US Politics

Donald Trump tested the contours of his gag order in the federal criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, assailing his former attorney general and potential trial witness William Barr in remarks at a Saturday night New York gala event.“I make this commitment to you tonight: we will not have Bill Barr as our attorney general, is that OK?” Trump said as he discussed a potential second presidency. “He was a coward. He was afraid of being impeached.”The US court of appeals for the DC circuit notably ruled days before that Trump remains barred from attacking potential trial witnesses in the 2020 election interference case pending against him in Washington as long as his attacks do not involve their participation in the criminal investigation or trial proceedings.Under that standard, it was unclear whether Trump directly violated the conditions of the gag order, which he has vowed to appeal to the US supreme court. But it tested the restriction’s scope and cast into doubt his ability to stay clear of being held in contempt.The remark about Barr came during a speech heavy with resentment about Trump’s four criminal indictments and vows for revenge before an audience that included allies he is expected to tap for top justice department roles should he be re-elected next year to the White House.Trump compared himself again to the legendary mob boss Al Capone. But he appeared to press the point more in front of his most loyal allies, including Kash Patel – widely considered a candidate for FBI or CIA director – and Jeffrey Clark, a former justice department official who has himself been indicted.Patel and Clark connected for a brief private conversation after Trump finished his remarks and left the New York Young Republican Club’s black-tie gala with his in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn, also seen as a candidate for a top White House legal role if there is a second Trump administration.The former president has been indicted four times: for retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and obstructing justice, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Washington, for trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and for paying hush money to a porn star.Trump flashed a forced grin when he delivered the complaint that Capone, “the greatest gangster”, was indicted only once. But his voice betrayed a deeper sense of bitterness and what came across as a thinly-veiled message for his allies to exact retribution.The speech was delivered from the same stage at Cipriani Wall Street where Hillary Clinton referred to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” before she lost the 2016 election to Trump. The theme of Trump’s remarks was revenge: how he had gotten the better of Washington elites before and how he would do so again.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump repeatedly name-checked Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist with whom he forged a close bond during the 2016 campaign, as he retold the story of how Bannon had urged him not to drop out of the race over the objections of former Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus.The story about that moment and of his disdain for the criticism he received for bragging about touching women’s genitals in an infamous Access Hollywood tape underscored the recent return of his original allies to his orbit.Trump also called out to Epshteyn, a close confidant with long ties to Bannon who now oversees Trump’s legal teams, and Raheem Kassam, another longtime Bannon associate. Trump’s communications director Steve Cheung, a former Bannon adviser, was scheduled to attend but did not. More

Utah senator Mitt Romney declined to rule out voting for Joe Biden next year and said he hasn’t offered an endorsement in the Republican race because his backing would probably be a “kiss of death”.“If I endorsed them, it would be the kiss of death – I’m not going to do that,” Romney said during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.The Republican joked that he should maybe endorse the candidate he likes the least, and he made it clear that he would not be supporting Donald Trump.Romney added that he thought former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley – rising in the polls but still significantly trailing Trump – is “the only one that has a shot at becoming the nominee” other than the former president.He also said New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has aggressively taken on Trump during the campaign, has been “terrific”. That compliment is likely to intrigue many because Romney once called Christie “another bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth”, according to a biography released this year.Romney announced earlier this year he would not run for re-election in the Senate. The 2012 Republican presidential nominee has not shied away from criticizing Trump and twice voted to impeach him during the former president’s lone term.Trump has viciously attacked Romney in response.While Romney on Sunday said he would not rule out voting for Biden in 2024, he said there were other Democrats who would be a better nominee than the incumbent president. He said the candidate he would most like to support is the West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin.Manchin is leaving the Senate and has toyed with a bid for the presidency. But Romney said he didn’t think Manchin would run in the end.“I wish he’d be the Democratic nominee,” Romney said.“I’m not going to describe who I’ll rule out other than president Trump,” he added. “By the way, in my view, bad policy we can overcome – as a country, we have in the past. Bad character is something which is very difficult to overcome.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA recent Wall Street Journal poll found Trump was leading Biden by four points – 47% to 43%.Trump faces 91 criminal charges for 2020 election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with assorted civil litigation.Meanwhile, the indictment of Biden’s son, Hunter, in California on nine criminal tax charges places obstacles in the president’s re-election efforts. More

US House speaker Mike Johnson and his fellow Republicans who comprise a majority in the chamber cannot be trusted to protect the American constitution, former congresswoman Liz Cheney said Sunday.Cheney made the comments on ABC’s This Week as she continued to warn of the dangers that a second Donald Trump presidency would present following the release of her book Oath and Honor: A Warning and a Memoir. In the book, she is deeply critical of Johnson, who played a key role in Trump’s legal strategy to contest the election and organized an amicus brief signed by 126 US House members urging the supreme court to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.“I’ve expressed very clearly my view that having Mike Johnson as the speaker, having this Republican majority in charge, you can’t count on them to defend the constitution at this moment,” Cheney said.The former Wyoming congresswoman, who once held the number three position in the House Republican conference, also declined to rule out a presidential bid in 2024. But she acknowledged that there were already third-party candidates who could fracture the vote. “Certainly I’m not gonna do something that has the impact of helping Donald Trump,” she said.She also spoke about the need to take Trump’s blunt and public proclamations about how he would bring authoritarianism if he won a second term after his re-election run failed against Biden.Trump’s allies have publicly said they would go after the media and prosecute political rivals if he returns to power. He has also described opponents as “vermin” in language that echoes Nazi rhetoric.Trump escalated concerns this week when he made the absurd comment that he would only be a dictator for the first day of his presidency, a remark he defended on Saturday evening.“I said I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said at a gala in New York City.The remarks referred in part to Trump’s first-term promises to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and to humiliate Mexicans by making them pay for it. They also alluded to his support of the oil and gas industry.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I think we have to take everything that Donald Trump says literally and seriously,” Cheney said on ABC. More

Rudy Giuliani, the politician who was once lauded as “America’s mayor” but descended into the rabbit hole of Donald Trump’s election denial lies, will face a Washington DC jury on Monday in a landmark case which could see him saddled with millions of dollars in damages.For the first time at trial, Giuliani will be confronted in a federal district court with the consequences of the conspiracy theories he disseminated as Trump’s 2020 election lawyer. He will come eye-to-eye with the mother and daughter poll workers from Georgia who claim that he destroyed their lives and caused them ongoing emotional distress by maliciously accusing them of election fraud.The stakes of the civil trial are exceptionally high. The plaintiffs are asking the jury to set damages of up to $43m as punishment for Giuliani’s “outrageous conduct”.Legal experts and democracy advocates will also be watching closely to see whether a rarely used complaint of defamation can act as a deterrent on anyone contemplating another round of election denial in next year’s presidential election and beyond. There could also be ramifications for the Rico organised crime prosecution that Giuliani is facing in Fulton county, Georgia, that also relates to his actions in the 2020 election.After jury selection and opening statements on Monday, there will be three days of testimony in the DC trial. Headlining the witness list are the poll workers themselves, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.“While nothing will fully repair all of the damages that Giuliani and his allies wreaked on our clients’ lives, livelihoods and security, they are eager and ready for their day in court to continue their fight for accountability,” said the women’s legal representatives at Protect Democracy, a non-partisan advocacy group.Freeman and Moss became household names after they gave a moving televised account to the House investigation into the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. They recounted how their lives had been turned upside down by Giuliani’s relentless attacks.“Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920,” Moss, who is African American, told the hearing, invoking the history of lynching in the deep south.Giuliani has already been found liable by the judge presiding in the case, Beryl Howell, for smearing the poll workers, intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them, and engaging in a conspiracy with at least two others to defame them. It now falls to the jury to decide the scale of damages.Giuliani defamed the poll workers by accusing them falsely of criminal misdeeds during the critical count of presidential election votes in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. As one of the key swing states in the 2020 race, Georgia’s 16 electoral college votes had the potential to determine whether Trump or Joe Biden would be the next occupant of the White House.As part of the Trump team’s extensive efforts to undermine the election count and thereby foil Biden’s victory, Giuliani bore down on Freeman and Moss. He helped circulate a misleadingly edited tape of security footage from the arena which he inaccurately claimed showed them stealing votes for Biden.He propagated the “Suitcase Gate” conspiracy theory – a video that falsely claimed to show the poll workers removing phoney ballots from suitcases stored under their table, then counting them “three, four, five, six, seven times …” The court will be shown a sample of the ginger mint that Freeman passed to Moss during the counting process – Giuliani claimed it was a USB drive used to change the vote count on electronic tabulation devices.His wild claims were fully debunked by Georgia officials at the time he was making them. In June a full investigation by the state’s election board cleared Freeman and Moss of any wrongdoing and dismissed Giuliani’s fraud claims as “unsubstantiated”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite the official pushback, Giuliani continued to attack the pair. In several hours of scheduled testimony, mother and daughter are expected to describe to the jury the storm of death threats and harassment they and their families suffered – and continue to suffer – in the wake of the smear campaign.In the fallout, they were forced to flee their homes, go into hiding and change their appearance. Moss quit her job as a poll worker.Giuliani’s lawyers have indicated that he may testify in person at the trial. If he does so he will not be allowed to repeat any of the defamatory slurs about the plaintiffs, as he has already accepted that he defamed them.His lawyers have indicated that he will, though, attempt to show that his actions had minimal connection to the blizzard of violent threats and harassment that the women have endured. That way he will hope to minimize the damages awarded by the jury.Several other former members of the legal team in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign are also likely to be called upon during the trial, with their testimony drawn from depositions. They include the former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, Jenna Ellis, who has been charged alongside Giuliani in the Fulton county Rico case, and Christina Bobb.Court documents show that Ellis refused to answer questions from Freeman and Moss’s lawyers during her deposition. She pleaded the fifth amendment right to remain silent 448 times. More

Former US House speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 race for the Oval Office while also expressing interest in joining his administration should he win, even though loyalists of the ex-president drove the congressman into an early exit.While serving as a House leader, McCarthy did not formally endorse Trump’s campaign for a second presidency, though the California representative was generally supportive of his fellow Republican. But, four days after announcing in an opinion column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal that he was leaving Congress at the end of December, McCarthy appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning and made clear that he backed Trump’s attempts to return to power.“I will support the president,” McCarthy told the show’s anchor Robert Costa on Sunday while discussing his post-congressional plans. “I will support president Trump.”After he confirmed those remarks were an endorsement of the former president, who is grappling with a multitude of pending criminal charges, McCarthy was asked by Costa if he would be “willing to serve in a Trump cabinet”.McCarthy replied, “In the right position. Look, if I’m the best person for the job – yes.”He went on to say that he worked together with Trump for the Republicans to seize what is now a four-seat majority in the House after a showing in the 2022 midterms that was widely considered to be underwhelming for their party.“Look, I worked with president Trump on a lot of policies,” McCarthy said. “But we also have a relationship where we’re very honest with each other.”McCarthy lost his hold on the House speaker’s gavel in October after he relied on Democratic support to keep the federal government funded and open. As retaliation, the far-right, pro-Trump faction in the House that helped make him speaker after enduring 15 votes for the role last year ensured he became the first ever ejected from the role by his own party.It was a bitter twist for McCarthy, who had taken the far-right position 146 other congressional Republicans did when they voted to object to Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election.McCarthy and his GOP colleagues maintained that position after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol and breached its walls on 6 January 2021. Trump even received a visit at his Mar-a-Lago home from McCarthy shortly after the failure of the Capitol attack plunged the defeated president into an apparent depression, according to the Liz Cheney book Oath and Honor.McCarthy’s support at one point prompted Trump to affectionately refer to him as “My Kevin” at one point.After his ouster, McCarthy pledged that he would not resign from Congress, saying he had “a lot more work to do”. But months of behind-the-scenes tension, including an alleged physical attack on Tennessee Republican House member Tim Burchett, appeared to change his mind and convince him to step away in the coming weeks instead of when his term expires in early 2025.McCarthy on Sunday said “Trump needs to stop” campaigning on promises of exacting revenge against his political enemies if returned to the Oval Office.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“America doesn’t want to see the idea of the retribution,” McCarthy said. “If it’s rebuild, restore and renew, then I think you’ll see that.”Despite Trump’s gloomy message, McCarthy predicted Trump would clinch the White House, help Republicans expand their numerical advantage in the House and retake a majority in the Senate if the Democrats nominate Biden for re-election.Much of McCarthy’s congressional agenda was blunted by Democratic control of the White House and the Senate, where the party has a 51-49 edge.Trump faces 91 criminal charges accusing him of election subversion, illegal retention of government secrets and hush-money payments to an adult film actor. He has also contended with civil litigation over his business affairs and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump has emerged as the clear frontrunner to be the Republicans’ 2024 presidential nominee, and a Wall Street Journal poll published Saturday showed Trump leading Biden 47% to 43%.“If Biden stays as the nominee for the Democrats, I believe Donald Trump will win,” McCarthy said. “I believe the Republicans will gain more seats in the House and the Republicans will win the Senate.” More

On 15 February 1798, a fight erupted on the floor of Congress. The previous month, Matthew Lyon of Vermont spat in the face of a fellow congressman, Roger Griswold of Connecticut. Now they came to blows. Griswold wielded a hickory walking stick. Lyon used fireplace tongs. The melee devolved into a wrestling match. Griswold won, but it was just the start of Lyon’s downfall. Defending his seat that fall, he fell foul of a law against sedition by campaigning against an undeclared war with France and was sentenced to four months in jail.Improbably, Lyon had the last laugh. While incarcerated, he won re-election. When an electoral college tie sent the 1800 presidential election into the House, Lyon was among those who voted for the winner, Thomas Jefferson.“The Spitting Lyon” is one of 14 controversial members of the founding generation profiled in a new book, A Republic of Scoundrels: the Schemers, Intriguers & Adventurers Who Created a New American Nation, edited by David Head of the University of Central Florida and Timothy C Hemmis of Texas A&M University – Central Texas.“One of the things the whole project does is cast a look at the founding generation – not just the founding fathers,” Hemmis says. “The founding fathers were American saints, so to speak. This is kind of a more complicated picture of that founding generation. These men did not hold up the ideals … we’ve been taught about or told about.”Two names are infamous: Benedict Arnold and Aaron Burr.Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton dramatized Burr’s killing of Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Head and Hemmis explore a less familiar development.“What the musical does not do,” Hemmis says, “is talk about Burr’s activities after he shot Hamilton. He goes out west and is starting to recruit these frontiersmen as audiences for entirely different plans and schemes, like carving out an empire in the west on a separate basis from the US, or going to invade Spanish Mexico.”Captured in Alabama in 1807, brought to trial for treason, Burr won acquittal and survived subsequent hearings. Arnold actually committed treason, defecting to the British in the revolutionary war. Yet the chapter on Arnold adds nuance, James Kirby Martin of the University of Houston noting how Arnold felt under-appreciated as a patriot and plagued by rivals despite his considerable achievements on the battlefield.Other subjects may be less familiar, including James Wilkinson, a high-ranking general who spied for Spain.“[Wilkinson] was just an amazing general in the US army – and a paid agent of a foreign power,” Head says. “No one discovered this definitively until after he died. There were rumors and suspicions, but he managed to hide it.”Each protagonist receives a chapter by a separate author. Shira Lurie of Saint Mary’s University notes in her chapter on Lyon that he really was called a scoundrel by Griswold before the Connecticut congressman assaulted him. Some subjects appear in other chapters: Wilkinson gets star treatment in the chapter by Samuel Watson, of the United States Military Academy at West Point, then plays a supporting role in Hemmis’s chapter on Burr. Improbably, the spy for Spain did the US government a favor by alerting it to Burr’s alleged plot. As to why Wilkinson did so, the explanations are predictably murky.“Was he blowing the whistle on treason or telling on Burr to save himself?” Head asks. “Who was doing what to whom? One of the options was to say one guy was less good than the other, but the reality is, they were both bad.”Defining the term “scoundrel”, the book cites Samuel Johnson’s dictionary definition, including a “low petty villain”.“It’s not exactly helpful,” Head says, “but it gives you an idea of someone known for deceit, known for cunning, preying on people’s vulnerabilities … It’s the kind of thing people duel over, impugning their reputation for honor.”Hemmis says: “It’s also the idea that there’s a lot of unethical commercial interests and schemes going on that don’t fit nicely into the American narrative.”If we are to fully understand the founding generation and the early American republic, the authors argue, we need to understand such scoundrels and their impact. As they explain, the new nation was no longer under a monarchy and the Articles of Confederation weakened the central government at the expense of the states. Powerful rivals controlled the borders: England, Spain and Indigenous American peoples. In such an atmosphere, Americans could pursue self-interest.Consider William Blount, who swindled revolutionary war veterans out of land earned through service. Blount enlisted his brother in the scheme and wound up with millions of acres on the western frontier. He became one of the first senators from Tennessee – and the first senator to be impeached.As Head and Hemmis illustrate, self-interest could lead men to ally with another country, encourage secession from the US, or both. There was Burr’s bid for a breakaway section in the west and there was Wilkinson’s work with the Spanish, during which he criticized superiors such as the only general who outranked him, Anthony Wayne, and George Washington himself. Wilkinson’s chapter does note that the intelligence he passed on was essentially open-source material and that when it counted, he supported American interests over those of Spain.The editors remind readers of the many differences between that era and ours. Spain loomed uncomfortably close, sharing a boundary for 40 years. The biggest sectional rivalry was not north v south but east v west, with the frontier in Kentucky. Foreign agents interfered in American politics. William Bowles, a would-be British agent, became a trusted voice among some Indigenous peoples in Florida and tried to set up an independent state, Muskogee. Don Diego de Gardoqui, a Spanish diplomat, supported the patriot cause with arms from Spain but later worked for his government in an unsuccessful attempt to weaken American power.Do these scoundrels offer lessons to learn today, amid the rise of Donald Trump and deepening social divides? Discussing Lyon, the congressman who brawled on the House floor then was re-elected from prison, Head recalls an exchange with a friend.“He texted me back: ‘Are we still a republic of scoundrels?’ I said, ‘Yes, but remember, it’s a republic.’ It’s an important point. Whatever it is, the country is still a republic. It’s an important thing to think about in modern times … It’s still unusual, precious, [something] to be proud of.“Our constitution works. The political system works. We’ve been through a civil war, slavery, violence … In the 1790s, we didn’t know whether it could work.”Lurie, author of the chapter on Lyon, has her own reflections for today, focused on his rivals’ inability to oust him.“The attempt to weaken one’s distasteful political opponents through ridicule, mockery and expressions of outrage did not work then, and it does not work now,” she writes. “Too often, such tactics just enhance these individuals’ popularity. Instead of looking down on them and their supporters, we might do better to seriously and humbly contemplate the nature of their appeal. And so, confront the real America, scoundrels and all.”
A Republic of Scoundrels is published in the US by Pegasus Books More

Donald Trump stands ready to knife US democracy. A year ago, he called for terminating the constitution. He has since announced that if re-elected, he wants to weaponize federal law enforcement against his political enemies. He has suggested that Gen Mark Milley, former chairman of the joint chiefs, be executed for fulfilling his duty.This is a man who reportedly kept a bound copy of Hitler’s speeches at his bedside, very nearly managed to overturn an election, and certainly basked in the mayhem of the January 6 insurrection. He said Mike Pence, his vice-president who ultimately stood against him, “deserved” to be hanged for so doing.This week, Trump said he would be a dictator “on day one” of a second term. All bets are off. Take him literally and seriously.The New York Times and the Atlantic report that Trump aims to make the executive branch his fiefdom, loyalty the primary if not only test. If he returns to power, the independence of the justice department and FBI will be things of the past. He is the “most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office”, Liz Cheney writes in her memoir.“This is the story of when American democracy began to unravel,” the former congresswoman adds. “It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize.”Cheney, formerly the No 3 House Republican, was vice-chair of the House January 6 committee. She has witnessed power wielded – not always wisely. Dick Cheney, her father, was George W Bush’s vice-president and pushed the Iraq war. Before that he was secretary of defense to Bush’s father and, like his daughter, represented Wyoming in the House.Liz Cheney delivers a frightening narrative. Her recollections are first-hand, her prose dry, terse and informed. On January 6, she witnessed Trump’s minions invade the Capitol first-hand.Subtitled “A Memoir and a Warning Oath”, her book is well-timed. The presidential primaries draw near. The Iowa caucus is next month. Trump laps the Republican pack. No one comes close. Ron DeSantis is in retrograde, his campaign encased in a dunghill of its own making. Nikki Haley has momentum of a sort but remains a long way behind.Cheney’s book will discomfit many. Mike Johnson, the new House speaker, is shown as a needy and servile fraud. Kevin McCarthy, his predecessor, is a bottomless pit of self-abasement. Jim Jordan, the hard-right judiciary chair from Ohio, is ham-handed and insincere.Johnson misled colleagues about the authorship of a legal brief filed in support of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, as well as its contents and his own credentials. He played a game of “bait and switch”, Cheney says. Johnson, she writes, was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, despite advising colleagues that he was.In reality, Johnson was dean of Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, a small Baptist institution that never opened its doors. Constitutional scholar? Nope. Pro-Trump lawyers wrote the pro-Trump brief, not Johnson, Cheney says.At a recent gathering of Christian legislators, Johnson referred to himself as a modern-day Moses.McCarthy, meanwhile, is vividly portrayed in all his gutless glory. First taking a pass on Johnson’s amicus brief, he then predictably caved. Anything to sit at the cool kids’ table. His tenure as speaker, which followed, will be remembered for its brevity and desperation. His trip to see Trump in Florida, shortly after the election, left Cheney incredulous.“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?”“They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”Trump not eating. Let that claim sink in.This year, at his arraignment in Fulton county, Georgia, on charges relating to election subversion there, the former president self-reported as 6ft 3in and 215lb – almost 30lb lighter than at his last White House physical.OK.Turning to Jordan, Cheney recalls his performance on January 6. She rightly feared for her safety and remains unamused.“Jim Jordan approached me,” she recalls.“‘We need to get the ladies off the aisle,’ he said, and put out his hand. ‘Let me help you.’”“I swatted his hand away. ‘Get away from me. You fucking did this.’”Jordan’s spokesperson denies the incident.Cheney writes: “Most Republicans currently in Congress will do what Donald Trump asks, no matter what it is. I am very sad to say that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.”Mitt Romney has announced his retirement as a senator from Utah. Patrick McHenry, the former acting House speaker from North Carolina, has also decided to quit. Both men voted to certify Joe Biden’s win in 2020. In a Trump-centric Republican party, that is a big problem. In plain English, Congress is a hellscape. The cold civil war grows hot.Cheney briefly mentions Kash Patel, a former staffer to Devin Nunes, a congressman now in charge of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Patel was chief of staff at the Pentagon. In a recent interview with Steve Bannon, Patel made clear that in a second Trump term, bureaucrats and the press will be targets.“We will find the conspirators in government … and the media,” Patel said. “Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media … we are putting you all on notice.”Trump is a would-be Commodus, a debauched emperor, enamored with power, grievance and his own reflection. Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning epic, remains a movie for our times.“As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term,” Cheney writes. “But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our constitution.” Promoting her book, she added that the US is “sleepwalking into dictatorship”.Trump leads Biden in the polls.
Oath and Honor is published in the US by Hachette More

Donald Trump has nudged ahead of Joe Biden in national polling for the 2024 presidential election, a survey published on Saturday revealed, a day after the US president branded his predecessor as “despicable” at an event in California.The Wall Street Journal poll shows Biden with the lowest approval rating of his presidency, a finding broadly in line with other recent studies that have sparked concern in Democratic circles less than a year before voters go to the polls.It shows Trump leading Biden by four points, 47% to 43%, the first time this survey has shown that the former US president is favored in a head-to-head test of the likely 2024 White House matchup, the WSJ said.When five potential third-party and independent candidates are included, drawing a combined 17% support, Trump’s lead expands to six points, 37-31.Although Biden has expressed his desire to run for a second term, many in the Democratic party would like to see him stand down, fearing his advancing age – 81 on election day and 86 after eight years in the White House if he wins next year – will turn off voters.The indictment of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, in California on Thursday on nine criminal tax charges places additional obstacles in his path to re-election.Meanwhile Trump, despite leading the race for the Republican nomination by almost 50 points, according to RealClearPolitics, is no shoo-in either, largely because of his own multiple legal woes. The candidate who will himself be 78 on polling day remains in peril from four concurrent criminal cases against him, some over his illegal efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.At a fundraiser on Friday night, Biden laid into Trump for his actions on 6 January 2021, the day of the Capitol riot by his supporters trying to prevent Congress certifying the election result.“It’s despicable. It’s simply despicable,” Biden told an audience including California governor Gavin Newsom and Democratic former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, referring to how Trump stood and watched the unfolding riot on television and did nothing to stop it.He also referenced Trump’s interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity this week in which he was asked whether he would abuse his power if he were elected again. “The other day he said he would be a dictator only one day. God, only one day! He embraces political violence instead of rejecting it,” Biden said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHis speech was themed largely around the threat he said Trump posed to democracy, and avoided mention of the Israel-Gaza war. He told the audience of Democratic party supporters: “You’re the reason that Donald Trump is a former president, or, he hates when I say it, a defeated president. My guess is that he won’t show up at my next inauguration.”While the WSJ survey will alarm many Democrats, others warn not to read too much into what some observers see as “mad poll disease”, anxiety induced by a belief that a succession of negative polls shows what will happen a year from now instead of providing an opportunity to act, or vote, to prevent it.Similarly, the WSJ notes that while its figures show many Democrats are widely unhappy with Biden now, they might still back him on election day, especially if Trump is the Republican candidate. More