AFP

The patriotic music, fiery rhetoric and adoring crowd were all there as Donald Trump announced another White House bid, but — in a sign his star has dimmed — top Republican officials and even family members were no-shows.

Trump’s announcement that he is running again in 2024 came exactly a week after a poor Republican showing in midterm elections, a performance some members of the party have blamed on questionable candidates backed by the former president.

The lackluster attendance may reflect a desire among some party leaders to turn the page on the divisive and legally challenged Trump and pick another candidate to carry the Republican banner two years from now.

Only a single Republican member of Congress was spotted in the crowd of several hundred people who attended Trump’s kickoff event in a gilded ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

And that lawmaker, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, lost his Republican primary in May.

Another diehard Trump supporter, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, said he planned to attend but bad weather prevented him from flying to Palm Beach.

Trump’s son Donald Jr was reportedly on a hunting trip out west and gave the same excuse.

As for Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, who played a prominent role in her father’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns and his administration, she said she does “not plan to be involved in politics.”

“I love my father very much,” Ivanka Trump told Fox News Digital. “This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family.”

Her husband, Jared Kushner, did show up along with Trump’s sons Eric and Barron.

Prominent Republicans who did attend were members of the far-right fringe of the party such as Roger Stone, a political consultant who was pardoned by Trump, and conspiracy theorists who voiced support for Trump’s baseless claims that he won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.

– ‘Unfit for office’ –

Three former members of Trump’s cabinet, ex-vice president Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state, and Mark Esper, the defense secretary, made it clear on Wednesday they believe it is time to move on.

Pence told a CNN town hall event that he was proud of his time with Trump, a man he called “my friend,” but that he was not what the country needed anymore.

“I think it’s time for new leadership in this country that will bring us together around our highest ideals,” he said.

Though he refused definitively to rule out support of Trump if he were to become the Republican nominee, Pence said he felt the party’s primary process would offer alternatives.

“I honestly believe we’re gonna have better choices,” he said.

Pompeo, who, like Pence is a potential 2024 Republican nomination hopeful tweeted: “We need more seriousness, less noise, and leaders who are looking forward, not staring in the rearview mirror claiming victimhood.” 

Esper did not mince words in an interview with CNN.

“I think he’s unfit for office,” Esper said of Trump. “His actions are all about him and not about the country.

“I don’t think he’s an honest person,” he added. “We saw the falsehoods in the remarks that came out of his mouth last night.”

Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said there is clearly a “lack of enthusiasm for Trump’s third consecutive presidential campaign.”

“Trump has cost them three elections and they’d prefer not to let him ruin a fourth in 2024,” Sabato said.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News cut off its live coverage of Trump mid-speech and the conservative billionaire’s tabloid, the New York Post, carried a mocking headline on its front page: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”

While ridiculing Trump, the Post has been promoting his leading rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who emerged as the big winner from the otherwise disastrous midterms.

– ‘Hard to beat’ –

Trump did draw support from longtime ally Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, who praised his speech.

“If President Trump continues this tone and delivers this message on a consistent basis, he will be hard to beat,” Graham tweeted.

And analysts cautioned that Trump, who has defied the odds before, should not be counted out.

“The hard-core grassroots that have stood by Trump for six years will stand by him, for the most part,” Sabato said. “The party leadership is mainly in another place entirely.”

And for the time being, most polls show Trump leading DeSantis and other potential rivals for the Republican nomination.

A man who plowed his sports utility vehicle into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin last year and killed six people was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole.

A jury in October found Darrell Brooks, 40 guilty of multiple charges of first-degree intentional murder, reckless endangerment and hit-and-run after a three-week trial.

Brooks faced mandatory life imprisonment in a two-day sentencing hearing in the city of Waukesha where the attack happened in November 2021.

Judge Jennifer Dorow said, “frankly, you deserve it.” She said Brooks had hit a total of 68 people with his car.

“There are so many aggravating factors here it’s frankly difficult to even keep track of all,” the judge said.

She cited “complete disregard for the life of anyone else”, a prior criminal record, and “complete and utter lack of remorse.”

On Tuesday people who were hit in the rampage testified about their trauma and suffering.

In his defense, Brooks’s mother said her son had psychiatric problems and it would be more appropriate to institutionalize him.

Brooks himself in a rambling speech said he was sorry and that he does not understand why he did what he did.

“That’s a question I struggle with myself,” Brooks said.

But as he did several times during the trial itself, Brooks interrupted the judge, refused instructions to be quiet or sit down, even though he was confined to a separate room for the sentencing part of the trial.

“You might have some of your own mental health issues, whether it be bipolar childhood trauma, or things of that nature. But the bottom line is, none of that caused you to do what you did on November 21 of 2021,” said the judge.

Four women, one man and an eight-year-old girl were killed in the rampage, and dozens of other people watching and taking part in the parade were injured.

Brooks steered his red SUV into the marching musicians, dancers and children along a central Waukesha avenue for the Christmas parade, not slowing down or attempting to avoid the parade.

“He was boiling over with rage and anger and decided not to control,” said Dorow.

“He chose to drive recklessly, carelessly, and maliciously through a parade route at anyone in his path.”

After years of trying to expand into other sectors, the CEO of holiday home giant Airbnb, wants to get back to the basics: helping people make money.

“I had tried to create too many things at the same time,” explained Brian Chesky to AFP.

“Then the pandemic occurred. We had to get back to our core business,” he said.

The sudden halt to world tourism was a shock to the home rental company and forced layoffs of a quarter of Airbnb workforce in 2020.

It also snapped the company’s foray into travel “experiences”, Airbnb’s move into tourist activities.

The health of Airbnb, along with the whole travel sector, had begun rebounding since the Covid-19 lockdowns, but once again, dark clouds are looming.

“The big obvious thing is that (in most countries) we’re going to enter a recession probably, if we’re not already in one,” said Chesky.

The company which has a headcount of about 6,000 people, has no plans for layoffs unlike tech giants Meta, Amazon or Twitter.

Instead, it wants to encourage more people to become hosts on its platform, increasing options as the euphoria of reopened travel has cooled.

“We have to be affordable” in terms of pricing, Chesky insisted, to allow consumers to travel despite a deteriorating economic climate.

– ‘Huge business’ –

In order to face the challenge, more hosts are needed: “We got to help people make money,” said Chesky, especially those that are reluctant to open up their properties to strangers.

To encourage the reluctant, Airbnb unveiled on Wednesday a new feature that offers neophytes advice from the site’s highly experienced “superhosts” who, for a fee paid by the company, provide advice and suggestions.

In another move to attract skittish property owners, the San Francisco-based group will expand its user identity requirements to even more markets. It will also offer hosts tools to better set their rates and offer discounts.

Airbnb also announced the launch of its anti-party screening technology across the US and Canada.

Partying is the company’s bete noire, with revelers breaking the rules to host wild bashes, scaring away hosts or dissuading potential ones.

The San Francisco group also increased the damage covered by its inhouse insurance scheme from $1 million to $3 million.

Chesky has not given up on diversifying in the long term. In five or ten years, “I hope we will do much more than just hosting travelers,” he said.

In particular, the entrepreneur intends to revive “experiences”.

“There’s a huge business on the horizon. But it’s going to take longer than I thought.. it just turns out that it’s a more difficult thing to match supply and demand,” he said.

High-profile US sports stars and personalities have been named in a lawsuit over deceptive practices targeting investors who became victims of the stunning collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

The celebrities helped promote the exchange, which declared bankruptcy in the United States last week in a meltdown that has reverberated across the digital currency landscape and drawn scrutiny from authorities in multiple countries.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday was the latest official to call for more oversight of the crypto industry.

American football star Tom Brady and his supermodel ex-wife Gisele Bundchen, retired basketball great Shaquille O’Neal, tennis Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, actor/comedian Larry David, and Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary were among those named alongside FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in the suit filed in Miami federal court on Tuesday.

Investor Edwin Garrison, of Oklahoma, filed the suit in a Miami court on behalf of other investors, seeking to recover damages from losses suffered in the FTX implosion, accusing the company of “misrepresentations and omissions.”

“FTX’s fraudulent scheme was designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country,” the lawsuit alleges.

“Some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment have either invested in FTX or been brand ambassadors for the company” and hyped the exchange in ads and on social media, the document said.

David appeared in a television commercial during this year’s American football Super Bowl championship game, a coveted and costly promotional spot.

The exchange “needed celebrities … to continue funneling investors into the FTX Ponzi scheme, and to promote and substantially assist in the sale” of the accounts “which are unregistered securities,” the court documents said.

– ‘Regulatory gaps’ –

The turmoil at FTX, which until recently had been valued at $32 billion, came after Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency platform, backed out of a buyout deal amid reports about mismanagement of client funds and potential investigations by regulators.

“The recent failure of a major cryptocurrency exchange and the unfortunate impact that has resulted for holders and investors of crypto assets demonstrate the need for more effective oversight of cryptocurrency markets,” Treasury’s Yellen said in a statement.

US agencies have highlighted the risks involved in the crypto industry, which could eventually spill over into the traditional financial system, and she called on Congress “to move quickly to fill the regulatory gaps the Biden Administration has identified.”

Meanwhile, the House Financial Services Committee earlier Wednesday announced it would hold a hearing next month to investigate the company’s collapse.

“The fall of FTX has posed tremendous harm to over one million users, many of whom were everyday people who invested their hard-earned savings into the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, only to watch it all disappear within a matter of seconds,” committee Chair Maxine Waters said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, this event is just one out of many examples of cryptocurrency platforms that have collapsed just this past year.”

The lawsuit alleges the company used money from new investors to “pay interest to the old ones and to attempt to maintain the appearance of liquidity.”

The collapse came amid rising doubts over the financial stability of FTX. Attention had focused on the relationship between the exchange and Alameda Research, a trading house also owned by Bankman-Fried, and reports he shifted funds out of the exchange, even as he tried to fill a $7 billion gap.

It was a spectacular reversal of fortune for the founder and one-time cryptocurrency wunderkind Bankman-Fried.

The disgraced executive apologized on Twitter and resigned, but after the company filed for bankruptcy it said it was the victim of “unauthorized transactions.”

Republicans on Wednesday took control of the US House of Representatives from Democrats, networks said, narrowly securing a legislative base to oppose President Joe Biden’s agenda for the final two years of his term –- and leaving power in Congress split.

The slim Republican majority in the lower house of the US legislature will be far smaller than the party had been banking on, and Republicans also failed to take control of the Senate in a historically weak performance in the November 8 midterm elections.

NBC and CNN projected the victory for Republicans with at least 218 seats in the 435-member House of Representatives — the magic number needed to take control. This came a week after millions of Americans went to the polls for the midterms, which typically deliver a rejection of the party in the White House.

Biden congratulated top House Republican Kevin McCarthy “on Republicans winning the House majority” and added that he was “ready to work with House Republicans to deliver results for working families.”

Last week’s vote, he said, was “a strong rejection of election deniers, political violence and intimidation” and demonstrated “the strength and resilience of American democracy.”

Tweeting soon after the projection was called, McCarthy said that “Americans are ready for a new direction, and House Republicans are ready to deliver.”

The news came one day after former president Donald Trump — who loomed large during the election cycle, and whose endorsement appears to have doomed some of his party’s candidates — announced a new run for the White House.

With inflation surging and Biden’s popularity ratings cratering, Republicans had hoped to see a “red wave” wash over America, giving them control of both houses and hence an effective block over most of Biden’s legislative plans.

But instead, Democratic voters — galvanized by the Supreme Court’s overturning of abortion rights and wary of Trump-endorsed candidates who openly rejected the result of the 2020 presidential election — turned out in force. 

And Republicans lost ground with candidates rejected by moderate voters as too extreme.

– ‘Officially flipped’ –

Biden’s party flipped a key Senate seat in Pennsylvania and held onto two more in battleground states Arizona and Nevada, giving them an unassailable majority in the upper chamber with 50 seats plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.

A Senate runoff election in Georgia set for next month could see the Democrats ultimately improve their majority in the upper house.

The Senate oversees the confirmation of federal judges and cabinet members, and having the 100-seat body in his corner will be a major boon for Biden.

Meanwhile on Tuesday McCarthy won his party’s leadership vote by secret ballot, putting him in prime position to be the next speaker, replacing Democrat Nancy Pelosi.

The 57-year-old congressman from California, a senior member of House Republican leadership since 2014, fended off a challenge from Andy Biggs, a member of the influential far-right Freedom Caucus.

But potential far-right defections could yet complicate his path when the full chamber votes in January.

McCarthy now begins what is expected to be a grueling campaign to win the consequential floor vote on January 3, when the House of Representatives’ 435 newly elected members — Democrats and Republicans — choose their speaker, the third most important US political position after president and vice president.