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Trump Supporters "Overthrow" the U.S. Republican Party in Rural America? April 28, 2023 U.S. Presidential Election 2024 Former President Trump U.S. Republican Party of the United States: Will Trump Supporters "Overcome" in Rural Areas? Trump or anti-Trump? In local organizations of the opposition Republican Party in the U.S., supporters of Mr. Trump have been gaining strength, causing what could be called a "groundswell. Although he is the first person in history to be indicted as president, his approval rating has not declined, and his popularity has not waned. What is going on in the countryside? We covered the deepening divisions within the Republican Party. (By Kyoko Okano, International Correspondent) Trump's popularity stands out despite the first indictment in history First, I visited the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association (NRA) in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the Midwest. The NRA is a lobbying group that opposes gun control and is a strong supporter of the Republican Party. The annual meeting is also known as a forum for politicians seeking presidential elections to appeal for support. What stood out at the venue, where more than 70,000 people attended according to the organizers, were Trump supporters wearing hats and T-shirts with Trump's name on them. A long line had formed more than four hours before the speech began. When Mr. Trump appeared in the hall, everyone stood in unison. The audience was filled with loud applause and cheers, and the room was instantly filled with excitement. Mr. Trump speaking at the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting Mr. Trump. 'In my four years as President, I have already accomplished a lot, but there is still more to be done. We will take back the beautiful and wonderful White House and make America great again." Although he was the first person in history to be indicted for having served as president, Trump's approval rating has not declined since then. At the event, there were many voices in support of Mr. Trump, and his popularity showed no sign of waning.   A visitor to the venue I support Mr. Trump. His ideals are almost the same as mine." 'He hasn't done as bad as many people in the White House. He will make this country a better place. Emerging forces in support of Trump: What are they really like? Trump's popularity is now causing tremors in the Republican Party's local organizations. One such area is Butler County near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It has long been a strong Republican area, and Trump won the last presidential election there. What exactly is going on here? We were able to talk to one of the key players. He is Zach Scherer, 20, who works at a local supermarket. When he was in high school, Scherer became interested in politics because of Trump. He is an ardent Trump supporter who also agrees with Trump's claims that the last presidential election was rigged. Ms. Scherer. 'I think a lot of young people have been awakened by Mr. Trump. I like that he is like a normal person. He can be a bit of a slanderer, but that's what makes me like him, because he's so young." Scherer has helped Trump's campaign. After the last presidential election, she and her colleagues conducted their own investigation into possible fraud in Butler County, and she became frustrated with the local Republican Party chapter, which seemed to be uncooperative in such activities. Mr. Scherer. "In Butler County, many people have held chapter positions for 20 or 30 years. Frankly, I think they are only in office for themselves. Now it's time for a revamp." Older chapter members have come to feel that Trump is hanging on to the "vested interests" that he criticizes, Scherer said. He ran with more than 60 others in an election last May to elect a Republican chapter committee member. As a result, those who supported Trump won a majority of the committee members, effectively putting the chapter under their control. What do old-fashioned Republicans think? Al Lindsey, an attorney who has represented the Butler County Republican chapter for 40 years. He was forced to step down last year due to the rise of Scherer and his colleagues. Al Lindsey, former president of the Butler County Republican Chapter Mr. Lindsey. 'It was a very good organization, but all of a sudden it fell apart. They are not facing reality by pandering to the masses like Trump. They believe that controlling the Republican Party is more important than winning the election over the Democrats, and they're convinced that's how they're going to win." Lindsey said that the chapter's policy has been to unite all conservatives, not just Trump supporters. She believes that Scherer and his group's move is an act that will divide conservatives, and she feels threatened. The conclusion they came to was to start a new organization. To counter the "takeover" of the chapter by Trump supporters, they want to increase the number of people who agree with their views and become mainstream again. Lindsey. “They will never be convinced about us. So how can we unite the party? It would be nice if our side could get more votes. We have to take it back again." What lies ahead for the "underdogs"... Scherer became a mainstream member of the Butler County Republican Party. However, he has since been unable to unite as a chapter due to a struggle for control within the mainstream, which has left him feeling confused. Mr. Scherer. I thought I was doing a good thing, but all it did was cause internal strife, and all kinds of people wanted to be leaders. Nothing was getting done." I local branches of the Republican Party, as in Butler County, Trump-backed forces are now beginning to oust moderate members in many places. Will these developments weaken the Republican Party and benefit Democrats in the run-up to next year's presidential election? Or will it further strengthen Trump's presence in the Republican Party and, conversely, strengthen the unity of the party? We will continue to cover the "changes" in the Republican Party that are taking place in the regions.

By David A. Keene April 10, 2023 Last week, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee asked his state legislature to provide armed protection for her public and private schools. Tennessee's United States Senators, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty simultaneously urged Congress to provide the same protection nationwide in response to the murder of six students and staff last month at an unprotected Nashville school. Conversely, others, including President Biden and his Vice President, blamed the tragedy not on the shooter but on conservatives, the lack of universal background checks, red flag laws and an assault weapons ban. Governor Lee knew from reports streaming into his office that the shootings could have been prevented with school protection. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza passed up two Newtown, Connecticut, schools because their campuses were protected by armed security officers. Lanza killed twenty students and six teachers that day at the unprotected Sandy Hook Elementary School. He was not looking to do battle; he just wanted to kill. This March 27, Aiden Hale passed up two schools he had initially targeted because his “risk assessment” revealed “security was too great” at those schools. He wasn't looking to do battle either; like Lanza, Hale just wanted to find a killing ground. And in the unprotected Covenant School, he did. The debate over armed security for schools became a partisan and ideological battle following the Sandy Hook tragedy. Those with an almost pathological hatred of firearms opposed measures that most Americans believed made sense. As President of the National Rifle Association back then, I was touring one of several firearms training facilities Israel established to train private security personnel to protect her schools. Some saw the Sandy Hook tragedy as another excuse to demand more gun control. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, however, was determined to help find ways to thwart future mass shooters looking to turn school grounds into killing grounds. LaPierre announced at a press conference that Asa Hutchinson, a former U.S. Attorney, Member of Congress and head of the Drug Enforcement Agency had agreed to assemble an NRA sponsored team of professionals to develop a program of best practices to enhance school security. LaPierre said society has an obligation to provide our children with at least as much protection as banks, celebrities, jewelry stores, the media and politicians. The gun control community went berserk. The Obama White House characterized the suggestion that we provide schools with armed protection as “insane” — until someone realized that the federal and state governments had actually begun to do just that during the Clinton administration by providing many urban schools “school resource officers.” The Clinton-era program was limited to urban schools but increased funds to police departments willing to assign officers to school security duty. Many departments signed up, took the money but never gave the program much priority and assigned officers near retirement or with little training to the task. Still, the result was that would-be killers largely avoided schools with security in their search for victims. As inadequate and underfunded as the program may have been, we will never know how many lives were saved. Expanding such a program never seems to have occurred to the Obama White House. Years before, Israeli schools had been prime terrorist targets and the government responded by sending the military. That caused more problems than it solved because the military's mission was so different from the need. Israel then turned to the police with limited success, but that didn't work very well either. Finally, the schools began to employ privately trained security guards, men and women dedicated and trained to provide school security. Today most Israeli school budgets include a line item to hire and train security personnel at facilities like the one I toured in Tel Aviv. Hutchinson and his team began by cataloguing steps individual schools and school districts around the country were taking to deter the kind of attack that took place at Sandy Hook. They discovered many approaches. Some schools had armed their teachers while others had one or two teachers, administrators or staffers who were trained and let it be known that on any given day one of them was armed. They never said who that might be but felt that if everyone knew someone was armed it would be a deterrent. Hiring full time security is expensive and few American school administrators gave security the priority of their Israeli counterparts, so they were creative. Some relied on volunteers; retired police officers or veterans who took it upon themselves to acquire training. Others were even more inventive. My favorite town provided a visible police presence by allowing policemen to be in the school when filling out the reports that chew up an inordinate amount of time. Fewer police working at desks at headquarters or precinct houses provided school security at little or no cost! After nearly a year of research and testing, Hutchinson's team developed a plan that played on the NRA's strengths to enhance school security. The “School Shield Program provides training to those who provide assessments of a school's needs. Assessments become the critical first step, determining a school's vulnerabilities and allowing administrators to develop a plan to enhance security. At the time such assessments could cost ten thousand dollars or more per school. One of the NRA's strengths is in training, so we began to provide training for those who do these assessments. The way it works is simple enough. A team of professionals invite men and women interested in providing free assessments to schools within their area to a training session so they could go out and do the assessments themselves. Most have been law enforcement officers and School Resource Officers who go on to provide assessments as volunteers. Critics believed that the NRA volunteers would simply recommend arming everyone in sight, but while the need for armed security is one option, it isn't the only choice. There would be no need to assess a school's security needs if there was a “one size fits all” solution that would work everywhere. Properly locked doors, controlled access, fast communication, lighting … or strategically placed cameras can all be useful under the right circumstances and are often recommended in addition to or instead of firearms protection. An effective assessment provides school administrators with a smorgasbord of recommendations so they can pick and choose what they can afford or what provides their facility with the level of security they deem sufficient. The NRA Foundation runs a grant program to help schools to acquire what they might need. School Shield began smoothly and is still operating, but the very idea of providing security to the nation's schools came under another round of fire from the Left in the Defund the Police Movement. Many liberal urban and suburban school boards demanded that school resource officers be sent packing and that talk of anything like armed protection was off limits, even while aspiring to continue to look for and find defenseless victims. In recent years, however, a few public officials have begun to realize that armed protection may be a better option than ranting about guns, troubled shooters and various unrelated evils. Tennessee is a practical state, the police in Nashville reacted quickly to take down the shooter, and the realization dawned that the NRA may have had a point when LaPierre suggested after Sandy Hook a decade ago that sometimes the best defense against a “bad guy” with a gun is “a good guy with a gun.” and the media still don't get it, but Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw does. Crenshaw spoke clearly in a recent CNN interview, suggesting that Congress place two armed security guards in each school as “a preventative measure.” CNN's Dana Bash was appalled and asked, “So the answer is more guns?” Crenshaw didn't hesitate, “The answer is armed guards. … Yes, more guns – the kind of guns that protect the President, that protect you all at CNN.” Those killed by mass school shooters since Sandy Hook have been silenced but could be alive today had political leaders acted with knowledge and reason as Tennessee's governor and senators are today. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

NHK Nov 3, 2022 アメリカ中間選挙 トランプ氏への影響は？ 保守派重鎮が語る 2022年11月4日 6時14分 アメリカ中間選挙2022 「トランプ氏は後ろを向いている。みんな前を向いていきたいのだ」共和党の政策に絶大な影響力を持つNRA＝全米ライフル協会の元会長デビッド・キーン氏のことばです。2024年の大統領選挙への立候補も取り沙汰されるトランプ前大統領。“トランプ氏の共和党”はどこに向かおうとしているのか。半世紀にわたってワシントンの中枢で政治を見てきた重鎮に聞きました。 デビッド・キーン氏とは 1970年代、ニクソン政権で副大統領をつとめたアグニュー氏の政治アドバイザーとしてワシントンでのキャリアをスタートさせたデビッド・キーン氏。 当時、20代前半で「最も若いホワイトハウスのスタッフとして就任し、退任する時もまだいちばん若かった」と言います。その後、レーガン氏の選挙戦で地域の責任者となったほか、1980年のブッシュ氏の選挙戦では政策責任者を務めました。 キーン氏「かなり長い時間を過ごしているが、とても楽しい。アメリカ人は政治に関心がないし、下に見る人は多いが、ワシントンには正しいことをしようとしているいい人がたくさんいる。難しい仕事だが、おもしろくもある」いちばん長く務めたのが、保守派集会「CPAC」を運営する政治団体の代表。その後、オバマ政権時代には、NRA＝全米ライフル協会の会長も務めました。今も共和党の候補者に対して政策や選挙面でのアドバイスを行うなど、半世紀にわたって、ワシントンの中枢で政治をみてきた保守派の重鎮に先月、首都ワシントン近郊にある自宅でインタビューしました。 トランプ氏が新たな支持層を獲得した？ キーン氏「トランプ氏は思った以上に大統領として成功した。実効性のある税制法案を通し、最高裁判所だけでなく連邦裁判所にも保守派の判事を多く任命できた」「私が若い頃は、共和党は銀行や工場を経営するようなビジネス関係者。民主党は労働者層や移民などを代表していた。現在はがらりと変わってウォール街や多くの大企業は民主党を支持。共和党は忠実な民主党員だった労働者から支持を得ている。ただ、両党のリーダーはこの変化を理解できていなかった。だから民主党の政治家は今もいかに労働者を支援するかについて話をするし、共和党は銀行員やビジネス関係者を代表しているかのように話し続けている」 「そんな時にトランプ氏が共和党の候補者となった。何が起きていたかというと、党の支持層は変わったのに、リーダーは誰も変化に対応できておらず、有権者は不満を募らせていたのだ。トランプ氏はこうした人たちに訴えかけることができ、だから人気が続いていると思う」 トランプ氏の弱点は？ 「彼の問題は、政府の仕組みを十分に理解できていなかったことだ。近年のほかのどの大統領よりも政府内で反対の立場をとるスタッフを残した。『大統領になったのだから、今度はみんな私のために働く』と言っていたそうだが、政府はそのようには動かない。民間企業とは違うのだ。トランプ氏はオバマ元大統領が指名した人物を多く残したが、その結果、政策を実行する責任者の中にも彼に敵対心を持つスタッフが残った。“ワシントンの一部ではない”ということがトランプ氏が支持された理由だったが、それこそが彼がワシントンに対応できなかった理由なのだ。彼はワシントンのことを全く理解できていなかった」 トランプ氏で党内分裂？それとも？ 「確かに共和党内は分裂している。なぜならトランプ氏のことを好きな人もいれば嫌いな人もいるからだ。しかし、それはレーガン政権の時もそうだしブッシュ政権の時もそうだった。これが政治の摂理なのだ。政治の中にいる人間の間には競争があり、いつも“つまらないけんか”をしているものだ。レーガン一派が共和党に入ってきた時、それまで党の中心だった人たちは『これは最悪だ』と言っていたが今やレーガン一派が共和党をまわしている」 「こうした新しい勢力は政党が何をできるのかも分からずに入ってくる。だからこんなことを達成したい、しかもそれをすぐにやると意気込む。しかし、思ったよりも難しいことが分かるのだ。それで脱落する人もいるし、自分が嫌いだったはずの人のようになってしまう人もいる。だが一部は残り、どうやってこの仕組みの中でやっていくのかを学んでいく。トランプ氏らは未熟だったのだ。彼らはワシントンが難物で、問題を解決するのが難しいことが分かったため、多くの人はより洗練されてきている。中間選挙の候補者らもじきに伝統的な党に溶け込んでいくだろう。そして新しい支持層に効果的に訴えることができる党となるのだ」 中間選挙の結果はどうなる？ 「共和党が議会下院で多数派を奪還することはほぼ確実だろう。そしてかなりの票差になるはずだ。バイデン大統領の支持率が低く、それは歴史的にみて、野党、今の場合は共和党が議会下院で多くの議席を獲得するということを意味している。だから、来年1月には共和党が議会下院で主導権を握り、民主党のペロシ氏ではなく共和党のマッカーシー氏が下院議長となるだろう」 選挙後に必要なことは？ 「私が問題だと思っているのは、ここ最近のアメリカ政治ではみんな相手を捜査したがるということだ。共和党が政権についている時は民主党が共和党の大統領を弾劾したいと思い、刑務所に入ってほしいと思っていた。そして共和党が力を持ったら、『われわれにしたんだから、今度はこっちがやってやる』と言う。ワシントンではこういうことが起きるのだ。しかし、地方に行くと人々は経済を再生させてほしいし、投票した理由である問題に対応してほしいと思っている。必要なのに捜査するべきではないとは言わないが、共和党はインフレなど社会が懸念していることに対応しなければならない」 「そうすれば2024年の大統領選挙は共和党にとって期待できるものとなるだろう。しかし、そうしなければ政治家に向けられる有権者の目は厳しくなる。なぜなら、どちらの政党が勝ったとしても自分たちが懸念している問題について政治家は注目してくれず、問題に対応するよりも政治家どうしの争いに忙しいと感じるからだ」 トランプ氏は2024年立候補するのか？ 「トランプ氏が立候補するかどうか分からない。そして立候補して候補者に選ばれるかも分からない。ただ、立候補すれば、“最も大きな支持”から始まるとは思う。トランプ氏はもう何年も公の場で戦ってきているが、『彼は絶対正しい』と言っていた人たちでさえ、戦いをやめたいと思っている。そしてこれがほかのなによりも、彼が直面する弱さになるだろう。大統領や大統領候補は控えめにしなければならない時があるのだ。人々は大統領候補には前を向いてほしいと思うものだ。トランプ氏は後ろを向いている。彼やその周辺の話を聞くと、過去を見ている。みんな前を向いていきたいのだ。そして、すでに新しい世代の時代にも入ってる」 油井キャスターが見る 2024年への動き 2024年の大統領選挙に向けた共和党内の動き。現地で中間選挙を取材している油井キャスターはどう見るのでしょうか。 今回、大勢のトランプ支持者に話を聞きましたが、待望論がある一方で、トランプ氏にかわる候補を求める声もあります。新たな候補として多くの人たちが名前を挙げたのが、フロリダ州のデサンティス知事でした。デサンティス氏は州知事に当選した4年前の中間選挙の際、家族そろってトランプ氏を称賛した選挙広告で大きな話題となり「ミニ・トランプ」とも呼ばれてきました。そして今、トランプ氏の最有力後継者として注目を集めています。 しかし、トランプ氏自身は、自分よりもデサンティス氏にスポットライトがあたることに強い不快感をあらわにしています。それだけに、中間選挙の結果を通してみずからの存在感を改めてアピールしたい考えです。中間選挙の見通しについて最近、よく耳にするのが「レッド・ウェーブ」ということばです。赤は共和党のイメージカラーですが、共和党を支持する赤い波が押し寄せてくるというもので、実際に共和党に風が吹いていると感じます。もし共和党が上下両院で多数派となれば、トランプ氏はみずからの成果と誇示し、立候補を表明する可能性が高まるのではないかという見方が強まっています。 あわせて読みたい