New Hampshire

Trump shares his New Hampshire victory with an accused sexual predator

Published

2 years ago

January 24, 2024

Press Room

Trump shares his New Hampshire victory with an accused sexual predator

Donald Trump and casino mogul Steve Wynn on July 12, 2005 in Las Vegas. Joe Cavaretta/AP

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After winning the Republican primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, Donald Trump took the stage at his victory celebration and delivered a rambling speech in which he repeatedly denigrated Nikki Haley, who he had hired to be his UN ambassador when he was president. He did not offer thanks to any specific person. He did not mention his top campaign advisers. He did not express appreciation to anyone on his New Hampshire team. He did not refer to any member of his family. (His wife Melania did not appear with him.) But he did namecheck two supporters in attendance: Steve Wynn and John Paulson.

Most viewers probably missed the significance of this moment, which offered a true snapshot of Trump’s perverted worldview.

Wynn is a former casino mogul. For years, he was the king of Las Vegas. He developed several resorts there, including the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, and the Bellagio. He also built casinos in Macau, Atlantic City, and elsewhere. He became a wildly successful billionaire—the sort of guy Trump once aspired to be. Though Wynn and Trump had a bruising legal fight over their Atlantic City casinos in the 1990s, they eventually settled the dispute and ended up bosom buddies. A big-money Republican donor, Wynn was an early supporter of Trump’s first presidential campaign. After Trump entered the White House, Wynn became finance chair of the Republican National Committee.

Wynn is also a disgraced businessman who was credibly accused of sexual assault. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster article citing dozens of people saying that Wynn had “sexualized his workplace and pressured workers to perform sex acts.” The piece opened with the story of a manicurist who said that Wynn had forced her to have sex with him in his office. The newspaper noted that the woman’s supervisor filed a report with the casino’s human resources department, and Wynn later paid the manicurist a $7.5 million settlement. According to the Journal, dozens of people who worked at his casinos described incidents that formed “a decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct.” Wynn denied the charges, telling the paper, “The idea that I ever assaulted any woman is preposterous.”

Wynn’s alleged wrongdoing led to multiple investigations, lawsuits, and regulatory actions. In 2019, Nevada regulators fined Wynn Resorts $20 million for ignoring complaints about Wynn’s misconduct. This was the largest fee imposed on a gambling licensee in the state. That year, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission released a report concluding that senior executives at Wynn’s company had covered up allegations of Wynn’s behavior. The Massachusetts regulators fined Wynn Resorts $35 million. Last July, Wynn paid a $10 million fine and agreed to cut his ties to the casino industry to settle a case with Nevada gambling regulators that began with the allegations of workplace sexual misconduct. (In 2022, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to force Wynn to register as a foreign agent for the Chinese government for having lobbied the Trump administration to extradite fugitive Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui to China; the case was dismissed on a technicality.)

Wynn resigned as national finance chair of the RNC days after the Wall Street Journal story appeared in 2018.

Despite the many allegations against Wynn, Trump remains his pal. So much so that Wynn warranted one of the few shout-outs of the night in New Hampshire. It’s as if Trump and he are two accused sexual predators in a pod. (Actually, Trump was found liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll.) Here’s a good window into Trump’s psyche: a billionaire forced out of his business due to a flood of sexual misconduct allegations was foremost in Trump’s mind when he was celebrating an important political accomplishment.

John Paulson, whose attendance Trump also noted, is a hedge fund billionaire. He’s most famous—or infamous—for having made about $4 billion in 2007 betting against subprime mortgages. Though this move has been hailed as one of the greatest trades in US financial history, it is tainted. Paulson scored this windfall by shorting a package of mortgage bonds assembled by Goldman Sachs. Guess who selected the bonds that went into this package? Paulson.

Goldman Sachs allowed an investor looking to wager against the housing bubble to concoct this package that Goldman Sachs then peddled as reasonable investments to its clients, including pension funds, foreign banks, and insurance companies. “Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio,” the Securities and Exchange Commission stated when it filed a civil lawsuit against the firm in 2010. The complaint did not name Paulson as a defendant, but it detailed his role in creating the financial instrument that led to $1 billion in losses for Goldman’s customers. Goldman Sachs agreed to pay $550 million to the SEC to settle this case. That was one of the largest penalties ever paid by a Wall Street firm.

Like Wynn, Paulson supported Trump in the 2016 campaign, and he has been a Trump donor ever since. In 2020, he held a $500,000-per-couple fundraiser for Trump at his mansion in the Hamptons.

From the stage in New Hampshire, Trump told Wynn and Paulson, “Good to have you guys.” He also teased that he might name Paulson Treasury secretary if he returns to the White House.

This was just a brief occurrence in a speech full of the customary Trump nonsense that included misogynistic references to Haley, the usual lies about the 2020 election, and inflammatory rhetoric about migrants and President Joe Biden. But it was telling that in the middle of this triumph the people Trump appeared to care most about were not campaign aides who have toiled hard to help him achieve his win or loved ones who have been at his side. When he looked into the audience, his gaze fell upon two oligarchs—one an accused sexual assaulter; the other, a wheeler-dealer who cashed in on a deal that led to one of the biggest penalties in Wall Street history.

These are Trump’s people. This is his world. This is his crowd.

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New Hampshire

Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters

Published

9 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Possible 2028 Democratic White House contenders weigh in on Iran with New Hampshire voters

As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran overtakes the foreign policy debate in Washington, two Democratic governors with potential 2028 presidential aspirations — Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear — recently traveled to New Hampshire, introducing themselves to the state’s famously engaged voters. The two weighed in on the war and both criticized and questioned President Trump’s strategy and endgame.

“If a president is going to take a country into war, and risk the lives of American troops and Americans in the region, he has to have a real justification and not one that seems to change every five to 10 hours,” Beshear told CBS News after a Democratic fundraiser in Keene.

“This President seems to use force before ever trying diplomacy, and he has a duty to sell it to the American people and to address Congress with it,” Beshear continued. “He hasn’t done any of that. In fact, it appears there isn’t even a plan for what success looks like. He’s gone from regime change to strategic objectives and now is talking about unconditional surrender, which isn’t realistic where he is.”

Beshear also said he thought that Congress should have reined in Mr. Trump’s war powers.

“He is trying to ignore Congress. He’s trying to even ignore the American people,” Beshear said.

He went on to note that the president’s State of the Union address took place “three — four days before he launched this attack,” and Mr. Trump “didn’t even have the respect to tell the American people the threat that he thought Iran posed to us.”

Last week, both the House and the Senate failed to pass resolutions to limit Mr. Trump’s war powers and stop him from taking further military action against Iran without congressional support.

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear speaks with voters in Keene, New Hampshire, on March 7, 2026.

Anne Bryson

For Newsom, the war with Iran constitutes part of a broader criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At an event last Tuesday in Los Angeles, Newsom had compared Israel to an “apartheid state.” Later, in New Hampshire, he sought to clarify his comment.

“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman [New York Times] column last week, where Tom used that word of apartheid as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” Newsom explained during a book tour event Thursday night in Portsmouth. “I’m very angry, with what he is doing and why he’s doing it, what he’s going to ultimately try to do to the Supreme Court there, what he’s trying to do to save his own political career.”

Friedman wrote that at the same time that the U.S. and Israel are prosecuting a war in Iran, within Israel, Netanyahu’s government has undertaken efforts to annex the West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes; fire the attorney general who is leading the prosecution against Netanyahu for corruption; and block the government’s attempt to establish a commission to examine the failures that led up to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Hamas.

CBS News has reached out to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment.

On Iran, Newsom said, “I’m very angry about this war, with all due respect, you know, not because I’m angry the supreme leader is dead. Quite the contrary. I’m not naive about the last 37 years of his reign. Forty-seven years since ’79 — the revolution,” Newsom said. “But I’m also mindful that you have a president who still is inarticulate and incapable of giving us the rationale of why? Why now? What’s the endgame?”

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks with political commentator Jack Cocchiarella at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on March 5, 2026.

Anne Bryson

Many attendees at Newsom’s book event said that the situation in Iran is a top-of-mind issue for them, too. Some said they’re “horrified” by what is happening.

29-year-old Alicia Marr told CBS News she decided to attend Newsom’s event because of his social media response to the war with Iran.

“There was one spot left, and I decided to pick it up, and it was due to his response to the war, that it is just unacceptable, and I would agree with that,” Marr said.

While some voters like Marr are eager to hear about where potential candidates stand on foreign policy, many at Newsom’s event said they care most about how potential candidates plan to address domestic issues.

“I’m more focused on getting the middle class back on track and fighting the oligarchy, and I’m less invested in international issues,” said Anita Alden, who also attended Newsom’s event,

“I wouldn’t call myself America first, but we have so many problems at home that are my priority,” she told CBS News.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who may also be weighing another White House bid, told Fox 2 Detroit last week that she “unequivocally opposes” the Trump administration’s military action in Iran and urged Congress to take action.

“If we want to stop Donald Trump with this random decision that he has arrived at, then Congress must act, and Congress must act immediately. The American people do not want our sons and daughters to go into this unauthorized war of choice,” Harris said.

Mr. Trump has lashed out against Democrats who have pushed back on his Iran strategy, calling them “losers” last week and arguing that they would criticize any decision he made on Iran.

“If I did it, it’s no good. If I didn’t do it, they would have said the opposite, that you should have done this,” the president said.

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New Hampshire

Mass. man nabbed after allegedly driving over 100 mph in N.H.

Published

21 hours ago

March 9, 2026

Press Room

Mass. man nabbed after allegedly driving over 100 mph in N.H.

Local News

Police say the Attleboro man was driving 104 mph in a 55 mph zone on Route 202 near in Rindge, New Hampshire.

A Massachusetts man was arrested late Wednesday night after police say he was driving more than 100 mph on a New Hampshire roadway.

Officers with the Rindge Police Department stopped a vehicle shortly after 11 p.m. on Route 202 near Sears Drive in Rindge following a report of a car traveling at excessive speed, according to a statement from Chief Rachel Malynowski.

The vehicle, a 2020 Kia Stinger, was spotted traveling at 104 mph in a posted 55 mph zone, Malynowski said.

The driver, a 21-year-old man from Attleboro, was arrested and charged with reckless operation of a motor vehicle, according to police.

He is scheduled to be arraigned April 5. If convicted, the man faces a fine of at least $750, in addition to the court’s penalty assessment, and a 90-day license suspension, Malynowski said.