US Politics

Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House saysAshish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, and physician Kevin O’Connor say president contracted BA.5 variant Joe Biden is “feeling well” and “doing just fine” after testing positive for Covid, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said.Joe Biden’s mild Covid symptoms are improving, doctor saysRead moreAppearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ashish Jha said: “So it is the BA.5 variant, which is about 80% of infections. But thank goodness, our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well.“I checked in with his team late last night. He was feeling well. He had a good day yesterday. He’s got a viral syndrome, an upper respiratory infection … and he’s doing just fine.”The White House later released a letter in which Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said the president’s “predominant symptom now is a sore throat”.O’Connor also said Biden had completed a third full day of treatment with Paxlovid, which would continue and was “experiencing no shortness of breath at all”.Biden’s positive test was announced on Thursday. At 79, the president is the oldest ever inaugurated. He is also, as he said, double-vaccinated and double-boosted and has access to the best possible care.On Sunday the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told CNN’s State of the Union he knew Biden was still working “because on Thursday I got a call from the White House about something on transportation that he had asked me to follow up on”.Buttigieg also wished Biden “a speedy path back to 100%”.Jha was asked if the White House “will continue to make disclosures if [Biden] has long-term symptoms from this infection”.“Absolutely,” he said. “You know, we think it’s really important for the American people to know how well the president’s doing, which is why we have been so transparent, giving updates several times a day, having people hear from me directly, hear directly from his physician.“And obviously if he has persistent symptoms, if any of them interfere with his ability to carry out his duties, we will disclose that early and often.“But I suspect this is going to be a course of Covid that we’ve seen in many Americans who have been fully vaccinated, double-boosted, getting treated with those tools in hand. You know, the president has been doing well, and we’re gonna expect that he’s going to continue to do so.”Jha also suggested cities seeing high case rates, including New York, Phoenix and Miami, might consider re-instituting indoor mask mandates.“Masks work, right? They clearly slow down transmission. So in areas of high transmission, I think it’s very prudent for people to be wearing masks indoors, especially if they’re in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. That’s what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] recommends. And I think that’s a very important and effective way of reducing transmission, protecting yourself as well.“You know, in terms of mandates, that’s something that we’ve always felt strongly should be done by local officials, mayors, governors, local health officials, and we’re seeing different officials take different tactics. And I think that’s actually appropriate given that we have a very diverse country with different transmission patterns and and willingness to kind of engage in-in wearing masks.”Jha was also asked about monkeypox, which on Saturday the World Health Organization declared a “public health emergency of international concern”. Would the Biden administration declare a pandemic?“Pandemics are declared by the World Health Organization,” Jha said, “and I actually applaud the World Health Organization for declaring that public health emergency of international concern. We are seeing outbreaks that are out of control in many, many parts of the world. It’s very important that we get our arms around this thing.“In the US right now, we’re looking at public health emergency as something that [the health department] might … invoke but it really depends on what does that allow us to do. Right now we have over 2,000 cases, but we have ramped up vaccinations, ramped up treatments, ramped up testing, and we’re going to continue to look at all sort of policy options. Right now, we think we can get our arms around this thing but obviously if we need further tools we will invoke them as we need them.”Jha said he thought monkeypox could be contained.Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surgeRead more“The way we contain monkeypox is we have a very simple, straightforward strategy on this, which is: make testing widely available. We have done that. And now testing is far more frequent and common.Answering the charge that the US was caught flat-footed by monkeypox, Jha said: “What I would acknowledge is that when we started two months ago, we had a limited supply of vaccines. We have obtained more than any other country, probably more than every other country combined. We have acted swiftly.”Asked if people should be concerned about another infectious disease, polio, which has been detected in New York, Jha said: “There is a lot of surveillance that we do for polio, there’s wastewater surveillance that goes on, we are not seeing outbreaks of polio elsewhere.“This one case has heightened everybody’s surveillance. But … CDC and the Department of Health of New York are doing an investigation to try to understand more, but I do not expect polio to become more widespread in the country, again, because so many Americans are vaccinated against this.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsOmicron variantCoronavirusBiden administrationDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

Pete Buttigieg urges Republicans to back same-sex marriage bill Senate Democrats hope at least 10 Republicans will support Respect for Marriage Act after 157 in House voted against it More

Trump’s attempted coup continues – even after January 6 hearings are over for nowRobert ReichThe committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power. Even now, Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election The House of Representatives’ select committee investigating the January 6 attack has finished its hearings, at least for now.But Trump’s attempted coup continues.He has not stopped giving speeches to stir up angry mobs with his big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. He gave another fiery address Friday evening in Arizona.How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against TrumpRead moreHe is actively backing congressional candidates who propound his big lie.Trump continues to push states to alter the outcomes of the 2020 election. Just last week he urged Wisconsin assembly speaker Robin Vos to support a resolution to retract Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes cast for Biden.He is encouraging Republican lawmakers in several states to pass legislation allowing them to take over election machinery and ignore the popular vote.Meanwhile, the lives of committee members and their families have been threatened. Witnesses have received gangster-style warnings not to cooperate.The committee’s message to all of America, including Republicans: Stop supporting this treachery.The committee has made that treachery crystal clear.It has shown the deception behind Trump’s big lie, including Trump’s attorney general William Barr, saying “I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations” and that promoting it was “a grave disservice to the country”.It has demonstrated non-partisan repulsion toward Trump’s attempted coup, even in Trump’s White House. As former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson said, “I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic, it was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”It has made open appeals to Republican lawmakers to stop supporting the attempt. The Republican vice-chair of the committee, Liz Cheney, warned her Republican colleagues “who are defending the indefensible” that “there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain”.It has revealed how average Americans fell for Trump’s treachery, with disastrous results. Witness Stephen Ayres, who described himself as “nothing but a family man and a working man”, participated in the January 6 attack because Trump “basically put out, you know, come to the Stop the Steal rally, you know, and I felt like I needed to be down here”.And it has reminded Americans of their duties to democracy. As committee chair Bennie Thompson put it: “When you’re on the losing side, that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it … but you can’t turn violent.”Committee member Jamie Raskin recalled Lincoln’s warning that politicians who encourage mobs to rampage and terrorize will destroy the bonds of social trust necessary for democracy to work.It is impossible to know whether the hearings will lead to criminal indictments and convictions of Trump and his enablers.But the hearings already appear to have convinced some Trump supporters that he is a dangerous charlatan.The percentage of Republicans who say Trump misled people about the 2020 election has ticked up since last month, while Trump’s enormous fundraising operation has slowed. A New York Times/Siena College poll last week showed that nearly half of Republican primary voters would rather vote for a Republican other than Trump in 2024.History teaches that it is possible to bring down an American demagogue by putting his wickedness on display for all to see.In 1954, I watched the Army-McCarthy hearings. The Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy – whose communist witch hunt was ending careers and debasing much of the US government – had charged the US army with lax security at a top-secret army facility. The army hired Boston lawyer Joseph Welch to make its case.At a session on 9 June 1954, after McCarthy accused one of Welch’s young staff attorneys of being a communist, Welch responded in words that led to McCarthy’s undoing: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”Almost overnight, McCarthy’s immense national popularity evaporated. Censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party and ignored by the press, McCarthy died three years later, 48 years old and a broken man.Now, the January 6 committee has produced history’s most detailed account of an American president’s cruel and seditious pursuit of power.Will it be enough to stop Trump’s ongoing attempted coup? That depends on whether Americans heed the committee’s implicit plea to ensure that American democracy endures. This article was amended on 24 July 2022. McCarthy was a senator for Wisconsin, not Minnesota.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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‘US democracy will not survive for long’: how January 6 hearings plot a roadmap to autocracyTrump’s efforts to subvert the elections laid bare the system’s weaknesses, exposing it to greater exploitation They promised the January 6 hearings would “blow the roof off the house”, presenting America with the truth about Donald Trump’s attack on democracy culminating in the US Capitol insurrection. In the end, the roof of the House, where the summer season of hearings reached their finale on Thursday night, remained intact, though mightily shaken.January 6 panel: shining a light on American democracy’s nose diveRead moreIt will take time for historians to assess whether the eight public sessions were comparable to the 1973 Watergate hearings, as Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the January 6 committee, predicted. Yet it’s already clear that after 19 hours and 11 minutes of testimony, filmed depositions, documentary evidence and raw footage of the Capitol attack the hearings have generated a mountain of words and images that will linger long in the collective memory.We know now that on the day that the United States suffered the worst assault on the Capitol since the British ravaged it in 1814, Trump tried to grab the steering wheel from a secret service agent to turn his presidential SUV in the direction of the violent mob so he could join them. We know that when he exhorted his followers to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” he was aware that many of them were armed with guns and wearing body armor.We know from Thursday night that when his close aides pleaded with him to call off the attack, he refused, spending 187 minutes watching events unfold on TV in the White House dining room while swatting away increasingly desperate pleas for him to act until it was clear that his hopes of violently overthrowing the election had faded.To those who track anti-democratic movements there is a chilling familiarity to this rich evocation of a president descending into an abyss of fantasy, fury and possible illegality. “The picture that the hearings depict is of a coup leader,” said the Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky. “This is a guy who was unwilling to accept defeat and was prepared to use virtually any means to try to stay illegally in power.”Levitsky is co-author of the influential book How Democracies Die which traces the collapse of once-proud democratic nations – in some cases through wrenching upheavals, but more often in modern times through a tip-toeing into authoritarianism. Levitsky is also an authority on Latin America, a region from which he draws a compelling parallel.Levitsky told the Guardian that the Trump who emerges from the hearings was a coup leader, “but not a very sophisticated one. Not a very experienced one. A petty autocrat. A type of leader more familiar to someone like me, a student of Latin American politics.”If Trump’s Latin American-style authoritarianism rang out from the hearings for scholars like Levitsky, a more vexed question is whether it similarly pierced the consciences of the wider American people. It is in their hands that the fate of the January 6 committee’s prime objective now rests: ensuring that a head-on assault on US democracy never happens again.The committee, led by its Democratic chair Bennie Thompson and rebel Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney, went to great lengths to make the hearings as digestible as possible for the TV, streaming and social media era. They employed the British journalist and former president of ABC News, James Goldston, to produce the events as tightly as a Netflix cliffhanger, which seems broadly, like a success.The opening primetime hearing on 9 June attracted at least 20m viewers, equivalent to the TV audience for a large sporting event. The following daytime sessions dipped to around 10m people, though ratings shot back up to almost 14m on 28 June when the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave explosive testimony.It is one thing to preach to the millions of Americans who are already horrified by Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy, but what about those who went along with it and internalized his lies about the stolen election?Here the evidence is less comforting. When you enter the right-wing media bubble, the vision of a South American coup leader suddenly vanishes.Over on Fox News, the opening hearing was passed over in favor of the channel’s controversial star Tucker Carlson who used his show to ridicule the proceedings as “deranged propaganda” and to shrink the insurrection into “a forgettably minor outbreak”. On Thursday night, Carlson again supplanted live coverage of the closing hearing, going on a rant instead about Biden and Covid.The further into the right-wing media jungle you venture, the more the narrative becomes distorted. NewsGuard, a non-partisan firm that monitors misinformation, reviewed output during the period of the hearings from Newsmax, the hard-right TV channel that is still carried by most major cable and satellite providers.The monitors found Newsmax aired at least 40 false and misleading claims about the 2020 election and 6 January. Several of the falsehoods were pumped out even as the live hearings were proceeding.“If you were watching only Newsmax to get information about the January 6 hearings, you would likely be living in an entirely alternate universe,” said Jack Brewster, NewsGuard’s senior analyst.The media bubble is not the only barrier standing between the January 6 committee and a major repair of the country’s damaged democratic infrastructure. While the hearings focused heavily on the figure of Trump, Levitsky argues that an arguably even greater threat is now posed by the Republican party which enabled him.“In a two-party system, if one political party is not committed to democratic rules of the game, democracy is not likely to survive for very long,” Levitsky said. “The party has revealed itself, from top to bottom, to be a majority anti-democratic party.”Levitsky cites an analysis by the Republican Accountability Project, a group of anti-Trump conservatives, of the public statements made by all 261 Republicans in the US House and Senate in the wake of the 2020 election. It found that 224 of them – a staggering 86% of all Republicans in Congress – cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s win in what amounted to a mass “attack on a cornerstone of our democracy”.Levitsky warns that the hearings have illuminated two great dangers for America, both relating to Republicans. The first is that the party’s strategists have acquired through Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a roadmap to the vulnerabilities of the electoral system.“They discovered that there is a plethora of opportunities for subverting an election, from blocking certification to sending alternate slates of electors to Congress. Armed with that knowledge, they may well do it much better next time.”The second lesson for Levitsky relates to accountability, or the lack of it. The Republicans who played with fire, openly backing the anti-democratic movement, found that they were largely immune to the consequences.“They learned that if you try to overturn the election you will not be punished by Republican voters, activists or donors. For the most part, you’ll be rewarded for it. And to me, that is terrifying.”Even now, at national level, the Republican leadership continues to stoke the flames. The minority leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, and his top team have relentlessly striven to hinder and belittle the January 6 committee.But it is at state and local levels that the rot is most advanced. The watchdog States United Democracy Center calculates that at least 33 states are considering 229 bills that would give state legislatures the power to politicize, criminalize or otherwise tamper with elections. The group also notes that disciples of Trump’s stolen election lie are bidding for secretary of state positions in November in 17 states, which would give them, were they to win, control over election administration in a large swathe of the country.Several have already prevailed in Republican primaries, putting them one step away from being able to wreak havoc over the machinery of democracy. They include Jim Marchant in Nevada and Mark Finchem in Arizona, while in Pennsylvania a Stop the Steal peddler, Doug Mastriano, is vying to become governor which would similarly put him in the electoral driving seat.Then there is Kristina Karamo from the battleground state of Michigan who won the Republican nomination for secretary of state in April. Karamo has flirted with the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon and has accused singers Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish of putting children “under a satanic delusion”. She continues to be a fervent critic of Biden as an illegitimate president.Michigan’s current Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, who nursed the state through the traumatic contested count in 2020, is up for re-election and will go head-to-head with Karamo in the mid-terms. Benson told the Guardian that she sees the race as a test of the future for America, “between those who want to protect and defend democracy and those openly willing to deny it”.Benson’s plea is all the more urgent given signs that the willingness to embrace violence displayed on January 6 is also worming its way into the political fabric. A mega poll from UC Davis this week found that one in five adults in the US – which extrapolates to about 50 million people – believe that it can be justified to achieve your political aims through violence.Extremist groups have also stepped up their activities since the insurrection. Last month, the national chairman of the far-right Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, and several other top leaders were charged with seditious conspiracy. Yet the indictments do not appear to have discouraged the group from audaciously moving to infiltrate the Republicans – more than 10 current or former Proud Boys, for instance, now sit on the Republican party’s executive committee in Miami-Dade, Florida.So what does accountability look like in the wake of the hearings? How do you shore up democracy when even prosecutions appear to wield little power of persuasion?There was a lot of talk about accountability on Thursday night at the final hearing of this summer season. In his opening remarks Bennie Thompson, speaking by video link from Covid quarantine, said there had to be “stiff consequences for those responsible”.It required scant translation to see that as a direct invitation to Merrick Garland, the country’s top law enforcement official, to prosecute Trump. To pile pressure on the Department of Justice, Thompson announced that the committee was still receiving new intelligence and that there will be further public hearings in September.“There’s no doubt that the justice department has followed the hearings really closely,” said Daniel Zelenko, a partner at Crowell & Moring and a former federal prosecutor. “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny and debate about a prosecution. But if you were ever going to indict a former president, it’s hard to imagine a more compelling fact pattern.”There is also the accountability of the ballot box. Cheney picked up that theme.“Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office,” she said in her closing remarks on Thursday. “Every American must consider this: can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDemocratsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

Any Given Tuesday: Lis Smith on Cuomo, Spitzer and a political life The Democratic operative delivers a memoir and coming-of-age tale that lands punches – and sometimes pulls themWith Any Given Tuesday, Lis Smith delivers 300 pages of smack, snark and vulnerability. A veteran Democratic campaign hand, she shares up-close takes of those who appear in the news and dishes autobiographical vignettes. The book, her first, is a political memoir and coming-of-age tale. It is breezy and informative.Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s townRead moreFor two decades, Smith worked in the trenches. She witnessed plenty and bears the resulting scars. Most recently, she was a senior media adviser to Pete Buttigieg, now transportation secretary in the Biden administration, and counseled Andrew Cuomo, now a disgraced ex-governor of New York.According to Smith, Buttigieg made politics ennobling and fun. More important, he offered a road to redemption.“He saw me for who I actually was and, for the first time in my adult life, I did too,” Smith writes. According to exit polls in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Buttigieg brought meaning to middle-aged white college graduates. These days, he is seen by Democrats as a possible alternative to Joe Biden in 2024.Smith dated Eliot Spitzer, another governor of New York who fell from grace.“We were like a lit match and dynamite,” she writes. Smith also gushes about Spitzer’s “deep set, cerulean blue eyes”, the “most gorgeous” such pair she had ever seen. A 24-year age gap provided additional fuel but Spitzer, once known as the Sheriff of Wall Street, spent less than 15 months in office. His administration ended abruptly in 2009, over his trysts with prostitutes.Smith can be blunt and brutal. She savages Cuomo and flattens Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City, like a pancake.Smith recounts in detail Cuomo’s mishandling of Covid, the allegations of sexual harassment and his obfuscation. He “died as he lived”, she writes, damningly, “with zero regard for the people around him and the impact his actions would have on them”.As for De Blasio: “This guy can’t handle a 9/11.” He also came up short, we are told, in the personal hygiene department: a “gross unshowered guy”. De Blasio retracted an employment offer to Smith, after her relationship with Spitzer became tabloid fodder. He also coveted an endorsement from Spitzer that never materialized.“Both of us had tried to get in bed with Eliot but only one of us had been successful,” Smith brags.On Tuesday, De Blasio dropped out of a congressional primary after gaining a bare 3% support in a recent poll.Smith is very much a New Yorker. She grew up in a leafy Westchester suburb, north of the city. Her parents were loving and politically conscious. Her father led a major white-shoe law firm. He introduced his daughter to football and the star-crossed New York Jets.Smith went to Dartmouth. Not surprisingly, her politics are establishment liberal. She worked on campaigns for Jon Corzine, for New Jersey governor; Terry McAuliffe, for governor of Virginia; and Claire McCaskill, for senator in Missouri. In 2012 she earned a credit from Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.Smith has kind words for McAuliffe and McCaskill but portrays Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs chief executive, as aloof, never warming to the reality that elections are about retail politics and people. Despite this, Smith omits mention of the markets-moving failure of MF Global, a Corzine-run commodities brokerage that left a wake of ruin.“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine testified before a congressional committee. “I do not know which accounts are unreconciled or whether the unreconciled accounts were or were not subject to the segregation rules.”Corzine holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.Smith is candid about the corrosive effects of the Democrats’ lurch left.“If someone doesn’t support every policy on their progressive wish list … they’re branded an enemy or a Republican in disguise. If these ideological purists think a West Virginia Democrat is bad, wait till they get a load of the Republican alternative.”But Smith also falls victim to ideological myopia. Discussing the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and its considerable political consequences, she appears to solely blame the Ferguson police for the death of the African American teen, who she says was “shot to death in broad daylight”. Like Hillary Clinton, Smith neglects to mention that police fired after Brown lunged for an officer’s gun. She also does not mention that Brown tussled with a convenience store owner before his confrontation with the law.Inadvertently, Smith highlights the volatility of the Democrats’ multicultural, upstairs-downstairs coalition. Worship at the twin altars of identity politics and political correctness exacts a steep price in votes and can negatively impact human life. See New York City’s current crime wave for proof.Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican partyRead moreSmith reserves some of her sharpest digs for Roger Stone, convicted and then-pardoned confidante of Donald Trump, pen-pal of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. She calls him a “stone-cold sociopath”. But she skates over animus that existed between Stone and Spitzer, her ex. In 2007, Stone allegedly left a threatening telephone message for Spitzer’s father, a real estate magnate. Months later, Stone told the FBI Spitzer “used the service of high-priced call girls” while staying in Florida.In the end, Smith is an idealist.“I believe in the power of politics to improve people’s lives,” she writes. “I still believe there is hope for the future.”
Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story is published in the US by Harper
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How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against TrumpThe committee laid out evidence in a manner federal prosecutors could use as framework for potential prosecution The House January 6 select committee advanced new evidence at its Thursday primetime hearing that Donald Trump took active steps to obstruct the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win, paving the way for prosecutors to construct a criminal case against the former president.‘It’s a kangaroo court’: in key state, Trump backers dismiss January 6 hearingsRead moreThe former president knew as early as 15 mins after returning to the White House from his rally at the Ellipse that the US Capitol was under attack by his supporters, and yet acted only to find ways to stop the certification by calling senators to make objections, the panel showed.And when Trump finally sent a tweet instructing the rioters to leave the Capitol, it was 4.17pm, only after it had become clear they had been unable to fully occupy the building after being repulsed by a late-arriving national guard and the Capitol attack had largely failed.Those deliberate actions to first advance the obstruction, and then refuse to intervene until the attack was essentially over, bolstered the case that Trump violated federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding, through both action and inaction.Elaine Luria, the select committee member who co-led Thursday’s hearing, concluded: “In the end, this is not a story of inaction in time of crisis. It was the final action of Donald Trump’s own plan to usurp the will of the American people and remain in power.”The select committee, in effect, at the primetime hearing laid out the evidence of obstruction of an official proceeding – a violation of federal law – in such a manner that justice department prosecutors could take up their presentation as a framework for a potential prosecution.Aside from presenting new details of the former president’s actions on January 6, the panel also revealed new and potentially legally significant details about Trump’s frame of mind that the members believe revealed his intent and understanding of what had taken place that day.The select committee notably focused on a tweet that Trump sent at 6.01pm, after the attack was largely over, referring to his lie that he had won the 2020 election, that read: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away.”Playing a clip from a deposition with Trump’s close aide Nicholas Luna, the select committee revealed that Luna had suggested that Trump might consider revising that first part of the tweet because it read to him as though Trump was responsible for the Capitol attack.Luna testified that he had told Trump the language “would lead some to believe that potentially he had something to do with the events that happened at the Capitol”.Trump did not revise the tweet, and the select committee appeared to raise the extraordinary situation that the former president did not dispute that assessment that he had something to do with the Capitol attack and therefore saw no reason to change the phrasing.The episode is significant since it came immediately after the crisis at the Capitol, which Trump had been watching live on television, as had millions of shocked Americans. Insight into Trump’s frame of mind would be an important consideration for any criminal case.Within three days, Trump’s stance had shifted from apparently not caring that he might be perceived as having a role in the events of January 6, to refusing to even discuss in a video address from the White House the attack or the US Capitol police officers who died.The reversal was noted by Trump’s former campaign chairman, Tim Murtaugh, in a text to a Trump campaign press aide, Matthew Wolking, that the select committee showed.“He’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won’t do that, because they’re his people. And he would be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault,” Murtaugh said.From an investigative perspective, the select committee also raised the pattern of crucial missing evidence from January 6, which members and investigators on the panel increasingly see as malfeasance, according to two sources close to the inquiry.The primetime hearing on Thursday – the final one of the summer before further hearings in September – for the large part ran through how Trump chose not to act while ensconced in the White House watching Fox News as the violence at the Capitol unfolded two miles away down Pennsylvania Avenue.In order to reconstruct his actions, the select committee showed it had attempted to rely on the presidential daily diary, the presidential call logs and official photos taken by the White House photographer that day.But the panel revealed that none of those records existed for the crucial 187 minutes of the Capitol attack. The daily diary lacked entries, hours’ worth of call logs were missing and the White House photographer had been told to take no pictures during that time.The missing records fit a pattern of evidence loss, the select committee indicated: the text messages among Secret Service agents on the presidential security detail that day were erased 11 days after Congress requested the communications in January last year.TopicsUS newsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Trump and Pence duel in Arizona in fight for Republican future Former president and his one-time wingman appear at rival events – and it’s all to play for as the US midterms approachEddie Palazuelos drove 200 miles and lined up for five hours under the baking sun to to see Donald Trump at a campaign event for candidates he is backing in the forthcoming Arizona Republican primaries.It’s the fifth Trump rally the 27-year-old has attended since the former president lost the White House in 2020 – because Palazuelos vehemently believes the election was stolen. Any judge or lawmaker who concludes otherwise is “willfully ignorant”, he said, referring to the dozens of lawsuits and recounts nationwide which ruled out fraud.‘It’s a kangaroo court’: in key state, Trump backers dismiss January 6 hearingsRead more“Fixing our election system is fundamental. That’s why Kari Lake is my No 1 for governor, because she won’t stop talking about the election,” said Palazuelos, an IT worker from Tucson, as Abba’s hit The Winner Takes it All blasted through the speakers. “Of course Trump’s endorsement means something.”How much it means is the big question.In Arizona’s gubernatorial race, candidate Kari Lake’s consistent and combative false claims about election fraud were rewarded with an endorsement from Trump back in January, which helped the former local Fox news anchor and Barack Obama supporter surge ahead in the race for the Republican nomination.But Trump’s visit on Friday also took place as his former wingman Mike Pence spoke at two campaign events for Karrin Taylor Robson, Lake’s main rival in the key battleground state, who has stopped short of calling the election corrupt.Trump and Pence squared off in Arizona the day after the congressional committee investigating the attempted coup on January 6 said that the then president’s refusal to call off the violent mob for over three hours amounted to a dereliction of duty. The duel signals a proxy war for the future of the Republican party, and follows revelations that Trump approved – or was at least nonchalant about – the mob chanting “hang Mike Pence”.The duelling appearances underlines the importance of Arizona on the national stage, with the 2 August primaries likely to serve as a litmus test for Trump’s endorsement prowess ahead of the midterms, where the Republicans hope to win key state races and regain control of the Senate and House.“Trump continues to have a tight hold over the Republican party in the state, but we’ll see whether the January 6 hearings have made enough of them decide that they want something less bombastic,” said Julie Erfle, a Phoenix-based communications consultant and political commentator.The Trump-Lake event on Friday evening took place about 90 miles north of Phoenix in the Prescott valley, one of the reddest parts of the state, with deep seated undercurrents of racism, including the presence of white supremacy groups such as the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers.Friday was the hottest day of the year so far, and several people passed out and needed medical attention. Once inside, the mood was festive as exhausted supporters refueled on popcorn, cheesy nachos and small bottles of water that cost $4.50.It was very much the Trump show, with appearances by several far-right conspiracy theorists, including the MyPillow boss Mike Lindell, former sheriff Joseph Arpaio, Trump’s attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh, and Mark Finchem, a member of the militia group the Oath Keepers running for secretary of state. All of Trump’s endorsements have repeated the false claims about the stolen 2020 election.Trump came on stage to rapturous applause, and repeated his usual baseless complaints about rampant election fraud by the so-called radical left. But the crowd seemed to hang on to every word.“I’ll be voting for all of Trump’s endorsements, and for him in 2024. Pence? He’s a Rino and a traitor, not to be trusted,” said Kelly Ciccone, 58, referencing the shorthand for Republican In Name Only.Earlier in the day, Pence appeared at Taylor’s relatively small but spirited campaign event in Peoria, a Phoenix suburb, alongside the outgoing Republican governor Doug Ducey. Taylor, a pro-gun, anti-choice, anti-immigration developer, is catching up fast in the polls after spending least $13.5m of her own wealth on the race.It’s not the first time Pence has pitted himself against his former boss. In May, he backed Georgia governor Brian Kemp, who like Ducey has been repeatedly attacked by Trump for his refusal to overturn the 2020 results in his state. On that occasion, Kemp crushed Trump’s candidate David Perdue by more than 50 points.It’s unclear whether Pence, who has been campaigning for candidates nationwide, plans to launch a 2024 presidential bid but as polls stand now, only Ron DeSantis, the hardline Florida governor, looks capable of challenging Trump.The dozen Republican voters interviewed by the Guardian were more or less evenly split between Trump, Pence and DeSantis as their pick for 2024.“I probably wouldn’t vote for Trump again because of his alleged involvement in January 6. The country needs a lot of fixing. I don’t think going back is the answer,” said Kevin Coles, 30, a cybersecurity expert at the Taylor event.It’s all to play for in Arizona. Coles is among around 20% of voters who are still undecided in the gubernatorial race, but the momentum is with Taylor, and her backer Ducey, who is also co-chair of the Republican Governors Association, has seen his approval ratings rise to 60%.Pence did not criticise Trump – in fact, he boasted about their joint achievements in the White House. But backing Taylor against Lake will likely be seen as a combative move.Next week, the former allies will take the fight to Washington with speeches about the post-2024 Republican agenda at rival conservative think tanks on Tuesday. It will be Trump’s first public appearance in the capitol since he left the White House on Biden’s inauguration day on 20 January 2021.“Nationally, this signals what we’re going to see in the Republican presidential primary for 2024 – a contest between the Trump and Pence factions of the party,” said Erfle.“The two sides are not all that different on misogyny, racism and far-right nationalism. It’s more about choosing a cult of personality that revolves around Trump or continuing democracy in some form.”TopicsArizonaMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

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