expected to give the former president his toughest primary challenge of 2024 makes it official. florida s governor ron desantis getting into the race, taking on his fellow floridian, launching in a streaming event with elon musk on twitter. trump used it to pummel the republican field, including marco rubio and jeb bush who he turned into a campaign punching bag. in a moment, randi kaye looks into whether desantis will do better. first, the political waters he is about to jump into. in one way they may appear promising for a republican candidate. the current president s job approval now stands at 40%. new polling out late today shows this. with the debt ceiling crisis coming to a head, that poll shows 34% approve of the way the president is handling the economy. desantis enters a large and growing field. five more are known to be weighing a run, including pence and sununu and chris christie and youngkin. it s the large field that some experts say will favor the former preside
good evening. tomorrow, the man who many expected to give the former president s toughest primary challenge of 2024 makes it official. florida s governor, ron desantis, getting into the race, taking on his fellow floridian, launching the campaign in a streaming event with elon musk on twitter. his opponent s former favorite megaphone. which he used in 2016, of course, to pummel the rest of the republican field, including former florida senator, marco rubio, and floor jeb bush, who you turn first into a verbal punching bag, then a campaign punchline, and finally, a political footnote. in a moment randi kaye looks ahead to whether governor desantis will do any better against those kind of tactics. first, the kind of political waters he is about to jump into. in one way, they may appear promising for a republican candidate. the current president s job approval, now stands at 40%. a new cnn polling out late today. and with the debt ceiling crisis coming to a head, that same p
it is 4:00 new york. it is not every day that a former president of the united states is in a courthouse. much less as a defendant in the case that threatens to bring down the entire brand that he used to propel himself into office in the first place. today, donald trump was back in court in the $250 million civil fraud trial in new york. before walking in, trump lashed out as he so often does at the judge, the trial, at the new york attorney general who brought the lawsuit. he did not mention judge engoron s clerk, who has been a frequent target of his, he remains under a gag order that prohibits him from talking about court staff. inside the courtroom, accounting expert eli bartov took the stand and testified that in his expert opinion the attorney general s claims of a years long pattern of fraud, manipulating the values of trump s real estate assets were baseless. there is no evidence whatsoever for any accounting fraud, he said. dold trump was reportedly visibly pleased.