Donald Trump lashed out at Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday as more Republicans turned against the former president after the party's underperformance in the midterm elections.
Mr Trump has been blamed for his party's worse-than-expected showing on November 8 after he endorsed hundreds of extremist candidates who proved unpalatable.
They included many "election deniers" who were pushing his false claims that an elaborate, nationwide conspiracy was to blame for his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020.
"It's Mitch McConnell's fault," Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, which is very similar to Twitter but with far fewer users.
He said "everyone despises" the senior Republican senator and used what Chinese Americans consider a racist slur against his Taiwan-born wife, Elaine Chao.
Mr Trump and said the Republican Party should have spent more money backing Jake Masters, who lost in his bid for a Senate seat in Arizona.
Democrats kept control of the US Senate on Saturday, repelling Republican efforts to retake the chamber and making it harder for them to thwart Mr Biden’s agenda.
Mr Trump is still considered the leader of the Republican Party but after last week's lacklustre electoral showing, in which the Democrats still have an outside chance of winning the House of Representatives, there is a palpable shift away from him.
Senior Trump allies are urging him to postpone his expected launch of a 2024 presidential run on Tuesday and conservative media outlets are rallying around Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the future of the Republican Party after he won his bid for re-election.
Maryland's departing Republican Governor Larry Hogan said on Sunday that the party had to switch gears.
"It's basically the third election in a row that Donald Trump has cost us the race, and it's like three strikes and you're out," Mr Hogan, a vocal Trump critic, on Sunday told CNN.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
"Donald Trump kept saying, 'we're gonna be winning so much, we'll get tired of winning'. Well, I'm tired of losing. I mean, that's all he's done."
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Zayed Sustainability Prize
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Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Notable cricketers and political careers
- India: Kirti Azad, Navjot Sidhu and Gautam Gambhir (rumoured)
- Pakistan: Imran Khan and Shahid Afridi (rumoured)
- Sri Lanka: Arjuna Ranatunga, Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillakaratne Dilshan (rumoured)
- Bangladesh (Mashrafe Mortaza)
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
More on animal trafficking
Seemar’s top six for the Dubai World Cup Carnival:
1. Reynaldothewizard
2. North America
3. Raven’s Corner
4. Hawkesbury
5. New Maharajah
6. Secret Ambition
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
