US Politics

Brittney Griner got emotional quickly.Speaking to reporters for the first time since a nearly 10-month detainment in Russia on drug-related charges, the WNBA star had to take a moment to compose herself after being asked about her resiliency through the ordeal.“I’m no stranger to hard times,” Griner said Thursday from the lobby of the Footprint Center, home of her new team the Phoenix Mercury and the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. “Just digging deep. You’re going to be faced with adversities in life. This was a pretty big one. I just relied on my hard work to get through it.”Griner’s first news conference drew more than 100 people, including Arizona governor Katie Hobbs, members of the Mercury organization and her wife, Cherelle.Griner was arrested in February 2022 at a Moscow airport after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges containing cannabis oil. She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison.She said her abilities as an athlete helped her cope. “I know this sounds so small but dying in practice and just hard workouts, you find a way to just grind it out, just put your head down and keep going and keep moving forward,” she said.“You can never stand still and that was my thing; just never be still, never get too focused on the now and looking forward to what’s to come.”After nearly 10 months of strained negotiations between Washington and Moscow, Griner was exchanged in the United Arab Emirates for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout on 8 December.Griner kept a low profile following her return to the US while adjusting to life back at home, outside of appearances at the Super Bowl, the PGA Tour’s Phoenix Open and an MLK Day event in Phoenix.But she said she never doubted she would be back playing professionally again.“I believe in me,” Griner said. “I believe in what I can do. I know if I put my mind to it I can achieve any goal.She added: “I’m not trying to sound big-headed, but I bet on me. I have all the resources here to help me get to that point where I can play, and it was no question to be back in the WNBA, back in Phoenix playing.”Griner also said her management team has been in touch with the family of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia who has become a symbol of attacks on the press in Russia.“No one should be in those conditions,” she said.She added: “You’re in foreign territory and you’re in unknown waters. So there’s a lot that we might know that they didn’t know so there’s been a lot of communication between both teams.”
Associated Press contributed to this report More

Ron DeSantis is due to spend Friday in Britain on the last leg of a world tour aimed at enhancing his foreign policy credentials before an expected run for the Republican nomination.Formally, DeSantis will meet the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, in his role as governor of Florida, the third most populous US state.Nigel Farage’s new rightwing Reform UK party is also trying to secure a meeting with DeSantis, Politico reported on Thursday.Despite being greeted by the prime ministers of Japan and South Korea on earlier legs of the trip, he won’t meet the British prime minster, Rishi Sunak – in part because it is not standard diplomatic protocol for a prime minister to meet a US governor, UK officials say.There is additionally an issue of logistics, with Sunak in Scotland on a pre-planned trip to the Conservatives’ conference there.DeSantis’s visit is not completely on a pretext. The UK regularly ranks as Florida’s top business partner, and there are more than 600 British businesses in the state, employing more than 50,000 Floridians. However, the timing of DeSantis’s tour, which has also included Japan, South Korea and Israel, has been dictated by the brewing primary contest with Donald Trump. It is a race in which he is trailing badly, though as he pointed out on the Japanese leg of the trip, the numbers could change when he formally declares his bid.The fact he has not officially entered the race has not stopped attacks from the Trump camp, who view him as the only serious challenger. While Trump boasts of his personal rapport with some of the world’s leaders, suggesting it gives him a unique ability to resolve big conflicts around the world, DeSantis’s previous experience abroad is limited to his deployment as a legal adviser to a Navy Seal team in Iraq, and some limited travel as Florida governor. This trip, and the accompanying footage of handshaking with foreign officials, will provide a rebuttal to claims he is too inexperienced in the ways of the world to be president.“It’s an irony that people like him who make the case that America should focus more on itself, also sees it as indispensable to go around and present themselves in a dog and pony show to the world,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said.Trump is due to be in the UK next week for a visit to his golf course in Scotland.Such tours are a rite of passage for presidential candidates. In 2008, Barack Obama, who also had a foreign policy experience deficit, visited Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the UK. On the last three stops, Obama met Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown. But, unlike DeSantis, he had already secured the nomination at that point.The inclusion of Tokyo and Seoul in DeSantis’s tour is telling, a reflection of how the centre of US foreign policy has shifted.“I think it really does indicate a growing focus in US foreign policy generally, but even in the public consciousness, on the Indo-Pacific, on competition with China,” Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center thinktank, said. “I think the fact that he chose to go there really does suggest that’s the direction foreign policy is moving.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIsrael has long been a must-do for US presidential hopefuls on tour, though now that is more true of Republicans, who are generally in lockstep with Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government, than Democrats. It has been called the “new Iowa” for Republican hopefuls – a primary for the Jewish and evangelical vote.In his speech at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on Thursday, DeSantis repeated a story about how he had used water from the Sea of Galilee to baptise his children. He talked about “Judeo-Christian values” binding the two countries. The only mention of the world “Palestinian” was in a line about terrorism.DeSantis disowned the Biden administration’s criticism of Netanyahu’s efforts to curb the independence of the judiciary, saying: “It shouldn’t be for us to butt in to these important issues”, but there was nothing of substance separating his position from Trump’s.The one area of policy difference with the Republican frontrunner is over Ukraine. DeSantis’s support for a ceasefire and for less US involvement sparked a backlash from the more hawkish end of the Republican party, and Cleverly can be expected to echo those misgivings. DeSantis has tried to hedge his position, potentially opening space between his stance and Trump’s pro-Moscow inclinations.DeSantis’s world tour has come at an awkward time, as support among congressional Republicans has slid towards Trump in his absence, but the fact that he felt he had to leave the US at all, suggests that the maxim foreign policy does not matter in US presidential elections is not always true.“Differences over foreign policy can matter in the team-building phase of the campaign,” Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, said. “This seems like a box-checking exercise and actually a horribly timed one from DeSantis’s perspective, because the last thing you want to do, when your campaign is faltering, is go overseas.” More

A quick check of the Met office forecasts for Ukraine suggests that over the next week or so the weather is going to get steadily warmer. The rising mercury has fuelled speculation that Ukraine’s much discussed spring offensive is just around the corner, the only questions being when and where Ukraine’s military planners intend to make their big push. Kyiv is being understandably tight-lipped about this, surprise and deception – as Sun Tsu noted in the Art of War millenia ago – being key to military success.

Some observers have noted that Ukraine has achieved a bridgehead on the eastern side of the Dnipro River, which could foreshadow a major push southwards towards Crimea. The big question exercising most military experts is whether Ukraine has received sufficient new military equipment from its western allies to achieve the sort of spectacular successes it managed in September and October last year.

But there are signs of war fatigue setting in among some of Kyiv’s friends, while – as we noted in the last Ukraine recap – an increasing number of countries are opting to join China in urging Volodymyr Zelensky to the negotiating table. Just this week the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, held a telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president, the first time the pair has spoken since the war began. Zelensky said afterwards that he had told Xi that: “There can be no peace at the expense of territorial compromises.”

Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues. You can also subscribe to our fortnightly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

But with much of Europe and the west suffering rising inflation and the prospect of continuing unstable energy prices, this may become an increasingly unpopular stance. Stefan Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, tracks Beijing’s growing influence in the diplomatic manoeuvring around Ukraine while noting widening divisions in the west.

Read more:
Western anger over China’s ambiguity on Ukraine cannot hide growing divisions in EU over support for Kyiv

There is, as Chris Morris – an expert in military strategy at the University of Portsmouth notes here – an element of Catch-22 about the situation. Kyiv’s allies want the spring offensive to demonstrate that Ukraine can achieve significant gains on the battlefield if they are to continue to pour billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment into the cause. Kyiv, meanwhile, needs billions of dollars’ of military equipment to achieve that success.

The state of the conflict on April 26 according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Institute for the Study of War

The problem, as Morris notes, is that the recent massive leak of US intelligence files included Pentagon assessments that Ukraine is unlikely to make the same massive gains as it achieved last autumn. A great deal is likely to hang on whether that assessment is accurate or whether, like last year, Ukraine’s tactical nous will surprise everyone once again, most crucially, of course, the Russians.

Read more:
Ukraine war: as Kyiv prepares counteroffensive it needs to convince allies it is up for the fight

Many observers have linked the fighting – particularly over the winter around the battered city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s east – to the first world war: the trenches, the high casualty numbers, the slow progress across territory. Christiaan Harinck, an expert in the history of war at Utrecht University, says that while much of this is undeniable, it would be foolish to jump to conclusions about what would appear to be the failure of Russia’s winter offensive.

Moscow’s political objectives, Harink warns, might be as much about involving the west in a lengthy and debilitating conflict. As he writes here: “It might be the case that in its current assessment of the situation, a stalemate in eastern Ukraine serves the Kremlin’s purpose.”

Read more:
Ukraine war: why WWI comparisons can lead to underestimates of Russia’s strengths

The Russian front

If many western commentators are comparing the trench warfare in eastern Ukraine to the first world war, Putin and his propaganda machine have been insistent in drawing parallels with the “great patriotic war” in which Russia (with, admittedly, a modicum of help from the US, Britain and other countries) faced down the Nazi threat and achieved victory in Europe.

Russians celebrate Victory Day on May 9 (the UK celebrates the same thing on May 8, due to the time difference) and, particularly since Putin came to power, it’s become a huge thing. One of the centrepieces is the march of the Immortals Regiment in which thousands parade with pictures of loved ones who gave their lives in defence of the homeland.

But not this year. It was recently announced that for security reasons the celebrations would be scaled back (cancelled in cities deemed too close to the Ukraine border) and the march of the Immortals will not take place.

Dina Fainberg, an expert in modern history at City, University of London, tells the story of how Victory day become Russia’s biggest national celebration. As she notes, the decision has been greeted with derision by many in the west. One former US military commander tweeting that: “Nothing says you’re a grand strategist quite like not having enough soldiers and equipment to hold an annual parade.”

Fainburg thinks there could be another reason behind the decision. Imagine if thousands of people turned up to march carrying pictures of loved ones killed in Putin’s “special military operation”.

Read more:
Ukraine war: Russia scales back May 9 Victory Day celebrations amid fear of popular protests

Victory Day become a tradition during Soviet times. Another less palatable feature of that era were the show trials by which Stalin rid himself of possible rivals and other thorns in his side. Preparing to be sentenced to 25 years for “treason”, journalist and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza recently drew a comparison between his treatment and 1930s-style Soviet “justice”.

Russian dIssident Vladimir Kara-Murza has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for ‘treason’ among other charges.
The Moscow City Court via AP

But, as Stephen Hall – an expert in authoritarian regimes at the University of Bath – notes here, Putin has shown he has myriad ways of silencing troublesome voices in modern Russia.

Read more:
‘Stalin-style’ show trials and unexplained deaths of opposition figures show the depth of repression in Putin’s Russia

Further afield (and on sea)

Anyone following the war in Ukraine will have heard of the Wagner Group, a mercenary army allegedly run by one of Putin’s closest allies, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Allegedly, because Prigozhin himself denies any knowledge of the Wagner Group. Whatever the truth of this, there is increasing evidence that Russian mercenaries are involved in several parts of Africa, including Sudan – where savage fighting is rapidly spreading across the whole country and threatens to descend into civil war (although the Wagner Group denies this).

Kristian Gustafson and a team of intelligence experts at Brunel, University of London, have taken a close look at reports of Russian involvement in conflicts across Africa.

Read more:
Sudan: questions about Wagner Group involvement as another African country falls prey to Russian mercenaries

Finally, it remains unclear who was behind the sabotage to the Nord Stream pipeline last year that held up supplies of gas into Europe, fuelling concerns about the vulnerability of vital undersea and maritime infrastructure. Now a documentary report from a consortium of Scandinavian broadcasters has investigated the movements of a Russian research vessel called Admiral Vladimirsky allegedly collecting data on windfarms, gas pipelines, power and internet cables in the North Sea.

Christian Bueger, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, once accompanied a Royal Navy reconnaissance vessel to the North Sea where part of its mission was to look out for Russian spy ships. He gives us his assessment of just how vulnerable this infrastructure is to hostile interference.

Read more:
Russian ‘spy ship’ in North Sea raises concerns about the vulnerability of key maritime infrastructure

Ukraine Recap is available as a fortnightly email newsletter. Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox. More

The son of the Republican governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, met their father in his office to lobby him to reject several bills that would harm transgender people in the state, the Montana Free Press reported.David Gianforte told the paper they identify as non-binary and use he/they pronouns – the first time they disclosed their gender identity publicly. They told the outlet they felt an obligation to use their relationship with their father to stand up for LGBTQ+ people in the state.“There are a lot of important issues passing through the legislature right now,” they said in a statement. “For my own sake I’ve chosen to focus primarily on transgender rights, as that would significantly directly affect a number of my friends … I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights.”The governor, who assaulted a Guardian reporter in 2017, responded with an email that said: “I would like to better understand your thoughts and concerns. When can we get together to talk about it? Love, Dad.”Brooke Stroyke, a spokesperson for the governor, declined to comment to the Montana Free Press.“The governor loves his family and values their thoughts, ideas and perspectives,” Stroyke said. “Our office will not discuss private conversations between the governor and members of his family.”Republicans across the US have moved to restrict transgender rights. Ten bills in the Montana state legislature this session target transgender people, according to translegislation.com, an online tracker.Those bills including measures that would deny gender-affirming care to minors and limit the definition of sex in state law, which could limit legal protections for transgender people. Another bill prohibits drag shows on any public property or places where minors are present.On Tuesday, the state legislature voted to ban Zooey Zephyr, a transgender Democratic lawmaker, from the statehouse floor. Zephyr previously told lawmakers they would have “blood on their hands”.David Gianforte told the Montana Free Press they didn’t expect their lobbying to ultimately change the outcome of the bill.“I feel like I have a voice and I can be heard,” they said. “And I feel, not only in communicating with my father, that’s not necessarily the main point, but also just showing support for the transgender community in Montana. I think that could be meaningful, especially at this time.”Greg Gianforte pleaded guilty in 2017 to a charge of misdemeanor assault after he attacked the Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs on the eve of his election to the US House. Gianforte received a six-month deferred sentence and served no jail time. He became Montana governor in 2021.A few weeks after the meeting between the governor and David, the governor sent the legislation banning transgender-affirming care back to the legislature with revisions. David said the press release accompanying those changes was “bizarre”.“It’s bizarre to me to read the press release that my father put out,” David said. “He talks about compassion toward children, the youth of Montana, while simultaneously taking away healthcare from the youth in Montana.“It’s basically a contradiction in my mind.” More

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is quietly assembling a senior staff for an expected 2024 presidential campaign that will be headed by his top political adviser, Generra Peck, and around seven other Republican operatives serving as top advisers, according to two people familiar with the matter.The leadership roster remains subject to change since the campaign – which could launch as soon as the start of next month – does not yet technically exist and most salaries are being paid, for the moment, through the state Republican party.But some of the senior staff have started to move in recent weeks to the campaign’s base in Tallahassee, the people said, as DeSantis prepares to announce his presidential ambitions as perhaps the closest challenger to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.The leadership roster, described to the Guardian, shows an initial team of advisers drawn from people who have previously worked for the governor, either from his time in Congress or his re-election campaign last year, as well as relative newcomers to his circle.Yet the lack of presidential campaign experience among the senior staff and the wisdom of recruiting a team that appears conventional in nature to take on an unconventional candidate like Trump has emerged as an early concern among some of the governor’s allies.DeSantis has recently taken curveballs from the Trump campaign, which cut a television ad mocking him for using his fingers to eat chocolate pudding, something he has denied, and slammed him as unelectable in a general election after he became the face of a six-week abortion ban in Florida.The campaign manager is expected to be Peck, one of DeSantis’s most trusted advisers, who most recently shepherded his 2022 re-election effort for Florida governor, which saw him defeat the Democratic challenger and former governor Charlie Crist by almost 20 percentage points.Peck is considered a highly adept political operator – notably including by Trump’s own team – who associates say earned the trust of DeSantis and his wife, Casey. At the governor’s inauguration, Peck was one of the people he thanked for his success.The political director is expected to be Ryan Tyson, another top DeSantis adviser and one of the best-known Republican pollsters, who has been tasked with turning DeSantis’s legislative record in Florida into campaign policy that could work for a national audience.Tyson has had a rocky start. This week, DeSantis made a special trip to Washington to meet with Republican members of Congress, only for them to mostly turn around and endorse Trump. The only endorsement for DeSantis came from Representative Laurel Lee, who served in his administration.The policy team is expected to be headed by Dustin Carmack, DeSantis’s chief of staff when he was a member of Congress, from 2013 until 2018, before he ran for Florida governor. Carmack was also the chief of staff for the director of national intelligence during the Trump administration.The communications team is expected to be headed by David Abrams, who came over from the Republican State Leadership Committee. Abrams previously worked for the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu – both potential 2024 candidates.Also a senior adviser for press is Christina Pushaw, responsible for rapid response. Pushaw came under scrutiny last year when the justice department directed her to retroactively register as a foreign agent for her work on behalf of the former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili from 2018 until 2020.In a reflection of Casey DeSantis’s influence on her husband’s political career, her top aide, Melissa Peters, is also expected to serve as a senior adviser, with the title of chief financial officer overseeing operations, acting effectively as “the voice” of the would-be first lady on the campaign.The chief technology officer is expected to be Carl Sceusa, who helped set up the WinRed platform, which generated more than $1bn in digital fundraising for Republican candidates in the 2020 election in only 15 months. He is expected to work with Ethan Eilon, who is heading the digital team.DeSantis had discussed having Heather Barker run the finance operation, but last month, she joined Never Back Down Pac – the main fundraising vehicle for the DeSantis campaign. Barker’s deputy, Tucker Obenshain, is now expected to lead the advance team.Also regarded as senior staff is Jason Johnson, the former chief strategist for Senator Ted Cruz, though it was unclear whether he will be leading a specific team or whether he will take on a broader top advisory role with the campaign.A spokesperson for DeSantis declined to comment on personnel moves.The senior staff roster effectively outlines a leadership team of around eight people as DeSantis looks to finalize his campaign operation ahead of a 2024 announcement that could come as early as the first two weeks of May or as late as July, one of the people said.That number could still expand, and some DeSantis allies have told associates that they believe other close aides to the governor could yet join the campaign. One name that has frequently been floated as an expected addition to the senior staff, for example, is the veteran national Republican operative Phil Cox.The campaign’s ambition is to reach a headcount of around 80 people by the time DeSantis announces. That would rival the Trump campaign, which has been staffing up since November – but it is unclear whether DeSantis has a payroll system in place for such an expansion, the person said. More

The most irresponsible thing you can do these days is look away from the worst-case scenario.” So says Rick Wilson. In the week Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, Wilson’s worst-case scenario is this: a successful Carlson campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.Wilson is a longtime Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a media company, Resolute Square, for which he hosts the Enemies List podcast.He says: “Tucker is one of the very small number of political celebrities in this country who has the name ID, the personal wealth, the stature to actually declare and run for president and in a Republican primary run in the same track Donald Trump did: the transgressive, bad boy candidate, the one who lets you say what you want to say, think what you want to think, act how you want to act, no matter how grotesque it is.“Among Republicans, he’s a beloved figure. He’s right now in the Republican universe a martyr – and there ain’t nothing they want more than a martyr.”Carlson’s martyrdom came suddenly on Monday, in the aftermath of the settled Dominion Voter Systems defamation suit over Trump’s election lies and their broadcast by Fox News. The primetime host, a ratings juggernaut, was gone.On Wednesday night, the New York Times reported that Carlson’s dismissal involved “highly offensive and crude remarks” in messages included in the Dominion suit, if redacted in court filings. Carlson, 53, released a cryptic video in which he said: “Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some … see you soon.”Other than that, he has not hinted what’s next. To many, a presidential campaign may seem unthinkable. To Wilson, that is precisely the reason to think it.Before Trump launched in 2016, “people used to say, ‘Trump? There’s no way he’ll run. He’s a clown. He’s a reality TV guy. Nobody ever is gonna take that seriously’ … right up until he won the nomination. And then they said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it can’t be that bad. What could possibly be as bad as you think?’ Well, everything.“And so I think we live in a world where the most irresponsible thing you can do is look away from the worst-case scenario. I do believe that if Tucker ran for president, there is an argument to be made that he’s the one person who could beat Trump.”In the words of the New York Times, at Fox Carlson created “what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and also … the most successful”. Pursuing far-right talking points, he channelled the Republican base.Now he has lost that platform. Wilson discounts a move to another network or a start-up, like the Daily Caller Carlson co-founded in 2010, after leaving CNN and MSNBC. But to Wilson, Carlson has precious assets for any political campaign: “He has an understanding of the camera, he has an understanding of the news media, infrastructure and ecosystem. He can present. He can talk.”Which leads Wilson to Ron DeSantis, still Trump’s closest challenger in polling, though he has not declared a run. Carlson “is unlike Ron DeSantis. He can talk to people, you know? He is the guy who can engage people on a on a human basis. Ron is not that guy.”The Florida governor has fallen as Trump has surged, boosted by his own claimed martyrdom over his criminal indictment and other legal problems. DeSantis has also scored own-goals, from his fight with Disney to his failure to charm his own party, perceived personal failings prompting endorsements for Trump.Wilson thinks DeSantis’s decision to run in a “Tucker Carlson primary”, courting the far right, may now rebound.“DeSantis’s people had been bragging for a year. ‘Oh, we’re winning the Tucker primary. His audience loves us. We’re gonna be on Tucker.’ And it was an interesting dependency. It was an advantage that DeSantis was booked on Fox all the time and on Tucker, and mentioned on Tucker very frequently. But that has now disappeared. Fox is all back in on Trump.”Wilson knows a thing or two about Republican fundraising. If Carlson ran, he says, he would “absolutely destroy with small donors. He would raise uncounted millions. Mega-donors would would not go for it. The racial aspect of Tucker is not exactly hidden. I think that would be a disqualifier for a lot of wealthy donors. But Tucker could offset it. He would be a massive draw in that email fundraising hamster wheel.“Remember, in 2016 the large-donor money for Trump was very late in the game. Before that, they were all with Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or Chris Christie.“I have very high confidence you’re gonna see another iteration of, you know, ‘We love you Ron, we’re never leaving you Ron,’ and then they’re gonna call him one day and say, ‘Hey, Ron, I love you, man. But you’re young. Try again next time.’ And they’ll hang up with Ron and go, ‘Mr Trump, where do I send my million dollars?’“I’ve been to that rodeo too many times now.”So if Carlson does enter the arena, and does buck DeSantis into the cheap seats, can he do the same to Trump?“This iteration of Trump’s campaign is a lot smarter than the last one. I predict they would say, ‘Let’s bring Tucker in as VP and stop all this chaos, be done with it. You know, there are very few good options [for Trump] if Tucker gets in the race.”Joe Biden and Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson? It seems outlandish.“Again, I think the worst thing we can do is imagine the worst-case scenario can never happen. Because the worst-case scenario has happened any number of times in the last eight years.” More

At an 18 February 2017 rally, Donald Trump railed against immigrants and violence. He was unusually focused on Sweden, warning the crowd about recent terrorist attacks in the country: “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” If a terrorist attack in Sweden seemed unbelievable, it’s because it was. There had been no attack by immigrants the night before Trump spoke. The most recent attacks on Sweden, at the time, were a series of bombings between November 2016 and January 2017 that were allegedly connected to the neo-Nazi group the Nordic Resistance.People in Sweden shared photographs of their very un-bombed houses. Reporters did their due diligence and wrote stories about how nothing at all had happened in Sweden the previous night. It was a news cycle of nothing. But all that nothing could not persuade the president he was wrong. Trump repeated the story over and over. He was right, he insisted in multiple interviews: Sweden had been bombed by immigrant terrorists and he knew because he’d seen it on Tucker Carlson Tonight.Trump and Carlson were locked in a folie à deux that made each other’s careers. As Trump demanded a wall between Mexico and the United States, Carlson aired show after show cherry-picking stories to inflate the dangers of immigration. As Trump railed against Muslims, Carlson aired aggrieved segments about Macy’s selling hijabs. Together, they tapped into a nativist anger in America. Trump’s audience was Carlson’s audience. The Venn diagram was one big white angry circle. And Carlson even went further than Trump. While Trump encouraged his supporters to get vaccinated, Carlson likened the vaccine to Nazi experiments.There are still questions about exactly why Fox fired Carlson on Monday morning. But it’s clear that in his wake, he leaves wreckage. Not just from advising his elderly viewers that they didn’t need the vaccine. Not just from downplaying the insurrection as “mostly peaceful” and “embarrassingly tepid”. Not just for normalizing racist and neo-Nazi ideology or for the way he demonized individuals he disagreed with even if they weren’t public figures. But in the way he redefined truth and helped define the Trump presidency. He certainly wasn’t the first, or even the most eloquent, but Carlson was the loudest John the Baptist leading the way of the Trump era, evangelizing for a politics built on petty grievances and outrage.And the connection between Trump and Carlson wasn’t accidental. They often texted and conversed. Trump sought Carlson’s advice on his presidential run. And while past presidents have had close relationships with media figures, theirs was more transactional. Carlson’s disinformation informed Trump’s approach to his presidency and Trump capitalized on the anger Carlson incited.Richard West, professor of communications studies at Emerson College and author of a forthcoming book on the media, told me that Carlson elevated “factitis” to an art. Factitis, as West defines it, is “[an]irrational fear and avoidance of reporting facts”.“He ushered in this perception that whatever you think is OK, whatever you feel can be viewed as real and factual,” West says. “And it has to be because I’m on TV reading a teleprompter. Years ago, we used to call this blogging. Now it’s called TV anchorship on Fox.”West described the symbiosis of Carlson’s influence, which peaked under the Trump administration, as the “Tucker-Trump transactional threat”. He describes it as a feedback loop, “where one person reports something that’s not a fact. The other says, ‘That’s true.’ And the other one says, ‘Yes, I told you it was true.’ It’s just kind of an odd transactional aversion to truth.”The journalist Brian Stelter, former host of CNN’s Reliable Sources, described the cratering legacy of Carlson more succinctly. “Tucker Carlson made cable news cruder, uglier, more toxic. And as much as he turned on some fans, he also turned off a lot of people.”Trump and Carlson knew that one of the most powerful tools at their disposal was scapegoating individuals, often those not used to the media spotlight. The researcher Nina Jankowicz was targeted by Carlson after she was appointed to head the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board of the US Department of Homeland Security. The board was disbanded after it became the target of disinformation, and Jankowicz is still dealing with harassment. She told me in an interview that she could always tell when she’d been mentioned on Carlson’s show, by the fresh new wave of harassment. She doesn’t hold out hope that whoever replaces Carlson will be better: “And even if they replace Tucker with somebody who is more palatable, that legacy is one of lying for profit, lying for sport and lying without regard to the consequence of your lies. And that has really engendered this kind of normalization of political violence in America.”Jankowicz wasn’t the only woman Carlson targeted; it was regular feature on his show. The reporters Kim Kelly, Taylor Lorenz, and Lauren Duca all experienced Carlson’s ire. Sometimes they lost their jobs as a result, but they always received harassment from his fans, an army of angry viewers, ready to focus their vitriol on any target. The Trump-Carlson legacy is to transform both the right and the left into a nation of shitposters, a republic of dunk tweeters. A place where cruelty and disinformation is a bankable business model.I interviewed Carlson for a profile in the Columbia Journalism Reviewin 2018. I asked him if he felt responsible for the words he spoke, and the impact he had. I’d seen loved ones echo Carlson’s language about Black people and immigrants, in ways so nasty it left me devastated.My life and my community were cratered by Carlson’s rhetoric. He was dismissive and accused me of promoting censorship. But since the profile was published, it’s become clear that the lives of his viewers and the people he targeted where just rhetorical strategy to him. There was no care or concern over the damage he caused or the lives he ruined. And until his recent firing, there were very few consequences.At the time, people I talked to for the story insisted that Carlson didn’t believe what he said because it was just entertainment. And as his texts from the Dominion lawsuit show, he didn’t believe some of what he was claiming every night. But anyone who has read Hamlet knows that you become what you pretend you are. People die; a kingdom was ruined.Trump is running for re-election now without Carlson’s platform. What that does to his political power remains to be seen.But there’s no doubt that another of Murdoch’s apostles will take his place on Fox’s nightly lineup, just as Carlson replaced Bill O’Reilly. Maybe his replacement will be even more extreme, more willing to spin conspiracy theories for the Maga right. From O’Reilly to Glenn Beck to Carlson – that has tended to be the direction of travel.Like John the Baptist, despite having his head severed and delivered to Rupert Murdoch on a platter, Carlson’s gospel of hate will endure. It’s too embedded in the nature of American politics – both its tone and its language – to divest ourselves of it. And it’s too profitable. Carlson’s legacy is very real and we’re living in its ruins. More

Tucker Carlson has broken his silence for the first time since his abrupt departure from Fox News, posting a video to Twitter that did not directly address his reported firing.Carlson was one of the network’s biggest stars, and gained a large following while spouting xenophobic and racist rhetoric on his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight. He left Fox News without explanation on Monday. News outlets have reported that Carlson was fired on the personal order of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch for, among other things, using vulgar language to describe a female executive.On Wednesday, Carlson shared a cryptic two-minute video on his Twitter account that did not explain his exit, but offered sweeping complaints about the state of American discourse. He said what he noticed “when you step away from the noise for a few days,” is how nice some people are.“The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are,” he added. “They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years we won’t even remember we heard them. Trust me, as somebody who participated.”Fox hasn’t commented publicly on why it cut ties with Carlson, but it came after Fox News last week agreed to pay voting equipment company Dominion $787.5m to settle a high-profile defamation lawsuit.Carlson’s stunning departure is reportedly connected to a lawsuit filed by the his former senior booking producer Abby Grossberg, who claimed she faced sexism and a hostile work environment.Fox News said in an official statement that Carlson and the network had “mutually” agreed to separate.On Monday, Fox News immediately replaced Carlson’s slot with a rotating roster of hosts until a permanent replacement can be found, the network said. In his video on Wednesday, Carlson implied his fans had not seen the last of him.“Where can you still find Americans saying true things?” he said. “There aren’t many places left but there are some and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.”Associated Press contributed to this story More