Trump calls Biden ‘lying machine’ and ‘fact checker’s dream’ as CNN debate looms: Latest updates

The Republican felon may see a bump in the polls after Thursday’s first debate because of a long-running trend: incumbents tend to do worse in the first debate of any presidential election season.

Historian Alan Schroeder explained to NBC News that a president’s life exists in a “protected bubble” and the first encounter tends to take them outside of that bubble where they are forced to face off against a pumped up opponent who’s been itching for a showdown.

Here’s more from Gustaf Kilander.

The Department of Justice has filed a response in opposition to Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss the classified documents case against him based on “spoliation of evidence in violation of due process”.

Defendant Trump does not offer the Court a single case at any level, at any time, from anywhere in the country, in which the disruption of the precise order of documents gathered in the execution of a search warrant provided support for a spoliation claim.

The special counsel further defends the handling of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, writing:

Trump personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes along with a collection of other personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others. At the end of his presidency, he took his cluttered collection of keepsakes to Mar-a-Lago, his personal residence and social club, where the boxes traveled from one readily accessible location to another – a public ballroom, an office space, a bathroom, and a basement storage room. After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor; and boxes were moved to Trump’s residence on more than one occasion so he could review and pick through them.

Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that. But neither the law nor the facts provide any basis whatsoever for the Court to find bad faith or spoliation in the unsurprising reality that the order of some of the items may have shifted since then. To the contrary, the FBI agents who conducted the search did so professionally, thoroughly, and carefully under challenging circumstances, particularly given the cluttered state of the boxes and the substantial volume of highly classified documents Trump had retained.

Here’s the veteran former House speaker telling Anderson Cooper that Trump is an “indicted, impeached convicted loser” and offering a vote of no confidence in the Supreme Court ahead of its upcoming verdict on his spurious presidential immunity defence.

Former Wyoming Republican representative Liz Cheney shared a video of a Swift concert yesterday to mock Trump’s obsession with the pop superstar and his own rally attendance figures.

Gustaf Kilander has more.

Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump’s meanadering statements make him “nearly impossible” to debate as she issues stark warnings and analysis ahead of Thursday’s first presidental debate for the 2024 election.

“It is a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments like in a normal debate. It’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are.” Clinton wrote, noting she debate both men in election campaigns. “He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather.”

Donald Trump appears to have changed his tune regarding Joe Biden’s past performances in presidential or primary debates, moving away from calling him the “WORST debater” toward calling him a “worthy debater”.

NBC News reports that the move appears to be about managing expectations ahead of Thursday’s first presidential debate.

In mid-May he wrote on Truth Social:

“Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced — He can’t put two sentences together!”

Days later he told the Minnesota Republican Party in a speech: “He can’t talk. He can’t walk. Can’t find his way off a stage. Can’t put two sentences together.”

However, last week, he said in an interview with the All-In Podcast: “He beat Paul Ryan pretty badly. And I assume he’s going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater. I would say I don’t want to underestimate him.”

Trump has long characterized Biden as both a senile old man and a criminal mastermind — alternating between the two when it suits him.

Read the latest from The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg…

Special counsel Jack Smith has defended federal law enforcement’s handling of documents discovered at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, sharing images in a new court filing that show how the former president stashed “top secret” materials and government “secrets” in a cluttered collection of clothing, Christmas ornaments, newspapers and photographs of himself.

The former president has argued that the charges in his classified documents case should be dropped on grounds that investigators failed to preserve evidence in the order in which they were found.

Donald Trump is well-known for a lot of things: his divisiveness, his career in real estate, The Apprentice, his lawsuits, for being the only president to be impeached twice. But perhaps nothing has infiltrated society more than Mr Trump’s unique linguistic style.

Whether he’s posting on Truth Social, speaking at a campaign rally, or testifying in court, Mr Trump never seems to be at a loss for words — and sometimes, he even makes up new ones.

From uttering gaffes to tweeting typos (like “covfefe”) to misreading words (like “Nambia”) to dismissing his opponent with a harsh nickname, his terminology quickly turns iconic.

Here, The Independent offers a dictionary guide to the Mr Trump’s most memorable phrases: