US Politics

Analysis‘Extremists didn’t make it’: why Republicans flopped in once-red ArizonaMaanvi SinghThe state rejected hardline rhetoric amid historic turnout by young and Latino voters Arizonans rejected extremists.As their new governor, voters chose Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who oversaw the 2020 election, over Kari Lake, the extremist Trump-endorsed election denier who campaigned alongside white supremacists. They re-elected the moderate Democrat Mark Kelly to the Senate over the far-right Blake Masters, who equated abortion to “genocide” and espouses the great replacement theory. For secretary of state, voters chose Adrian Fontes, the former election official who vowed to protect voting rights, over Mark Finchem, a self-identified member of the Oath Keepers.The results defied many polls and political pundits, but were in line with broader political shifts in the formerly deep-red Copper state. Early estimates suggest that the state saw historic turnout among young voters and Latino voters that grassroots organisations in the state have been working for a decade to register and mobilise.“Our community voted like their survival depended on it,” said Alejandra Gomez, co-director of the progressive group Lucha. “Because it did.”Lucha canvassers knocked on more than 450,000 doors, including in rural counties. “We were confident that we would see some gains for Democrats,” she said. But she didn’t expect Democrats and progressives would see some of their best results in decades. Voters not only rejected rightwing election deniers, they also rejected a ballot measure – pushed by state Republicans – that would have imposed onerous new voter identification requirements and made it harder for tribal and student voters to cast ballots.Just over a decade after Arizona passed one of the more stringent anti-immigrant measures, which encouraged police to stop anyone they thought looked undocumented, voters approved a measure allowing undocumented students access to state-funded financial aid for college.“I’m extremely relieved,’’ said Carla Roberts, 56, who worked with grassroots groups to canvass and register voters ahead of the election. “I’m just so relieved that these extreme candidates didn’t make it.”Roberts, a mother to a trans daughter who used to vote Republican, turned away from the party as state Republicans began increasingly pushing anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation. Like many moderate Republican and independent voters in the state, she voted for candidates from both parties in the past. The party’s far-right shift in recent years prompted her to change her registration.Her daughter, Evelyn Roberts, 18, who voted for the first time this year, said she hoped the newly re-elected Democrats would double down on protecting voting rights, trans rights and civil rights overall.Why the Democrats’ biggest wins of the midterms weren’t in Washington DCRead moreEvelyn, who didn’t yet have a driver’s licence or state ID, and was in the process of changing her name on various government forms, was only able to vote for federal offices due to Arizona’s longstanding voter ID requirements to vote in state elections. This year, the legislature passed a law attempting to expand such requirements to presidential elections.“We need to remove the fear being created around voting,” she said.More than a third of voters in Arizona are registered Republicans, nearly a third are Democrats and a third are independent. But until recently, Republican presidential nominees tended to win the popular vote in Arizona. Donald Trump got about 49% of the state’s support in 2016, but four years later he was the first Republican presidential candidate to lose the state in 24 years, allowing Joe Biden to win the presidency.This year, Trump’s endorsed candidates proved too extreme to win over voters in a state where maverick independence has long been valued over party loyalty. “Arizonans chose solving our problems over conspiracy theories,” Hobbs said at a victory rally.Extremism and hardline anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric may have ultimately alienated conservative and independent Latino voters who have played increasingly decisive roles in recent elections.“I think it would be very premature and even a little bit reckless for Democrats to think that they have a mandate now just because they won some very key races statewide against very extreme candidates,” said Joseph Garcia, the executive director of Chicanos Por La Causa Action Fund, a non-partisan group that invested $10m in voter outreach before the primaries and midterms this year. “Had there been more moderate Republicans running in these races, it might have been a different outcome.”Many Latino voters in the state – including immigrant voters as well as young second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans – lack strong ties to either big party, according to pre-midterm polling by EquisLabs.But ultimately Latino voters provided a slim margin of victory for Democrats in Arizona’s Senate race, according to an analysis by UnidosUS, which conducted election day polling in the state.“Overall, the election was not as good as Republicans expected and not as bad as Democrats had expected,” said Clarissa Martinez, the deputy vice-president of UnidosUS. “But certainly it was a good night for the Hispanic community in the sense that they reaffirmed their critical role in influencing the political landscape.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022ArizonaUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

Troublemaker Trump doesn’t care about a second term – or America. What he craves is attentionSimon TisdallTrump says he’s in it to win it in 2024. But all he offers is disruption and division in the service of his ego, not his country For a man dismissed as a sad, bad loser who “rages at the dying of the right” while the world – and the Republicans – leave him behind, Donald Trump attracts a lot of attention. And that’s the whole point of his latest presidential bid.It’s not even certain that Trump really wants the gig. No former president has recaptured the White House for a second, non-consecutive term since the Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1893. It would take some doing. Is his heart really in it?Fact is, Trump, now 76, is work-shy and lazy. As president he didn’t pay attention to briefings or do his homework. He preferred to play golf. His constant skiving, off-the-cuff decision-making and Oval office tantrums proved he wasn’t fit for the job.Yet by launching his re-election campaign so far in advance, Trump has embarked on a marathon. It’s not principles or idealism that will sustain him. It’s not shop-worn cliches about America made “great and glorious again”.The truth is more mundane. Trump, high-handed braggart-in-chief and low-life star of multiple criminal and civil investigations, just cannot bear to be ignored. He cannot stand the thought of someone else winning. And he badly wants to avoid jail.Last week’s long-winded, fib-filled announcement of his 2024 candidacy was a reminder of Trump’s ability to fascinate even as he appals. Half-a-dozen New York Times columnists immediately felt compelled to register their lack of interest, at considerable length.[Fox News’s once slavish pundits, who have reportedly dropped him on Rupert Murdoch’s orders, visibly struggled on air to break their Trump fixation-addiction. They watched his speech from his Mar-a-Lago swamp the way rats watch a snake.Analysts have been busy explaining why he will not win again: voters are tired of lies and crude insults; the country cannot afford four more years of chaos; the failure of many Trump-backed midterm election candidates shows his appeal is fading.Big campaign donors and former allies are distancing themselves as a motley troupe of wannabe rivals advances. Even his daughter, Ivanka, a former aide, has had enough. She plans to spend more time with her other children.It’s already received wisdom on the left that the Republicans will self-destruct in a scrap for the party nomination. The most fancied king-slayer is Ron DeSantis. To channel Barack Obama, the rightwing Florida governor is the lipstick on the Trump pig.And yet, and yet … bandwagon-loads of wishful thinking cloud these calculations. Trump retains the support, mostly, of his famed “base” – the Maga core. He continues to attract torrents of individual cash donations. The politics of grievance have deep roots. DeSantis has not said he will run.And he is dusting off his election playbook, which confounded conventional wisdom in 2016. He will again cast himself as the underdog, the outsider, the only candidate who calls out corrupt Washington elites. Trump, after all, is an expert on corruption.Might this work? Yes, says commentator Kevin Williamson. Trump “is not as weak a candidate as many people might expect, or hope, him to be,” he warned. Despite all the caveats, he remains the man to beat, in pole position.Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me … Could America really fall for this vaudeville charlatan all over again? Polls suggest most voters want neither Trump nor Joe Biden in 2024. Yet if there is a rematch, who can say what will happen.Even Jeb Bush, George W’s dull-ish brother, mocked last week’s speech as “low energy”. But there’s no denying Trump, in his dog days, retains a showman’s ability to whip up a crowd, make waves and break news (fake or otherwise). He thrives on what Margaret Thatcher described as the “oxygen of publicity”.The mere fact that he is back in the running may undercut US global leadership. Coupled with the Democrats’ loss of the House of Representatives, it raises questions about Biden’s continuing authority. Biden told the world: “America is back.” Trump#2 would take it backwards.Vladimir Putin, for one, will be happy Trump is in the frame. The great appeaser is notoriously sweet on Russia’s war criminal boss. Putin and his fans, such as Hungary’s leader Viktor Orbán, hope the Maga mob will force reductions in aid for Ukraine.Autocrats and authoritarians everywhere will be rooting for a Trump comeback. His comrade-in-arms, Benjamin Netanyahu, in office again in Israel, has no time for Biden. The Saudis, having invested so much, expect a return – in both senses.The odd man out in this welcoming committee of tyrants and strongmen will be China’s president, Xi Jinping. Just the thought of a second Trump presidency is enough to wipe the smile off his face – if he ever smiled, that is.European leaders, the EU and Nato will pray it doesn’t happen. And after his sexist, discriminatory behaviour towards Theresa May, how might Trump redux treat the UK’s latest prime minister, Rishi Sunak? It hardly bears thinking about.Trump says he’s in it to win it in 2024. But that’s not the whole story. What the ultimate narcissist wants most of all is attention, preferably the uncritical, fawning variety. To stir up a storm, he will follow his tried and tested 3D formula.Some politicians offer blood, sweat and tears. Trump noisily offers disruption, distraction and division – in the service of his ego, not his country. The best, sensible course would be to ignore him. But that is not how the world works.Trump is still box office. He makes headlines. He sucks up energy. He is the nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue, a Mary Shelley monster. It’s hard to take your eyes off him, and dangerous to try. He’s not over.TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

‘You did it!’: Biden basks in midterms afterglow after beating expectations Biden spent the last several months weathering the blame for an anticipated rebuke from voters – but instead found vindicationToday, Joe Biden will quietly ring in his 80th birthday over brunch with his family in Washington. It’s a milestone none of his predecessors reached while serving in the White House and one that looms large as he considers his political future.Yet the president enters his ninth decade at a moment of unexpected strength. Democrats defied history in the midterm elections, keeping control of the Senate and shattering Republican hopes of a “red wave” in the House.The verdict – a beat-the-odds performance by his party and the defeat of several election-denying candidates backed by Donald Trump – offered validation to a president who saw the elections as a test of American democracy.In the afterglow of the election, Democrats have piled on praise – a major reversal for Biden, who spent much of of the second year of his presidency weathering the blame for what many anticipated would be a crushing rebuke from voters. But instead of a repudiation, he found vindication.“You did it, Joe!” Vice-President Kamala Harris exclaimed at a post-election event with supporters. “This victory belongs to Joe Biden,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, his one-time rival for the Democratic nomination, said last week. And when asked how Democrats overcame tremendous headwinds and the weight of history, Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, credited the president: “I have to thank Joe Biden.”With the midterms behind him, and a possible reelection campaign before him, Biden’s allies are hopeful voters will come to see the first half of his term as they do: a hard-won success story.Biden entered the White House at a period of profound tumult for the nation: in the shadow of the 6 January insurrection and the depths of the coronavirus pandemic. While vowing to confront the nation’s most urgent crises and shore up America’s standing abroad, Biden set out in pursuit of an ambitious agenda.“He’s a president who understands the moment,” said Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. “And when we look back at this period, we’re going to see him as ‘steady Joe’, someone who was able to stabilize the country and move us forward.”In less than two years, Biden has achieved a slew of consequential policy goals, some with the bipartisan support he promised. Taken together, the legislation he signed during the first half of his term has transformed the American social safety net and provided the largest investment to fight climate change in US history.With narrow Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill, he helped push through a Covid relief package so large in scale that it halved the rate of child poverty in America. The new administration meanwhile expanded and accelerated a mass vaccination campaign that has inoculated nearly 7 in 10 American adults, though a post-pandemic return-to-normal has proved elusive.Moving beyond Covid, he has amassed even more legislative wins: a $1tn investment in the nation’s infrastructure, the first gun control measure in decades, funding to boost the domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips, an expansion of benefits for veterans and, finally, after months of uncertainty, the centerpiece of his economic agenda, a landmark climate and healthcare law. Soon he may also sign into law a bill protecting same-sex and interracial marriages.With his nominations, Biden has rapidly reshaped the federal courts, including the supreme court, where Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson now sits as the first Black female justice in American history.“It is as transformative a list as we’ve seen in at least a generation, if not more,” said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “The number and the scope and the importance of things that Biden has gotten through is remarkable, period, but with a slim majority, especially.”But his successes are not confined to Capitol Hill, says Biden’s team, which recently compiled a list on Twitter using small type to emphasize the sweep of the president’s achievements.With his executive authority, Biden met progressive demands by pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of marijuana possession and forgiving federal student-loan debt for millions of borrowers, which is tied up in legal challenges. He also signed two executive orders attempting to protect access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June.He ended the war in Afghanistan, though the chaotic withdrawal of US troops rattled Americans and allies alike. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden rallied Nato and led the global response – a role he promised to restore after Trump’s isolationist retreat.And many Democrats now say Biden and Harris deserve credit for foregrounding the threats to democracy and reproductive choice during the midterms. Despite warnings from party strategists that those were not front-of-mind issues, Democrats now believe they helped counter Republican attacks centered on inflation and crime and delivered crucial victories in battleground states.“It was critical in framing this election,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster. “If you take out ‘democracy’ and you take ‘choice’ out of that election word cloud, it would have been a goddamn bloodbath.”In his last major pre-election speech, Biden warned that electing candidates who denied the results of the 2020 election and wouldn’t commit to accepting the results in 2022 ​​was a “path to chaos”. The most high-profile of such candidates lost, while abortion helped propel Democrats in states where the right was under threat.“That we fought this midterm election to a standstill and actually picked up a Senate seat, it is historic,” Belcher said.Not everyone agrees that the election was a resounding victory for the president. Some have argued that the elections were a rejection of Republican extremism, not a reflection of Biden’s political strength.To win, Democrats had to outperform Biden, whose approval ratings hovered in the low 40s, dragged down by pessimism over the state of the economy. According to 538’s tracking aggregator of public opinion polls, Biden’s numbers are lower at this point in his term than any president since Harry Truman.“Ironically, he probably would have gotten more credit if he had done fewer things,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who has worked for Biden.Before Democrats could sell an initiative to the public, Lake said, they were already embroiled in their next legislative fight. ​But she said the White House would have a fresh opportunity to make their pitch for his agenda as the implementation of many of his plans got underway in the months ahead.At an event with business and labor leaders on Friday, Biden assured Americans that they would soon feel the impact of the legislation he signed earlier this year limiting the cost of health care and energy prices.“We passed them this year, but now they’re really going to kick into effect,” he said. “It’s going to accelerate in the months ahead.”Republicans have found ​much attack in Biden’s rich record, blaming his spending policies for ​exacerbating inflation. They have also threatened to use their new House majority to investigate the Afghanistan withdrawal, aspects of his Covid response and his administration’s handling of the US-Mexico border.Neither are Democrats uniformly satisfied. Progressives are still dismayed by Biden’s preference for bipartisanship and argue that he has much left to do to fulfill the bold promises he made as a candidate. While Biden’s student-debt forgiveness plan and some of his immigration policies have divided his party.Democrats’ run of legislating will almost certainly give way to a new era of gridlock in a divided Washington next year. But with a Democratic majority in the Senate he can continue to fill judicial vacancies – and he will face renewed pressure to exercise his executive authority to act on issues like climate and immigration.Biden has said his decision to run for president in 2020 was rooted in his alarm of the Trump presidency, specifically his predecessor’s refusal to condemn the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. He saw his mission as not only to defeat Trump but to defeat the forces of Trumpism.After the midterms, Biden declared those anti-democratic forces in retreat.Days later, Trump, 76, announced that he would run again for president. Already the oldest president in American history, Biden, who would be 82 years old at his inauguration in 2025, now must decide whether he is up for a rigorous campaign, potentially against an old foe, and, should he win, four more years in the White House.Two-thirds of midterm voters, including many Democrats, said they did not want Biden to run for re-election, according to exit polls. In surveys, voters rank the president’s age as a top concern. Biden has said it is a “legitimate thing” for voters to consider while insisting that he has the mental and physical stamina for the job.Top advisers are already laying the groundwork for a 2024 campaign. Biden has said it is his “intention” to run again but would discuss it with his family over the holidays before announcing a decision, probably early next year.History provides several examples of presidents who “perceived a mission and chose to only serve one term”, Engel said.But, he continued, “there is no historical precedent for a president having the question of age be as prevalent as it is and simultaneously feeling that the country’s survival may hinge upon his running again.”In an “unstable world”, with Russia issuing nuclear threats, Trump attempting a comeback and American democracy still under assault, Lake said voters would likely turn again to the candidate offering steady, tested leadership.In 2020, Americans “chose stability over instability and democracy over authoritarianism and violence,” she said, “and that contrast still exists today, probably even stronger.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceTrump’s VP is surprisingly critical of the boss whose followers wanted him dead. But surely the presidency won’t be his too After four years at Donald Trump’s side, Mike Pence emerged as the Rodney Dangerfield of vice-presidents: he gets no respect. So Help Me God, his memoir, is well-written and well-paced. But it will do little to shake that impression.Cheney hits back as Pence says January 6 committee has ‘no right’ to testimonyRead moreAt the Capitol on January 6, his boss was prepared to leave him for dead. And yet the Republican rank-and-file yawned. Among prospective presidential nominees, Pence is tied with Donald Trump Jr for third. The GOP gravitates to frontrunners. Pence, once a six-term congressman and governor of Indiana, is not that.As governor, he was dwarfed by his predecessor, Mitch Daniels. On Capitol Hill, he was eclipsed by the late Richard Lugar, also from Indiana and chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, and Dan Coats, another Hoosier senator. On the page, Pence lauds all three. Say what you like, he is unfailingly polite.Coats became Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence and repeatedly pushed back against the president. That cost Coats his job. Pence pushed back less.The former vice-president is a committed Christian with sharp elbows but also a sonorous voice. He has struggled with the tugs of faith and ambition. Family is an integral part of his life. He takes pride in his son’s service as a US marine. Born and raised a Catholic, the 48th vice-president is now one of America’s most prominent evangelicals. So Help Me God is replete with references to prayer. Pence begins with a verse from the Book of Jeremiah and concludes with Ecclesiastes: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”Trump picked him as a running mate at the suggestion of Paul Manafort. Unlike Newt Gingrich and Chris Christie, other possible picks, Pence could do “normal”.Time passes. On 3 November 2020, America delivered its verdict on the Trump presidency. Trump lost. By his own admission, Pence was surprised. He refused to believe the polls and mistook the enthusiasm of the base for the entire political landscape. He wrongly believed he would serve another four years, yards from the Oval Office, enjoying weekly lunches with the Man.Instead, two months later, at great personal peril, he accepted reality and abided by his conscience and the constitution. Like Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle (another hapless Hoosier) and Al Gore, Pence presided over the certification of an election he had lost.For Pence and those around him, it was a matter of duty and faith. They refused to subvert democracy. Yet along the way Pence flashed streaks of being in two minds politically – as he continues to do. He rebuffed Trump’s entreaties to join a coup but gave a thumbs-up to the turbulence. He welcomed the decision by the Missouri senator Josh Hawley to object to election results.“It meant we would have a substantive debate,” Pence writes. He got way more than that. His own brother, Greg Pence, an Indiana congressman, voted against certification – mere hours after the insurrectionists sought to hang his brother from makeshift gallows. As the mob raged, Greg Pence hid too. After it, the brass ring came first.Among House Republicans, Trump remains emperor. Rightwing members have extracted a pledge that the GOP-controlled House will investigate Nancy Pelosi and the justice department for the purported mistreatment of defendants jailed for invading the Capitol. Pence’s anger and hurt are visible.“The president’s words were reckless, and they endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol building,” he recently said. But in the next breath, he stonewalled the House January 6 committee. Pence told CBS it would set a “terrible precedent” for Congress to summon a vice-president to testify about conversations at the White House. He also attacked the committee for its “partisanship”.Bennie Thompson, the Democratic committee chair, and Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chair, pushed back hard.“Our investigation has publicly presented the testimony of more than 50 Republican witnesses,” they said. “This testimony, subject to criminal penalties for lying to Congress, was not ‘partisan’. It was truthful.”From Pence, it was a strained attempt to retain political viability. Surely, that train has left the station.Pence’s memoir does deliver a perhaps surprisingly surgical indictment of Trump. The book catalogs Trump’s faults, errors and sins. From Charlottesville to Russia to Ukraine, Pence repeatedly tags him for his shortcomings and missteps.He upbraids Trump for his failure to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”, but then rejects the contention Trump is a bigot.Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookRead moreAs for Putin, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour”, Pence writes. “Acknowledging Russian meddling” would not have “cheapen[ed] our victory” over Hillary Clinton. On Ukraine, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment, Pence terms the infamous phone call to Volodymyr Zelenskiy “less than perfect”.But even as Putin’s malignance takes center stage, the Trumps refuse to abandon their man. Don Jr clamors to halt aid to Ukraine, the dauphin gone Charles Lindbergh. He tweets: “Since it was Ukraine’s missile that hit our NATO ally Poland, can we at least stop spending billions to arm them now?”These days, Pence leads Advancing American Freedom, a tax-exempt conservative way-station with an advisory board replete with Trump refugees. Kellyanne Conway, Betsy DeVos and Callista Gingrich are there, so too David Friedman and Larry Kudlow. If more than one of them backs Pence in 2024, count it a minor miracle.Rodney Dangerfield is gone. But his spirit definitely lives on – in Mike Pence, of all people.
So Help Me God is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
TopicsBooksMike PenceDonald TrumpTrump administrationRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2020reviewsReuse this content More

Interview‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on the criminality of Donald TrumpDavid Smith in Washington The great Washington Post reporter has published 20 interviews he conducted with the then president – who is now running againJust when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Donald Trump is running for president again. That was not a prospect Bob Woodward had to deal with when Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, after Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein cracked open the Watergate scandal.“Our long national nightmare is over,” declared Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, and it was. Nixon faded into jowly retirement. But Trump yearns to regain the crown.The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s chilling warning for US democracyRead moreWoodward spoke to the Guardian by phone six hours before the disgraced one-term, twice-impeached president took the stage at Mar-a-Lago, his gaudy personal Xanadu in Florida, to announce what might or might not be the greatest political comeback of all time.Does Woodward, who at 79 has written about nine American presidents, think Trump can win again? Or is Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, hammer of wokeness, now the man to beat?“Who knows? Trump’s got tens of millions of supporters. DeSantis is the flavour of the month. DeSantis may be the one. Maybe not. I remember in 1990, before the ’92 presidential election, with a bunch of friends making a list of the 50 people who might be the next president. [Bill] Clinton was not on the list [though] he would have put himself there. So who knows? You can’t record the future.”But you can revisit the past. Trump pulled off an unlikely victory in 2016 in what many saw as an indictment of the media. While there was some fine reporting that left America in no doubt about what it was getting, there was also wall-to-wall cable news coverage and a constant pressure for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, to respond to Trump’s latest unhinged tweet. Are there lessons to learn?Woodward says: “If you look back on 2016, there was a lot of good coverage but it was never enough. He was able to sell himself as a successful, wealthy businessman. What do we know about him now that we didn’t know in 2016? There is a lot of evidence, good reporting, investigations by some committees on the Hill, that actually he was not a successful businessman, he’s not wealthy. What’s the lesson from all that? Dig deeper and then, when you dig deep, dig deeper more and more and more.”His image burnished by the reality TV show The Apprentice, the Trump of 2016 was able to essay the role of political outsider and swamp drainer. Now the novelty has worn off, he faces federal, state and congressional investigations and his four years in the Oval Office are a matter of record.Woodward has contributed a trilogy of books – Fear, Rage and Peril (the last written with Robert Costa) – and now an audiobook, The Trump Tapes, presenting his 20 interviews with the president. The Guardian’s Lloyd Green called it “a passport to the heart of darkness”.Woodward continues: “Now he’s going to run again and we in our business need to focus on what he did as president. That’s the office he’s running for. Yes, it’s a political office, and you see all the stories now about the politics of Trump running, people abandoning him, people sticking with him and so forth – that’s an important story.“But the real scorecard is what he did as president and on foreign affairs, dealing with Kim Jong-un or [Vladimir] Putin or all this stuff that’s on the tapes. He made it personal. He ran it on instinct.”Woodward describes the tapes as a “laboratory” for understanding Trump’s presidency. “My conclusions are very severe. He failed as president, failed to do his constitutional, moral, practical duty, and I think, not all, but most of the reporting should be on his presidency.”Woodward cites the example of Trump’s tax cuts in 2017, estimated to cost $1.9tn over a decade, criticised as a handout to the rich and corporations at the expense of working families.“I fault myself on this. I’ve not seen – maybe I’m not aware – of some really good reporting on the tax cut, how it happened exactly, who benefited. I wrote in one of my Trump books, Fear, that Gary Cohn engineered and drove it. The former president of Goldman Sachs benefited from that and you can surmise but I’d like to see my own paper or the Guardian or anywhere say: this is really who benefited from this.”Nineteen of the Woodward/Trump interviews happened in person or by phone between autumn 2019 and August 2020, amid research for Rage.This period included the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests. Woodward suggested to Trump that both had benefited from white privilege. The president was having none of it. He sneered: “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow.”This chapter of Trump’s tenure was also defined by the coronavirus, which emerged in China in late 2019 but which he downplayed, claiming it would vanish over the summer. Now, more than a million Americans have died of Covid-19.In The Trump Tapes, Woodward interviews Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser who warned Trump the virus would be “the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency”, and his deputy, Matthew Pottinger, who likened it to the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed 650,000.Woodward adds: “I discovered they issued this warning 28 January. I was as shocked as I’ve ever been as a reporter.”By April, Woodward could not resist pushing Trump to meet the moment, telling him experts were saying he needed to mobilise the country, coordinate with intelligence agencies and work with foreign governments. Woodward argued: “If you come out and say, ‘This is a full mobilisation, this is a Manhattan Project, we are going – pardon the expression – balls to the wall’, that’s what people want.”Had he crossed a line? His wife, Elsa Walsh, also a journalist, thought so. He recalls: “I did these interviews on speakerphone so I could record them with Trump’s permission. She was there many times and Trump knew that and then afterwards she said I was yelling at Trump and that I shouldn’t be doing that. I’m just supposed to ask questions. She berated me for this. It’s on the tape.”But he insists: “It wasn’t an advocacy position. Trump had these coronavirus meetings and had virus deniers there and so the whole atmosphere was one of ‘Let’s not listen to the experts’. I knew some of these people and found out what they said and they were very specific and it had a logic to it, namely that overall Trump needed a world war two-style mobilisation to deal with this.“I couldn’t talk to him so I passed it on and made it clear this is not me but this is my reporting from what the experts are saying. As I said to my wife, we’re in a different world. It’s the reporter who’s on the street and sees somebody shot. Go help them as a human being and then you phone in the story. This is of the magnitude that 1.1 million people died in this country because of the virus.”By the summer, the scale of Trump’s failure and the price in death and grief were clear. In the tapes, Woodward asks: “Was there a moment in all of this last two months where you said to yourself, ‘Ah, this is the leadership test of a lifetime?’”Trump replies, with dead finality: “No.”Woodward reflects: “Even then, let alone now, it was the leadership test of a lifetime and just, ‘No’. It’s tragic. Not only did he conceal what he knew and deny it but it’s a crime. It’s a moral crime to know all this and not tell the people. I once asked him the job of the president and he said, ‘To protect the people.’ I’ve never heard about or read anywhere in my own reporting or in history where a president was so negligent.”The last long interview took place on 21 July 2020. Woodward said things were bad. Trump did not understand so Woodward had to point out that 140,000 people had died. The president claimed to have Covid under control. Woodward asked, “What’s the plan?” Trump said there would be one in 104 days. Woodward wondered what he was talking about. Then he realised: the presidential election was 104 days away.Such exchanges are damning and ensure that more than eight hours of conversations, by his own words shall Trump be condemned. Why, then, did he agree to talk? As the comedian Jimmy Kimmel put it: “Why are you agreeing to do 20 interviews on tape with the guy who took down Richard Nixon with tapes? With tapes!”Trump campaign announcement deepens Republicans’ civil warRead moreOne answer is ego. Trump can be heard flattering “a great historian” and “the great Bob Woodward”. Woodward suggests: “I had been sceptical of the Steele dossier and the Russian investigation and had said so publicly. [Senator] Lindsey Graham, [Trump’s] supporter from South Carolina, had told him I would not put words in his mouth, which was true, and so he agreed to do these interviews.”On the other side of the coin, this is a rare opportunity to hear the Woodward method. The Washington Post, where he has worked for half a century, observed that The Trump Tapes “offers a surprising window into the legendary investigative reporter’s process – a perennial focus of both mystique and critique”.At times, Woodward indulges Trump’s streams of consciousness, airing of grievances and pathological narcissism. At others he cajoles, challenges or confronts. Woodward says: “He’ll talk and talk and talk but I ask questions, very specific questions. What are you doing about the virus? Tell me about Putin.”He did miss one opening. He asked if, in the event of a close election in November, Trump would refuse to leave the White House. The president declined to comment.“It was the only question he didn’t answer in eight hours – 600 questions – and I should have followed up. I should have said, ‘Wait a minute, why isn’t he answering that?’ I didn’t.”Re-listening to all 20 interviews, and finding it such a different experience from reading the transcripts or listening to snatches on TV or the internet, convinced Woodward to release the recordings – a first in his long career. Raw and unfiltered, this is one instance where Trump does not benefit from a reporter “tidying up” his quotations to make him sound more lucid and less repetitive than he actually is.“To be frank, it’s very surprising and it’s a learning experience at age 79, having done this so many years, that there’s something about hearing the voice that gives it an authenticity and power,” Woodward says. “Especially Trump. He doesn’t ever hem and haw, he doesn’t go hmm. He just is right out of the box.”Fifty years since the Watergate break-in, he sees a parallel with the secret White House recording system that caught Nixon.“The Nixon tapes didn’t just come out as transcripts. They came out so you could hear it and this is a version of that. It’s the same problem of appalling criminal – I can’t use any other word for it – behaviour for a sitting president to look away.“There’s a statement that Henry Kissinger once made: ‘What extraordinary vehicles destiny selects to accomplish its design’. I’m not sure destiny exists, but what an extraordinary vehicle.”TopicsBooksBob WoodwardDonald TrumpPolitics booksRepublicansTrump administrationUS politicsinterviewsReuse this content More

Rights group calls for Samuel Alito to be investigated after claims of leaked 2014 rulingAnti-abortion activist said supreme court justice revealed the landmark ruling on contraception and religious rights weeks earlier A civil rights group issued a call Saturday for US supreme court justice Samuel Alito to be investigated over allegations that the judge leaked a 2014 landmark ruling involving contraception and religious rights at a private dinner with wealthy political donors.The claim was contained in a New York Times article in which minister Rob Schenck, an anti-abortion activist, said he was told of the decision weeks before it was announced and had used the information to prepare a public relations push.Samuel Alito assured Ted Kennedy in 2005 of respect for Roe, diary revealsRead moreSchenck also claimed he tipped off Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that brought and won the case allowing privately-held, for-profit businesses to be exempt from regulations to which its owners religiously object, in this case requiring employers to cover certain contraceptives for their female employees.“The Senate judiciary committee should immediately move to investigate the apparent leak by Justice Alito,” said Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice.“This bombshell report is the latest proof that the Republican justices on the court are little more than politicians in robes. It’s no wonder trust in the court has hit a record low. Structural reform of the court, including strict new ethics rules, is needed now more than ever.”Fallon added that Schenck “should be called to testify about both the leak and the years-long lobbying effort he once led to cultivate Alito and other Republican justices”.Claims of the judicial leak, potentially for political purposes, comes six months after a draft opinion of the Dobbs decision overturning the nationwide abortion rights established by the 1972 case Roe v Wade was leaked ahead of its June publication.In a letter to supreme court chief justice John G Roberts Jr dated 7 June, Schenck wrote that he was reaching out to the judge “to inform you of a series of events that may impinge on the investigation you and your delegates are undertaking in connection with the leak of a draft opinion”.He described a dinner at which an unnamed political donor invited to dine at the home of Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, had offered to try to glean information about the pending decision in the Hobby Lobby case.The next day, the Times reported, the dining guest called Schenck and told him Alito had written the majority opinion in the case and that Hobby Lobby would win. That exact decision was publicly announced less than a month later.Schenck concluded the letter to Roberts by saying he “thought this previous incident might bear some consideration by you and others involved in the process”.How that directly reflects on the current investigation into the leak of the Dobbs decision is not clear, but it arrives at a time of concern for the court’s legitimacy as it works under the sway of a conservative supermajority. Polls show that a majority of Americans are losing confidence in the supreme court.After the leak in May of the Dobbs decision draft, Alito called the unauthorized disclosure “a grave betrayal” and ordered an investigation by the supreme court’s marshal.The Times noted that Schenck’s account has “gaps”. But the newspaper’s examination of the claim uncovered emails and conversations that “strongly suggested” that Schenck knew of the decision before it was made public.TopicsUS supreme courtAbortionRoe v WadeContraception and family planningReligionUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump campaign announcement deepens Republicans’ civil war Republicans are now soul searching over how they lost a very winnable Senate and bracing for two tumultuous years in the House – and many blame TrumpMike Lindell was full of passionate intensity. Wandering the white and gold ballroom of the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the mustachioed pillow-maker predicted that Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House would clear the Republican field.“After he announces today, I think [Florida governor] Ron DeSantis will end up just endorsing him,” Lindell, a rabid Trump cheerleader and conspiracy theorist, told the Guardian early on Tuesday evening. “I can’t imagine anybody wasting the time, effort and money of the people. We need to unite our country and there’s only man who can do that and he’ll be up on that stage. Period.”It did not work out that way.Could Trump’s 2024 campaign keep his legal troubles at bay?Read moreIn fact Trump’s lethargic primetime speech beneath crystal chandeliers and the stars and stripes had the opposite effect, conveying the impression to many of a Yesterday’s Man who has lost his swagger, more vulnerable than ever to DeSantis and other would-be challengers in 2024.Far from a coronation, it also deepened what Democrats gleefully called “an all-out civil war” engulfing the Republican party in the wake of midterm elections where, despite economic discontent and historical headwinds, forecasts of a red wave were scaled down to a pink splash.Republicans are now soul searching over how they lost a very winnable Senate and bracing for two tumultuous years in the House of Representatives, where their wafer-thin majority is likely to enflame divisions and empower the far right.Many point the finger of blame at Trump and his false claims of voter fraud, noting the underperformance of candidates he endorsed for the Senate and the near total wipeout of election deniers who ran for statewide office.It is perhaps an unflattering insight into human nature that Republicans who were willing to tolerate Trump’s misogyny, racism and lies, and even his attempted coup against the government, have declared “enough is enough” when they discovered him to be a loser.The Axios website reported that Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, won huge applause at an annual meeting of Republican governors after arguing that Trump had cost the party dearly for three elections in a row. Voters had “rejected crazy”, Christie said.Media proprietor Rupert Murdoch also appears to be deserting the sinking ship. His New York Post newspaper covered his presidential announcement with an article buried on page 26 under the headline “Been there, Don that.” The story was teased at the bottom of the front page with: “Florida man makes announcement.”Republican donors who previously backed Trump are out too. Ken Griffin, a billionaire founder of the Citadel hedge fund, has endorsed DeSantis for president. Stephen Schwarzman, of the private equity firm Blackstone, said he would support one among a new generation of leaders in the Republican primary.And the conservative Club for Growth, once a staunch ally of the former president, released a polling memo that showed him trailing DeSantis in several crucial states. Even Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is staying away this time. Is the writing on the wall at last?Mark Sanford, a former Republican governor of South Carolina, said: “There’s a shelf life to every political figure. We do have expiration dates, and in military terms, at some point people outrun their supply lines. It has that feeling of desperation.”Trump’s potential rivals can smell blood in the water. DeSantis, Christie, former vice president Mike Pence – currently promoting a memoir – and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo have all dropped hints about running for president in 2024. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, Nikki Haley, a former UN ambassador, and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tim Scott of South Carolina could also be in the frame.Sanford added: “If Trump has been perceived as the alpha dog in the room and now he may be faltering, there are going to be a lot of people nipping at his heels.“Politics is constructed in a very Darwinian level and, the moment you start to show a little bit of weakness, you got 10 people coming at you fast, and I think there are going to be 10 people coming at Trump in fairly short order based on both real and perceived weaknesses that are beginning to now show.“Frankly, the only thing that he really had going for him, and this was the tagline in 2016, was ‘I’m a winner and you’re going to get so tired of winning’. He’s always been about the perception of winning and, once that mirror begins to crack, there is no there there.”But Trump is hardly likely to surrender without a fight. A crowded primary could turn into a bare-knuckle political brawl peppered with insults and name-calling, reminiscent of the 2016 campaign when Trump deployed terms such as “low energy”, “Lyin’ Ted” and “Little Marco”.For a party that became a cult of personality around one man to then attempt decoupling from him could trigger something of an identity crisis. Nowhere will that be more evident than on Capitol Hill, where Trump has branded Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, “an old crow”.On Wednesday McConnell was challenged for the leadership for the first time in 15 years amid post-election recriminations from the hard right. He prevailed by 37 votes to 10 over Rick Scott, the outgoing chair of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, in a secret ballot.Republicans in the House, meanwhile, offered initial support for Kevin McCarthy of California to serve as speaker but, given their narrow majority, the job may prove akin to herding cats. Each member will have huge sway over the conduct of business, raising the spectre of partisan battles and legislative gridlock with pro-Trump extremists gaining huge leverage.To secure the speakership, the Washington Post reported, McCarthy has promised to restore committee assignments for Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona. The former was removed for endorsing violent behavior and conspiracy theories; the latter for posting an animated video that depicted him killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.Rick Wilson, cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “McCarthy is the Sino – he’s the speaker in name only. Marjorie Taylor Greene runs the House caucus. Marjorie Taylor Greene has more control over the caucus than Kevin McCarthy does. That symbolic vote was very clearly sending him a signal: do what we want or we’ll blow you out. They will if he does not obey them.”“So we’re going to have endless investigations of Hunter Biden’s laptop. We’re going to have endless ‘Did Anthony Fauci brew up the virus in a Chinese lab?’ All this crap is coming down the pike and that’s because Kevin cannot resist the power they have over him. He is going to be the weakest speaker in the history of the US House.”Some prominent Republicans, including House conference chair Elise Stefanik of New York, have already endorsed Trump for president in 2024. Others are sitting on the fence or calling for change. Asked whether she would back Trump, Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, one of the most conservative states in the country, replied: “I don’t think that’s the right question. I think the question is who is the current leader of the Republican party. Oh, I know who it is: Ron DeSantis.”Trump faced opposition from Republican donors and establishment figures in 2016, when his insurgent campaign energised the grassroots and ultimately made the party capitulate. But this time, aged 76, he lacks novelty value, shock value or a Twitter feed. And his four-year record in the White House is there for all to see.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “He starts out in a weaker position than he did in 2016 in that voters are very familiar with the Trump show both in government and out of government. Not enough of them are willing to buy the tickets to the show to get him to the nomination or get him to the presidency.“If the mega-donors are already cutting ties it means they’re open for business for alternative candidates and they’re going to want to get behind some of those candidates pretty early to fill the vacuum, which nobody did after January 6. Republicans have now seen the electoral consequences of not filling the vacuum after January 6.”But many analysts and pollsters suggest that Trump still commands absolute loyalty from around a third of Republican voters. These “Make America great again” (Maga) fans display quasi-religious fervour at his campaign rallies, vow to stick with him through thick and thin and adopt his “big lie” about the 2020 election as an article of faith.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “There is a split in the Republican party between the Trump populists who want to savage the existing electoral and political system – we see that with the extraordinary number of election deniers out there – and a group of people who are committed to governing and the constitution and believe they can achieve conservative ends through those existing means. That’s a very fundamental split. I don’t see it going away.”For Democrats, the sight of Republicans at each other’s throats offers respite from scrutiny of their own internal divisions. Journalists with a taste for alliteration are fond of using the phrase “Democrats in disarray”. But with Trump looming large, Republicans could be facing years of Maga meltdown.Drexel Heard, a Democratic strategist based in Los Angeles, said: “Donald Trump put Republicans in disarray and that is what that campaign is going to be like. Do I think Donald Trump has a chance to win? Absolutely not. It’s going to further erode the Republican party. It’s going to split them. Ron DeSantis can’t out-Trump Donald Trump but he’s certainly going to try.”Heard added: “Democrats, as you saw in this midterm, did a pretty good job of holding the line across the country. My question is, why is it always ‘Democrats in disarray’ because of a small internal fight when you’ve got three major levers of the Republican party going at it?”TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

ExplainerWhat is a special counsel and why will one investigate Donald Trump?Jack Smith will oversee investigations into Trump – but why did the attorney general take this step against the ex-president? On Friday, when announcing the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel overseeing investigations of Donald Trump’s alleged election subversion and retention of White House records, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the selection would ensure “independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters”.So why did Garland take this step against the former president?What is a special counsel?Special counsels are usually highly experienced federal prosecutors. According to justice department regulations, a special counsel is appointed when an attorney general “determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted” but “investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States attorney’s office or litigating division of the [justice department] would present a conflict of interest … or other extraordinary circumstances”.An attorney general must therefore determine that it is “in the public interest to appoint an outside special counsel”.Have those tests been met?Garland says they have.Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, including inciting the Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, have been exhaustively documented. His retention of White House records, many classified, has been established through an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort, among other incidents.But such matters are certainly politically sensitive. Citing “recent developments” including Trump’s announcement that he is running for president again and Biden’s “stated intention to be a candidate as well”, Garland said he had “concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel”.This, Garland said, would “underscore the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law”.How do special counsels work?Outlining how Smith will work “quickly and completely”, Garland quoted from department regulations: “Although the special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the department, he must comply with the regulations, procedures and policies of the department.”Are special counsels completely independent?No. Regulations also state that the attorney general can request explanation of any step taken and direct it not be pursued. If that happens, the attorney general must notify Congress. Special counsels and their staff are also subject to department disciplinary procedures.Who can fire a special counsel?Regulations say a special counsel “may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the attorney general”. He or she can do this “for misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest or for other good cause, including violation of departmental policies. The attorney general shall inform the special counsel in writing of the specific reason”.Wasn’t Robert Mueller a special counsel?He was. Appointed in May 2017, the former FBI director investigated “Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”, including links between Trump and Moscow.Didn’t Trump try to fire him?Trump did. But only the attorney general can do so, so it didn’t work. Attempts to get rid of Mueller featured among examples of potential obstruction of justice which Mueller laid out.Wasn’t there another special counsel?Yes. Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, appointed John Durham to investigate justice department activities which gave rise to the Russia investigation. Durham’s work now appears to be winding down, without having produced major indictments. The two cases he took to trial ended in acquittals.What happens when a special counsel is done?The attorney general decides how to proceed. In Mueller’s case, critics charge, Barr misrepresented the special counsel’s findings in order to let Trump off the hook. Whether he wriggles off it this time will be up to Garland.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsMerrick GarlandexplainersReuse this content More