Re: “Trump: Iran’s supreme leader has been killed,” March 1 news story

President Donald Trump’s call for Iranians to take to their dangerous streets to express their rights, to gain free speech and to create a new government is beyond irony when his goons beat, jail and kill Americans expressing their right of free speech in Minneapolis and across the United States. When the time comes in America, let us hope our citizens have the courage that he calls for in Iran’s citizens.

Jerry Swedlund, Denver

Another Republican war. This is the third war perpetrated by a Republican administration. In spite of what many Americans may have thought about President Joe Biden, I felt safe under his administration. And one of those reasons is because of his respect for our military and the lives and safety of our soldiers. I no longer feel safe, and I’m willing to bet I’m not alone.

Nancy Rife, Wheat Ridge

Astounding! We’re at war with Iran! Our Congress, the only branch of government with the power to declare war, didn’t declare war?

President Trump spoke for a long, long time last week on national TV and “forgot” to mention he was locked and loaded the military for immediate action. You’d think somebody would have “suggested” to our diplomatic corps to send their families back to the U.S. of A. for an overdue vacation ASAP. Now many are trapped, and the last time that happened, there were hostages held in Iran for 444 days.

Pity those service members due for discharge this week to be told to fuhgeddaboudit. I got nailed with a” for the convenience of the military” enlistment freeze back in 1961 and didn’t appreciate the surprise one bit.

Now I suppose Trump will suspend our elections until after it¶¶Òőap over there.

Harry Puncec, Lakewood

If anyone needed confirming evidence that America is spiraling downward into a fully fledged autocracy, President Trump’s war with Iran provides it.

After having announced in June that Iran’s nuclear program had been “completely and totally obliterated,” it seems that it is now necessary to attack Iran again to destroy its missile program. The reason for this is to prevent Iran from launching non-existent nuclear weapons against the U.S. on rockets that do not currently exist.

But then Donald Trump does what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts, which is the definition of an autocrat. And if you believe that the mid-term elections in November will be “free and fair,” you may want to think again.

Guy Wroble, Denver

Rep. Boebert demonstrates a new low at Hillary Clinton deposition

Re: “Boebert leaks photo of Clinton testifying, disrupting deposition,” Feb. 27 news story

Rep. Lauren Boebert¶¶Òőap despicable behavior at the Epstein deposition of the Clintons is an astounding new low, even for her. She is an embarrassment to all of us in the 4th congressional district and, for that matter, to all Coloradans. If it isn’t apparent already, she needs to resign or be replaced, as she is incapable of functioning as a competent adult in the halls of Congress.

Ralph Roberts, Roxborough

Everything keeps getting interesting when it comes to Lauren Boebert. Everyone on the House Oversight Committee should have known the rules for this closed-door session, as they were read at the beginning. It included no photographs.

Either she wasn’t paying attention, or she didn’t care. She took a photo or photos and passed them on to right-winger Benny Johnson. I didn’t realize that Johnson was into fashion, but  Boebert’s excuse was that she liked Hillary Clinton’s outfit, so she decided to share it with Johnson. When she wants to lie, she does it big.

Rep. Boebert should be excluded from the committee. In addition, President Trump and his wife should also be heard from under oath if the committee wanted to appear that they were not hypocrites. But that won’t happen.

Wayne Wathen, Centennial

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WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told members of Congress on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes, starting two days of depositions that also will include former President Bill Clinton.

“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein,” Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on social media. The closed-door deposition concluded after over six hours of questioning.

Her testimony was disrupted briefly Thursday after U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado shared a photo of the closed-door proceeding that was posted online.

Boebert sent a photo to a conservative influencer who posted it on social media, violating the committee’s rules for depositions. The that Clinton halted her testimony after learning about the image, and her attorneys objected and asked to pause the proceedings.

Her testimony resumed about 30 minutes later, the Times reported.

The closed-door depositions in the Clintons’ hometown of Chappaqua, a typically quiet hamlet north of New York City, come after  between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee. It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress.

Yet the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond.

, a Republican who has expressed regret that the Clintons are being forced to testify, bowed last year to pressure to release case files on Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial. The Clintons, too,  after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., threatened  against them.

“Like every decent person,” Hillary Clinton added in her opening statement, “I have been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes.”

She had said that her husband had flown with Epstein for charitable trips but that she did not recall meeting Epstein. She had interacted with Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, at conferences hosted by the Clinton Foundation.

ČŃČčłæ·É±đ±ô±ô,Ìę, also attended the 2010 wedding of their daughter, Chelsea Clinton. As she exited the event center where the deposition was held, Hillary Clinton told reporters that Maxwell had come to the wedding as a guest of someone else and that she had told the committee she only knew Maxwell “as an acquaintance.”

At the conclusion of the hearing, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said Hillary Clinton had answered every question posed to her.

Republicans relish chance to question Clintons

Bill Clinton, however, has emerged as a top target for Republicans amid the political struggle over who receives the most scrutiny for their ties to Epstein.  of the former president were included in the first tranche of Epstein files released by the Department of Justice in January, including a number of him with women whose faces were redacted. Clinton has not been accused of wrongdoing in his relationship with Epstein.

Comer also has pointed to Hillary Clinton’s work as secretary of state to address sex trafficking as another reason to insist on her deposition. Clinton defended her work to address sex trafficking around the world, saying that it remained important to help the millions of survivors of sex trafficking.

The committee’s investigation also has sought to understand why the Department of Justice under previous presidential administrations did not seek further charges against Epstein after a 2008 arrangement in which he pleaded guilty to state charges in Florida for soliciting prostitution from an underage girl but avoided federal charges.

Hillary Clinton accused Comer of running a one-sided investigation that has failed to hold Trump and other Republican officials to account. “This institutional failure is designed to protect one political party and one public official,” she said.

łÛ±đłÙÌę, especially on the right, have swirled for years around the Clintons and their connections to Epstein and Maxwell, who argues she was convicted wrongfully. Republicans have long wanted to press the Clintons for answers.

Hillary Clinton said that one Republican lawmaker asked her a line of questions about “vile, bogus conspiracy theories.”

Democrats said Thursday that the Boebert photo incident underscored how important it was for there to be a clear public record of the deposition. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the Oversight panel, said Hillary Clinton, after the incident, repeated her longstanding demand that the deposition be made public, and Democrats called for a video and transcript of the complete proceedings to be released quickly.

Comer said that he would work quickly to release a video and transcript of the deposition.

“The purpose of the whole investigation is to try to understand many things about Epstein,” he told reporters outside the convention center where the depositions were being held. “How did he accumulate so much wealth? How was he able to surround himself with some of the most powerful men in the world?”

Comer described the deposition as a bipartisan effort and said Thursday that it was “very possible” the committee would question Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was Epstein’s neighbor and had several interactions with him. Under questioning from Democrats this month, Lutnick  after the late financier’s 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a child, reversing his previous claim that he had cut ties with him after 2005.

Democrats call for Trump to testify

Democrats, now being led by a new generation of politicians, have prioritized transparency around Epstein over defending the former leaders of their party. Several Democratic lawmakers joined with Republicans on the Oversight panel to  against the Clintons last month. Several said they had no relationship with the Clintons and owed no loyalty to them.

Garcia also called on Trump to testify in the investigation. He argued that Bill Clinton’s appearance sets a precedent that should apply to Trump as well.

“Let¶¶Òőap get President Trump in front of our committee to answer the questions that are being asked across this country from survivors,” Garcia said.

Comer previously said the committee can’t depose Trump because he is a sitting president.

Still, Democrats are also coming off an effort this week to confront Trump about his administration’s handling of the Epstein files by taking women who survived Epstein’s abuse as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address.

Garcia and others also are challenging the Department of Justice’s assertion that it has met the requirements of a law passed by Congress last year that mandates the release of many of the case files on Epstein.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said his caucus in the coming days also would review unredacted versions of the Epstein case files at a Department of Justice office. Schumer, who demanded that the department release all of the files and preserve all materials, said they will “pull on every thread” until they “reveal this massive cover-up.”

Public affairs editor Jon Murray contributed to this story.

Follow the AP’s coverage of Jeffrey Epstein at .

Re: “Officials texted war plans to group chat, journalist,” March 25 news story

The discussion over an open network (and I can assure you that by hacker standards, it is open) of the Houthi battle plan and timing in Yemen shows just how inept this band of toadies appointed by a Republican congress is.

We’re very fortunate that we’re not reading an obituary of a fighter pilot brought down by a surface-to-air missile because they knew where and when they’d be there. In the Air Force (I’m a 24-year veteran), even the most basic of airmen have operational security drilled into them.

They should all be fired.

Robert Mann, Centennial

Sending mixed messages

So Hillary Clinton should have been locked up for using her private server to conduct government business while she was Secretary of State, but Donald Trump’s natural security team using a hackable message site instead of the government-secured protocol was a “glitch”?  Or maybe it didn’t happen at all? Really? The issue is not so much that attack plans were inappropriately shared with a journalist but that Trump’s team used the Signal app in the first place.  Not only is that galling hypocrisy, but it reveals Trump’s team is a bunch of amateurs supposedly guiding our national security who are now in the process of a cover-up, apparently testifying to a Senate committee that no classified information was shared in the texts.

John W. Thomas, Fort Collins

Portrait of a president

Re: “Portrait removed after president’s complaint,” March 25 news story

I find it exceedingly interesting that President Donald Trump was neither involved in the text meeting regarding military plans to attack the Houthis in Yemen nor aware of the egregious intelligence leak that followed until he was told about it later in the day by a journalist.  He was, however, very aware of and concerned about a portrait of him that he deemed disagreeable that was displayed in the Colorado Capitol building in Denver. Hmmm! It just makes me wonder.

Al White, Winter Park

Ominous headlines prompt donation

Your headlines on page 1A of the March 25 paper, in only a few words, render a clear, devastating verdict on the ineptness, pettiness, and criminality of the Trump administration.

Going from the top of the page to the bottom, these headlines are: “Officials invoke state secrets privilege,” “Portrait removed after president’s complaint,” and “Officials texted war plans to group chat, journalist.”

I’m tempted to laugh at the White House clown show, equally tempted to cry over the ominous rise of authoritarianism, but have settled on a donation to the American Civil Liberties Union and to any other group that isn’t afraid to stand up to the greatest threat ever in our country’s nearly 250 years as a beacon of freedom and individual liberties to the world.

David E. Stauffer, Denver

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Gill grew up in the western suburbs of Denver and founded his software start-up, Quark, in 1981 after graduating from the University of Colorado. In 1999 and parlayed his profits into activism, becoming an influential national voice for gay rights and donating hundreds of millions of dollars to LGBTQ+ causes through

“He has helped lead the fight against HIV-AIDS, laid the groundwork for marriage equality and so much more,” Gill’s medal citation reads. “His strong character, unwavering resolve and indisputable effectiveness in fighting for love and equality for all make him a key figure in our nation’s story of freedom.”

The nation’s highest civilian award is given at the discretion of the president to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values or security of the United States, world peace or other significant societal, public or private endeavors,” according to

Recipients chosen by Biden, whose term will end Jan. 20, include prominent political figures such as 2016 presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as well as cultural icons such as former Los Angeles Lakers point guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson and children’s TV star William Nye, better known as Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Other awardees include José Andrés, Bono, Ashton Carter (posthumous), Michael J. Fox, Jane Goodall, Fannie Lou Hamer (posthumous), Robert Francis Kennedy (posthumous), Ralph Lauren, Lionel Messi, George Romney (posthumous), David Rubenstein, George Soros, George Stevens Jr., Denzel Washington and Anna Wintour.

His planned afternoon stop on the northern edge of Aurora, near the airport, comes three weeks after the former president and current Republican nominee pledged to visit a suburban city he’s falsely claimed has been overrun by Venezuelan gangs. His visit has been met with praise from some Republican officials, pushback from Democrats and attempts by city officials to rebut his repeated exaggerations of gang problems that have been most apparent at a handful of Aurora apartment complexes.

Trump is scheduled to speak at the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Convention Center at 1 p.m. Doors open for the event at 9 a.m., . Trump will then travel to Reno, Nevada, for another rally scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. mountain time.

The campaign has not released more information about the event, and campaign staff did not respond to a message seeking information on the number of tickets distributed. But a front desk clerk for the Gaylord said Thursday that the event would be indoors, with a capacity of 10,000.

The campaign has not yet announced any additional speakers or attendees, though a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert said the congresswoman plans to attend, as will state Rep. Gabe Evans, who’s running for Congress in the north Denver suburbs. So, too, will Jeff Crank, a Republican running for a Colorado Springs-based congressional district. Evans and Crank may speak at the rally, their spokespeople said.

Spokesmen for the Aurora and Denver police departments would not provide details about logistical planning for the event. The Aurora spokesman said the department may seek help from other agencies, if needed.

Trump’s visit comes amid the former president’s continued — and often inaccurate — focus on Aurora and what local officials have described as the “limited” presence of a Venezuelan gang; those concerns have primarily been linked to a group of dilapidated apartment buildings. It’s been part of Trump’s wider focus on immigration, with him often employing anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The former president’s campaign referred to Aurora as a “war zone” when announcing the rally plans earlier this week, and Trump twice referenced the situation in Aurora during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris last month. Denver TV station Fox31 that the Trump campaign has invited the woman who recorded a now-infamous video of armed men in an Aurora apartment building’s hallways to attend the rally.

In a statement this week, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman — a Republican whose 2018 congressional reelection loss — said the visit “is an opportunity to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city — not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs. My public offer to show him our community and meet with our police chief for a briefing still stands.”

Coffman said the “concerns about Venezuelan gang activity” had been “grossly exaggerated.”

Concerns about demonizing immigrants

Residents at the apartments at the center of the firestorm planned to hold an event and press conference in response to Trump’s rally on Friday afternoon, an organizer told The Denver Post. The Denver chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation has also announced plans to hold a drum circle “and make some noise” outside of the Gaylord.

A group of unions and community groups — a coalition that includes the large union for state employees — released a statement Thursday condemning “the racist and divisive lies that MAGA Republicans are using in an attempt to distract us from horrendous living conditions” at the apartments.

U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat who represents Aurora in Congress, told that Trump had exaggerated the issues in the city and that elected leaders “are addressing our public safety issues and our housing issues, and we don’t need somebody coming and telling lies and demonizing our immigrants and our refugees.”

Aurora’s crime rate has followed seen across the country. That¶¶Òőap despite — or, some argue, partly because of — the influx of Venezuelans fleeing their country who have funneled into Colorado and other cities nationwide.

Multiple studies show immigrants  than native-born Americans. But Aurora of how Trump has been able to use real but isolated episodes of migrant violence to tar an entire population. He uses those examples to paint a picture of a country in chaos due to what he regularly calls an immigrant “invasion.”

“Do you see what they’re doing in Colorado? They’re taking over,” Trump, who often warns of “migrant crime,” said of Venezuelan gang members during a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday. “They’re taking over real estate. They become real estate developers from Venezuela. They have equipment that our military doesn’t have.”

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, noted that Aurora, a city of 400,000 people, has long fought to shake its reputation as Colorado’s rougher big city. One-fifth of Aurora’s residents were born in another country.

“This is a safer town than it’s been before,” Polis told the Associated Press in an interview. “Things are going really great” in Aurora, Polis added, “and I don’t want this bizarre counter-narrative out there.”

Colorado polling favors Harris

Trump’s rally is unlikely to shift the political winds in Colorado, a now-reliably blue state that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won by 5 percentage points in 2016 and President Joe Biden won by more than 13 points four years ago. Recent polling gives Harris a double-digit lead over Trump in the Centennial State.

The last major presidential candidate campaign rally in Colorado was four years ago, when Trump had an event in Colorado Springs. This time, the major-party candidates and their surrogates have visited the state for campaign stops only to raise money.

Harris visited Denver for a post-State of the Union event in March in her capacity as vice president, several months before Biden dropped out of the race. After she became the nominee, running mate Tim Walz, Minnesota’s governor, headlined a fundraiser in Denver in August.

Trump was in Colorado in August for a high-dollar fundraiser in Aspen. of Trump’s remarks at the event, in which he claimed that undocumented immigrants were coming from the Middle East and Asia. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, was in Denver earlier this week for a private fundraiser at the Brown Palace hotel downtown.

Immigration is also a key plank of several Colorado Republicans’ platforms, though it’s unclear if all of those candidates will attend the Aurora rally.

But another notable celebrity-turned-political figure will be in Colorado on Friday: Stormy Daniels, the former adult film star whose accusations of hush-money payments from Trump led to the former president’s felony convictions in May.

She will hold two nights of shows at the this weekend. The event, which was planned before Trump’s rally was announced, promises “laughs, real-talk, and an intimate peek behind the curtain of (Daniels’) life in the adult entertainment world.”

Staff writer Nick Coltrain and the Associated Press contributed to this story.

A poll by Telluride-based pollster Keating Research found the Democratic nominee had an 11-point lead over Republican former President Donald Trump, 53% to 42%. Two percent of voters preferred someone else, and 3% were undecided.

Though it was released this week, the poll by Keating, a Democratic firm, was conducted with 500 likely voters Sept. 11-14, just after Harris and Trump’s Sept. 10 televised debate. It has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

That finding was roughly in line with conducted over the last few weeks. Those surveys, both performed by Morning Consult, a national firm, found Harris ahead by double digits — leading by 15 percentage points, 55% to 40%, in a poll conducted in late August and early September; and leading by 10 points, 53% to 42% (with results rounded), in a poll conducted Sept. 9-18. Both surveyed roughly 500 likely voters in Colorado.

If those polls prove true to life in November, Harris will win Colorado by a similar margin to President Joe Biden in 2020. Biden beat Trump by more than 13 points in the state. Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in 2016, won Colorado .

Nationally, Harris with a much narrower 2-3% lead over Trump.

The latest Colorado results show some improvement for Harris over Biden, who withdrew from his reelection bid in late July. A , a Democratic firm, showed Biden leading Trump in the state by 10 percentage points among 800 registered voters in Colorado in a head-to-head matchup.

But that margin dropped to a six-point lead when factoring in other presidential candidates, including independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The poll was conducted just before Biden’s debate against Trump, widely seen as a disastrous performance.)

Though Kennedy remains on the ballot in Colorado, and endorsed Trump.

The recent Keating poll shows that among Colorado’s Latino voters, Harris holds a 42-point lead over Trump, 69% to 27%. She leads 55% to 38% among unaffiliated Coloradans, who make up a plurality of registered voters statewide. She also leads by 15 points among voters under the age of 50, by seven points among older voters and by 13 points among voters who live in the suburbs surrounding Denver.

The vice president also leads among women, 57% to 38%.

The poll identified a narrow Harris lead among male voters, too — 49% to 46% — though that is within the poll’s margin of error. Men have been one of , one he . Though Harris appears to hold a slight advantage with men in Colorado, it’s the smallest lead among any group identified by Keating.

Colorado last backed a Republican presidential candidate in 2004, when then-President George W. Bush beat his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry.

Colorado State House Rep. Scott Bottoms should know better. No one — not even his own congregation — is going to waste time on such a simple story.

Better go with: The quiet lawyer, with a reputation as the honest confidant, is secretly a long lost and embittered family relation. He killed the heir in the vineyard while the victim’s vain and headstrong daughters conspired to rid themselves of their meddlesome father, and the third wife was with her lover, a corrupt government agent connected to cartels to whom the victim’s sons owed mounting gambling debts. Now that¶¶Òőap a page-turner!

This is the level of inane and improbable complexity that a conspiracy theorist should aim for after an unexpected event such as an assassination or attempt, a narrow election, a terrorist attack, or a pandemic. So when Bottoms told his congregation that of Donald Trump, he could have done better as a purveyor of fiction … a lot better.

Bottoms has already blamed the FBI for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. His new conspiracy theory needs a fresh villain. And since he’s presented zero evidence of an FBI plot, he could choose anyone!

While unnamed Deep State operatives controlling both the State and Justice Departments provide an air of mystery, they desperately need an outsider connection. And it can’t be George Soros or the Koch Brothers; they’re busy animating other fictions. As long as Pastor Bottoms is going to take time away from the Gospel to preach Christian Nationalist politics, he should name names. Resurrect Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Toss in a connection to Monsanto, the Masons, the Comintern, and the Kardashians.

Bottoms told his congregants the FBI would have succeeded were it not for God’s intervention. Too bad Presidents JFK, Garfield, McKinley, and Lincoln weren’t on the divine presidential protection plan. Bottoms predicted that by Nov. 5, Trump would be dead or in jail or the election would be suspended. Can we get a scripture citation on that?

Colorado-based podcaster Joe Oltmann did one better.

: “Shooter is a rabid antifa member … like Erik Maulbetsch of the Colorado Times Recorder or Sean Heidi Beedle of the same organization. Or Kyle Antifa Clark of 9news … These are evil, disgustingly vile people and they need to be held accountable. They are terrorists. They are unAmerican and their Soros-funded rhetoric needs to stop. They stole elections, stole our voice and it¶¶Òőap time to hold them accountable. They are terrorists.”

Terrorists?

Illuminati would have been better bait for his followers looking for something to dig into on Parler and Truth Social. Clark is too dapper for a suicide vest anyway. And with names like Maulbetsch and Beedle, Oltmann should have said the Times Recorder crew are part of the Bilderberg Group or the Trilateral Commission, undercover globalists sowing the subversive seeds of free trade on the Front Range. Also, Antifa has been overplayed. The American public needs more Russian collusion conspiracy theories. Oh, and chemtrails would be a nice touch.

On the left, “it-was-staged” conspiracy theories have found fertile ground. A Morning Consult poll found a third of those who supported President Joe Biden believed the attempted assassination was faked to improve Trump’s prospects. Support for that theory explains why Democrats didn’t immediately propose new gun laws in the wake of the shooting.

In this faked-assassination-attempt conspiracy theory, Trump slashed his own ear or used a concealed fake blood capsule to create the illusion. How do believers explain the death of bystander Corey Comperatore? Must have been the COVID shot.

Aberdeen, Wash., mayor, Douglas Or, said he wants independent doctors to look at the injury to make sure it wasn’t faked. Admittedly, the oversized gauze bandage adorning Trump’s ear at the Republican Convention did seem suspect. However, a fake injury could be covered by fake doctors with fake lab coats and reported as fake news. That¶¶Òőap where things could get interesting. Let¶¶Òőap bring in Mossad, Haliburton, Hillary Clinton, Project 2025, and those behind the faked moon landing and really develop the derisory potential of this half-baked conspiracy theory.

After all, if we’re going to circulate things without a single shred of evidence, let¶¶Òőap go big.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on X: @kristakafer.

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GREENSBORO, N.C. — He’s argued his four criminal indictments and mug shot bolstered his support among Black voters who see him as a victim of discrimination just like them.

He’s compared himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison imprisoned by Vladimir Putin, and suggested that he is a political dissident, too.

And in nearly every public appearance, he repeats falsehoods about the election he lost.

Candidates on the verge of winning their parties’ nominations generally massage their messaging and moderate positions that may energize hardcore primary voters but are less appealing to a broader audience. In political terms, they “pivot.”

Not Donald Trump. The former president is instead doubling down on often-incendiary rhetoric that offends wide swaths of voters, seeming to be doing little to rein in his most irascible and oftentimes self-defeating instincts. That¶¶Òőap even as some of his most loyal allies have suggested he shift his focus and tone down rhetoric that risks offending independent voters and people outside his base.

“Donald Trump is Donald Trump. That¶¶Òőap not going to change,” said senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita. “Our job is not to remake Donald Trump.”

LaCivita and other top campaign officials instead say their role is to provide the organization “to amplify and to force project” Trump’s message.

The campaign, he said, had already assumed a general election posture before voting began, running ads attacking President Joe Biden before the Iowa caucuses. So while Trump is now talking less about his last remaining GOP rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his campaign is focused on building out a general election infrastructure as it turns its focus from early voting states to November battlegrounds.

That includes efforts to take over the Republican National Committee, with plans to consolidate the party’s and campaign’s fundraising, political operations, communications and research operations. LaCivita is in line to become the RNC’s chief operating officer while retaining his role on the campaign.

“The campaign’s pivot,” LaCivita said, “is just a realization that we’ve already secured what we need to win. That manifests itself in not only the messaging but the mechanics.” He said to expect “more of the same” after Trump clinches the nomination, which is expected later this month.

Trump’s hardest edges, no matter how familiar to Americans nine years after he first ran for president, produce welcome fodder for Biden’s reelection team, which wants to motivate disaffected Democrats and independent voters by warning about a second Trump term.

Trump’s speeches at rallies can stretch for two hours as he meanders between policy proposals, personal stories and jokes, attacks on his opponents and complaints that he is being persecuted by the courts, and dire warnings about the country’s future. Trump often adds asides that were not in his prepared remarks. But some of his most divisive comments are part of his script.

He has bragged about nominating three Supreme Court justices who voted to end a national right to abortion, even as he urges Republicans not to be too extreme on an issue Democrats have credited for several victories. In promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, he has talked about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing Adolf Hitler. And he once described his enemies as “vermin,” language opponents deride as authoritarian.

At one rally this past weekend, Trump went so far as to cast Biden’s handling of the border as “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”

“Donald Trump is still Donald Trump — the same extreme, dangerous candidate voters rejected in 2020, and they’ll reject him again this November regardless of the team he has around him,” said Biden spokesman Kevin Munoz.

Trump’s advisers have at times encouraged him to speak less about grievance and retribution and more about his vision for a second term. But after three campaigns for the White House and four years in office, Trump is set in his ways. Former aides learned long ago that trying to pressure Trump to rein in his impulses often only led him to dig in deeper. And his campaign team seems to respect and trust the former president¶¶Òőap political instincts, pointing to his sweep of the GOP primaries so far.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump would not change. Americans “deserve a president who will not sugarcoat what¶¶Òőap happening in the world,” he said.

Interviews with Republicans, including Trump supporters and those still backing Haley’s beleaguered bid, reflect concerns that Trump risks fumbling a clear opportunity against Biden, who faces low approval ratings and widespread voter questions about his age and readiness for a second term.

“At some point (Trump) needs to take the spotlight off himself,” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia congressman who backs Haley. Davis noted improving economic indicators but said Biden remains burdened by concerns about inflation and “has been bad on the border” and “terrible on the deficit.”

Even Trump voters seem to recognize the problem: According to AP VoteCast data, about half of Republicans in conservative South Carolina — including about a quarter of Trump’s own supporters — are concerned he is too extreme to win the general election. While Trump dominates among conservative voters, those voters represented just 37% of the electorate in the November 2020 presidential election.

Trump held rallies Saturday in North Carolina and Virginia, two states that hold primaries on Super Tuesday but are also potential swing states in November’s general election.

Both states highlight Trump’s potential problems in November: He dominates among conservatives, especially in rural and small-town America, but struggles with more moderate voters in more urban settings.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who was re-elected in 2020 even as Trump won his state, said he welcomes the contrast between Trump and Biden.

“Do you want a president who wakes up every morning thinking about the American people?” he asked in an interview. “Or do you want a president who wakes up every morning thinking about himself?”

Biden won Virginia in 2020. A year later, Virginians elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor. Youngkin emphasized education and economic policy, and attracted urban and suburban moderates who rejected Trump. Some of the states’ suburban and exurban congressional districts have become more favorable to Democrats in the Trump era.

Notably, Youngkin has not endorsed Trump. He declined an interview request through aides.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who sometimes speaks to the former president, compared 2024 to 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan won a landslide over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, who was saddled with inflation, high unemployment and international conflict. Reagan, dubbed “the happy warrior,” won 44 states and a new Republican Senate with “a positive vision,” Gingrich said, that was about more than Carter’s record.

“When you have the kind of numbers Biden has, what people need is about 70% positive, 30% anti-Biden,” Gingrich said, insisting Trump could usher in a Republican wave like when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Just as possible, however, is a repeat of 2018, when Republicans lost the House majority, or 2020, when Trump lost and Democrats reclaimed Senate control, or 2022, when Republicans lost winnable Senate races and failed to flip the chamber.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suggests Trump and his campaign should “just keep doing what they’re doing.”

But Graham himself has pivoted. After he ran for president in 2016, Graham vowed that “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.” Now, he is a Trump confidant.

“Everybody that wants to give him advice, he beat like a drum,” Graham said at Trump’s South Carolina victory party.

___

Colvin reported from New York.

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Re: “Eight words, a verbal slip put focus on Biden’s age, again,” Feb. 10 news story

Let¶¶Òőap see, he walked gingerly down a ramp at West Point beside an escort. He mispronounces names and words; at times, he doesn’t even know where he is; sometimes, he is confused as to what president was in office and what World War was fought. He gives unsolicited medical advice that could actually kill people. He knows nothing about everything, yet he acts as though he does; fact-checking him is an ongoing process, as he lies and fabricates stories as part of his M.O. Shall I go on? You get the point!

You may be under the impression that I am writing about President Joe Biden, but you are so wrong
 this is all about Trump!

The special counsel, Robert Hur, who investigated President Biden’s handling of classified documents, put forth his own subjective opinion when referring to the president. Robert Hur is in no way, shape or form qualified to make such an assessment. As far as I know, he is not a medical doctor or a psychologist.

President Biden and his administration have worked very hard to bring our country back from the disaster that was Trump; focused on our country and our people, we are witnessing the positive results of this effort.

Elise Rubin, Broomfield

Re: “Aides went from letting “Joe be Joe” to shielding president from slip-ups,” Feb. 11 news story

The article on President Joe Biden’s mental acuity in the Sunday paper is downright scary. The problem is, I’m not sure it’s as scary as Donald Trump. As a Reagan Republican, I don’t find that Trump has any connection to a true conservative agenda. He basically rants and raves without much thought of the consequences. Over the weekend he suggested he wouldn’t support some of our NATO allies if they were attacked. Wow, what a dangerous statement. He also restated he would end the war in Ukraine in one day. Everyone knows that this would be Trump selling out Ukraine and the thousands of people killed there since Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Think about it: Trump and Putin working together. Wow, I have to wonder if Trump even has a moral compass.

Then there’s Biden; he has shown a marked decline in his mental faculties, and my guess is that it is just going to get worse. The question arises if his handlers could actually be running this country.

There is a way out: Biden retires, and the Democrats give us a true moderate nominee. For a moderate Democrat, I would crossover and vote for him/her, and so would a ton of other disillusioned Trumpers. I need to add here that the Republican establishment in Colorado needs to do the right thing and resign and give the reins to true conservatives, not Trump pretenders. They should accept the fact that they have mortally harmed the party with their stupid Trump support and, in some cases, their ambitions for jobs.

Michael Scanlan, Arvada

With special counsel Robert Hur’s release of his report citing President Joe Biden’s age-related infirmities as justification not to recommend prosecution for his retention of classified documents, Biden, like Hillary Clinton before him, has had his “Comey moment.” He may not recover from this setback.

The Democratic Party should immediately pivot toward contested primaries. At his advanced age, Biden may suffer a medical decline before the election. Voters may also fear that he may suffer a decline after the election, leading to an unpopular Kamala Harris’ ascendancy to the presidency.

Biden asserted in his campaign that he would be a “bridge” candidate, a transition president. He should honor this pledge. Biden, like many aging athletes, seems not to recognize when it is time to step out of the political arena so that he may be remembered for his many noteworthy accomplishments and not his decline. (Think: Ronald Reagan.)

Biden polls poorly against Donald Trump and Nikki Haley and could easily lose with another gaffe during debate or campaigning. Democrats need to focus on better exposing and grooming their bench of candidates to take over the reins of national leadership, starting with the 2024 presidential election.

Peter Wessel, Denver

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“For me, that balance is family, work and service,” she said.

Clinton juggled those roles — and more — during eight years as first lady in the White House. She’s returning Tuesday for her first public appearance in the building since the Obama years to indulge her love for the arts.

In her White House years, she was a wife, a mother and the nation’s hostess, but also a wronged spouse, the head of a national health care task force and on the cover of Vogue. In later years, she stepped over the White House threshold as a visiting senator and Cabinet member, but never in the long-sought role of Madam President.

Early on as first lady, she held a rare news conference where she was grilled about the Clintons’ past real estate dealings, declaring that she had been “rezoned” out of her sphere of privacy.

The former first lady and current first lady Jill Biden will appear together to announce the recipients of the Praemium Imperiale, an annual global arts prize for lifetime achievement by the Japan Art Association. Both women will deliver remarks.

Her return visit is likely to be a sentimental one.

“I have to imagine she’s really looking forward to being back and being back with the Bidens, who she’s been close to for a long time,” said Lisa Caputo, who was Clinton’s White House press secretary.

Clinton’s ties to the White House bracket her time as first lady.

Early visits came when she accompanied Bill Clinton to the executive mansion, when he was Arkansas governor from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, for annual receptions for the nation’s governors.

She was a regular at the White House in her post-first lady roles as a U.S. senator and as secretary of state, a position that came with a permanent seat next to the president at Cabinet meetings.

Twice she sought the ultimate White House perch, campaigning in 2008 and again in 2016 to become the first woman elected president. She fell short each time, and kept her distance from the White House during the Trump years.

Ellen Fitzpatrick, emeritus professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, said going back to the White House evokes memories for any former first lady.

She recalled Jacqueline Kennedy’s trip back with her children years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The former first lady later told President Richard Nixon in a thank you note that a day she had dreaded turned out to be one of the most precious she spent with her kids.

“I think for Hillary herself, I’m sure it will be quite a moment going back in,” said Fitzpatrick, author of “The Highest Glass Ceiling,” a book about women who run for president.

Clinton made some good and not-so-good White House memories.

“My eight years in the White House tested my faith and political beliefs, my marriage and our nation’s Constitution,” she wrote in “Living History,” her memoir. “I became a lightning rod for political and ideological battles waged over America’s future and a magnet for feelings, good or bad, about women’s choices and roles.”

In his first year in office, President Clinton stood with his wife in the East Room and made her head of a national health care task force to bring health insurance to every American. No first lady had ever been responsible for shaping such major public policy. The work, largely done in secret, inevitably attracted criticism. The plan ultimately died without a vote in Congress.

In 1994, Clinton donned a pink sweater and fielded questions for more than an hour in the East Room about her financial dealings as part of the Whitewater affair, an Arkansas real estate project the couple had lost money in and that federal authorities were investigating.

At one point during the news conference, she said, “I’ve always believed in a zone of privacy, and I told a friend the other day that I feel after resisting for a long time that I’ve been rezoned.”

Another notable White House image of the Clintons came in 1998 after the president’s sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was exposed. As the family kept plans for a two-week vacation on the Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard, the Clintons walked across the South Lawn to the waiting helicopter with a teenaged Chelsea as a buffer between her parents.

Hillary Clinton also was among those in the Roosevelt Room at the White House when the president declared to the nation that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” She went on national television and blamed their political problems on a “vast, right-wing conspiracy.”

Her public approval ratings ticked upward as her marital woes played out in public. She also became the first first lady to grace the cover of Vogue magazine, clad in a long-sleeved black velvet gown and seated on a red couch in the White House Red Room.

After her husband was acquitted during a Senate impeachment trial in January 1999, she ran for and won a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2000, their final year in the White House. For a short period, she went about her duties as a freshman lawmaker while closing out her chapter as first lady.

After Clinton lost the Democratic presidential nomination to then-fellow Sen. Barack Obama in 2008, he persuaded her to become his secretary of state. She again was a regular presence at the White House, with a seat next to Obama at the Cabinet table. She’s prominent in the famous photo of officials crowded into the Situation Room when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

Tuesday will be a full-circle moment of sorts for Hillary Clinton. She and President Clinton first celebrated the Praemium Imperiale prizes at the White House in 1994. She is the U.S international adviser for the awards.

Melanne Verveer, who was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the White House, said Clinton’s love for the arts is a lesser-known piece of her biography as a globe-trotting policy wonk and diplomat.

The White House was “a place of enormous artistic welcoming” under Hillary Clinton, Verveer said, adding that she was keenly interested in the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, federal agencies whose funding conservatives wanted to cut. She also showcased American sculpture in the first lady’s garden at the White House.

“It was just a huge engagement on the arts, so I’m not surprised in some ways that the Praemium Imperiale is going to take place at the White House with her being there,” Verveer said.

Whether she visits or not, Clinton will have an enduring presence at the White House: her portrait as first lady hangs in a hallway on the ground floor.

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