US Politics

Is Fox News finally falling out of love with Trump? It’s complicatedCourt revelations of the network’s private views about the former president suggest no love lost – but experts suggest each needs the other“He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us … We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait … I hate him passionately.”These were not the text messages of a liberal journalist feeling their spirit crushed by the Donald Trump era. They were, according to US court papers, the words of Tucker Carlson, one of the former US president’s biggest cheerleaders on the rightwing Fox News network.‘Lachlan’s in the mire’: Fox News case spells trouble for Murdoch heirRead moreA $1.6bn defamation lawsuit, brought by a voting machine maker that claims it was wrongly maligned, has pulled back the curtain on one of the most consequential relationships in modern political history: Trump and Fox News.The private venting of Fox News’s primetime stars, expressing contempt for Trump and his election lies even as they told millions of viewers the opposite, has fueled perceptions that the long-running affair between America’s 45th president and most watched cable news network is on the rocks.However, a glance at Fox News’s output over the last week suggests that, like love, it’s complicated. While Carlson and other primetime hosts may quietly be rooting for the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to beat Trump to the 2024 Republican primary nomination, they are already dropping hints about a readiness to jump back onboard the Trump train.“It’s a toxic relationship,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). “They are good and bad for each other at the same time. You’ve got to look at it through that prism to understand what’s going on here. Fox can’t do without Trump and Trump ultimately can’t do without Fox because he knows, at the end of the day, that’s the media vehicle through which he will be able to reach the widest audience of his supporters.”The lawsuit has plunged Fox News, the dominant media force among conservatives, into one of the biggest crises in its 26-year history. Dominion Voting Systems argues that the network knowingly broadcast false claims that the election technology company was responsible for fraud in the 2020 presidential election.Publicly released internal documents and depositions have revealed that, while Fox News hosts were promulgating Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election, off air they were messaging their colleagues to say they did not believe a word of it.In one text message exchange, Carlson, who hosts one of the most watched shows on cable news, said Trump has a talent to “destroy things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Later, addressing Trump’s four years as president, Carlson texted: “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”Yet for years Carlson had been an enthusiastic champion of Trump. In a 2017 conversation with colleague Greg Gutfeld on the network, Carlson agreed that Trump was “the greatest president that ever will be”.The paper trail goes all the way to the top. Rupert Murdoch, chair of Fox Corp, told the Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott, that hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in pushing Trump’s election fraud claims on the network. Murdoch also called the voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff” in a text message.The documents also paint a portrait of Fox News living in fear of bleeding its audience to even more extreme rivals such as Newsmax and the One America News Network. Bill Sammon, a Fox Washington news executive, is quoted as saying: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”On election night the network called – correctly – that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump in the battleground state of Arizona, prompting a furious backlash from Trump’s supporters. One internal email said: “Holy cow, our audience is mad at the network.” Another noted: “They’re FURIOUS.”Fox News dropped from first to third in the news network ratings between the 3 November 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration on 20 January 2021, according to Nielsen. Thousands of its viewers flocked to the more conservative Newsmax, where primetime viewership shot from 58,000 the week before the election to 568,000 the week after.Carlson wrote to a producer: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”Dominion argues that Fox executives decided to push false narratives to entice their audience back. It points to outlandish conspiracy theories promoted by Trump allies such as lawyer Sidney Powell on programs hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs.Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the watchdog group Media Matters, said: “You can see the hosts worried that the network they had helped to build for years was basically going to collapse, that their viewers were turning on them, that executives were scrambling for a way to get the viewers back.”There had effectively been a revolving door between the Trump White House and Fox News; his last press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, is a regular on the network. But as the dust settled after the January 6 insurrection and Biden’s inauguration, the relationship cooled. Trump no longer called in to Fox & Friends to ramble at will. The network dropped his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a contributor, ostensibly because of a ban on political activity.It was a potentially serious blow to the man looking to win back the White House in 2024. Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster, said: “Donald Trump needs Fox News more than Fox needs Donald Trump because Trump doesn’t have easy access to an uncritical media like he did in 2016. There is no alternative for him. He can’t go to CNN or MSNBC. He does have to go to Newsmax, and that just does not have the reach of these other cable news channels.”Worse still for Trump, Fox News found a new Chosen One. It reportedly asked DeSantis to appear on air 113 times, or nearly once a day, during one four-month spell and was given exclusive access to his signing of a contentious election law. Reelected in a landslide last November, DeSantis is a culture warrior with a flair for “owning the libs”. The attraction was obvious.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, explained: “Fox News knows exactly what their audience wants. Their audience wants a guy like Trump. They want a bully. They want a son of a bitch. They want somebody who will go after woke. They want an authoritarian. So Fox is going to give them what they want.“Fox has made the determination that they don’t think Trump can win in ‘24, which is why they’re pushing DeSantis. Once they realise that Trump is going to be the nominee, then everybody will fall in line like they did last time.”When Trump supporters gathered at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, both DeSantis and Fox News’s big names stayed away. Instead the Newsmax and other fringe rightwing media held sway. Trump ally Steve Bannon accused Fox News of disrespecting the former president, stating: “You’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president. Well, we deem you’re not going to have a network.”It was, perhaps, the equivalent of a cathartic marital row. A day later, something changed: Fox News carried the whole of Trump’s one hour, 45 minute address to CPAC, a departure from its distinctly tepid response to his 2024 campaign events. “I hope Fox doesn’t turn off, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016,” he said pointedly.Then, on Monday, Carlson presented selective excerpts of security footage from the US Capitol attack to spin the false narrative that January 6 was in fact a peaceful protest. He was widely condemned by both Democrats and Republicans – but Trump said on his social media platform, “congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in US history”.As the week wore on, Carlson praised Trump’s “bold plans” for 2024, telling viewers: “He is saying things that are really interesting, not rehashes at all.” Host Sean Hannity, “privately disgusted” with Trump according to court documents, played clips of an interview Trump had done on his radio show.To observers, it was a sign that the on-off Trump-Fox affair could soon be on again, especially if, as opinion polls currently suggest, the former reality TV star surges ahead the Republican primary.Walsh observed: “If you did a private poll of every conservative media talker and conservative network and every Republican elected official, 80 to 90% of them privately would want Trump gone and want DeSantis to be the guy. Tucker Carlson doesn’t want Trump to run again. Hannity, Trump’s cheerleader, doesn’t want Trump to run again.“That’s how they all feel privately and they’re all hoping that somebody does their dirty work. Fox News is hoping that Trump will implode or get indicted or die or whatever but Fox News, we know, will follow their audience and, if Trump stays in and he’s the man, Fox News will be right there, his biggest cheerleader again.”The bottom line is ratings or, to put it another way, dollars.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Fox have already demonstrated that they will move and calibrate their news coverage based on what the audience demands and, as of right now, the demand still overwhelmingly is for Donald Trump.”Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, added: “This an example of a dysfunctional co-dependent relationship. They need each other, whether they want to admit it or not.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS television industryRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

ReviewIt’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism review: Bernie Sanders, by the bookThe Vermont senator and former presidential candidate offers a clarion call against the American oligarchsThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders has a predictably unsparing view of the effects of “unfettered capitalism”: it “destroys anything that gets in its way in the pursuit of profits. It destroys the environment. It destroys our democracy. It discards human beings without a second thought. It will never provide workers with the fulfillment that Americans have a right to expect from their careers. [And it is] propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency.”Has Bernie Sanders really helped Joe Biden move further left?Read moreThe two-time presidential candidate makes his case with the usual horrifying numbers about the acceleration of inequality in America: 90% of our wealth is owned by one-tenth of 1% of the population; the wealth of 725 US billionaires increased 70% during the pandemic to more than $5tn; BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street now control assets of $20tn and are major shareholders in 96% of S&P 500 companies.Sanders recites these statistics with religious fervor, and poses fundamental questions for our time: “Do we believe in the Golden Rule? [or] do we accept … that gold rules – and that lying, cheating, and stealing are OK if you’re powerful enough to get away with it?”Bernie believes (and I strongly agree) that it’s long past the time when we should be paying at least as much attention to American oligarchs as we do to those surrounding Vladimir Putin. Our homegrown plutocrats “own” our democracy.“They spend tens of billions … on campaign contributions … to buy politicians who will do their bidding. They spend billions more on lobbying firms to influence governmental decisions” at every level. And “to a significant degree”, the oligarchs “own” the media. That is why our prominent pundits “rarely raise issues that will undermine the privileged positions of their employers” and “there is little public discussion about the power of corporate America and how oligarchs wield that power to benefit their interests at the expense of working families”.We were reminded this week of how this system works. Joe Biden released a budget with perfectly modest proposals for tax increases, like a 25% minimum tax on the wealthiest Americans and a seven-percentage-point raise in the corporate tax rate to 28%, which would still leave it seven points lower than it was before Donald Trump gutted it with his gigantic tax giveaways.Instantly, experts owned and operated by the billionaires started spewing their familiar bilge, like these moving words from the Cato Institute: “Higher tax rates on the wages of a narrow segment of the United States’ most productive executives and business leaders will have strong disincentives against their continued work and other negative behavioral effects that translate into a less dynamic, slower growing economy.“Higher taxes on investment income target the financial rewards to successful entrepreneurs who undertake risks and persevere through failure to build high return businesses that provide welfare enhancing goods and services to people around the world.”Sanders quotes one of the most prescient Americans of the mid-20th century, from 1944: “As our industrial economy expanded [our] political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”The name of that dangerous revolutionary: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Several decades before that, Theodore Roosevelt similarly bemoaned the “absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting” which “has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power”.There is something extremely refreshing about an author who assumes it should be obvious that billionaires should not be allowed to exist – and has perfectly reasonable proposals about how they should be eliminated. At the height of the pandemic, Sanders proposed the Make Billionaires Pay Act, which would have imposed a 60% tax on all the wealth gained by 467 billionaires between 18 March 2020 and January 2021.“But why stop at one year?” he now asks. After all, the 1950s were economic boom times in America – and under a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, “the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was around 92%. America thrived. Unions were strong. Working-class Americans could afford to support themselves and buy homes on a single income.” And the richest 20% controlled a measly (by current standards) 42.8% of the wealth.Bernie Sanders: ‘Oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? They run the US as well’Read moreSanders’ 99.5 Percent Act would only touch the top 0.5% of Americans. “But the families of billionaires in America, who have a combined net worth of over $5tn, would owe up to $3tn in estate taxes.” He would accomplish this with a 45% tax rate on estates worth $3.5m and a 65% rate on those worth more than $1bn.There is much more here, including a convincing case for Medicare for All and an excoriation of a for-profit healthcare system which spends twice as much per citizen as France or Germany and still manages to leaves tens of millions of Americans un- or underinsured, all while nourishing an obscene pharmaceuticals business in which profits jumped by 90% in 2021.I first toured the castles of the Loire Valley as a teenager in the company of the family of my uncle, Jerry Kaiser, a 60s radical and a very early opponent of the war in Vietnam. As we absorbed the opulence of one chateau after another, Jerry had only one question: “What took them so long to have a revolution?”The noble purpose of Bernie Sander’s powerful new book is to get millions of Americans to ask that question of themselves – right now.
It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism is published in the US by Crown
TopicsBooksBernie SandersUS politicsDemocratsUS SenateUS CongressUS economyreviewsReuse this content More

Trump/Steinbrenner: how the Yankees owner fired a president’s egoDonald Trump is exiled in Florida but he was made in New York – in part by a friendship with a controversial baseball ownerWhen Donald Trump was looking to make his mark in 1980s Manhattan, he found a role model up in the Bronx: the New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Trump was also a professional team owner: his New Jersey Generals competed in the short-lived United States Football League. But though Trump and Steinbrenner would ultimately become good friends, they didn’t get off to the best start.Trump to publish book of letters from Kim Jong-un, Oprah Winfrey and othersRead moreAs Maggie Haberman of the New York Times writes in her bestselling book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the two men sat on the board of the New York State Sportsplex Corporation, which was looking into building new stadiums. Trump was eyeing one in Queens, where the Generals could play.“At a press conference following the board’s first meeting, in 1984, Steinbrenner complained that Trump was hogging the microphone. ‘This isn’t going to be a one-man show or I’m not going to stick around,’ he said, raising his arms to obscure Trump so that photographers could not capture them together.“That show of ego, and willingness to set the terms of debate, did not stop the men from becoming friends, and Trump was a constant presence in the owner’s box at Yankee Stadium.”Years later, Steinbrenner provided inspiration for Trump on his hit TV show, The Apprentice.“He ad-libbed the ‘You’re fired’ line used to dispatch each week’s loser as an apparent, and unacknowledged, homage” to Steinbrenner, Haberman writes, describing how the Yankees owner’s “revolving door of managers was one of New York’s great ongoing tragicomedies.“As he was still trying to figure out how to be a boss of a company, Trump looked upon Steinbrenner – and the ease, even glee, with which he fired people – and other members of Steinbrenner’s social circle as examples. When he had to play an executive on television, Trump adopted Steinbrenner’s voice and recast The Apprentice’s spirit as gleefully punitive.”Memorably, Steinbrenner cashed in on the catchphrase in a 1978 Miller Lite commercial, which shows him clashing with manager Billy Martin.Steinbrenner says: “Tastes great.”Martin insists: “Less filling.”“Billy,” Steinbrenner.“Yeah, George?”“You’re fired,” Steinbrenner says, with a grin.“Not again!” Martin replies, as the two men chuckle.In real life, Martin had five stints as Yankees manager.Steinbrenner and Trump became etched into popular culture – as executives who made firing people an art form.In 2010, following Steinbrenner’s death, Jim Caple on ESPN wrote: “During his prime, Steinbrenner single-handedly raised the national unemployment rate by a percent, firing managers so regularly that he made Donald Trump look like the head of a teachers union.”Trump told the writer Mark Leibovich Steinbrenner had been his best friend, calling him a “big time winner”. Those comments were published in 2017, when Trump had taken Steinbrenner’s human resources philosophy to the White House, dispensing with officials the way Steinbrenner fired executives and managers.However, when, in 1973, the syndicate Steinbrenner led bought the Yankees, he gave no indication he would be so involved in personnel matters.“‘I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all,” he said, making arguably the least accurate prediction in sports business history.“We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned,” Steinbrenner added. “We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships.”Steinbrenner’s stint with the Yankees did feature one thing more scarce in Trump’s business career: eye-catching financial success. His group bought the team from CBS for a measly $10m. Last year, Forbes pegged the Yankees’ value at $6bn.There was a reason for the bargain price. Steinbrenner, then 42, chairman of the American Ship Building Company and part‐owner of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, purchased the most successful franchise in baseball at close to rock bottom, at least by its standards. The year before, the Yankees finished fourth in the American League East and drew just 966,000 fans: their first time under a million since the second world war, when attendance was down across baseball. Steinbrenner’s group got the Yankees for less than the small-market Cleveland Indians had recently fetched.Around the same time, Steinbrenner and Trump both got into trouble with the US justice department.In 1973, the department sued Trump’s real estate firm for discriminating against Black tenants and thereby violating the Fair Housing Act, a case eventually settled.The following year, the justice department indicted Steinbrenner for illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign. That case ended in a guilty plea in August 1974, two weeks after Nixon resigned, and Steinbrenner being suspended from running the team. (Trump would also befriend Nixon – he will include 25 letters from the former president in a book due out in April.)Untouchable review: Trump as ‘lawless Houdini’ above US justiceRead moreSteinbrenner wound up returning the Yankees to the pinnacle, spending liberally on star players, especially in the early years of free agency, and winning 11 pennants and seven World Series titles.In 2006, with the Yankees on their way to a ninth straight AL East title, Trump threw out the ceremonial pitch at Fenway Park before a game against the Boston Red Sox. In August 2020, as president, he said he had canceled plans to throw the opening pitch at Yankee Stadium, also against the Red Sox – citing his “strong focus” on the coronavirus pandemic. The Times said no invitation was made for that specific game.We’ll never know how Trump would have been received. But he has weighed in from the peanut gallery himself. In 2013, with the Yankees on their way to a first playoff miss in five seasons, he called out the team.“The Yankees are sure lucky George Steinbrenner is not around,” Trump tweeted, before going back to the firing imagery that marked both men’s careers.“A lot of people would be losing their jobs.”
Frederic J Frommer’s books include Red Sox vs Yankees: The Great Rivalry and You Gotta Have Heart: Washington Baseball from Walter Johnson to the 2019 World Series Champion Nationals
TopicsNew York YankeesDonald TrumpMLBBaseballUS sportsUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

Mike Pence: Donald Trump was wrong, history will hold him accountableFormer vice-president, speaking at annual Gridiron dinner, says it ‘mocks decency’ to portray Capitol attack as anything other than a ‘disgrace’Mike Pence has offered a rebuke of his one-time boss Donald Trump, saying history will hold him accountable for his role in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Pence, then the vice-president, was in the Capitol when thousands of Trump supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop Congress certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.As the vice-president has the constitutional role of Senate president, Pence was presiding over what had always been the ceremonial task of approving the votes of the electoral college.Throughout the siege, Trump sent several tweets, one calling on Republicans to “fight” and others making false claims of voter fraud. He also criticised Pence for certifying the results.Judge who told Pence not to overturn election predicts ‘beginning of end of Trump’Read more“President Trump was wrong,” Pence told journalists and their guests at the Gridiron dinner, an annual white-tie event in Washington DC.“I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”Pence, who is considering a run for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, was whisked to safety by law enforcement during the attack.He rarely addressed January 6 in the months afterwards, but has since upped his criticism of the rioters and the behaviour of Trump that day. In a memoir released in November he accused Trump of endangering his family.“What happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said on Saturday. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.”A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.Pence’s remarks came a few days after the conservative television host Tucker Carlson aired highly selective, misleading security footage of the Capitol attack, in an attempt to claim that many of the rioters were “orderly”.Carlson’s depiction was sharply criticised by Democrats and several high-profile Republicans in the Senate, though many other Republicans – particularly in the House of Representatives – shrugged off the episode.With ReutersTopicsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsReuse this content More

Biden denies reports that Alaska oil drilling project has been approvedSigning off on the Willow plan would place the president’s political career in conflict with climate-minded DemocratsThe Biden administration has denied reports that it has authorized a key oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope, a highly contentious project that environmentalists argue would damage a pristine wilderness and gut White House commitments to combat climate crisis.Late Friday, Bloomberg was first to report citing anonymous sources that senior Biden advisers had signed off on the project and formal approval would be made public by the Interior Department next week.The decision to authorize drilling on the north slope, if correct, would amount to one of the most symbolically important climate decisions of Biden’s political career and place his administration in conflict with the climate-alert left wing of the Democratic party.But that pressure is countered by unions and some Indigenous communities in Alaska who say approval of the project would provide economic security in the state beyond the borders of the 9.3m-hectare (23m acres) area of the north slope that is considered the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the US.But after reports were published, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “no final decisions have been made” on the project and “anyone who says there has been a final decision is wrong”.Earlier on Friday, former vice-president Al Gore said it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to allow the project to proceed. “The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future,” he said.Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski said on Friday that a decision was “imminent”. The Republican senator previously called the size of the project “minuscule” and that it has been “meticulously planned” to avoid harm to the environment.Biden has come under intense pressure from lawmakers and the courts, and high energy prices that have dogged his first term as president after he vowed “no more drilling on federal lands, period” during his campaign.But White House policy to oppose new oil leases and discourage domestic shale-oil drilling, has also forced its hand in other areas. Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia last year to urge increases in Saudi production came at a high political cost and was broadly fruitless.White House approval of “the Willow Master Development Plan”, a multi-billion ConocoPhillips project to drill oil inside the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska would serve as a substantial win for the oil-and-gas industries.ConocoPhillips has said the Willow plan could provide more than $17bn in revenue for federal, state and local governments and create over 2,800 jobs. It could suck an estimated 600m barrels of oil from beneath the permafrost and, at a projected 180,000 daily barrels of oil, would produce approximately 1.6% of current US production.Under those figures, the project would also contribute 280m tons of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere when the oil was processed and used across fossil-fuel dependent economy.Unlike other, small oil and gas leases approved by the White House it would also be one that Biden approves without the force of court or congressional orders.The oil giant, which reported profits of $18.7bn in 2022, double the previous year, originally requested permits to drill on five locations but later scaled back to three.ConocoPhillips has said it cannot comment on the decision until it has a formal record.The Interior Department has previously said it has “substantial concerns” about the Willow project’s impact upon the climate and the subsistence lifestyle of native Alaskan communities – but has completed an environmental review of the development that it said would improve it.A wave of opposition to the Willow project has included rallies in Washington DC and an online #StopWillow campaign that has garnered more than 3m signatures.Siqiniq Maupin with the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic has warned that the project would threaten subsistence lifestyle of native communities that rely upon the migration of caribou.“President Biden continues to address climate change during high-profile speeches and events but his actions are contradictory,” Maupin said.TopicsBiden administrationAlaskaOilClimate crisisIndigenous peoplesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?Now in control of the House, Republicans are making light of the violence of the day and assailing the investigation into the Capitol attackIt might be thought that Republicans would prefer not to remind Americans of the day their president nearly destroyed US democracy.But the party’s right wing is going all in to rewrite the history of the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and to make political martyrs of those imprisoned for assaulting police officers and sending politicians fleeing as the mob attempted to stop Congress from endorsing Joe Biden’s election victory.Fox News produced ‘zero’ evidence to back election lie, defamation case hearsRead moreTrump himself has waded in by appearing on a song sung by the “J6 Prison Choir” of men locked up for their part in the insurrection while Republican supporters in Congress are setting up a delegation to visit the prisoners in what will be seen as an act of solidarity.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation into the then Democratic-led original congressional investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the riot.But leading the charge in the Orwellian attempt to control the past in the hope that it will lead Republicans to control the future is the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who pressured Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, into releasing to him thousands of hours of video of Trump supporters swarming the Capitol.Carlson presented selected snippets on his nightly show that he claimed proved the rioters were really no more than tourists who “obviously revered the Capitol”.“These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” he said.Carlson, who has claimed that the January 6 attack was a “false flag” operation by the Washington establishment to discredit Trump’s supporters, said the video shows “mostly peaceful chaos”.“Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” he said.Republicans in Washington are not universally happy with this revisionism. Senator Kevin Cramer said that the attack “was not just some rowdy protest of Boy Scouts” and that the Fox News interpretation was “a lie”. Senator Thom Tillis called Carlson’s description of events “bullshit”.Asked if it was a mistake for McCarthy to hand the footage over to Fox News, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, distanced himself from the consequences.“My concern is how it was depicted,” he said.McCarthy defended the release of the video in the name of transparency although that did not explain why he gave it only to Fox.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said McCarthy was driven principally by thirst for power as the Republican right made release of the video a condition of support for his election as speaker in January.“Everybody knows that McCarthy, who was once very upset about what happened on January 6 and said so, is just using this for his own purposes. This was simply an action designed to get him the final few votes needed to become speaker. He sold out his country. It was absolutely spineless,” Sabato said.“Carlson and McCarthy have given the crazies, the far-right extremists, the neo-Nazi white supremacists who are obsessed with January 6, the counter reality they’ve been looking for of a bunch of patriots taking a tour in the Capitol.”Sabato said Carlson, who is working to shore up his own credibility with Trump’s followers amid revelations that the Fox News host regularly derided the then president and said “I hate him passionately”, was a driving force behind the move.“Tucker Carlson on his own show said that if McCarthy wants these votes to become speaker then show us by releasing all of the information on the film. Everybody knew from the instant Carlson got it he was going to put together snippets that were very misleading, and which excluded all of the real action that day, all of the criminal action that day. It was totally predictable,” he said.While Carlson’s selective interpretation of the video was rapidly derided by some Republicans, as well as by the Capitol police chief and the family of an officer who died after being assaulted as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, plenty of others were onboard.The House Republicans’ Twitter account said that Carlson’s take on the footage was a “MUST WATCH”.Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia said the clips were proof of the innocence of the more than 1,000 people charged with crimes as the mob stormed the Capitol. Hundreds have already been convicted including some jailed for violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now,” Collins tweeted to considerable derision.The attempt to turn the imprisoned rioters into martyrs gained steam after Trump appeared in a song by a choir of men jailed over their involvement in the January 6 attack. They sing the national anthem as the former president recites the pledge of allegiance. Trump has praised the insurrectionists and said that if he were to win the presidency again he would “very, very seriously” consider giving them all pardons.The prisoners’ cause has been taken up by other Republicans.The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was among those pressing McCarthy to release the January 6 video as a condition for her support for his election as speaker. She is expected to lead a congressional delegation to a Washington DC federal prison where some of the rioters are being held, ostensibly to check on their welfare, as the result of another of her conditions for supporting McCarthy.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation of Congress’s original investigation into the events of 6 January 2021, which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the assault.The latest committee to look into the riot will be led by Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who contested Biden’s victory and likened Trump’s impeachment to the crucifixion of Jesus.Loudermilk was found by the earlier House investigation to have a given tours of the Capitol to a group of people the day before the insurrection even though it was closed to visitors. They included at least one man seen photographing corridors and staircases who was later identified outside the Capitol on 6 January making threats against members of Congress.Loudermilk tweeted that he intends to revisit the January 6 investigation because, he said, the earlier inquiry was politicised.“The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this. As chairman of the subcommittee on oversight, I’m focused on finding out what really happened on J6 to ensure it never happens again,” he said.Former congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans who served on the January 6 committee, and who then lost a primary race against a Trump-backed rival, challenged Loudermilk, who declined to testify at the hearings she helped chair.“If @HouseGOP wants new Jan 6 hearings, bring it on. Let’s replay every witness & all the evidence from last year. But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence,” tweeted Cheney, who was hired by Sabato earlier this month as a professor at the Center for Politics.Whether revisiting what many Americans regard as a shameful day for democracy will work in the Republicans’ favor remains to be seen.Opinion polls show that views about what happened on 6 January 2021 have not shifted dramatically in the intervening two years. According to a Quinnipiac university poll in December, 45% of Americans said that Trump bears “a lot” of responsibility for the storming of the Capitol. Just 21% did not blame him at all. The country was almost evenly split over whether the former president committed a crime that day.Polls also show a deep divide over the significance of the January 6 Capitol attack, with 50% of Americans saying it represented an assault on democracy that should not be forgotten while 44% say events are being overstated.Sabato said that while the reimagining of events will play well with hardcore Republicans, it may ultimately not be good for the party as a whole.“This will stir some of the base. But it’s not all positive for Republicans because it helps Trump, the one guy who probably will lose to Biden if it turns out to be Biden versus Trump again,” he said.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesLiz CheneyKevin McCarthyfeaturesReuse this content More

Ron DeSantis has been wooing the Republican faithful in Iowa on Friday, ahead of a widely expected campaign for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.At a casino in Davenport, in the east of the state whose caucuses will kick off next year’s nomination season, the hard right Florida governor wasted little time in reaching for the cultural messaging popular with his supporters back home.“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” he in a speech alongside Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Republican governor.“Our state is where the woke mob goes to die.”Today’s visit is being seen as the unofficial launch of his presidential campaign, and a formal declaration is not expected until after the current session of the Florida legislature concludes its business in May.DeSantis won reelection in Florida in November, and is building his second term on even more restrictive legislation. He has seized significant control of the state’s biggest employer, Disney; fired an elected state attorney he disagreed with; and engineered a “hostile takeover” of a historically liberal arts college to turn it into a model of conservative higher education.New laws in Florida proposed this week would introduce a six-week abortion ban, allow the carry of firearms without a need for training or permits; and further curb freedoms in education and for the LBGTQ+ community.It’s a message he hopes will resonate on a national scale as prepares to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. Trump will visit Iowa on Monday.DeSantis was heading to the capital city of Des Moines later in the day to meet with a small contingent of Republican lawmakers, and to promote his newly released book, The Courage to be Free.In Davenport, he was keen to brag about the margin of his reelection, according to the Des Moines Register, which reported he “railed against the ‘woke ideology’ that he said infected American education, health care and business.“There’s certain little enclaves in our country that may be popular,” he told a crowd of several hundred.“But it’s not popular with the vast majority of people. And I think it showed. From what we showed in Florida, not only can you have a good agenda and deliver, you can make big inroads with the electorate. And that’s exactly what we did. To go from a 32,000 to 1.5m margin, it doesn’t happen by accident.”That’s it for the US politics blog for today, and indeed for the week. Thanks for joining us.Here’s what we’ve been following:
Ron DeSantis has been in Iowa, railing against what he calls “woke ideology”, and signing books, as he prepares to launch his likely run for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Please read my colleague Joan E Greve’s account of his visit here.
Republican support for Donald Trump in Iowa, meanwhile, has taken a nose dive. A Des Moines Register poll found that while 69% said they would “definitely” vote for Trump in the 2024 election when last asked in June 2021, only 47% say now that they will.
Trump’s legal peril worsened (again) on three fronts. The former president is “likely” to be charged in New York over a illegal pay-off to an adult movie actress; federal prosecutors want his attorneys to testify again over his mishandling of classified documents; and a judge says an infamous video of him bragging about grabbing women inappropriately can be used in a lawsuit by a woman who accused him of raping her.
Joe Biden urged “extremist Maga Republicans” to join him in rebuilding the US economy. In remarks from the White House, the president hailed a better than expected economic report that showed 311,000 jobs were added in February.
Lachlan Murdoch, Fox Corp chief exec, said a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against Fox News by the voting machine company Dominion, related to the network pushing lies about the 2020 presidential election, is “noise”.
Biden met EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen at the White House to try to resolve a spat over electric vehicle tax credits. The leaders were expected to agree to open talks on a deal to open the US market to EU components eligible for the credits.
The White House has confirmed Joe Biden will meet prime ministers Rishi Sunak of the UK and Anthony Albanese of Australia in California on Monday for a conference to discuss areas of partnership between the countries.The president will also meet the leaders bilaterally, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced at her Friday afternoon briefing.Jean-Pierre did not reveal any other details of the summit that will take place in San Diego, but Sunak is known to be keen to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol with Biden.The war in Ukraine, and western support for the country’s battles against the Russian invasion, are also likely to be high on the agenda.Biden last met with Sunak in Bali, Indonesia, in November. The president’s first efforts at pronouncing the prime minister’s name, at a Diwali event at the White House in November shortly after Sunak took office, caused mirth when he called his fellow leader “Rashi Sanook”.Sunak will sit down with NBC News anchor Lester Holt for an interview to be aired in the US on Monday night, the network announced. More

Ron DeSantis visits Iowa as presidential bid speculation intensifiesRightwing governor of Florida – and most likely rival to Trump for the 2024 nomination – promotes his book in the early voting state Republican Ron DeSantis greeted fans in Iowa on Friday, marking the Florida governor’s first visit this election cycle to the early voting state and intensifying speculation over when he might announce his 2024 presidential bid.DeSantis delivered remarks to a full crowd at a casino in Davenport on Friday morning, and he is scheduled to later appear in Des Moines with the governor of Iowa, Republican Kim Reynolds, to promote his new book, The Courage to be Free.Larry Hogan doesn’t rule out third-party 2024 campaign in bid to stop TrumpRead moreThe hardline rightwing governor has emerged as the most likely rival to Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican nomination race and relations between the two have soured, with Trump recently pouring insults on DeSantis.Trump has already announced his own bid to return to the White House, but his grip on the party has weakened a little after a disappointing show by top Trump-backed candidates in last November’s midterm elections.Speaking in Davenport, DeSantis touted his accomplishments in Florida and hammered the culture-war issues that have energized Republican primary voters in recent years.The crowd gave DeSantis a standing ovation when he mentioned his decision to have migrants flown from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard, a move that sparked a lawsuit and has already cost the state nearly $2m.“We will never surrender to the woke mob,” DeSantis told the Davenport crowd. “Our state is where the woke mob goes to die.”After the speech, DeSantis mingled with his supporters, working the rope line of the event. The governor took selfies with supporters and offered to autograph their books, looking like a candidate for higher office.DeSantis’s trip comes as he trails Trump in national surveys of likely Republican primary voters, with the former US president leading by 25 points in the latest Morning Consult poll.But a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey suggests DeSantis currently poses the largest threat to Trump in Iowa, which will hold the first caucus of the 2024 Republican nomination contest next February.According to the survey’s results, Trump is viewed favorably by 80% of Iowa Republicans, compared with 75% who view DeSantis favorably. The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who launched her own presidential campaign last month, is viewed favorably by 53% of Iowa Republicans.“Someone who has already held the office and who won the state twice would be presumed to be the frontrunner, and I don’t know that we can say that at this point,” said pollster J Ann Selzer, who conducted the Iowa survey. “There’s nothing locked in about Iowa for Donald Trump.”Haley is wrapping up a three-day swing through Iowa on Friday, and Trump is scheduled to visit the state on Monday to deliver a speech on education issues, which DeSantis has seized upon as a central focus of his gubernatorial tenure.DeSantis has signed a bill banning lessons in Florida’s elementary schools on sexual orientation or gender identity, attacked by critics as the “don’t say gay” law, and Republican legislators hope to expand that policy to cover pre-kindergarten through eighth grade during this legislative session.DeSantis is expected to wait to formally launch his presidential campaign until after Florida’s current legislative session, which began on Tuesday, concludes in May. But DeSantis’s latest events and remarks have left little question that he will soon enter the presidential race, with the hope of capturing the Republican nomination and defeating Joe Biden in November 2024.“Now’s not the time to rest on our laurels,” DeSantis said in his state of the state address on Tuesday. “We will stand strong. We will hold the line. We won’t back down. And I can promise you this: you ain’t seen nothing yet.”TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansUS elections 2024US politicsIowanewsReuse this content More