeted news of President Trump’s planned Saturday visit to Portsmouth with a demand: Mandate masks now. Everyone attending Trump’s rally must be required by Gov. Chris Sununu to wear a face mask.

Team Trump’s response: Where were these demands when these same Democrats were attending Black Lives Matter rallies across the state?

It didn’t take the two major Democratic candidates for governor long to throw down on the mask issue, or to link it back to their real target, Gov. Sununu.

“I’m calling on Gov. Chris Sununu to issue an order requiring social distancing and masks at the Portsmouth Trump rally,” state Sen. Dan Feltes tweeted Monday morning. “After Trump’s Tulsa rally, there was a sharp uptick in COVID cases. The public health of Granite Staters must take priority over politics.”

“Where is Gov. Chris Sununu?” Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky demanded via Twitter, adding:

“If Trump & Sununu refuse to put public health first, we must address out of state attendee risk, require masks, and ensure social distancing.”

NHJournal asked Volinsky what he meant by “addressing out of state attendee risk:” ID checks? Mandatory testing? Turning away out-of-state vehicles? He declined to respond.

Sununu released a statement Monday announcing he would be treating Trump’s event the same way he’s treated other political gatherings since the COVID-19 crisis began.

“As Governor, I will always welcome the President of the United States to New Hampshire. I am pleased to see the campaign will be handing out face masks and hand sanitizer to all attendees, as has been true at all public gatherings in NH where social distancing is hard to maintain. It is imperative that folks attending the rally wear masks,” Sununu said.

The statement from the governor’s office noted that “from the outset of this pandemic, the State has not stopped or prevented individuals from peacefully assembling, including marches led by Black Lives Matter and protests from Reopen NH.

“The Governor’s schedule is still being finalized. In the past, the Governor has greeted the President upon arrival at the airport. If the Governor greets the President at the airport, he will be wearing a mask,” according to the statement.

The Trump campaign responded to the Democrats’ complaints more aggressively, calling out what they perceive as hypocrisy from people demanding masks at Trump rallies just weeks after attending Black Lives Matter rallies with no mask mandate.

“When marauders destroy businesses and tear down statues, they don’t need masks. There is no concern about the spread of COVID-19,” Trump campaign strategist Corey Lewandowski told NHJournal. “But when Americans want to see the leader of the free world, a mask is a must? Hypocrites.

“One place the left doesn’t demand a mask is Joe Biden’s basement — where he remains hiding alone,” Lewandowski said.

Asked about the charge of hypocrisy, Feltes spokesperson Emma Sand told NHJournal:

“This will be by far the largest event and gathering since COVID-19 hit New Hampshire, and whether Gov. Sununu actually does a public health order, like he did for the upcoming NASCAR race, is the issue. At a minimum, he should issue a public health order for this event to protect lives and prevent an uptick in COVID-19 cases, not be cowed by Trump to fail to do his job”

Volinsky declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the debate rages over whether protests and political rallies have had a significant impact on COVID-19’s trajectory in recent weeks.

Despite the assumptions by Feltes and others, new positive tests in Oklahoma rose about 350 percent from June 1 until Trump’s rally on June 20, then by just 75 percent between rally day and July 4. In Tulsa County, officials said last week it was too early to make a determination about the impact of the Trump rally, and that the increased infections thus far had been traced to smaller gatherings at bars, gyms, and restaurants.

Meanwhile, supporters of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer have been pushing back for weeks against claims their gatherings created a risk of significant spread. But in recent days, the mayors of Los Angeles and Miami have both acknowledged these rallies likely played some role in the recent increase in cases.

And in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office revealed they instructed contact tracers tracking positive COVID tests not to ask if the infected person had attended a BLM protest.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep New Yorkers safe while respecting individual privacy,” said de Blasio spokeswoman Avery Cohen.

Team Trump tells NHJournal that Granite Staters are “ecstatic” to welcome President Trump back to New Hampshire.

“While encouraging safety measures for attendees, Saturday will be a celebration of President Trump’s ‘Promises Made, Promises Kept’ agenda, reminding voters that he is the only leader who can bring about the great American comeback,” said RNC spokesperson Nina McLaughlin. “The contrast between President Trump fighting for Granite Staters and Joe Biden hiding from them in his basement bunker couldn’t be clearer.”

Rush Limbaugh could hardly contain his excitement. “We’ve got three polls today showing Donald Trump at 30 percent or higher with black voters,” he told his national radio audience on Monday. “We’ve got Emerson, we’ve got Rasmussen and we’ve got Marist!”

Rush was echoing a Trump 2020 campaign email entitled “Black Voters Are Raising Their Voices in Support of President Trump. Recent Polls Show Significant Increase in Support from Black Community.”

“You can’t dispute the fact that African Americans have been benefiting from President Trump’s policies,” Katrina Pierson with the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Four years ago, the President asked the black community, ‘What do you have to lose;’ now we are thinking, ‘Imagine what we stand to gain!’”

The new Emerson poll puts Trump at 35 percent with black voters and 38 percent with Hispanics. “If you add in Asian voters at 28 percent approval,” notes Emerson’s director of polling Spencer Kimball, “our number is very close to the new Marist poll,” which finds Trump’s approval at 33 percent among non-white voters.  A recent RasmussenReports poll has Trump support among black voters at 34 percent, and even the new CNN poll has Trump’s approval among non-white voters at 26 percent.

Why is losing black voters by a two-to-one margin something to shout about? Because if Donald Trump came anywhere close to those numbers on Election Day, he’d likely win a 50-state sweep. Minority voters–and black voters in particular– are an absolutely vital part of the Democratic base. And they don’t vote for Republicans, particularly for president.

Over the past 40 years, black voter support for Republican presidential candidates has consistently registered somewhere between “embarrassingly low” and “nonexistent.”  Running for re-election with a red-hot economy, President Reagan got just 9 percent of the African-American vote in 1984. That’s the same 9 percent GOP presidential candidates averaged ever since, according to data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

In his 2012 race against President Obama, Republican Mitt Romney got just 6 percent support from black voters. John McCain? Four percent.

Enter Donald Trump. His 8 percent support in 2016 was typical for a GOP candidate, but there’s been nothing typical about the Trump presidency. Could these new polls be a sign he’s making progress with voters of color where a traditional Republican could not?

“Absolutely,” says John Burnett, a strategic advisor to the New York GOP and an African-American Republican.

“Trump is the wedding crasher,” Burnett told NHJournal. And while Democrats have a longtime relationship with African-American voters, Burnett says “they never really sealed the deal. Now Trump has shown up at the ceremony and he’s telling us, ‘You can do better!'”

Is 30 percent support among black voters for Trump really impossible?

“I have a better chance of jumping center for the Celtics tonight than Donald Trump having 30 percent support in the African-American community,” former Hillary 2016 advisor Joel Payne, who is African-American, told NHJournal.  “Donald Trump’s presidency is an existential crisis for the African-American community and I would predict historically-low African-American support for him next November.”

CNN’s anti-Trump host Ana Navarro-Cárdenas went even further. “Zero chance this is accurate. Zero,” she tweeted. “The poll must have only been conducted in the homes of Ben Carson, Kanye, that sheriff guy with the hat and those two Cubic Zirconia & Polyester-Spandex ladies.” (She’s referring to former Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke and African-American Fox News personalities Diamond & Silk.)

And it’s true that these polls are contradicted by data from Gallup and Quinnipiac University, where Trump’s numbers among black voters remain both steady and unimpressive.

“Trump clearly thinks he should be improving on the 8 percent vote among blacks he received three years ago,” writes Gallup’s senior scientist Frank Newport. “Based on what we see so far in terms of black ratings of the job Trump is doing as president, currently at 10 percent, I don’t see a high probability of that happening.”

And it may not.  But the non-traditional nature of the Trump presidency combined with his overt efforts to engage black voters means Democrats may have to change their math.  From Kanye West’s Oval Office photo op to the campaign’s “Black Voices for Trump” coalition to a focus on historically black colleges and universities, Donald Trump is reaching out to African-American voters more aggressively than any Republican president in recent years.

Meanwhile, some black activists are stepping up, too. African-American conservatives Autry Pruitt and James Golden — better known as Rush Limbaugh’s senior producer ‘Bo Snerdly’ — just launched a new website, MAGA.BLACK, with the self-declared mission to “Make Black Americans Republican Again.”

Golden, aka ‘Snerdley,’ told InsideSources that Democrats aren’t having a conversation that’s connecting with black voters. “My mother is a die-hard Democrat, and even she is sick of the Democrats’ impeachment efforts. She’s not paying any attention to it. She recently told me her party should stop picking on Trump and let the man do his job.”

Democrats may be right about talk of 30 percent of black voters backing Trump being unrealistic. But if Trump gets half that support, his re-election would be all but assured. According to research reported by the Washington Post, Trump’s 2016 win was aided in part by a national drop in black turnout of just 4.7 points from 2012. In the swing states, black turnout fell a modest 5.3 percent.

Are black voters who stayed home rather than back Hillary Clinton really going to turn out for a Pete Buttigieg or Liz Warren?  If low unemployment and investment in education convince just 5 percent of black voters to cast their first GOP ballot, or (more likely) stay home, how do Democrats make up for those lost votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Jacksonville?

Critics at CNN can mock Trump’s high-profile black supporters like Kanye, but Golden believes that’s a mistake. “Kanye isn’t alone. There are more African Americans speaking out now than at any other time I remember.”

Maybe just enough to re-elect Donald Trump.

Tuesday night Gov. John Kasich was on the set of “Cuomo Primetime” with Chris Cuomo, a show that regularly features liberal commentators like Paul Begala, Sally Kohn and Bill Press. Their topic Tuesday night–and every night–is how horrible Donald Trump is and, by extension, how awful the Republican Party is.  Cuomo linked Trump to the “white nationalist” comments of Iowa Congressman Steve King and called him the most untrustworthy person in politics he’d ever seen. Kasich nodded, sighed and largely agreed.

It was the beginning of John Kasich’s career as a paid political analyst for CNN and the end of his campaign for president as a Republican.

Short of volunteering to testify at President Trump’s impeachment hearings, it’s hard to imagine anything the former Ohio governor could do that would damage his viability in the GOP more than going to work for CNN. He and his team must realize how much the Republican base reviles the network of Anderson Cooper and Jim Acosta.  Even MSNBC would be less damaging to Kasich with the GOP base because they view it as openly partisan and, therefore, accept its biases as fair play.

CNN, on the other hand, continually pushes the blatantly #FakeNew that it’s a nonpartisan news platform.  Given its overt, tireless anti-Trump bias (it was the home of Trump-decapitating comedian Kathy Griffin and anti-Trump obsessive Don Lemon) this claim of objectivity drives many conservatives crazy.

Plus–it’s Trump’s target number one.  And John Kasich, who ran for the GOP nomination just three years ago, chooses to go to work for them?  It’s a great way to give Trump the finger, but a lousy way to win the GOP nomination.

“Stick a fork in him, he’s done,” says GOP consultant and longtime NH player Dave Carney. “He’s a non-starter.”

Several other NHGOP politicos agreed. “I don’t know what he’s thinking,” one told NHJournal. “Even if he spends all his airtime bashing Trump instead of the GOP, Republican primary voters are going to hate him for it.”

They weren’t loving him before. A poll of Republicans last year gave Trump a 62-27 margin over Kasich in a primary. Which wouldn’t be so bad…except these were Ohio Republicans.

“Amongst Republicans in New Hampshire who would like to see a challenge to the president, John Kasich rates the highest,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics told WMUR-TV. “The problem is that he only rates at 9 percent, and the president has a solid 70 percent backing right now amongst Republicans.”

Still, John Kasich is slightly more popular than the Cable News Network.  When asked to name their most trusted news source, only 3 percent of Republicans named CNN.

A Republican activist told NHJournal “Being the Republican who hated Trump the most isn’t going to win you points among the base, even if Trump does crash and burn. ‘I told you so’ is rarely a winning message. Kasich will be in their face, every night on a network they hate, reminding them he’s not on their team. It might be good TV but it’s terrible politics.”

If you’re watching Fox and Friends tomorrow (Friday) morning, you may see the new ad from  Defending Democracy Together, a Republican advocacy organization founded by Bill Kristol, urging the NHGOP to maintain its neutral stance in any 2020 GOP POTUS primary.

“There has been chatter among New Hampshire Republicans calling for the elimination of the party’s neutrality requirement before presidential primaries, which would allow the state party to endorse President Trump against a potential primary challenger. A discussion is expected at the meeting at the end of the month,” the organization warns.

“We are running a commercial today and Friday during Fox and Friends in the Manchester media market urging the RNC not to rig the primary in Trump’s favor,” the organization said in a statement.

The original supporters of an NHGOP rule change, Rep. Fred Doucette and Windham, NH selectman Bruce Breton, told NHJournal last week they have no plans to present a proposal to change the party bylaws and allow NHGOP officials to publicly endorse candidates in party primaries. They didn’t submit such a change by the state party deadline that passed the first week in January.

Bill Kristol tells NHJournal that’s good news, but Defending Democracy Together is running the ad to bolster the idea of a wide-open primary as pressure from the Trump organization on GOP institutions rises.  He also notes that other states like South Carolina, along with the RNC don’t seem as dedicated to the tradition of open primaries as the Granite State.

“I feel much better about New Hampshire, actually,” Kristol said. “I’m confident the Republicans in New Hampshire–the home of the First In The Nation primary–aren’t going to let themselves be pushed around by Trump apparatchiks.”

On Tuesday night, Donald Trump took his battle for border wall funding to primetime TV, but Democrats refused to even acknowledge there was a border “crisis” to battle over.  In fact, listening to the three speakers, it was hard to tell they were discussing the same topic.

President Trump addressed the issue of the ongoing government shutdown briefly, but spent most of his time talking about the surge of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers crossing the borders, as well as the negative impacts of illegal immigration.

“In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes, and 4,000 violent killings,” the president said. “Day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who have violated our borders.

“In California, an Air Force veteran was raped, murdered and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history. In Georgia, an illegal alien was recently charged with murder for killing, beheading and dismembering his neighbor. In Maryland, MS-13 gang members who arrived in the United States as unaccompanied minors were arrested and charged last year after viciously stabbing and beating a 16-year-old girl.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, on the other hand, made vague references to Democrats supporting border security while opposing what Schumer called an “ineffective, unnecessary border wall” and talking mostly about government workers and their families hurt by the shutdown.

“The fact is: President Trump has chosen to hold hostage critical services for the health, safety and well-being of the American people and withhold the paychecks of 800,000 innocent workers across the nation – many of them veterans,” Speaker Pelosi said.

“There is no excuse for hurting millions of Americans over a policy difference. Federal workers are about to miss a paycheck. Some families can’t get a mortgage to buy a new home. Farmers and small businesses won’t get loans they desperately need,” added Sen. Schumer.

Liberal groups like the League of Women Voters joined in: “The real threat to the safety and security of Americans is the loss of paychecks for hundreds of thousands of hard-working public servants during the ongoing shutdown,” they said in a statement.

So who carried the day? “Judging by the comments from both sides, we’re no closer to ending this impasse,” Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies told InsideSources. Vaughan, who supports stricter immigration enforcement, said that Trump “did a good job promoting border security, but I wish he’d spent more time explaining why there’s a crisis.”

“As long as we have policies that allow people who make asylum claims–claims they know are almost certain to be rejected–to be released into the country if they have a child with them, we’re encouraging desperate people to risk the lives of children. That’s the ‘immoral’ part  that Speaker Pelosi won’t fix,” Vaughan said.

President Trump echoed that sentiment in what was probably the most memorable line of the evening:

“Some have suggested a barrier is immoral. Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside. The only thing that is immoral is for the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.”

While President Trump and the Democrats mostly talked past each other, there was one clear area of disagreement. President Trump insists that there is, in fact, a “crisis” at the southern border, while both Pelosi and Schumer referred to it as Trump’s “manufactured crisis.”  Who’s right?

According to the Washington Post, “2,000 unauthorized migrants who are being taken into federal custody each day” at the Mexico border.  Another anti-Trump outlet, Vox.com says: “More families crossed the US-Mexico border without papers in November 2018 than in any month since the Department of Homeland Security started tracking family apprehensions separately.”

But the final judgment belongs to the voters, and according to a Morning Consult poll released the day of the speech, they are with President Trump on the “crisis” question.  The poll found that 42 percent describe the current situation as a “crisis” and 37 percent say it’s “not a crisis but a problem,” while just 12 percent agree with the Democrats that there’s no problem at all.

“This is why Trump may have won the night. Democrats are still denying there’s a problem. Americans can see people rushing the border and climbing the fences, they see the coverage of the overcrowded border facilities. Of course there’s a problem–a major one,” Vaughan said.