US Politics

Pro-Trump Republicans’ primary wins raise alarm about US democracyCrucial races from Nevada to South Carolina returned candidates who back ‘big lie’ of stolen election while Democrats lost Hispanic votes in south Texas In pivotal primary races from Nevada to South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican voters chose candidates who fervently embraced Donald Trump’s lie about a stolen election, prompting warnings from Democrats that US democracy will be at stake in the November elections.Victories of pro-Trump candidates in Nevada set the stage for match-ups between election-deniers and embattled Democrats in a state both parties see as critical in the midterms.Is rising Maga star Ron DeSantis the man to displace Trump in 2024?Read moreIn South Carolina, a vote to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection proved one Republican’s undoing while another survived the former president’s wrath to win the nomination.In south Texas, where Hispanic voters have shifted sharply toward the Republican party, a Republican flipped a House seat long held by a Democrat. The loss was a stark warning that Democrats’ standing with a crucial voting bloc is slipping.Nevada, a swing state that has trended Democratic in past election cycles, will play host to a number of consequential races this fall, for House, Senate, governor and secretary of state, as Democrats seek to defend narrow majorities in Congress.In the 50-50 Senate, every race will matter. But the party is saddled with a deeply unpopular president in a political system primed for revolt against the party in power. Inflation and the war in Ukraine have caused the cost of food and gas to shoot up while angst over gun violence and a shortage of baby formula deepens voter frustration.Republicans view the Nevada Senate race as one of their best chances of flipping a Democratic seat. They also sense an opportunity to make inroads in a state dominated by Democrats who were guided to power by the late Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. The senator up for re-election, Catherine Cortez Masto, was his chosen successor.Adam Laxalt, a former state attorney general endorsed by Trump, easily won the Republican primary to take on Cortez Masto in one of the most fiercely contested races of the cycle.Jim Marchant, a former lawmaker who has dabbled in the QAnon conspiracy theory and openly embraced the idea of overturning elections, will be the Republican nominee to become secretary of state, and therefore the top election official in a swing state that could be crucial to determining the presidential contest in 2024.The elevation of election-denying Republicans across the US comes even as a bipartisan House panel investigating the Capitol attack unspools damning testimony from Trump’s inner circle, discrediting the former president’s claims.In South Carolina, Republicans ousted the five-term incumbent, Tom Rice, who crossed Trump and loyalists by voting to impeach the former president.Rice was defeated by Russell Fry, a Republican state lawmaker backed by Trump. The result was a welcome one for Trump after setbacks last month in races where Trump sought retribution against Republicans who rebuffed his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.But as in Georgia, there were limits to his influence. Another Republican House incumbent, Nancy Mace, fended off a Trump-backed challenger. Unlike in Rice’s staunchly conservative district, Mace – who did not vote to impeach but did criticise Trump – held on by attracting support from suburban voters who abandoned the party during the Trump years.On social media, Trump spun the evening as a resounding success. Mace’s challenger, Katie Arrington, he said, was a “very long-shot” who “did FAR better than anticipated”.“The ‘Impeacher’ was ousted without even a runoff. a GREAT night!,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, about Rice.In Maine, Jared Golden, one of the few Democrats to represent a House district Trump carried, will attempt to defy political gravity in a rematch against the seat’s former representative, Bruce Poliquin. Golden narrowly beat Poliquin in the anti-Trump wave of 2018. With political winds reversed, Poliquin hopes to regain the seat.The state’s combative former governor, Paul LePage, is also attempting a comeback. Facing no opposition, he clinched the Republican nomination to run against the incumbent, Janet Mills.Perhaps most worrying for Democrats was the loss in south Texas. A Republican state representative, Mayra Flores, cruised to victory, avoiding a runoff against her main Democratic opponent, Dan Sanchez, in a special election to fill a seat vacated by a Democratic congressman, Filemón Vela.Flores will have to run again in November. Because of redistricting, she is set to square off against the Democratic congressman Vicente Gonzalez in a district considerably more left-leaning than the one she will temporarily represent.Nevertheless, some prognosticators moved their ratings for the district in Republicans’ favor, citing gains among Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley.In a memo from the National Republican Congressional Committee obtained by CNN, the party touted Flores’ victory as the culmination of efforts to recruit and run more diverse candidates and said it offered a “blueprint for success in South Texas”.It concluded: “This is the first of many Democrat-held seats that will flip Republican in 2022.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsRepublicansDemocratsDonald TrumpNevadaSouth CarolinanewsReuse this content More

Tuesday’s Republican primaries should be an alarm bell to DemocratsLloyd GreenTrump-backed candidates did well, Latino voters continued to drift to the right and the January 6 hearings had no discernible impact On Tuesday, Republicans flipped a congressional seat in a heavily Hispanic district in south Texas, sent packing a pro-impeachment Republican congressman from South Carolina and nominated a passel of Trump loyalists in Nevada. It was a good night for the 45th president and an even better one for his party.In Texas’s 34th congressional district, Mayra Flores, a Republican, garnered 51% of the vote in a special election in a district that voted for Joe Biden by double digits. Flores is the first Republican elected from the district, and the first Latina Republican in Texas’s congressional delegation.The Democrats have plenty to worry about. Flores campaigned on being born in Mexico and arriving in the US with her migrant parents. From the looks of things, the Democrats’ hold on Latino voters appears to be rapidly eroding. The cracks that appeared in the 2020 elections continue to grow.Concerns over the economy and crime have supplanted immigration as a driving issue. With Trump’s name not on the ballot, the collapse of the stock market and inflation rampant, Flores’s win is a foretaste of the coming midterms. The special election also served as a blunt reminder of the lack of rapport between Joe Biden and the Latino community.In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders won Latinos over with a platform of Medicare for all and higher wages, lunch-bucket issues that resonate with a demographic group that leads Americans in workforce participation. In the February 2020 Nevada caucuses, the Vermont senator netted half the Hispanic vote, and triumphed in that contest by more than 25 points.Beyond that, a significant portion of US Hispanic voters categorize themselves as “white”, including more than half of Cubans in the Miami area, a 2020 Pew survey found. Contrary to what some progressives have convinced themselves, not all Hispanics feel woke, let alone are inclined to refer to themselves as “Latinx”.White voters with college degrees and Black voters in general comprise the heart of the Democrats’ coalition. But other demographic blocs appear to be heading for the door. Against this backdrop, the supreme court’s expected decision to overturn Roe v Wade should not be viewed by Democrats as a magic bullet that will rescue them from an expected Republican wave this fall.Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Trump exacted a combination of fealty and revenge. His grip over Republicans may have loosened but the love affair continues.In South Carolina’s seventh congressional district, incumbent representative Tom Rice suffered defeat after voting to impeach Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection.The congressman lost to Russell Fry, a state legislator endorsed by Trump. Rice remained unrepentant to the end. “I was livid,” he said. “I took an oath to protect the constitution and I did it then and I would do it again tomorrow.” His constituents were unimpressed.Elsewhere in South Carolina, Representative Nancy Mace defeated Katie Arrington, a one-term former state legislator who had Trump’s backing. Mace offended Trump by voting to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election and criticizing the insurrection.Unlike Rice, Mace opposed impeachment. Beyond that, on the campaign trail, she repeatedly stressed her personal support for Trump, and let his backers know that she still stood with them.Mace also received the active support of Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor and a Trump UN ambassador. The congresswoman also attacked Arrington for losing her security clearance while a civilian at the Pentagon. On Tuesday, Mace’s strategy paid off.Trump loyalists also had a good night in Nevada. There, denial of Trump’s loss in the 2020 election emerged as the coin of the realm. Jim Marchant won the Republican nomination for secretary of state. His embrace of the big lie was a central tenet of his candidacy.Elsewhere on the ballot, Trump’s pick for the US Senate, Adam Laxalt, prevailed in the Republican primary with a 55-36 win over Sam Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran. Laxalt is a former Nevada attorney general, and the grandson of the late Paul Laxalt, a US senator.He will face the Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto in the fall. That contest will again highlight a battle for the ballots of Nevada’s Hispanic voters. Indeed, control of the Senate may rest with Nevada.Likewise, Joe Lombardo, another Trump-backed candidate, won the Republican nod for governor. He is the sheriff of Clark county, and will take on Steve Sisolak, the Democratic incumbent.Hearings held by the House special committee did not affect Tuesday’s primaries; they were irrelevant. Whether that is the case in November remains to be seen.
An attorney in New York, Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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Trump thought he would get away with it. The US Capitol attack hearings prove that’s not trueEmma BrockesHigh drama, betrayal, catharsis: the televised select committee investigation makes for riveting viewing One of the worst things about the Trump presidency was the frequent sense that the man could do or say anything and, Alice in Wonderland-style, the sheer lunacy of it would never break through. “I could,” said Trump in 2016, “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.”On 6 January 2021, when, egged on by Trump, a mob of his supporters stormed the US Capitol building, this principle was seemingly put to the test. Impeachment efforts failed. Key members of Trump’s team declined to condemn him. His supporters appeared to remain loyal. Now, as the events of that day come before a House select committee, there’s a new approach in the fight to make some of this stick: less the presentation of evidence by a lawyer to a jury than of a prestige drama by a producer to a TV audience – one with limited time and multiple other viewing options.Last Thursday at 8pm eastern time, every TV network in the US, with the exception of Fox News, carried live coverage of the House select committee into the 6 January riot. If the Benghazi hearings of 2015, or the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings three years later, were, by the standards of most cable TV fodder, blockbuster TV events, this was of a different order entirely. Audience figures for the first day of the hearings hit 20 million on TV alone – that is, without numbers for all those watching via live stream.The Democratic chair of the committee, congressman Bennie Thompson, and his vice-chair, Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, stewarded a tight two-hour presentation that marshalled evidence against Trump as slickly as any HBO pilot. Both seemed aware of their deeper purpose: not merely to present the facts, but to construct a narrative that might, finally, persuade Americans in doubt that Trump fomented a mob intent on overturning the election.To this end, the hearings are being produced by James Goldston, a former president of ABC News and veteran producer of compelling TV. Unlike the televised Watergate hearings in 1973, which were a much more free-flowing and less compelling affair, the first two days of the hearings have been highly choreographed and dramatically structured, edited to hold one’s attention.From Thompson’s opening remarks – “tonight,” he said, deploying the language of news exclusives, “you will see never-before-seen-footage of the brutal attack on our Capitol” – to the split-screen format that banked reaction shots while witnesses were speaking, it has been extraordinary television. Thompson handed over to Cheney, who delivered a speech tailor-made for pull-quotes: “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said, before addressing her fellow Republicans: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain.”Part of the drama in the hours that followed was the shock of seeing formerly loyal servants of Trump do a swift 180-degree turn. These included Cheney herself, an arch-conservative whose voting record during Trump’s single term in office aligned 93% of the time with the man she was now calling a liar. More in this vein was to follow. Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general and a man who until recently had only praise for his former boss, testified by video that Trump’s “stop the steal” was “bullshit”, and he’d wanted no part of it.Ivanka Trump, looking so ghostly as to appear practically as a hologram, testified on video to say she had believed Barr; and an even more sickly looking Jared Kushner confirmed that, after being told by Trump’s own lawyer that no election fraud had taken place, Kushner had rejected the information as “whining”.The witnesses for the first day were cleverly chosen: a young, female officer in the US Capitol police, who was knocked unconscious while trying to hold off the rioters, tugged at the heartstrings. “I’m trained to handle a crowd,” she said, “but I’m not combat trained.” And the British documentary maker Nick Quested, who captured on film unimpeachable evidence that the events of 6 January weren’t random, but a plan executed by white supremacist groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. There was humour – Cheney’s deadpan expression as she described how Trump, on election night, “followed the advice of an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani”. And there was emotional release. It is shocking just how cathartic it was to hear a bipartisan committee, with all the trappings of office behind it, finally say the words we’ve been waiting to hear: “Donald Trump acted illegally.”All of this choreography is designed to build a case that will, presumably, eventually aid the justice department in its criminal proceedings against Trump. In the meantime, it was hearts and minds the committee was after, building to a peak in that first hearing with a closing montage of scenes of violence at the Capitol overlaid with audio of Trump. “They were peaceful people,” he said, as images of his supporters beating police officers and smashing windows unspooled. “These were great people. I mentioned the word love, the love, the love in the air.” On Wednesday, American audiences waited, with bated breath, for episode three of the drama to drop.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
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Elon Musk suggests he may vote for Republican Ron DeSantis in 2024World’s richest man says in tweet he is leaning towards Florida governor after voting Republican in Texas special election The tech billionaire Elon Musk said on Wednesday that he would possibly vote for Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, if he were to run in the 2024 US presidential election.The billionaire tech mogul’s expression of support for DeSantis, albeit vague, was among several tweets in which he discussed some of his political leanings after he recently declared himself a Republican.Musk claimed to back the successful Republican congressional candidate Mayra Flores during a special election in Texas on Tuesday.“I voted for Mayra Flores – first time I ever voted Republican. Massive red wave in 2022,” Musk said.Mayra Flores wins special election to turn Texas House seat RepublicanRead more“I assume republican for president 2?” an account called Tesla Owners Silicon Valley asked.Musk replied, “tbd,” prompting the follow-up: “What are you leaning towards?”“DeSantis,” Musk said.Musk’s seeming support of DeSantis comes as the high-profile Republican – who is both a staunch ally to Donald Trump as well as a potential rival – appears to be a strong contender in the party’s presidential primary.The rising star has bested Trump in recent polls of Republican activists, as some conservative diehards seem to be tiring of the ex-president’s insistence that he won the 2020 election.Trump’s “big lie” claim has repeatedly been proven wrong. Joe Biden won the presidency and there is no evidence that he did so unlawfully.DeSantis has been ramping up his efforts to position himself as a true conservative. He has signed into law legislation that strips Black voters’ power through gerrymandering congressional districts to benefit Republicans, for example. DeSantis also curtailed the discussion of race and diversity in schools and businesses. He has also signed off on bills that ban discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in some Florida classrooms with his “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.His attack on what he called “wokeism” has come to include bans on math textbooks that supposedly include “prohibited” subjects, such as critical race theory. He has also tried banning medical care for transgender youths and engaged in a sparring match with Disney.Disney publicly opposed DeSantis’s attack on LBGTQ+ rights. DeSantis’s dogged rhetoric on social issues has built a strong brand, with political science professor Michael Binder previously telling the Guardian: “He’s nicknamed Governor Grievance.”TopicsRepublicansElon MuskUS politicsRon DeSantisnewsReuse this content More

Mayra Flores wins special election to turn Texas House seat RepublicanSouth Texas congressional district goes Republican for first time as party continues to make inroads among Latino voters A south Texas congressional district will be represented by a Republican for the first time following a special election on Tuesday. The election of Mayra Flores, who bested her Democrat competitor in a 51%-43% vote, comes as Republicans continue to make inroads among Latino voters in south Texas.Bernie Sanders skewers Republican critic of ‘full-on socialism’ in Fox debateRead moreFlores, reportedly the first Latina Republican to serve Texas in Congress, is expected to face a more challenging race in November, however. Her victory was to replace Democrat Filemon Vela, who retired before his term ended – meaning she was elected to serve out the remainder.During November’s general election, voters will determine who will serve as the district’s permanent congressional representative starting in 2022. Flores, who is running for this seat in the general election, will face off against Democratic nominee Vicente Gonzalez.Gonzalez now serves as the representative for a neighboring congressional district. He is reportedly expected to beat Flores in the election.Flores’s victory comes as Republicans ramp up efforts to court Latino voters and amid a slew of polls and elections showing a broader shift among Latino voters away from the Democrats.“If you look at things like the Texas local elections, the New Jersey elections, Nassau County elections, the Virginia elections, they all point to Hispanics not just not snapping back but continuing to get more Republican in relative terms than they were before,” David Shor, a political data analyst of the left, told Yahoo News.Indeed, Flores touted her conservative bona fides on the campaign trail. She invoked elements of Trump’s rhetoric, and leaned heavily on law-and-order motifs in describing her background.Flores, a respiratory care worker, was born in Mexico. On her website, Flores boasts that her parents and grandparents “raised her with strong conservative values and to always put God and family first”.She has made clear that her immigration to the US at age six was done “legally” and “with the help of her father … gave her family the biggest gift, the gift of becoming a proud, naturalized American citizen”.Flores has also voiced alignment with “America First”, an exceptionalist rightwing clarion call to those who feel neglected by politicians. She has claimed her district has long had “to beg for scraps from Nancy Pelosi” and said “for over 100 years, the Democratic party has taken for granted the loyalty and support south Texas has given them for decades”.“They do nothing to earn our vote or our support,” Flores also said on her campaign site. She also faulted President Joe Biden by claiming that he signed “a record number of executive orders to kill Texas jobs, weaken border security, and remove protection for the unborn”.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Trump’s raising of $250m for fund that ‘did not exist’ suggests possible fraud‘The big lie was also the big rip-off,’ says Democrat Zoe Lofgren after January 6 panel appears to make case for fundraising fraud The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack appeared to make the case at its second hearing that Donald Trump and his campaign engaged in potential fundraising fraud, raising $250m for a Trump “election defense fund” that did not actually exist.Like Napoleon at Elba, Donald Trump plots his revenge and return | Lloyd GreenRead moreThe hearing, led by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, also showed that Trump and the campaign raised millions for thefund and then funneled the money to, among other destinations, the Trump business properties as well as Trump’s own Save America political action committee.In showing that Trump deceived donors into contributing money to the election defense fund – based on claims about a stolen election that his top advisers told him were nonsense – the panel suggested Trump engaged in potential fraud as well as other violations of federal law.The select committee said through filings and other evidence, it found the Trump campaign raised $100m in the first week after the election and overall raised about $250m as it asked donors to help fundraise legal challenges to the results.But the “Official Election Defense Fund”, as it was billed on fundraising emails that were repeatedly sent up until 30 minutes before the Capitol attack, did not formally exist, according to Trump campaign aides Hannah Allred and Gary Coby, who testified to the panel.“The big lie was also a big ripoff,” Lofgren said of the deception at the hearing, later telling CNN: “He intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what it said.”The Trump campaign was able to fundraise through to January 6 since Trump continued frivolous election litigation past the so-called safe harbor deadline, which is generally accepted as the date by which state-level election challenges – like recounts – must be completed.The select committee doubled down on establishing Trump’s criminal or corrupt intent in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results by showing he could not have reasonably believed he had defeated Biden when some of his most senior advisers told him otherwise.Trump was told by every credible adviser, from former attorney general Bill Barr to former Trump campaign chair Bill Stepien to former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann to former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, that the election was not stolen.The admissions by Trump’s top officials are significant as they could put federal prosecutors one step closer to being able to charge Trump with obstructing an official proceeding or defrauding the United States on the basis of election fraud claims he knew were false.The select committee in short made the case that if Trump is ever charged, he could not use the defense that he acted in potential criminal ways because he earnestly believed there was election fraud because he was told otherwise – the doctrine of “wilful blindness”.At the second hearing, the select committee also revealed a new piece of information: that Trump falsely declared victory on election night at the White House at the insistence of his attorney Rudy Giuliani, and against the advice of every other presidential adviser.The former president had infamously claimed on election night that “frankly, we did win this election” even though no winner had yet been announced, as a number of the most closely contested states were still counting millions of mail-in ballots.How Trump came to falsely declare victory on election night was not exactly clear, until the select committee on Tuesday played a video of the top Trump White House aide Jason Miller testifying that Giuliani recommended to Trump they just pretend that they had won.“They’re stealing it from us,” Giuliani told the then president when he found him at the White House, according to Miller, who also testified that the former New York mayor seemed drunk. “Where do all the votes come from? We need to go say that we won.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsJan 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

Interview‘There’s an art to not alarming people’: the duo who pranked Trump, Cruz and the NRAMatthew Cantor The Good Liars – AKA Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler – have mined a rich seam by infiltrating rightwing events and satirizing them with a straight faceThey have told Donald Trump he’s boring, obtained Dr Ben Carson’s signature to authorize a weed prescription, and attempted an exorcism on Ted Cruz.Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler, AKA the Good Liars, have been working together since the era of Occupy Wall Street. Interviewing rightwing activists and slipping undercover into political rallies, their brand of satire exists somewhere between The Daily Show’s correspondent segments and the character-driven comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen.Comedian infiltrates NRA event to mock Wayne LaPierre’s ‘thoughts and prayers’Read moreAt an event for Ted Cruz – a frequent target – Stiefler managed to get onstage next to the senator and ask the crowd: “What made everyone so weird and sad that they had to come out here?” During a moment of prayer with the then presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, Selvig asked God to “give the candidates the strength to know when to quit”. But you might know them best from a recent appearance at an NRA convention in Houston, days after the school shooting in Texas.Addressing attendees as well as the NRA’s executive vice-president himself, Selvig made an impassioned speech, condemning “the leftwing media” for “saying Wayne LaPierre isn’t doing enough to stop these mass shootings”.He reeled off a seemingly endless list of tragedies before reminding the crowd that “the NRA under Wayne LaPierre’s leadership has provided thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families. And maybe these mass shootings would stop happening if we all thought a little bit more and we prayed a little bit more.”Many in the audience appeared to miss the satire. But when a clip of the speech emerged online, the rest of the world certainly didn’t. As of Monday, the video had received nearly 10m views on Twitter alone.It was hardly planned in advance. “We didn’t know that I was going to have that opportunity to be on a microphone with Wayne LaPierre until I walked into the room,” Selvig tells the Guardian. He spent the moments before his speech trying to craft remarks that “matched the tone” of the others there – apparently successfully, given the applause afterward.Selvig and Stiefler – born in the 80s, though they found themselves temporarily unable to speak when asked their exact ages – met through friends on the comedy scene in New York City. They became friends playing basketball together before conducting their first joint project, during Occupy Wall Street. Selvig and Stiefler posed as bankers, telling the media they represented the “Occupy Occupy Wall Street” movement and were proud to be part of the 1%. Speaking to protesters while wearing “thrift store suits”, they would lament their plight: “‘We’re gonna have to stop doing so much cocaine if we can’t afford it any more because you guys are out here,’” Stiefler recalls saying. “Kind of, like, over-the-top stuff that ended up being taken seriously.”They were surprised when actual bankers fell for the joke and joined them. “We sold merch, like to be funny – we thought we would sell zero of them. But we sold a bunch of, like, $300 cufflinks that said ‘1%’ on them, you know, playing this part,” Stiefler says. “We were trying to be found out and we couldn’t.” Finally, Rachel Maddow caught on.The time we asked Ted Cruz why he is so sad and weird. pic.twitter.com/1tbIrypaar— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) June 15, 2020
“Ever since then, we’ve felt like there was comedy to be mined from real situations,” Stiefler says. “And it was almost like we back-doored our way into being kind of socially, politically aware, because if we’re gonna go to events, interact with real people, it’s much more satisfying if we’re able to stick it to the right people.”That led to a new project a few years later: a film in which the pair, playing the roles of undecided and not-so-bright voters, pranked the 2016 presidential candidates. “That was kind of the beginning of the way we’re doing things now,” Stiefler says.That film led to the Cruz exorcism attempt, as well as firing guns with Rick Santorum while in character as worshipful fans, calling him “Dad”, and a query to Marco Rubio about a girlfriend who had fallen for the candidate: “What can I do to win her back? You won her away from me.”The amount of preparation that goes into each encounter varies widely. For the film, much of the planning was an effort to find “the funniest interaction that hopefully has some social commentary woven into it”, Selvig says, but also fit with the fictional character’s motivations.But plenty of improvisation is involved. Selvig describes the moment when they stood at the front of a Trump rally, in suits and bright red Maga hats, and began loudly complaining that he was boring – derailing the speech before Trump instructed security to get rid of them.“We had kind of a plan going in for something to do,” Selvig says, but that changed when they arrived on the scene. “We didn’t realize that it was going to be so boring. He actually is very boring live, because he just repeats the same things you’ve heard over and over and over again.” It occurred to them that pointing that out would be “the most insulting thing” for Trump. “It would hurt his feelings the most. And that was important,” Selvig says.Both men have backgrounds in improvisation, particularly Stiefler, who was on several teams as part of New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade. Selvig has a degree in drama from Syracuse University. But theatrical work can only take you so far when your scene partners are America’s political leaders.“We’re not working necessarily with the people in the same way you do onstage at a UCB improv show. It’s just kind of a different beast,” Stiefler says.“Ted Cruz is a horrible improv,” Selvig adds.So what is it like performing with someone like that – how do Selvig and Stiefler maintain their remarkable composure?It can be frightening, Stiefler says, particularly given all the concerns leading up to the key moment – getting through campaign security, occupying spaces where they aren’t supposed to be. “So yeah, our hearts are kind of beating and everything,” he says.But “once you’ve started, it would be weirder to bail than it would be just to see it through. It would be stranger and more alarming to people, I think, if you give up halfway through,” he adds. “I’ve never found it hard to keep a straight face, because once you’re in, you’re in.”That certainly applied to Selvig’s NRA speech, which went on for two minutes without interruption. “I didn’t really have time to worry about it, because by the time I’d gotten the creative down, I was in front of the microphone speaking,” Selvig says.But there was a very different reason to be fearful: everyone in that room, as Stiefler puts it, was “decidedly armed”.“There’s definitely an art to not alarming people too much and not seeming threatening in any way. But [Jason] being able to get on the microphone like that, I think it was such a just a perfect way of getting a chance to say what 60% of the country would love to say to Wayne LaPierre,” Stiefler says. The speech took place at an event where NRA members were voicing their opinions on his leadership, so LaPierre “really had to sit there. Listen to it. Take it all in.”Last year, the two found themselves on the fringes of a particularly unsafe environment: they were near the Capitol on January 6, speaking to those in the area before the riot. “We were talking to people and it was like – it had a feeling like something bad was gonna happen,” Stiefler says. “And as bad as it was, I was kind of grateful that we were there to document some of it.” He recalled speaking to one man who gave a monologue about Trump’s greatness and how he would “die in his boots” for the country; others described “1776 2.0”.“It just gives you a window into what’s going on, how convinced people are of this,” Stiefler says. “Being there that day is something I will never, never forget.”They watched people break through a police line and saw people speaking in tongues. Their microphones made them a target and they were surrounded and threatened. “I didn’t sleep for a week afterwards,” Selvig says. “Cops were crying – military, these grown tough dudes are crying because they’d lost control and didn’t know if their friends were all being killed inside … nobody knew what was happening.”At a time like this, can comedy cut through the madness? Stiefler and Selvig see reason for at least a little hope.“We have fans that will reach out and say we have kept them caring at all about politics – they would have unplugged a long time ago if they didn’t have a way of interacting with it that wasn’t so depressing,” Stiefler says.At Trump rallies, younger supporters of the ex-president will approach them and say how much they love the videos. “That’s got to be a good thing, if these people are decidedly not identifying with the really out-there stuff that we’re making fun of,” Stiefler adds.“It’s not like we’re trying to make Democrats out of everybody. We just think these certain people, and these certain ideas, need to be called out.”TopicsComedyUS politicsNRAfeaturesReuse this content More

US House passes bill to expand supreme court security to justices’ familiesThe bill comes after an armed man was arrested outside Brett Kavanaugh’s house as the court is due to rule on an abortion case The US House of Representatives has given final congressional approval to a bill to bolster supreme court security, ahead of an anticipated ruling curtailing abortion rights and in light of the arrest of a man charged with attempting to murder Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the court’s conservative majority.The legislation, which had already cleared the Senate, passed the House on a 396-27 vote. Joe Biden is prepared to sign it into law. It will expand police protection to families of justices and senior court officials.Man arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home charged with attempted murderRead moreThe House Republican leader said the bill would protect justices from “leftwing radicals”.A prominent Democrat said family members of court clerks and officials were also under threat, from “rightwing activists”.The court is due to rule in a major abortion case from Mississippi. A leaked draft opinion showed the conservative majority poised to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalized abortion. Protests have ensued outside some justices’ homes.Last week, a California man carrying a handgun, ammunition, a crowbar, pepper spray and zip-tie handcuffs was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home in Maryland.Republicans have led calls for improved protection but some progressives have contrasted such eagerness to act with many Republicans’ refusal to consider gun reform, even in the wake of a series of mass shootings.On the House floor on Tuesday, Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, Texas, said: “It is incredible to stand here and listen to our Republican colleagues talk about the risks and the dangers that exist to the supreme court.“I want to know where they were when the risks and the dangers existed in my community. In El Paso, Texas, where 23 innocent people were slaughtered by a white supremacist with an AK-47 [in 2019]. Where were they then?“How about Uvalde? Where were they then? How about every other mass shooting? Buffalo, you name it.”Ginni Thomas pressed 29 lawmakers in bid to overturn Trump loss, emails showRead moreNineteen children and two teachers were killed in Uvalde last month. Also in May, 10 people died in a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.Referring to gun reforms passed by the House but with no chance of passing the Senate, Escobar said: “Last week, we brought to the floor legislation intended to protect millions of Americans, especially including children.“The vast majority of our Republican colleagues voted against those protections for vulnerable people who don’t have access to 24-hour, round-the-clock US marshals protection. Who don’t have access to round-the-clock 24/7 police protection, which supreme court justices have today.“Supreme court justices have far more protection than members of Congress do. But more importantly [they have more protection] than those innocent lives that were taken in innumerable cities across America.”The US justice department is already providing additional support to court police.In the Kavanaugh case, Nicholas John Roske, 26 and from Simi Valley, California, was dressed in black when he arrived by taxi outside Kavanaugh’s home around 1am last Wednesday. According to court documents, he spotted two US marshals guarding the house and walked in the other direction, calling 911 to say he was having suicidal thoughts and planned to kill Kavanaugh.Roske said he had found the address on the internet.On Tuesday the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, greeted passage of the bill by saying: “We are sending a clear message to leftwing radicals: you cannot intimidate supreme court justices.”House Democrats had wanted to add protections for families of clerks and other court employees who, in the words of Ted Lieu, a congressman from California, “are getting threats from rightwing activists”.But Senate Republicans objected.“The security issue is related to supreme court justices, not the nameless staff that no one knows,” the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday.Lieu said measures to protect families of clerks and other employees would be considered separately.The federal judiciary is calling for separate legislation to offer more protection for judges. The US marshals service said judges were subject to 4,511 threats and inappropriate communications last year.TopicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)US CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More