US Politics

Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt of Congress trial set to begin MondayFormer Trump adviser refused to comply with Capitol attack subpoena for documents and testimony related to January 6 A federal criminal trial is set to begin on Monday to determine whether Stephen Bannon, the influential former adviser to Donald Trump, broke the law by refusing to comply with a subpoena for documents and testimony by the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.Last fall, the congressional committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots subpoenaed Bannon to sit for a deposition and to provide a wide range of documents related to the events of January 6. Bannon refused to comply. The committee cited him for contempt and referred him to the US justice department for prosecution in October of last year.The justice department pursued the referral, and a federal grand jury indicted Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress, both misdemeanors, in November. It is extremely rare for the justice department to pursue such charges – before Bannon, the last contempt prosecution was in 1983. Bannon faces between 30 days and a year in prison if convicted on each charge.Bannon, whom Trump fired from the White House in August of 2017, has emerged as a powerful conservative voice since leaving the White House, and his podcast, War Room, has become a must-stop for those on the political right. He has used it to stoke baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and began outlining how Trump could try to overturn the elections starting in September 2020.Days in advance, Bannon predicted that Trump would declare himself the winner on election night and take advantage of confusion that would result as Democrats picked up votes because of mail-in ballots that were counted after in person votes. Trump wound up doing exactly that.The committee said in its contempt report that Bannon appeared to have “some foreknowledge” of what would happen on 6 January. It has also said that Bannon and Trump spoke twice on 5 January. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Bannon said on a podcast after the first call. “It’s all converging and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow.”In the leadup to the attack, Bannon was also was present at the Willard hotel, the nucleus of Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Bannon is the first former Trump administration official to face a criminal trial for refusing to participate in the January 6 probe. From the moment he was indicted, he has pledged to fight the charges, saying on his podcast recently he was going “medieval” and would “savage his enemies”. But Bannon has suffered a number of defeats in the leadup to the trial as US district court Judge Carl J Nichols, a Trump appointee, has blocked many of Bannon’s main defenses.“What’s the point of going to trial if we don’t have any defences?” David Schoen, one of Bannon’s lawyers, said at a recent hearing. Nichols replied by simply by saying “agreed”.Nichols’s ruling stripped Bannon of some of his key defenses, including that he had been relying on the advice of his lawyer when he defied the subpoena. Bannon’s lawyers have also claimed that Trump invoked executive privilege to shield Bannon from compliance, but it’s not clear that Trump did so and whether or not a former president has the power to grant such protection to someone not serving in government. The Trump lawyer Justin Clark told Bannon’s attorney in a letter that he didn’t believe Bannon was immune from testimony.After the rulings, the only defenses that appear to remain for Bannon is that he might have somehow misunderstood the deadline to respond to the subpoena, and that he did not think he had defied the subpoena because the select committee told him in a letter after the deadline that they hoped he might still cooperate with the investigation.Bannon has maneuvered to try to delay the trial, citing the publicity of the committee’s public hearings and by recently offering to testify before the panel. Prosecutors argued the move was an attempt to put off the trial. Bannon had also attempted to call prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as witnesses in his case, but Nichols’s rulings appear to make it more difficult for him to do so.Government prosecutors have said it will take them just a day to put on their case. Bannon’s lawyers have said their defense could take weeks.Federal prosecutors are also pursuing contempt charges against Peter Navarro, another ex-Trump administration official. Like Bannon, Navarro has pleaded not guilty.Hugo Lowell contributed to this report.TopicsUS politicsSteve BannonJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

Too old to run again? Biden faces questions about his age as crises mount Faced with a grim outlook for 2022, some Democrats are looking ahead to 2024 and asking, is Joe Biden the best person to lead the party and the US?Joe Biden is having a rough summer. The US supreme court has overturned Roe v Wade, ending federal protections for abortion access. Although gas prices are now falling, they remain high and have driven inflation to its largest annual increase in more than 40 years. West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has finally ended any hopes that the president had of passing a climate bill in Congress. With an evenly divided Senate, Biden’s options for addressing these problems – or enacting any of his other legislative priorities – are bleak.The American people have taken note. Biden’s approval rating has steadily fallen since April and now sits in the high 30s. A recent Monmouth poll found that only 10% of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction.Biden in crisis mode as specter of one-term Carter haunts White HouseRead moreAmid this pessimism, Democrats are bracing for a potential shellacking in the midterm elections, as Republicans appear poised to regain control of the House of Representatives. Faced with a grim outlook for 2022, some Democrats are already looking ahead to 2024 and asking, is Joe Biden the best person to lead the party and the nation?Questions over whether Biden should seek re-election in 2024 have grown louder in recent weeks. A New York Times/Siena College poll taken this month found that 64% of Democrats say they would prefer a different nominee for 2024. Among Democrats under 30, that figure rises to 94%.Ellen Sciales, a spokesperson for the youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, said voters of her generation have grown disillusioned with Biden and other Democratic party leaders. After turning out to vote at near-record levels in 2020, young voters are now watching in dismay as the climate crisis accelerates and reproductive rights are stripped away, Sciales said.“Democrats should be treating the loss of my generation as an existential threat,” Sciales said. “We’ve been warning Democrats that unless they pass real meaningful policy immediately, like what was promised in Build Back Better, they are going to lose the engagement of so many voters, threatening their chances in 2022, 2024 and even further.”In addition to his sinking approval rating, Biden is facing increasingly pointed questions about his age. At 79 years old, Biden is already the oldest president in US history, and if re-elected, he would be 86 when his second term ended. The Times/Siena poll found that age and poor job performance ranked as the top two reasons why Democrats said Biden should not run again in 2024.The White House has publicly dismissed concerns about Biden getting older. “That is not a question that we should be even asking,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said last month.But some of Biden’s aides privately tell a different story. According to a recent New York Times report, White House staffers have expressed hesitation about scheduling long international trips for Biden, out of concern that they are too taxing for him. They also worry that Biden’s slower, more shuffling gait could cause him to fall, and they fret over his tendency to jumble words in speeches. David Axelrod, who previously served as Barack Obama’s chief campaign strategist, has said that Biden’s age could be a “major issue” if he seeks re-election.A New York Times columnist last week wrote an article titled “Joe Biden is Too Old to be President Again”, but pointed out that this was a wider problem with US politics. “There’s a problem here that goes beyond Biden himself. We are ruled by a gerontocracy. Biden is 79. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 82. The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is 83. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is 71. Often, it’s not clear if they grasp how broken this country is.”Biden insists he still plans to run again in 2024, assuming his health cooperates. “I’m a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many, many times,” Biden said in December. “If I’m in the health I’m in now, if I’m in good health, then in fact, I would run again.”But those comments have not quelled the 2024 conversation, even among fellow Democrats. When progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked whether she would endorse Biden as the Democratic nominee in 2024, she demurred.“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Ocasio-Cortez said last month. Weeks later, she dodged questions from late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert about whether she would consider launching her own presidential campaign in 2024.If Ocasio-Cortez or another progressive leader chose to challenge Biden, it would be a historic candidacy. No sitting Democratic president has faced a primary challenge since 1980, when Ted Kennedy chose to run against Jimmy Carter as the country faced record-high inflation and gas shortages. Carter was able to defeat Kennedy in the primary, but he ultimately lost the general election to a Republican candidate who promised to “make America great again”: Ronald Reagan..Jon Ward, author of Camelot’s End, which chronicles the 1980 Democratic primary, said there are some clear parallels and important distinctions between Carter and Biden. While Carter had a clear-cut opponent in Kennedy, it remains unclear who – if anyone – from the Democratic party’s highest ranks would challenge Biden.But one element working in Biden’s favor is time, Ward said. The 2024 presidential election is still more than two years away, giving the economy some breathing room to return to a place of greater stability.“There’s time for inflation to ease and for the economy to turn around,” Ward said. “However, it’s not clear that’s where we’re headed, since there are a lot of forecasts of recession and even the prospect of the very ‘stagflation’ that crippled Carter.”Biden’s allies insist he has time to improve the economy and the nation’s broader outlook, and they are generally dismissive of polls indicating he should step aside in 2024.“Polls are a snapshot of the time,” said Antjuan Seawright, Democratic strategist and senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Truth be told, what’s hot today could be cold tomorrow, and what’s cold today, it could be very hot tomorrow.”Seawright criticized the recent 2024 chatter as “a manufactured outrage from a few in our party”, suggesting those who are engaging in the speculation should instead rededicate themselves to the midterm elections.Even some of the progressives who did not support Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary echo that point. Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive group MoveOn, said she has not yet been talking about the 2024 election because of her single-minded concentration on the midterms.Emphasizing the urgency of the upcoming elections, Epting noted that some of the gubernatorial, state legislative and secretary of state races being held this year will have sweeping implications for 2024. A number of Republican candidates who have embraced Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 race are now running for posts that could help them determine election rules in 2024.“We’re going to find out whether our elections in 2024 are going to be free and fair, based on who ends up in office in 2022,” Epting said. “The very terrain of our democracy and our election system is going to be decided this election cycle.”TopicsJoe BidenUS elections 2024US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

‘It was opportunistic in the best sense’: how the US constitution inspired an exhibitionAfter a frenzied auction, a rare first printing of the US constitution was lent to a museum in Arkansas where it’s led to an exhibition on democracy They were eight tense minutes that Austen Barron Bailly will not forget in a hurry.The scene: Sotheby’s auction room in New York. The bidders: Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund manager, versus a group of 17,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts from around the world. The prize: a rare first printing of the US constitution.‘Many people don’t know this’: the artist shining a light on nuclear testingRead more“It was a nail biter because it was so clearly between these two bidders on the phone,” recalls Bailly, who witnessed the auction last November. “The back and forth and back and forth, and thinking about what it would mean for the US constitution to be owned by a private individual or by this crypto collective, was a pretty interesting, anticipatory eight minutes. Auction is its own form of theatre.”Griffin, an art collector and founder of Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, prevailed with a bid of $43.2m, a record price for a document or book sold at auction. Sotheby’s immediately announced that he would lend the constitution to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, for public display.The museum, which was founded by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, has about 4,000 works in its collection and is free to the public, made the constitution the centerpiece of an exhibition, We the People: The Radical Notion of Democracy, which opened earlier this month and runs until 2 January.Bailly, who is the museum’s chief curator, says: “The origins of this exhibition were very spontaneous. There was no intention to do an exhibition on the US constitution.“It was truly a response to the moment of the idea that this rare version of an original official edition was to have a new owner and there could be an opportunity to pair the document with works of art in a region of the country that has not seen that before. It was opportunistic in the best sense.”The show could be said to bridge the gap between history and art, between the dead white men of Mount Rushmore and the vibrant community of artists who critiqued America’s imperfect union since the beginning. The rare print of the constitution – one of just 11 known in the world, the museum says – is placed in dialogue with works that shine a different light on the nation’s founding.Among the highlights, organised by Native American art curator Polly Nordstrand, are historical paintings such as John Lee Douglas Mathies’s depiction of Seneca leader Red Jacket and John Trumbull’s portrait of Alexander Hamilton.Original prints of other founding documents, including the declaration of independence, articles of confederation and proposed bill of rights and emancipation proclamation, are juxtaposed with works by artists such as Shelley Niro, Roger Shimomura, Luis C Garza and Jacob Lawrence.Bailly explains: “That gathering of founding documents is truly unprecedented and then we have the opportunity through our collection and special loans to put those words, principles and foundations in conversation with the visual iconography of democracy, portraits of Native leaders, portraits of founding fathers, 20th century works of artists who are documenting and interpreting histories or imagining new futures.“It’s a diverse array of style, media, approach and perspectives and that’s really exciting. People can come to this show and see for themselves these fundamentals, both artistic and political.”The show – complemented by educational and public programming including panels, workshops, student tours and teacher resources – arrives at a moment when history, like seemingly everything else in America, seems to divide more than it unites.The New York Times’s 1619 Project reexamined the legacy of slavery, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton cast actors of colour as the founding fathers and the police murder of George Floyd prompted the removal of numerous Confederate statues.There has been a predictable rightwing backlash. Go to the website of the 1776 Project political action committee (PAC) and you are greeted with an invitation to “Report a School Promoting Critical Race Theory.” The PAC claims it is “promoting patriotism and pride in American history” as opposed to Marxist social engineering.Bailly says: “We don’t shy away from the complicated history and we seek to be very direct in providing fact and truth and those multiple perspectives. We have important works by artists of all backgrounds in the exhibition. We look, too, at the ways in which the cycles of American history and the struggles to form that more perfect union are a persistent part of our nature as a nation.“To me, one of the truest signs of patriotism is to care so much about your country, its principles, its documents, its fundamentals that you’re willing to criticize them to make sure that they work. There are always different ways to tell a story. What’s important is that there can be different biases or emphases within a story, but trying to strike some sort of balance is very critical for us.”Even the founding documents themselves, while sacred to many, are hardly beyond reproach. The declaration of independence’s resounding phrase, “all men are created equal”, does not mention women. The constitution’s “three-fifths clause” allowed enslaved people to be counted as three-fifths of free citizens.The chief curator adds: “What we find extraordinary is the recognition from the moment of the writing of the constitution that it was an imperfect document. We as a nation and artists and even founders of the constitution themselves embrace or acknowledge and work through those imperfections – thus the amendments, thus the bill of rights, thus the constant search for equality and justice.“These documents are the pillars and the cornerstones, flaws and all, of what guides us and we can constantly return to them. It’s those principles and the ostensible protection from the abuses of power that we the people have a responsibility to uphold, defend and fight for when they are not not upheld.”Surely one of the most important aspects of such an exhibition is its location. Donald Trump beat Joe Biden by more than 27 percentage points in Arkansas in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s former White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, is poised to become the state’s governor.Arkansas is bordered by red states Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. And in Bentonville, where Walmart was born and has its headquarters, a Confederate monument stood for more than a century until its removal in 2020. All in all, it does not seem the most fertile ground for a museum show interrogating the heroic version of the American story.But Bailly comments: “What we want to do is present contextually the conditions for the creation of these documents: the people, the places. We want to create a human-centric approach so that anybody coming in, no matter what his or her views are, will find some point of connection and may find connections that they haven’t thought about before.“We don’t dare to try to indoctrinate or direct or say, ‘You need to think like this.’ But we want to provide historical and artistic evidence that can allow people to inform their own thinking and ideas and perspectives. If they change, they change, if they don’t, they don’t. But we want to create that space for discovery, creativity, engagement.”
We the People: The Radical Notion of Democracy is now on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, until 2 January.
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Bernie Sanders condemns Joe Manchin for sabotaging president’s agenda Senator also rebukes Biden for Saudi Arabia trip: ‘I don’t believe we should maintain a warm relationship with a dictator like that’ Bernie Sanders harshly criticized prominent fellow Democrats on Sunday, accusing his Senate colleague Joe Manchin of sabotaging the president’s agenda and rebuking Joe Biden for traveling to Saudi Arabia last week.During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Sanders interrupted host Martha Raddatz when she said Manchin had “abruptly pulled the plug” on supporting a scaled-back version of a spending bill that is crucial to Biden’s agenda. Manchin said he would not support provisions in the bill that increase spending to combat climate change and close tax loopholes. Democrats cannot pass the bill without Manchin’s support in a US Senate that is divided 50-50, with vice-president Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaker in the event one is needed.The other Joe: how Manchin destroys Biden’s plans, angering DemocratsRead more“He didn’t abruptly do anything – he has sabotaged the president’s agenda,” Sanders said. “If you check the record, six months ago, I made it clear that you have people like Manchin, Sinema to a lesser degree, who are intentionally sabotaging the president’s agenda, what the American people want, what a majority of us in the Democratic caucus want.”“Nothing new about this,” he added. “The problem was that we continued to talk to Manchin like he was serious. He was not,” noting how the West Virginia senator and coal baron has benefited from campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies.Manchin said last week that he wants to delay any major decisions on the bill because of high inflation. Sanders said Sunday he wasn’t buying that justification, saying the people of West Virginia would support the provisions in the bill.“It’s the same nonsense Manchin has been talking about for a year,” he said. “In my humble opinion, Manchin represents the very wealthiest people in this country, not working families in West Virginia or America.”Biden tells summit of Arab leaders the US ‘will not walk away’ from Middle EastRead moreSanders also criticized Biden for his recent trip to Saudi Arabia, where the president fist-bumped and met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.The president has faced heavy criticism for the trip largely because Prince Mohammed personally approved the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, US intelligence agencies have concluded.As a presidential candidate Biden said he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah”, but has defended the trip as necessary to promote US interests in the Middle East, including stabilizing troubled oil markets. Biden said to reporters on Friday that he personally told the Saudi crown prince he believed he was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.Sanders said Biden should not have gone to Saudi Arabia.“You have a leader of that country who was involved in the murder of a Washington Post journalist,” Sanders said. “I don’t think that that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States.“I just don’t believe that we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictator like that.”TopicsJoe BidenBernie SandersJoe ManchinUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump won’t blunt January 6 inquiry by entering 2024 race, panel member says‘No one is above the law,’ says Elaine Luria in response to whether Trump could shield himself from threat of prosecution by simply announcing run Donald Trump won’t blunt the investigation by the congressional committee investigating the deadly January 6th attack on the Capitol by announcing that he’s running for the Oval Office again, a member of the panel said Sunday.Elaine Luria, a Virginia congresswoman and one of seven Democrats on the committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash, “The bottom line is that no one is above the law – whether he’s a president, former president or a potential future presidential candidate, we are going to pursue the facts.”Luria’s remarks were in response to an oft-asked question about whether Trump could simply announce he is running for president again in 2024 and shield himself from the threat of prosecution posed by the evidence presented during the January 6 committee’s recent hearings.Secret Service’s January 6 text messages story has shifted several times, panel is toldRead moreWhile the committee itself can’t charge Trump, it can recommend that federal prosecutors do so.Federal prosecutors have historically avoided pursuing criminal cases against prominent candidates ahead of high-stakes elections. But Luria’s comments suggest the committee members won’t shelf their inquiry or avoid potentially recommending charges against Trump just because the ex-president were to announce his aspirations to seek an electoral rematch against Joe Biden.Millions of Americans have watched live as witnesses summoned by the January 6 committee have exposed the lengths to which Trump tried to keep himself in the presidency after losing to Biden in the 2020 race.Among the most alarming episodes: he is accused of trying to commandeer his armored car and turn it towards the Capitol as a mob of his supporters – whom he told to “fight like hell” – stormed the building on the day Congress was supposed to certify his defeat. And when his vice-president faced a mob trying to hang him for not impeding the certification, Trump allegedly told aides that Mike Pence “deserves it”.Luria and the Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the panel, are slated to lead the committee’s next hearing on 21 July.Luria on Sunday said the committee planned to call new witnesses close to Trump and air additional “minute-by-minute” evidence to establish that he sat idly by as the attack on the Capitol unfolded. A bipartisan Senate report has linked seven deaths to the riots that day.Meanwhile, Sunday on CBS’ Face the Nation, Kinzinger pledged that the committee’s investigation is “not winding down”. He said he personally hoped the panel could set up an interview with Pence, though he acknowledged, “I am not sure we get a lot out of him.”New book claims Steve Bannon admitted Trump ‘would lie about anything’Read moreSimilarly, when asked on ABC’s This Week if the committee would seek to interview Pence or Trump himself, panel member Zoe Lofgren of California said: “Everything is on the table.”The committee over time has recommended criminal charges against four prominent Trump White House aides who refused to cooperate with its investigation: Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino.Federal prosecutors charged Bannon and Navarro, who face jail time and have pleaded not guilty, but it did not charge Scavino or Meadows.Bannon’s trial is set to start Monday with jury selection, though he’s recently offered to meet with the committee and provide sworn testimony.TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s town Mark Leibovich had a big hit with one Washington exposé but his follow-up tells us little we did not know alreadyMark Leibovich is the winner of a National Magazine Award, a former staffer of the New York Times Magazine, the author of a bestseller about Washington and a recent hire of the Atlantic, one of the hotter, the more serous news websites.Newt and the Never Trumpers: Gingrich, Tim Miller and the fate of the Republican partyRead moreIn short, he has a byline that arouses of expectations of thoroughness and thoughtfulness. So one might assume that his new 304-page tome (before the acknowledgments, the notes and the index) would include some new facts or several new insights about his subjects, the Trump sycophants who enabled the most disastrous presidency of modern times.Sadly, Leibovich has almost nothing fresh to tell us. Instead of new information, we get a recycled account of “the dirt that Trump tracked in, the people he broke, and the swamp he did not drain”.To be fair, Leibovich is remarkably up front about his lack of originality. As early as page 11 he warns the reader that “you will almost certainly recall many of the episodes described in the chapters ahead”. But it is still remarkable that he is unable to tell us almost anything new about the greatest hits of the Trump administration.In its preoccupation with gossip and a near-religious avoidance of substance, this book is a parody of the worst practices of the Washington press corps – which are among the biggest reasons a dangerous buffoon like Trump was able to reach the White House in the first place.Leibovoich does make one interesting observation in the first chapter, when he describes the Republican party as “a political version” of the “Stanley Milgram experiment on obedience” conducted at Yale in the early 1960s, when the researcher’s subjects were instructed to administer electric shocks upon innocent neighbors, ostensibly in the next room.“The force of the shocks was apparently becoming more and more painful as the victims screamed” – yet 65% of the subjects kept following instructions to continue the shocks.“The essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes,” Milgram concluded. “He therefore no longer regards himself as responsible for his actions.”Leibovich writes: “Republicans demonstrated much of the same fealty during the Trump years.”Unfortunately, his original insights begin and end there.The rest of the book consists of everything he wrote down in his notebooks, which he wisely left there until he sat down to compose this volume.His most frequent refrain is “Once again, you might recall all of it” – as indeed we do when he recounts the brief moment during the 2016 campaign when it looked like Marco Rubio might be the man to rescue the Republican establishment from Trump, or Rick Perry’s single spate of truth-telling, when he called the orange man from Queens a “toxic mix of demagoguery, mean–spiritedness and nonsense”.Of course, this “did nothing” to stop Perry endorsing Trump and becoming his energy secretary – but yes, we already recall that too.Like any good clip job, the book does include a few good lines – all of them from stories generated by others. Trump’s second secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was “like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass” (reported by Susan Glasser, in the New Yorker). Or Stormy Daniels, recoiling in horror when the late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel referred to her “making love” with the future president.“Gross!” said Daniels. “What is wrong with you? I laid there and prayed for death.”(A few paragraphs before that, Leibovich praises himself for the “minor feat” of not mentioning Daniels until page 153.)The author’s tenuous grasp of substance is most evident when he fudges exactly how much the Republican party had done to prepare itself for this moment, after its decades-long dances with racism and homophobia, dating back to Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy in 1968 and George W Bush’s courageous endorsement of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in 2004.Leibovich makes fun of Mitch McConnell for telling Politico Trump was “not going to change the basic philosophy of the party”, a prediction which turned out to be completely correct, since Trump’s biggest accomplishments were huge tax cuts for the rich and the appointment of three of the most disastrous, pro-business and anti-civil rights supreme court justices of all time.Steve Bannon admitted Trump ‘would lie about anything’, new book saysRead moreBut Leibovich treats the Senate Republican leader’s comment with all the wisdom of a spokesman for the Republican National Committee: “This turned out to be 100% true, except for Trump’s ‘basic philosophy’ on foreign policy, free trade, rule of law, deficits, tolerance for dictators, government activism, family values … and every virtuous quality the Republican party ever aspired to in its best, pre-Trump days.”If you want to hear Leibovich reprise all of the softball questions he asked (half of them off the record) of all Trump’s sycophants, this book is for you. But if you’re interested in explosive new facts about exactly how Trump tried to demolish American democracy, skip this and stay tuned for the next hearing of the House select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission is published in the US by Penguin Press
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‘He could be a good president’: is Tucker Carlson the next Donald Trump? The Fox news host spoke at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, a state that has first say in Republican presidential nomineesHe entered to rapturous applause, flattered his hosts shamelessly, told them about his political vision and sold them merchandise bearing his name.Tucker Carlson’s appearance in Iowa on Friday looked like a presidential run, walked like a presidential run and quacked like a presidential run but was most certainly not a presidential run, at least as far as anyone knows.The Fox News host was the keynote speaker at the Family Leadership Summit, a gathering of more than 1,800 religious conservatives in Des Moines, Iowa, which every four years is the first state to have a say in picking the Republican presidential nominee.A deadly ideology: how the ‘great replacement theory’ went mainstreamRead moreIt was at the same forum in the same state seven years ago that businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump told the audience that Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, was “not a war hero” – instantly dooming his candidacy, or so everyone thought.Carlson, 53, another political neophyte and media celebrity, has been touted as a potential Trump heir who might launch a bid for the White House by stoking the same flames of populism, white identity politics and hunger for a man who says what he thinks – the more outrageous the better.The New York Times has described Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News as “what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news”. It is also the most highly rated in prime time.Carlson describes white supremacy as a “hoax” but has become a prominent conduit for its talking points, suggesting that diversity is America’s biggest existential threat. He has notoriously promoted the far right “great replacement” theory, which holds that western elites are importing immigrant voters to usurp white people.Yet while he has embraced the nativist and liberal-taunting strains of the “Make America great again” movement, Carlson had been careful to keep some daylight between himself and Trump – leading some to speculate that he is carving out his own lane.“He could be a good president for sure,” said Kent Proudfit, 70, attending Friday’s Family Leadership Summit. “I don’t know if he would run but he’s pretty popular. He’s got the biggest cable show in America right now. I’d definitely vote for him.”Proudfit, a retired hospital courier driver wearing a “Trump 2024 revenge tour” cap that he got for free, said he was untroubled by Carlson’s lack of political experience.“You don’t always need to have somebody that’s a politician; maybe somebody that’s in business just like Trump was,” Proudfit said. “We need a businessman and he’s done pretty good in business so that’s where I would lean.”At the conference, Carlson’s warm-up acts were Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s governor, and Chuck Grassley, the longest-serving US senator in Iowa history, both of whom lauded the supreme court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.Taking the stage in a dark blue jacket, blue checkered shirt, blue-and-yellow striped tie and grey slacks, Carlson gave a 42-minute speech that ticked some of the boxes of a typical would-be candidate.There was personal biography (“I was super unpopular in sixth grade because I had exactly the same views that I have now.”), compliments to the hosts (“Think I’ve been to all 99 of your counties.”) and swipes at the Democrats (“The other side is so menacing and so scary at this point.”).Carlson also sought to clean up past comments that could be used against him. He has been widely condemned for voicing support for Russia in its war on Ukraine as well as for Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán.“I’m not a Putin defender, despite what you may have heard,” he said. “I don’t care one way or the other because he’s not my president. He doesn’t preside over my country and what he does in Ukraine, while I think historically significant, certainly significant to Ukrainians, is not more significant to me than what gas costs. In fact it’s not even in the same universe.”There was a ripple of applause. Carlson continued: “The rising price of fossil fuels is not an inconvenience. It’s the whole story. … Cheap energy, cheap fossil fuels make the difference between living in the Central African Republic and Des Moines.”He also bore some stylistic similarities to Trump in digressive, meandering remarks, sometimes with flashes of sardonic humour, that were more evocative of a man venting in a bar late at night than a politician reading from a teleprompter. Noting how Iowans have long been besieged by eager candidates, Carlson quipped: “I cannot even imagine being in my boxer shorts and, like, bumping into Beto O’Rourke.”But he admitted that he is “no Bible scholar” and gave no hint of joining that throng as he expressed surprise at being invited to address the conference, saying: “Then I thought, no, actually, I’m the perfect person to come up here because I can give you advice for how to assess the sweaty people begging for your vote. Because if there’s one group I know well, it’s politicians.”He argued that Republicans should choose a candidate who pays attention to voters’ core concerns, such as the welfare of their children, and who does not care what the New York Times thinks. Carlson’s speech went in esoteric directions, including reactionary gripes about modern architecture and an encounter with an underground bees’ nest.The TV host took familiar potshots at women who have abortions and transgender athletes before concluding: “Twitter isn’t real, OK? It’s the domain of super unhappy people with empty personal lives and creepy political agendas. What matters to you is what matters to you and you have every right, in fact you have a constitutional duty, to tell your representative to represent you on those issues.”The room erupted in whoops and applause from the conservative, overwhelmingly white audience that included many regular viewers of Tucker Carlson Tonight.Jim Hawkins, 77, retired from a career in education, said: “He is probably one of the more fearless people to expose many of the false truths. It’s very obvious that our press has a bias that leans toward liberalism.”At first Hawkins was skeptical about Carlson running for president but then appeared to warm to the idea, saying, “He would certainly outshine many of the people who would run against him through his intellect, his exposure to a variety of things. I could get behind that but he would leave a void in what he’s doing now.”Kyle Danilson, 16, wearing a white “Tucker Carlson” cap on sale in the lobby for $30, alongside water bottles for $20, said he had been watching Carlson’s show since he was 14. “He’s probably the number one reporter in conservative media,” Danilson remarked. “I agree with 75% of everything he says.“If he wanted to run for president he’d have the platform but I don’t think he should or would. He’s more one to promote somebody else instead of promoting himself.”Mary Jane Kolars, 71, watches Carlson’s show – widely condemned by fact checkers for spreading false conspiracy theories – every night.“I like that he’s honest,” she said. “He’s exposing a lot of corruption in our country and he’s not afraid to talk about what’s really going on behind the scenes.”But the retired substitute teacher and church secretary added: “I wouldn’t want him to run for president; I want Trump to. Tucker Carlson has his place and he’s gifted in that area. I don’t think he’s gifted in running a country or dealing with foreign countries and making deals like Trump can make deals.”Cindy Manning, 62, a teacher who watches the show almost every night, added: “He could run for president. I don’t know if that’s in his interest at all but he would make a good candidate. He does lack some things that he would need but he would just have to surround himself with people that would help him.”Democrats appear poised to end the first-in-the-nation status of their Iowa caucuses but Republicans are expected to maintain the tradition. Potential 2024 contenders including former vice-president Mike Pence, ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Senator Tom Cotton have been making visits to the Hawkeye state.Some observers suggest that Carlson, who was born to a wealthy family in San Francisco and attended a prestigious boarding school in Rhode Island, would struggle to appeal to Iowa’s conservative rural areas.Storm Lake Times newspaper editor Art Cullen said: “It seems to me like Tom Cotton or Mike Pence is much more a fit for Iowa than, say, Tucker Carlson, a guy who used to wear a bow tie and natty suits and everything. He shows up in Des Moines and Tom Cotton shows up in that little dinky town where there’s a lot of evangelicals.”Carlson’s brand of white nationalism would not necessarily be a vote winner here, Cullen added, saying, “There was a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment stirred up by the likes of former congressman Steve King. But there isn’t the kind of overt racism in Iowa that you’ll see in other places. It’s a much subtler form of racism so I don’t know if overt appeals are going to be that attractive.”Carlson has described impoverished immigrants as making America “poorer, dirtier, and more divided” and dismissed people protesting the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 as “criminal mobs”. He has also sown doubts about coronavirus vaccines and claimed without evidence that the January 6 Capitol insurrection was a government “false flag” operation.All told, his Iowa trip is unlikely to quell speculation that he could seek the Republican nomination.Democratic National Committee adviser Kurt Bardella said: “Tucker Carlson is someone who is very smart, a gifted performer, and would embody the absolute worst impulses of the Republican party come to life.“He would in many ways become the living embodiment of the white grievances that seem to have overrun the platform of the Republican party. When you tune into his programming every night, really it is the white grievance hour.”Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, added: “The white nationalist element within the party has grown larger and larger and more vocal and influential and visible. That would be a natural launching pad and constituency for a Tucker Carlson presidential bid.“In many ways, think of Tucker Carlson as a more polished Steve Bannon. Just right out of central casting, someone who embodies all the destructive elements that Steve Bannon represents but in a much more presentable and polished way.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsFox NewsIowafeaturesReuse this content More

The other Joe: how Manchin stands in the way of Biden, angering Democrats The centrist Democrat senator has repeatedly stood in the way of the president’s most ambitious legislative aspirations and derailed fragile negotiationsJoe Biden calls him “Jo-Jo”, an affectionate nickname for the West Virginia senator who, at critical moments during his presidency, has been the Joe holding all the cards.And this week Joe Manchin, a lonely coal state Democrat who has repeatedly stood in the way of the president’s most ambitious legislative aspirations, derailed weeks of negotiations in pursuit of a deal on a scaled-back version of Biden’s economic agenda that would win his support.Anger as Manchin kills Democrats’ climate plans – what happens now?Read moreWith control of Congress at stake, Democrats had hoped to reach a deal that fulfilled their campaign promises to combat global warming and expand the social safety net by the end of the month, giving lawmakers a legislative achievement to campaign on in the fall. But Manchin’s latest gambit all but ensured Democrats’ biggest ambitions would go unrealized.“Rage keeps me from tears,” Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and sponsor of the Green New Deal, wrote on Twitter late Thursday, as news broke of Manchin’s opposition. “Resolve keeps me from despair.”In a private discussion on Thursday, Manchin told Democratic leaders that he could not support a bill that contains new spending to combat climate change or raises taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations.By Friday morning, he had clarified his position. It was “not prudent” for Democrats to approve a major spending package while Americans faced painfully high costs for food, fuel and rent, the 74-year-old said in a radio interview.“Inflation is wreaking havoc on everybody’s life,” Manchin told the host, Hoppy Kercheval.But he offered an ultimatum: Democrats could accept a narrow deal now or try to pass a larger plan later, if the economic forecast improves.With his economic agenda in peril, Biden urged Democrats in Congress to accept what they could get done immediately to lower healthcare costs and vowed to act unilaterally on the climate crisis.The demands came at an inauspicious moment for the party’s leaders: the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who has been leading the fragile talks with Manchin, is stuck quarantining at home in Brooklyn after a Covid diagnosis while Biden was on a high-stakes trip to the Middle East. The president outlined his preferred course of action in a statement sent after he held a controversial meeting with the Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, during which rising fuel prices and oil production were top of the agenda.“Let me be clear: if the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” he said.It was in effect an acknowledgment that after more than a year of tortuous negotiations, Manchin could not be moved, not by activists, not by his colleagues, and not even by the president of the United States.“At some point you have to take the man at his word that he is not going to do that which he says he is not going to do,” said Christopher Regan, a former vice-chair of the West Virginia Democratic party who worked with Manchin.In a Senate divided evenly between the parties, any one Democrat could play king or queenmaker. But no one has done so more boldly or more frequently than Manchin.Fiscally conscious and socially conservative, Manchin is glaringly out of step with today’s Democratic party – and he knows it. At one point, he even offered to leave the Democratic party if his colleagues thought he’d become too much of an “embarrassment” – an offer he said they roundly rejected.Manchin comes from a political family in West Virginia, part of a legacy of Industrial-era Democrats who formed the party’s blue-collar base. Once one of the most reliably Democratic states, West Virginia began to turn sharply against the party, as the party bled support from white, working-class voters. In 2020, every single county in West Virginia voted for Donald Trump.Manchin, who began his career in state politics and served as governor, has so far defied the state’s lurch to the right. He was elected to the Senate in 2010, two years after Biden left to become vice-president, and won re-election in 2018.His victory helped Democrats build their fragile majority, with vice-president Kamala Harris serving as the 51st and tie-breaking vote.Reaching consensus hasn’t been easy. Manchin’s vote has been critical to approving Biden’s judicial nominees, and he ultimately signed off on the president’s massive Covid relief legislation over unanimous Republican opposition.But Manchin has joined Republicans to imperil some of Biden’s nominations, including Neera Tanden, who the president tapped to run the Office of Management and Budget and Sarah Bloom Raskin, who he chose to serve on the Federal Reserve. Neither were confirmed.Manchin is also a staunch defender of the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation which he insists encourages consensus in a deeply tribal chamber. Even when Republicans tested that view by obstructing a voting rights bill he crafted as a compromise solution to the matter, Manchin, joined by Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, remained firm.It’s a stance that puts the Democrats at odds with Biden, an avowed institutional who has nevertheless endorsed changing the filibuster rules to pass votings right legislation and abortion protections.In recent weeks, Biden has made repeated reference to their opposition, telling Democrats “we need two more senators” to break the current gridlock that has paralyzed much of his agenda.Nothing has angered Democrats more than Manchin’s opposition to Biden’s economic agenda.Known as Build Back Better, it began with New Deal-sized ambitions that, even at its slimmest, would still have dramatically expanded the social safety net and invested in critical efforts to lower carbon emissions.After months of frantically trimming and tailoring the legislation to meet Manchin’s demands, the senator abruptly drove a stake through the heart of the Democrats’ plan. Adding insult to injury, in the eyes of his colleagues, he announced his decision during an interview on Fox News. The revelation was so unexpected, it startled the host, Bret Baier, who asked for clarity: “You’re done? This is a no?”He was done.Talks on a stripped-down version of the bill began quietly earlier this year. Democratic leaders and the White House sought to keep expectations low even as the party’s demoralized supporters demanded action. Manchin says he’s open to a plan that would lower the cost of prescription drugs and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies set to lapse at the end of the year.Manchin’s approach has infuriated Democrats, particularly progressives who feel he has negotiated in bad faith, raising hopes before dashing them right when a deal seems within reach.“What he makes clear over and over again is that he can’t close the deal, and that you can’t trust what he says,” Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters on Friday.Manchin, apparently impervious to liberal pressure, argues that it’s him who has been consistent from the outset, voicing concern over rising inflation even when the president was arguing, wrongly, that it would prove “transitory”. New data showing that prices rose by an astonishing 9.1% in June prompted Manchin’s apparent reversal on the tax and climate provisions of the Democrats’ plan. In a statement, Manchin warned that new spending proposals risked inflaming inflation, which he called a “clear and present danger to our economy”.Activists in West Virginia and Washington have tried to cajole him with protests, sit-ins and ad campaigns to . Once a group of climate advocates in kayaks held signs that read “don’t sink our bill” during a “flotilla” protest outside his houseboat, Almost Heaven, where he lives when he is in Washington. Even Senator Bernie Sanders weighed in, with an op-ed in a West Virginia newspaper that drew Manchin’s ire.The West Virginian has always argued that he votes in the interest of his state, historically poor and hurt by the coal industry’s decline.But critics are skeptical, particularly when it comes to his position on climate legislation. Manchin is the Senate’s top recipient of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry and has made millions from his family’s coal firm.“Senators have told me and others that negotiating with Joe Manchin is like negotiating with an Etch-a-Sketch,” Norm Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said of Manchin’s opposition. “It appears to be a coal-powered Etch-a-Sketch.”In the radio interview on Friday, Manchin, who chairs the Senate energy and natural resources committee, indicated he might be interested in additional action on the climate crisis, if inflation begins to ease this summer.Whether Manchin and Biden can reach an agreement on the president’s biggest legislative priority before the November election will likely have profound implications for their party, but also, potentially, for the senator’s own political future.“There’s no friends for [Manchin] after this,” Regan, who worked in West Virginia Democratic politics, said. “He’s completely alienated the Democratic Party that supported him all the time and he’s nowhere near right-wing enough for the West Virginia Republican Party.”TopicsJoe ManchinJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More