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    Key Biden aide said pandemic was 'best thing that ever happened to him', book says

    A senior adviser to Democrat Joe Biden in his campaign for president believed “Covid is the best thing that ever happened to him”, a new book reports.It was, the authors add, a necessarily private comment that “campaign officials believed but would never say in public” as the US reeled from the impact of the pandemic amid hospitals stretched to breaking and with deaths mounting and the economy falling off a cliff.The remark, made to “an associate” by Anita Dunn, a Washington powerbroker who the Atlantic called “The Mastermind Behind Biden’s No-Drama Approach to Trump”, is reported in Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.The first major book on the 2020 election, a campaign indelibly marked by the coronavirus, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.This week, President Biden commemorated the 500,000th US Covid death with solemn ceremony and a request that Americans “remember those we lost and those we left behind”.Allen and Parnes, of NBC News and The Hill, also collaborated on Shattered, a similarly speedy history of Hillary Clinton’s White House run in 2016. In their new book they record Biden’s view of his predecessor in her defeat by Trump – he thought her a “terrible candidate” – and the views of Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice-president from 2009 to 2017, as the 2020 campaign unfolded.Obama first “seemed to be enamored with a former Texas congressman, Beto O’Rourke”, Allen and Parnes write, then later told Biden’s aides he feared his friend, aged 77 when the primary began, would only succeed in embarrassing himself and tarnishing a distinguished Washington career.But Dunn’s reported comment points to what became the dominant theme of the election. As the pandemic capsized Trump along with the economy Biden, through a much more cautious approach to campaigning and basic public health concerns, appealed to voters as the right man to manage a recovery.Trump sought to hammer Biden for “hiding in his basement” – a reference to Biden’s decision to rarely leave home in Wilmington, Delaware, instead campaigning virtually while the president held rallies and ignored public health guidelines. But such attacks did not hit home.Though “both Trump and Biden were comfortable with the stylistic and substantive contrasts of their … responses to the coronavirus”, Allen and Parnes write, “Trump led loudly, Biden calmly said Trump misled”.Like many members of his family and inner circle, Trump contracted the virus. He was reportedly more seriously ill than was publicly admitted. Biden stayed healthy and won the electoral college 306-232 and the popular vote by more than 7m.Dunn, 63, is a veteran of six Democratic campaigns and three winning ones, having worked for Obama in 2008 and 2012. She has not taken a role in the Biden administration and according to her own consulting firm, SKDK, is “currently on leave … expected to return later this year”.According to the profile published by the Atlantic in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s win in November, Dunn “came of age in the time when aides were neither seen nor heard … and still values discretion above almost all else”. More

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    Voting machine maker Dominion sues MyPillow CEO over false election claims

    The voting machine manufacturer Dominion is suing the Donald Trump-supporting chief executive of MyPillow for more than $1.3bn, claiming he damaged the company with his “Big Lie” that it distorted the results of the 2020 election.Dominion delivered on its earlier threat to sue Mike Lindell by lodging the lawsuit on Monday in a federal court in Washington. The complaint alleges that the MyPillow boss used the falsehood that Dominion voting machines had been used to rig the election in favour of Joe Biden as a marketing ploy to sell his product, “because the lie sells pillows”.The suit accuses Lindell and MyPillow of deceptive trade practices and seeking to profit by making false and defamatory statements. It highlights discounts MyPillow offered on its products linked to the rigged-election conspiracy theory, and points out that the company advertised on rightwing media outlets that were pushing the baseless claims and sponsored public rallies that propagated Trump’s lies.After Dominion warned that they were minded to sue, Lindell responded by stepping up attacks on the company. Earlier this month he released a three-hour film, Absolute Proof, devoted to the fantasy that last November’s defeat of Trump at the ballot box amounted to a “communist coup”.His relentless pursuit of the stolen election lie earned Lindell a permanent suspension from Twitter.On Monday, Lindell told the Wall Street Journal he was “very, very happy” that the Dominion lawsuit had gone ahead.“I have all the evidence on them,” he said. “Now this will get disclosed faster, all the machine fraud and the attack on our country.”No credible evidence of fraud on the scale needed to overturn the 2020 presidential election result has ever been presented. Numerous election officials, including prominent Republicans, have rebuffed the idea, as did Trump attorney general William Barr and homeland security secretary Chad Wolf.The Dominion legal action is the latest in a flurry of lawsuits swirling around Trump’s baseless claim that the election was stolen. Last month Dominion sued Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and another pro-Trump attorney, Sidney Powell, over their role in forwarding the conspiracy theory.A rival voting machine company, Smartmatic USA, has sued Fox News for $2.7bn, alleging defamatory comments about its products were broadcast on the network. Fox News has filed to dismiss the case. More

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    Rush Limbaugh, controversial conservative radio personality, dead at 70 – video obituary

    Rush Limbaugh, the conservative US radio host whose nastily personal and bigoted riffs on the daily news won millions of devoted fans and altered the landscape of American media and politics, has died. At the height of his influence in the mid-1990s, Limbaugh commanded a daily radio audience of millions, known as ‘dittoheads’, who tuned in to hear him dissect the sins of the Bill Clinton administration and wage battle against the ‘commie libs’ he accused of plotting to destroy the country. Limbaugh, 70, had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer a year ago.
    Rush Limbaugh, influential rightwing talk radio host, dies at age 70
    Rush Limbaugh obituary More

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    Mitch McConnell lambasts Donald Trump but votes not guilty in impeachment trial – video

    The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Saturday that Donald Trump was ‘practically and morally responsible’ for the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January – minutes after voting to acquit the former president in his impeachment trial for that very same act.
    The House majority leader, Nancy Pelosi, criticised McConnell’s remarks in a press conference on Saturday and said the issue of timing ‘was not the reason that he voted the way he did; it was the excuse that he used’
    Mitch McConnell savages Trump – minutes after voting to acquit More

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    Failure to convict Trump in impeachment trial will live as a 'vote of infamy', says Schumer – video

    The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, decried the decision to acquit Donald Trump of inciting a riot at the US Capitol on 6 January. House Democrats, who voted a month ago to charge Trump with ‘incitement of insurrection’, needed two thirds of the Senate, or 67 votes, to convict him. Only seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict Trump.
    The Democrats argued in the short trial that Trump caused the violent attack by repeating for months the false claims that the election was stolen from him, and then telling his supporters gathered near the White House that morning to ‘fight like hell’ to overturn his defeat. Five people died when they then laid siege to the Capitol.
    Senate has officially voted to acquit Trump on 57-43 vote More

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    The GOP representative at center of Trump impeachment trial drama

    Jaime Herrera Beutler, the congresswoman for south-west Washington state at the center of last-minute drama at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, has been a rare Republican supporter of the Democrat-led effort to convict the former president of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”.Herrera Beutler, who has served as a representative since 2011, made her support to impeach Trump known six days after the Capitol riot in early January. “The president of the United States incited a riot aiming to halt the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next,” Herrera Beutler said then.In the statement, Herrera Beutler described Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as “pleading with the president to go on television and call for an end to the mayhem, to no avail”.Late on Friday, Herrera Beutler went further, saying she was told by McCarthy that Trump initially sided with supporters. She urged Republican “patriots” to come forward and share what they know about the conversation in which Trump is alleged to have told McCarthy that rioters at the Capitol were “more upset about the election” than the congressional minority leader was.For a few tense hours it looked as if Herrera Beutler might upset the whole impeachment trial, as Democrats, backed by a handful of Republicans, suddenly decided she needed to be called as a witness – a move that would ensure Republicans would call witnesses too.But amid scenes of farce, chaos and frantic negotiations, a deal was struck to merely read Herrera Beutler’s statements into the record, in lieu of personal testimony. Suddenly, the prospect of weeks of lengthy witness testimony in the impeachment trial receded again.But the incident has focused senators to focus – even if briefly – on what Trump knew and when he knew it on the day of the riot, something that may leave a lingering impact on how the American public views the trial.Herrera Beutler first came to national attention in 2014, when then speaker John Boehner introduced her 13-month-old daughter Abigail, who has Potter’s syndrome, a rare condition in which a child is born without kidneys, to the legislative chamber with the Johns Hopkins doctor, Jessica Bienstock, who had helped save her life.Herrera Beutler later co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that would allow children on the Medicaid program with complex medical conditions to seek specialty care outside their coverage areas.She also drew attention as one of a growing number of women balancing motherhood and elected political life. At the time of her daughter’s birth, she was just the ninth lawmaker in history to have a baby while serving in Congress.Now again she is a rare politician: an eloquent voice in her Trumpist-dominated party, arguing for a return of the party to its pre-Trump values and standards of political life.In her 12 January statement on the Capitol riot, the congresswoman wrote: “I understand the argument that the best course is not to further inflame the country or alienate Republican voters. But I am also a Republican voter. I believe in our constitution, individual liberty, free markets, charity, life, justice, peace and this exceptional country. I see that my own party will be best served when those among us choose truth.” More

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    US Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman awarded Congressional Gold Medal

    Eugene Goodman, the Capitol police officer who led violent rioters away from lawmakers during the 6 January attack, has been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the US Senate.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, called the vote at the end of Friday’s impeachment proceedings, noting Goodman’s “foresight in the midst of chaos, and his willingness to make himself a target of the mob’s rage so that others might reach safety”.The Senate voted to award Goodman the medal – the highest honor Congress can bestow – by unanimous consent, meaning there were no objections. The medal has traditionally been used to honor military officers for distinguished service.Goodman was in the Senate chamber as Schumer spoke, and the entire Senate stood and turned toward him, giving him a standing ovation. He put his hand on his heart.Goodman, who was promoted to acting deputy sergeant-at-arms for the Senate after his performance during the Capitol riot, has been in the chamber for much of the impeachment trial. As an armed mob of Trump supporters bore down on the Capitol, threatening lawmakers including Mike Pence, the former vice president, Goodman intercepted, engaging rioters and leading them away from the Senate chamber.In new videos aired as part of House Democrats argument that former president Donald Trump incited the insurrection, Goodman was also shown leading the Republican senator Mitt Romney to safety as he unknowingly headed toward a location where the mob had gathered.“I was very fortunate indeed that officer Goodman was there to get me in the right direction,” Romney told reporters on Wednesday. He said he was unaware until he saw the footage that Goodman had potentially saved his life.A decorated army veteran who served from 2002 to 2006, Goodman, 40, is from Maryland. Last month, he escorted vice-president Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, to the inauguration ceremony.“He is wholly deserving of the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress, and I’m glad the Senate acted quickly on our legislation to recognize the quick thinking and bravery of this great Marylander with a Congressional Gold Medal,” said Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen in a statement. “I urge my colleagues in the House to quickly follow suit.”House leader Nancy Pelosi this week introduced plans to honor the officer. More