US Politics

The Arizona Republican Kari Lake’s vow of armed resistance over Donald Trump’s indictment for retaining classified records “threatens the very core of our democracy”, an Arizonan Democratic congressman said.Ruben Gallego is running to replace the former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the US Senate next year.He said: “I know this language isn’t just hyperbole – it’s dangerous and it threatens the very core of our democracy.”The 38-count federal indictment against Trump was unsealed on Friday. He is due to appear in court in Florida on Tuesday. Jack Smith, the special counsel, told reporters he would “seek a speedy trial”.Trump was already in unprecedented legal jeopardy. He and other Republicans responded to the indictment under the Espionage Act with incendiary rhetoric.Lake, a TV news anchor turned far-right firebrand, lost the election for Arizona governor last year. She continues to insist without evidence her defeat was the result of fraud.Speaking to Georgia Republicans on Friday, she said: “I have a message tonight for [US attorney general] Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, and Joe Biden. And the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one’s for you.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me.“And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA [National Rifle Association]. That’s not a threat – that’s a public service announcement.“We will not let you lay a finger on President Trump. Frankly, now is the time to cling to our guns and our religion.”Lake was speaking in place of Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president who escaped the mob Trump sent to the Capitol on January 6, some of whom chanted about hanging him, to preside over certification of Biden’s election win.Pence is now a candidate for the Republican nomination but like all others he trails Trump by large margins, as the former president ruthlessly capitalises on – and successfully monetises – the various charges against him.Trump faces criminal charges at state level, in New York, over a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and federally, over his retention of classified records and obstruction of moves to secure their return.In a New York civil trial, found liable for sexual assault and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, he was ordered to pay $5m.Also expected to be indicted over his election subversion, at state level in Georgia and federally in an investigation also supervised by Smith, Trump denies wrongdoing.According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lake’s remarks in Columbus on Friday met with a standing ovation.Responding to a reporter, Lake tweeted: “I meant what I said.”Gallego said: “As a marine who went all the way to Iraq to defend this country, our democracy, and our freedoms, I know this language isn’t just hyperbole – it’s dangerous and it threatens the very core of our democracy.”He also said Lake “owes every America-loving Arizonan an apology”, as the state had rejected “her off-the-rails rhetoric that does nothing but sow doubt in our elections”.But Lake remains an eager Trump ally, seen by some as a possible pick for vice-president. On Friday, she said she was “more than willing to fill Mike Pence’s shoes”.Like Trump, who features on a song splicing his voice with those of imprisoned Capitol rioters, Lake has released a single. Its title, 81 Million Votes My Ass, is a reference to Biden’s winning total. More

Bud Light, Target – and now Cracker Barrel? “We take no pleasure in reporting that @CrackBarrel has fallen,” the conservative group Texas Family said in a tweet last Thursday, in response to the southern-food restaurant chain marking Pride month on social media. “A once family-friendly establishment has caved to the mob.”The conservative backlash against American brands appears to have reached new heights over the last few weeks as companies show their support for Pride month and other LGBTQ+ issues. It is part of a wider backlash against corporate involvement in social, environmental or political issues that appears to be gathering steam.Corporate celebration of Pride month over recent years has seemed less radical amid growing criticism that parades and other events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights have actually become too corporatized. Critics have also pointed out that those same businesses are more than happy to fund politicians that oppose LGBTQ+ rights when it suits them. But conservatives have put those sponsorships back in the spotlight and are now more emboldened than ever to turn their fury against them.At the political vanguard is Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, the presidential candidate who is in the middle of a legal battle with Disney after the company publicly criticized his “don’t say gay” bill to curb discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.But the attack on “woke” corporations from conservative consumers and the politicians who court their support goes far further than Pride.Multiple Republican states, including Texas, West Virginia and Florida, have divested from investment firm BlackRock for the company’s support of environmental, social and governance portfolios that focus on sustainability and environmental impact.It is a notable change for Republicans, who for decades have been the party of business and fought the idea of government interference. Their hero, Ronald Reagan, once said “man is not free unless government is limited”.But a shift has been happening. Since 2019, the percentage of Republicans who say large corporations have a positive impact has fallen by a quarter, according to a 2021 Pew poll. A Gallup poll showed a similar drop in Republicans who were happy with the “size and influence of major corporations”, dropping from 57% to 31% in a year.Much of this comes from conservative distaste of “woke capitalism”, with companies coming out in support of progressive issues, such as LGBTQ+ rights, racial equity and concern over the environment, over the last decade. The shift has a strong business case. Younger Americans, who are more diverse and also more liberal, have come of age as consumers and companies have been trying to cater to them by promoting issues they care about. That comes with a price.“Millennials and younger generations are pushing this, and they have the idea that companies have a social responsibility beyond their business,” said Amna Kirmani, a professor of marketing at the University of Maryland. “Conservatives think that companies should stay out of sociopolitical issues and instead focus on their business.”In other words, companies can’t appeal to everyone in such a divisive political landscape, as they are quickly finding out. Now that two major corporations have pulled back on marketing efforts that promote LGBTQ+ issues in the face of a rightwing backlash, some experts say conservative resolve against companies promoting the issues has been strengthened.Bud Light had been trying to revive its brand to appeal to younger Americans when it turned to TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, for a sponsored post on social media.“Our number one job at Bud Light is to grow meaning and relevance with new drinkers – that is how we transform and really preserve this brand for the next 40 years,” Alissa Heinerscheid, the company’s vice-president of marketing, told Ad Age in September.The backlash to the brand’s partnership with Mulvaney was intense, eventually leading to sales in Bud Light dropping by at least 23% compared to last year.Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Bud Light, put Heinerscheid and another marketing executive on leave. Brendan Whitworth, chief executive of Anheuser-Busch inBev, said in a statement in April amid the boycott that the brand “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together.”Just a few weeks later, Target announced it would remove some of its Pride month merchandise from some of its stores after a series of “volatile circumstances” in which a handful of customers confronted workers and damaged displays in stores.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It has really emboldened a lot of conservative activists to keep shouting because in these two cases, there were serious consequences,” Kirmani said. “Boycotts happen all the time, most of them are not successful.”The ire against Bud Light and Target quickly spread to Kohl’s, which received bomb threats for displaying Pride month merchandise, and Chick-fil-A, which had hired an executive to lead diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the company. The attack on Chick-fil-A surprised many given the company’s long history of supporting rightwing causes. Backlashes also pointed to Nike, North Face, the US navy and the LA Dodgers baseball team for social media posts and campaigns that celebrated Pride month.Eric Bloem, vice-president of programs and corporate advocacy at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said that it stresses to companies that they need to be prepared to defend their values when faced with attacks. Nike and North Face, he pointed out, stood by their decision to work with transgender models (Nike had worked with Mulvaney) after they faced backlash. Meanwhile, Bud Light and Target backed off.“The message that it sends is that it fuels extremist behavior … and that they can make Pride toxic. Once they are able to make Pride toxic for one company, they’re going to move on to the next,” Bloem said.Both Kirmani and Bloem said the conservative backlash against companies comes from a minority of people with extreme views. A survey from the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Glaad showed that 75% of participants said they are comfortable seeing LGBTQ+ people in advertising.“Let’s be clear that this is a coordinated attack against the LGBTQ+ community by a small group of extremists,” Bloem said. “There’s over 525 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation that have been pushed at the state level. These pieces of legislation are banning books, access to gender-affirming care for youth, they’re preventing trans youth from participating in sports. All of this is part of the larger context.”The wider context also suggests this fight isn’t going to end soon. The attacks on Target and Bud Light had real impact and DeSantis is not the only 2024 Republican presidential runner taking on “woke” corporations.Outlier candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old tech entrepreneur, has made his fight against corporate liberalism the centerpiece of his campaign. He is positioning his company, Strive Asset Management, as an alternative to investment firms like BlackRock.Ramaswamy may not be a frontrunner but he is gaining airtime and his message has the support of Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy and others. His views may be out of touch with younger voters, and many other Americans, but it’s one that captures an angry base that has found a cause to fight for. “Courage Is Contagious” is Ramaswamy’s campaign slogan. As corporate America is finding out, it is also going to be contentious. More

Belligerent and conspiracy-laden rhetoric from high-profile Republican backers of Donald Trump has heightened fears that the former US president’s campaign against his legal troubles could trigger political violence.Fewer than 24 hours after Donald Trump was indicted, Arizona congressman Andy Biggs went on Twitter and used violent language to call for retribution. “We have now reached a war phase,” he said. “An eye for an eye.”Clay Higgins, another Republican congressman from Louisiana, gave militaristic instructions to his followers. “This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this,” he tweeted, using an abbreviation to refer to Trump as the real president.Higgins added: “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all,” he added, using an apparent reference to military-scale maps. (Two days later Higgins tweeted: “Let Trump handle Trump, he’s got this. We use the Constitution as our only weapon. Peace. Hold.”)The statements from the two far-right congressmen – both of whom voted to overturn the 2020 election – underscore the alarming way that violent rhetoric has seeped into mainstream US political discourse in the Republican party especially in the wake of Trump’s indictment.An estimated 12 million adults – 4.4% of the US population – believe violence is justified to return Trump to power, according to a recent survey by the University of Chicago’s Project on Security & Threats (CPOST).“I’ve been reporting on rightwing movements for 20 years. The ‘heat’ is hotter, the blast stronger. And the source more pungent,” said Jeffrey Sharlet, a professor at Dartmouth College and author of The Undertow, a book studying the far right. “The ‘rhetoric’ is specific: while Twitter giggled at what it took to be the ‘word salad’ of Higgins’ statement, those who study militias read it as the call to arms it is.”It is language that has been encouraged by Trump himself since before he was elected but that perhaps peaked around the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as his supporters invaded the building to try and prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.As a candidate in 2016, Trump pledged to cover the legal fees of supporters who assaulted protesters at his rallies. “I’d like to punch him in the face,” he said of one protester at a 2016 rally.On 6 January 2021, Trump used violent language as he encouraged his supporters to descend on the US Capitol to block the certification of the electoral college vote. “We fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he said. What followed was the deadliest assault on the US capitol in American history with five people dying in connection with the attack.There was evidence that Trump’s violent language was inspiring his supporters. On The Donald, a pro-Trump forum, users called for violence in order to restore Trump to the presidency, Rolling Stone reported. “The only way this country ever becomes anything like the Constitution says this country should be is if thousands of traitorous rats are publicly executed,” one user wrote, according to the magazine.A 2020 survey by ABC News found at least 54 criminal cases in which Trump was invoked in connection with violent acts or threats of violence.“What’s happening in the United States is political violence is going from the fringe to the mainstream,” Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who leads CPOST, told the Guardian earlier this month.Trump allies outside of Washington have also relied on violent language to defend the former president since his most recent indictment for his handling of classified documents after he left the White House.“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, said in a speech on Friday to applause. “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”Pete Santilli, a far-right talk show host, called on the military to use zip-ties to detain Biden, put him in the back of a pickup truck and get him out of the White House, according to the New York Times.Another guest on the show said he would “probably shoot” Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, if it were legal, the Times reported. Santilli also previously called for the execution of former president Barack Obama and other officials if Trump was indicted.Sharlet, the Dartmouth professor, said the violent rhetoric got worse each day that it persisted.“Every day it corrodes the hope of democracy. Every day it encourages so-called ‘lone wolves’ – the real militia to whom such not-so-coded signals are broadcast – to take action,” he said. More

The financier George Soros, the billionaire investor and liberal donor, has handed control of his multi-billion-dollar foundation to his son, Alexander.The 92-year-old, who memorably made $1bn betting against the British pound and “breaking the Bank of England” in a catastrophic financial event in 1992 that became known as Black Wednesday, had said previously that he did not want his Open Society Foundations (OSF) to be taken over by any of his five children.However, Soros has now named his son Alexander as chairman of one of the wealthiest global philanthropic foundations. “He’s earned it,” said Soros, whose personal fortune is valued at $6.7bn.The 37-year-old, who was quietly appointed in December, said he was “more political” than his father and that he planned to continue donating family money to left-leaning US political candidates, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.His father has been one of the biggest donors to Democratic candidates in US politics.“We are going to double down on defending voting rights and personal freedom at home and supporting the cause of democracy abroad,” said Alexander. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it too.”Alexander, who earlier this week tweeted a picture of himself posing with the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, now directs political activity as president of his father’s political action committee.The foundation, of which Alexander has been deputy chair since 2017, directs about $1.5bn a year to groups such as those backing human rights and helping to build democracies.Alexander, who studied history at New York University and earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, has pursued his own initiatives including backing progressive Jewish organisations, environmental causes and workers’ rights in the US.He also sits on the investment committee of the foundation that oversees Soros Fund Management (OSF), with the vast majority of the $25bn in assets under management belonging to the OSF. The OSF received $18bn from his father in 2018.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“With my background, there are a lot of ways I could have gone astray,” said Alexander. “Instead I became a workaholic, and my life is my work.”George Soros has married three times and has five children: Alexander, Andrea, Gregory, Robert and Jonathan. More

Donald Trump’s former attorney general William Barr believes that the former president may be “toast” as he faces a sweeping indictment of 37 federal criminal charges over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Speaking to Fox News on Sunday following the release of the indictment, Barr, who served as the US attorney general under Trump from 2019 to 2020, said that he was “shocked by the degree of sensitivity at these documents and how many there were”.“I do think we have to wait and see what the defense says and what proves to be true. But I do think … if even half of it is true, then he’s toast … It’s a very detailed indictment and it’s very damning,” said Barr.Barr has largely broken with Trump since he left office. His comments stand in stark contrast to Trump’s tirade against federal prosecutors who he said are pursuing him as part of a “witch-hunt”.Barr added: “The government’s agenda was to … protect those documents and get them out and I think it was perfectly appropriate to do that. It was the right thing to do.”Barr went on to push back against Trump’s narrative that he is the victim of a broader government “hoax”, saying: “Presenting Trump as a victim here, the victim of a witch-hunt, is ridiculous.”“He’s been a victim in the past. His adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims and I’ve been at his side defending against him when he is a victim, but this is much different. He’s not a victim here,” said Barr.According to the indictment unsealed on Friday, Trump stored classified documents in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.It also added that Trump directed Walt Nauta, his valet and aide, to deliberately move boxes of records to “conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury”.Documents possessed by Trump “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”, said the indictment.Barr said: “. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has. They have to be in the custody of the archivist. He had no right to maintain them and retain them. And he kept them in a way at Mar-a-Lago that anyone who really cares about national security, their stomach would churn at it,” he added.In addition to being charged with mishandling classified documents, Trump has been charged with several counts of obstruction of justice as well as making false statements to investigators.Trump has repeatedly maintained his innocence. In two fiery addresses on Saturday – his first public speeches since the federal indictment against him, the GOP’s top presidential contender told crowds of supporters in Georgia and North Carolina that he “will never be detained”.He also lashed out against federal officials, saying: “Now the Marxist left is once again using the same corrupt DoJ [justice department] and the same corrupt FBI, and the attorney general and the local district attorneys to interfere … They’re cheating. They’re crooked. They’re corrupt. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated. You have to defeat them.” More

A Roman Catholic mass to be held in western Pennsylvania this weekend in solidarity with LGBTQ Catholics has been canceled after flyers for the service switched the designation to a “Pride mass”.The cancellation of Sunday mass at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh came at the request of the diocese after protesting emails and calls, some of them threatening, officials said. While the exact nature of the protest messages is unclear, they come at a time when major brands like Target, Bud Light and Starbucks have faced rightwing backlash for using the Pride labeling.The Pittsburgh mass had been organized by Catholics for Change in Our Church with the help of LGBTQ+ outreach ministries, said group’s president Kevin Hayes, and similar in nature to other outreach efforts toward Black or Hispanic parishioners.Trouble arose after independent sponsors of the event promoted the mass with a flyer “that confused some and enraged others”, according the Bishop David Zubik of the Pittsburgh diocese.“This event was billed as a ‘Pride mass’ organized to coincide with Pride Month, an annual secular observance that supports members of the LGBTQ community on every level, including lifestyle and behavior, which the church cannot endorse,” Zubik said in a letter to priests, deacons and seminarians in the diocese.Zubik added that protesters incorrectly assumed that he had approved the event, and that the critics of the mass had used “condemning and threatening, and some might say hateful, language not in keeping with Christian charity”.Bishop Zubik said he asked that the gathering be canceled “given all that has transpired surrounding this event”.Kevin Hayes, president of Catholics for Change in Our Church, said that group members “are very sad and very frustrated”. He added that the goal had been to “just have LGBTQ Catholics feel welcomed as beloved sons and daughters of a loving God and just be affirmed for who they are within the context of the Eucharist, which we feel is appropriate.” More

Donald Trump has pledged to continue his 2024 presidential campaign even if he is convicted of a felony, saying he would campaign from prison if necessary.“I’ll never leave,” the former US president told Politico in an interview carried out on his plane between two campaign events. He also dismissed the possibility of pardoning himself, telling the outlet: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”US law does not bar Trump from running while under indictment, nor would it block him if he was convicted.“These are thugs and degenerates who are after me,” he said, continuing his use of inflammatory language to describe his opponents and extensive legal troubles.The defiant comments from Trump came two days after the US Department of Justice charged him with 37 criminal counts related to his mishandling of classified documents and obstructing the department’s investigation into the matter.Trump, who is the leading contender in the Republican field aiming to snag the party nomination to fight Joe Biden for the White House, is the first former US president to face federal charges – an extraordinary moment in American history.Trump has already started seizing on the charges to try an appeal to Republicans for support, holding them up as yet another example of the way that political rivals are trying to persecute him.“The ridiculous and baseless indictment by the Biden administration’s weaponized department of injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country,” he said during a speech at the Georgia Republican party’s convention.He received an enthusiastic welcome at the event from supporters, the Associated Press reported.About 48% of Americans believe Trump should have been indicted over his handling of classified documents, according to a new ABC/Ipsos study, while 35% believe he should not have been. There is a significant partisan split in responses reflecting the US’s deep divides: 86% of self-identified Democrats say he should have been indicted, while 67% of self-identified Republicans say he should not have.Trump leads a wide Republican presidential field fairly easily and most of his rivals have not used the indictment to attack him, a signal of the sway the former president still has over the Republican party.“The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation. Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, tweeted on Thursday.A day later, in a speech in North Carolina, DeSantis, who is seen as Trump’s most serious rival, seemed a bit more willing to needle Trump, saying he would have been “court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had mishandled classified documents when he was a navy lawyer.DeSantis, who sits a distant second in the polls to Trump, was also endorsed by Oklahoma’s governor, Kevin Stitt, this week – his first gubernatorial endorsement in the race.Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice-president and another 2024 rival, said Attorney General Merrick Garland should have to publicly explain the charges.“Stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people and explain why this indictment went forward,” he said in a North Carolina speech on Saturday. Garland appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the case in November to ensure independence due to the political sensitivity of the matter.“I had hoped the Department of Justice would see its way clear to resolve these issues with the former president without moving forward with charges, and I’m deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward,” Pence said on Friday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOther 2024 candidates echoed those sentiments.Trump’s former US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, also suggested the prosecution was political. “The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards, and vendetta politics,” she tweeted. “It’s time to move beyond the endless drama and distractions.”Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, said the “scales are weighted” in the US justice system and pledged to “purge all of the injustices and impurities in our system”.But Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is running for president and has willingly criticized Trump, called the indictment “devastating” and “evidence filled” on CNN on Friday.“The bigger issue for our country is: is this the type of conduct that we want from someone who wants to be president of the United States?” he said.Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, also a sometimes vocal Trump critic running for president, called on Trump to drop out.“What we see in the facts thus far is that he treated [the documents] like entertainment tools,” he said. “Staying in the race does a disservice to the office of presidency and to the country and to the important decision that we have to make.”Trump is expected to appear on Tuesday at 3pm at the federal courthouse in Miami for an arraignment. The Secret Service is reportedly determining a plan for transporting Trump to the courthouse for the appearance, which is likely to be a spectacle. The case will at least initially be overseen by Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who was rebuked by an appeals court for rulings favorable to the ex-president at an earlier point in the case.Trump already faces separate criminal charges in Manhattan over hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. More criminal charges could come this year from both the justice department and prosecutors in Atlanta related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Even Trump, who survived two impeachments while president and has avoided accountability nearly his entire career, seemed to acknowledge his mounting legal woes.“Nobody wants to be indicted,” he told Politico. “I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months. It’s been political.” More

Donald Trump is not the most rightwing candidate running for the White House. That is a statement few would have thought possible after the former president’s brand of nativist-populism reshaped the Republican party.But as the Republican primary election for 2024 gathers pace, Trump finds himself eclipsed on the right by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is betting that the party’s voters are spoiling for an even more extreme agenda.From Covid to crime, from immigration to cultural issues, DeSantis is staking out territory that leaves the 76-year-old frontrunner fending off a once unthinkable criticism: he might be a bit too liberal.“DeSantis’s strategy for now is that he is going to try to outflank Trump to the right and there’s opportunity there,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. “He can go after Trump’s record as president on spending. He can go after Trump on refusing to address entitlement reform, which Republicans seemed to abandon writ large.”This week, Trump was indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. DeSantis did not attempt to capitalise but rather condemned the “weaponization of federal law enforcement”. He has been dubbed a “mini-Trump” who seeks to emulate the former president. But in his first 10 days on the campaign trail, DeSantis has assailed Trump from the right.He told a conservative radio host “this is a different guy than 2015, 2016,” before deriding bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation that Trump championed as “basically a jailbreak bill” letting dangerous people out of prison.On immigration, DeSantis has played to the base by flying migrants from Florida to Massachusetts and California while arguing that Trump “endorsed and tried to ram” an “amnesty” bill through Congress. The governor even claimed Trump’s signature issue for himself by asserting that he would finish building a wall on the US-Mexico border.DeSantis can point to a hard-right record in Florida and suggest that he gets the job done in contrast to Trump’s unfulfilled promises at the White House. He has accused Trump of “turning the reins over” to Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, during the Covid pandemic while he says he kept Florida open for business. “We chose freedom over Faucism,” DeSantis told voters last week.Whalen, who served as a speechwriter for the Bush-Quayle re-election campaign, said: “What DeSantis is going to attack him on is that Donald Trump turned loose Anthony Fauci. Trump at no point fired anybody. Trump let Fauci drive children’s healthcare policy. If Trump wants to engage with this on a conversation over who handled Covid better, boy, if I’m Ron DeSantis, bring it on.”Extraordinarily, Trump finds himself on the defensive over what many neutral observers and critics regard as one his few positive achievements: the development of coronavirus vaccines in less than a year.Campaigning in Grimes, Iowa, he received a pointed question from a woman who claimed that “we have lost people because you supported the jab,” a reference to conspiracy theories about mRNA vaccines, which have been credited with saving millions of lives.While Trump did not dismiss her suggestion – and stressed that he was never in favour of mandates – he explained that “there’s a big portion of the country that thinks that was a great thing, you understand that. Not a lot of the people in this room, but there is a big portion.”DeSantis has also taken a swipe at Trump for saying he did not like the term “woke” because people struggle to define it. The governor retorted: “Woke is an existential threat to our society. To say it’s not a big deal, that just shows you don’t understand what a lot of these issues are right now.”The skirmishes imply that DeSantis and Trump are running separate races. While the governor is aiming to woo Republican primary voters who have spent years embracing extremism, Trump is already looking ahead to a general election against Joe Biden where moderate swing state voters are critical.Trump has repeatedly hit DeSantis from the left, arguing that his votes to cut social security and Medicare in Congress will make him unelectable in a general election – even though Trump’s proposed budgets also repeatedly called for major entitlement cuts.Although Trump is quick to remind voters that he appointed three supreme court justices who, last year, helped end the constitutional right to abortion, he has also suggested that Florida’s new six-week abortion ban is “too harsh”.In a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, he urged pragmatism with an eye on the general election: “I happen to be of the Ronald Reagan school in terms of exemptions, where you have the life of the mother, rape and incest. For me, that’s something that works very well and for probably 80, 85%, because don’t forget, we do have to win elections.”Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Trump’s current campaign strategists know that abortion is a huge weakness for the Republicans on a national stage going into 2024, evidenced by what happened in the midterms with the issue of abortion.“Trump is trying to thread the needle and sound more pragmatic on that because he’s actually thinking about the general at this point for that specific issue. There’s a good chunk of Republican voters who are not happy with the extreme abortion bans that are being pushed by the party.”DeSantis’s even-harder right approach could backfire in a national race against Biden, according to Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill.“It’s a risky proposition by the DeSantis camp to try to run to the right of Trump at this point because it feels as though it’s a very myopic strategy to just get out of the primary. Given how extreme his policies have been in Florida and what he’s advocated for, if by some miracle he did defeat Trump in the primaries, how does he walk all of that back to appeal to a general election electorate in this country?“This idea that he wants to scale up Florida is anathema to what the majority of the American people across the country actually want policy-wise. It’s not out of the ordinary that candidates tack more to the middle once they get into a general but we have never seen this level of extreme policy positions in a primary translate to a general election and be successful.”Trump is not willing to be entirely out-Trumped.He has pushed the death penalty for drug dealers and renewed his pledge to use the US military to attack foreign drug cartels. He also revived his pledge to end birthright citizenship, saying he would sign an executive order on the first day of his second term to change the long-settled interpretation of the 14th amendment.The posturing from both men might come to nought. History suggests that policy can be less important to voters than personality. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “DeSantis is running to the right of Trump on policy. The particular niche of Trump is that his rhetoric and his populism remains further right than DeSantis.“DeSantis has been a governor, a member of Congress. For all of his rhetorical policy stances and the policies he’s signed into law, he’s still part of the government. Sure, Trump was president, but he has carved a place for himself as a demagogue, as someone who is running both for and against the political and economic system in America.”Jacobs added: “DeSantis would like him to run on policy and then DeSantis can run on his record of what he’s accomplished and try to win over Trump’s rightwing base.“But I don’t think Trump is going to let him do that. He’s going to continue to mock and portray DeSantis as part of the problem, someone who’s feeble and lacks the grit and the guts of a strong leader.”Trump allies dismiss DeSantis as an imitator who rings hollow. Roger Stone, a political consultant and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” based in Florida, said: “He can try to sound like Trump, he can try to position himself like Trump, but I don’t think those are his real politics. He’s an establishment Republican. If you have a choice of seeing the Beatles or seeing a Beatles tribute band, which one are you going to go see?” More