US Politics

The deepest problem affecting the progress and development of democracy is the crippling dominance of party-first politics (Senate Republicans stand by their man and Trump wins his second acquittal, 13 February). It restricts the power of politicians to act in the best interests of their countries and their people.
The clear illustration of the power of party politics has been the trial of Donald Trump. Before the trial began, and ahead of any formal evidence being heard, the base of the Republican party had already decided the outcome. Thus, the verdict of one of the most politically important trials in history was given based on party dogma and not on the evidence, nor in the interests of the country.
Countries around the world with similarly blinkered party systems will also be rejuvenated. This will be embraced by the Victorian-era-entrenched Conservative party in the UK, which will be enabled to continue and extend its oligarchic rule which is swiftly becoming a kakistocracy.
Party politics should reflect the will of an ever-changing society. It has, however, become the greatest barrier to progress and fairness. Until politicians are selected solely on ability, rather than party loyalty and populism, democracy will exist only in name and civilised evolution will stagnate and devolve. Matt Minshall Batz-sur-Mer, Brittany, France
• The second acquittal of Donald Trump by the US Senate represents a profoundly dark and dangerous moment for American democracy. The message is clear. No conduct, be it inviting foreign powers to interfere in an election or fomenting violence to overthrow its result, is sufficiently abhorrent to permanently bar a candidate from holding public office. It now falls to the justice department and state prosecutors to succeed where Congress has failed and hold Trump truly accountable. If they do not, the US need only wait for the next attempt to subvert its democracy. Daniel Peacock New Moston, Manchester
• Most Republican senators did not honour their oath to “do impartial justice”, but voted politically instead. If the US’s system of governance is unable to hold Trump to account for his attempt to overthrow the result of a fair and free election, its much-vaunted constitution is simply not fit for purpose. Pete Stockwell London
• Jonathan Freedland is (almost) completely right (Acquitting Trump would spell grave danger for US democracy, 12 February). However, he errs in his report of Donald Trump’s relationship with violence and the rule of law. Trump had not been “whipping up his supporters for nearly a year”. His incitement to violence and failure to accept election results began before he stood as president in 2016, and continued throughout his term.
At rallies as long ago as 2015, Trump was encouraging violence against his opponents. His tolerance of violence and recognition of its attraction to a section of his base was confirmed when he said, in January 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”. Even before the 2016 election he refused to confirm that he would accept the result, raising rigged elections.
The events of 6 January were entirely foreseeable and consistent with the Trump we saw from 2015. The Republican party knew exactly who Trump was when they nominated him for president and then enabled him throughout his term and beyond.Magi Young Exeter More

For a few days last month, in a little corner of the internet where topics of Jewish interest are discussed, Jewish space lasers were trending.The discussion was prompted by speculation from the newly elected Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene based on “research” she had conducted, that wildfires in California had been caused by a project to explore “solar generators” tenuously associated with Rothschild, “an international banking firm”. Once that assertion became public, the floodgates opened and cynics, humorists and pundits – the Jewish community is blessed with an abundance of them – took ownership of this meme and began to explore every aspect of the lasers. Were they an appropriate batmitzvah gift? Did people who observe kashrut need separate lasers for dairy and for meat? Was a special one necessary for Passover? If buying in bulk, could they be obtained wholesale?Of course, the Jewish community is a place where there is always a surfeit of opinions. Not surprisingly, some observers doubted whether this was a matter for humour, arguing that it was not acceptable to laugh at such a dangerous – albeit absurd – claim. They argued that however far-fetched – a word that some pundits claim must have a Yiddish origin – Greene’s assertions might be, they were not a laughing matter.The doubters were quickly reminded that Jews have developed a fine art of laughing at their sorrows, even while trembling with fear. Surprising though it may be, in Nazi Germany Jews crafted jokes about the horrendous circumstances in which they lived. Consider this classic. Berlin 1938: two Jews were sitting on a park bench reading newspapers. One was engrossed in the Jewish communal paper, while the other occupied himself with the Nazi party’s official paper. The first, seeing his companion’s choice of reading material, expressed amazement that he would read a paper rife with antisemitic propaganda. The second explained that if he read the Jewish newspaper all he would find was news of Jews’ trials and tribulations. But if he read the Nazi paper, he learned that Jews controlled the banks, the media, foreign governments and every other important global institution. One depressed him, while the other made him feel powerful.But then, just as suddenly as it had gained a foothold on social media, the humour stopped. The abrupt halt to some very clever exchanges came when the Republican caucus refused to punish, criticise or condemn Greene in any fashion. Instead, they gave her a standing ovation. They did so after she told them that she had only been “curious” about some of the ideas she had posted and didn’t really know what space lasers were. Though her explanations beggared the imagination – her space laser post was long and detailed – it was enough for her colleagues.She made no public apology, neither to the gathering of Republican colleagues or on the following day, when she spoke on the House floor. She contended that the comments for which she was being criticised were “words of the past”, as if they had been made decades ago. In fact, some were just a few months old.Some people were shocked by Taylor’s comments. I was not. Having spent decades studying, teaching, researching and fighting antisemitism, Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy.In her QAnon-inspired worldview, behind them all was a small group of inordinately powerful people who had global – not national – loyalties. They conspired against the common welfare to advance their own interests. They mutilated babies. They amassed power and money in order to harm good, hard-working and, one can fairly assume, Christian folks. This is the foundation stone of classic antisemitism. There are certainly non-Jews in the swamp Greene wants to “drain”. But ultimately it is Jews who are the puppeteers.Antisemitism is a prejudice, akin to so many others. Just like racism and an array of other hatreds, it relies on stereotypes and assumes that all members of the group share those characteristics. Antisemitism has unique characteristics that differentiate it from other hatreds. The racist “punches down” and loathes persons of colour because they are apparently “lesser than” the white person. They are, the racist proclaims, not as smart, industrious, qualified or worthy. In contrast, the antisemite “punches up”. The Jew is supposedly more powerful, ingenious and financially adept than the non-Jew. Jews use their prodigious skills to advance themselves and harm others. The Jew is not just to be loathed. The Jew is to be feared.Every act of antisemitism – from shoving a Jew on the street to murdering them en masse – has this conspiracy at its roots. It was what prompted people in the middle ages to believe that Jews had poisoned the wells in order to spread the plague. It was at the heart of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a well-known forgery that purported to be the records of a meeting of powerful Jews who were scheming to control the world’s finances. Nazi antisemitism was founded on the notion that Jews were engaged in a deadly conspiracy against the German people. They had, the Nazis charged, “stabbed Germany in the back” during the first world war, thereby engineering its loss.I don’t believe Greene is advocating physical violence against Jews. It was hard, however, not to be struck by her choice of words when she spoke on the House floor to argue that these were no longer her views. Rather than apologise, she condemned the attacks on her as an attempt to “crucify” her. Crucify?Irrespective of her personal views about Jews, there is no doubt, however, that she is reinforcing and spreading a dangerous notion. She may not pick up the rock or gun to harm a Jew, but she is giving ammunition to those who will. And this kind of hatred and violence may start with Jews, but it never ends with them. And if it begins with others, it will eventually lead to Jews. History makes that clear.The UK recently witnessed how seamlessly various manifestations of antisemitism flowed from the fringes of a political party into the centre. That was, of course, from the left of the political spectrum. One has to wonder, if after the embrace Greene has received from her colleagues, we will not witness the same thing in the Republican party. This time it will come from the right. Both give witness to the ubiquitousness of antisemitism. It has no political favourites.Ultimately, however, this is about something more all-encompassing than even antisemitism. It is about an attack on democracy and the institutions that undergird that democracy. Conspiracies, such as those peddled by QAnon, are not just infused with antisemitic symbolism and themes, but are designed to create doubt about democratic institutions including Congress, the courts, financial agencies, electoral processes, the media and anything that is even obliquely connected to democracy.Every act of prejudicial physical violence begins with words. Greene has provided an endless array of such words. Her Republican colleagues, rather than stand and applaud, should recognise that and act upon it. There are people who spread hatred and prejudice and there are those who enable the spread of hatred and prejudice. Not just Greene, but also the Republicans who have failed to condemn her are enablers. They will ultimately bear responsibility for the consequences.In the fight against hatred and evil, neutrality is not an option. There are no bystanders. More

Wendy Mize’s family grew up on Publix, disciples to the giant supermarket chain’s empirical marketing slogan: “Where shopping is a pleasure”. As infants, her three daughters wore diapers bought from the Publix baby club. As children, they munched on free cookies from the bakery. There were even perks for the family’s pets, who are proud members of Publix Paws.But now the decades-long love affair is over. After a member of Publix’s founding family donated $300,000 to the Donald Trump rally that preceded January’s deadly Capitol riots, Mize is pulling out of what she says has become “an abusive, dysfunctional relationship”, and joining others in a boycott of the Florida-based grocery chain that operates more than 1,200 stores across seven south-eastern states.“It was the last straw,” said Mize, 57, an advertising copywriter from Orlando whose youngest twin daughters are now 19. “Insurrection at the Capitol, images of the police officer with his head being crushed, individuals dressed as Vikings on the floor of the Senate… we’re not going to call this normal. [Publix] are a private company and it is their business how they want to contribute their money, but it’s also my right to decide where I want to spend my dollars.”Publix is an institution in Florida, the company growing from Depression-era roots in the 1930s to a regional behemoth with 225,000 workers today, and its founding Jenkins family now worth $8.8bn, according to Forbes. It prides itself on a family-friendly image, luring customers with prominent buy-one-get-one deals and a range of popular sandwich subs, and boasts of being the largest employee-owned company in the US.Yet the company and its founders have donated often and generously to partisan, conservative causes, including more than $2m alone by Publix heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli, daughter of the late company founder George Jenkins, to the Republican National Committee and Trump’s failed re-election campaign.In a brief statement on 30 January, to date the company’s only comment about Fancelli, Publix attempted to distance itself from her. Yet her funding of the Trump gathering that formed the insurrection’s opening act, and revealed by the Wall Street Journal to have been channelled through the rightwing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, was just the latest in a series of controversies and missteps that left some shoppers holding their noses as they filled their carts, or others like Mize pulling out altogether.Three years ago, in the aftermath of the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17, Publix temporarily halted political donations after an outcry over its bankrolling of Adam Putnam, a self-confessed “proud National Rifle Association sellout”, for state governor.Parkland survivors, led by the activist David Hogg, and their supporters staged “die-ins” at Publix supermarkets in several locations, protesting the company’s donation of $670,000, through its political action committee, to Putnam’s campaign. Putnam, as Florida’s commissioner of agriculture, had strongly opposed stricter gun laws following the shooting.He was also the state official responsible for regulating Publix’s 800 stores in Florida, but ended up losing the Republican primary to the current governor Ron DeSantis, a staunch Trump ally and another recipient of the company’s political benevolence.Earlier this year, Publix donated donated $100,000 to a political action committee looking to secure DeSantis’s re-election in 2022. Soon after, the governor awarded Publix a lucrative and exclusive contract to distribute Covid-19 vaccines in numerous stores. The governor’s office, which denied impropriety, has since added other retailers, including Walmart and Winn Dixie, to its approved distribution chain. But the controversy did not sit well with some observers.“This is, plain and simple, dirty pay-to-play politics, corruption made possible by having a manipulative governor who kept Covid-19 infection data secret and is now doing the same with vaccine distribution,” the Miami Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago wrote.“He isn’t working for us, but on behalf of his re-election campaign. And this is exactly the type of politician Publix aids and abets by financing their careers.”Others point to the juxtaposition of Publix being at the forefront of vaccine distribution in Florida while failing to enforce in-store mask wearing in some areas of the state, and defending a damaging wrongful death lawsuit from the family of an employee in Miami who died of Covid complications after being told not to wear a mask.A judge in Tampa last week threw out the company’s demand to reduce the lawsuit to a worker’s compensation claim after the company asked for 70-year-old deli worker Gerardo Gutierrez’s death last April to be classified as a workplace accident.Gutierrez’s family insists he contracted the infection from a colleague after employees were banned from wearing masks by workplace regulations later reversed. Publix has said it does not comment on pending litigation, and did not respond to other questions from the Guardian for this article.“They were very slow adapting to the pandemic, and the new pandemic rules,” said Craig Pittman, author of several books on Florida culture who has chronicled Publix’s rise to become the state’s premier grocery retailer. “But the thing with Publix is it does lots of little things that people like, they make a big deal of the fact they’ll carry your groceries to the car and won’t accept the tip, they give free cookies to the kids in the bakery, if you ask for a sample they’ll give it to you no questions asked.“So for a long time people have been willing to overlook some of the less savory aspects of the story, a number of sexual and racial discrimination lawsuits filed by employees, and this whole thing about them or their heirs donating to various politicians. “Corporate messaging experts say Publix is walking a tightrope in its handling of the Fancelli crisis.“What Publix does is take the middle path, they minimize responsibility, and by noting that Mrs Fancelli’s actions were essentially those of a private citizen not involved in the company, they’re saying, ‘Look, we don’t have control here,” said professor Josh Scacco of the University of South Florida’s department of communication.“Publix assesses the situation as: ‘We don’t have responsibility, or responsibilities beyond guilt by association’. [But while] there is separation between the person at the checkout, the person behind the deli counter, the manager of a store, the CEO, and then the political action committee, ultimately they all come under the umbrella of Publix.”Scacco also believes the furore mirrors the increasingly partisan nature of corporate America, where even the purchase of guava and cheese square from a Publix bakery has become a political statement.“President Trump, for example, would tweet out support for a particular company and brand approval immediately polarized, Republicans like that company, Democrats dislike that company,” he said. “That is the risk that companies face being so closely tied to a particular leader or set of leaders.“It’s also partly why there was such a rush immediately after 6 January for many of these companies to say, ‘We are not donating to individuals in Congress who voted to overturn the election result, we’re just not going to do it’.”Mize, and her family, meanwhile, are working through their Publix break-up with a mixture of grief and relief. “This time I just thought, ‘Enough. It’s not going to be business as normal’.” More

Democratic and Republican lawmakers have issued fresh calls for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate why government officials and law enforcement failed to stop the attack on the US Capitol in January, following Donald Trump’s acquittal in his impeachment on charges that he incited the insurrection.The commission would be modeled after a panel created in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, which reviewed what caused the atrocity and laid out recommendations on how to foresee and prevent any future incursions.“We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” said Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator of South Carolina and close Trump ally who voted to acquit the former president on Saturday. “His behavior after the election was over the top,” Graham said of the former president on Fox News Sunday.Democrat Chris Coons of Delaware agreed. Speaking on ABC’s This Week, he said that a bipartisan commission would “make sure we secure the Capitol going forward and that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath Trump really was”.Using harrowing video footage from the day, Democratic House prosecutors laid out their case that the former president stoked the attack with violent rhetoric and dangerous insistence on the debunked conspiracy theories suggesting he had won the 2020 presidential election, against all evidence that he had, in fact, lost.Seven Republicans joined 50 Democrats in the Senate to hold Trump responsible for inciting the deadly insurrection, led by armed supporters who announced intentions to kill or harm lawmakers including Mike Pence, the former-vice president, and Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker.Though the result of the trial was the most bipartisan in history, House managers ultimately did not secure the 67 votes required to convict Trump.But an independent commission could be another way for both Republicans and Democrats to hold Trump accountable. Other investigations have already been planned, with two Senate committees set to investigate security failures during the riots. In the House, Pelosi has also asked for a review of the Capitol’s security process.“There should be a complete investigation about what happened,” said Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator of Louisiana who has been censured by fellow Republicans in his home state for voting in favor of conviction.A commission would reveal “what was known, who knew it and when they knew, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again”, Cassidy told ABC, adding that he was “attempting to hold President Trump accountable” with his vote in the trial.Even Republicans who found Trump “not guilty” with their vote have tried to distance themselves from the former president. Most notably, the senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said: “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.”McConnell, who insisted that he voted against impeachment because Trump was no longer in office, after refusing to hold the trial while Trump was still in office, statements on Saturday seemed to punt the responsibility of holding Trump responsible to civil courts: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”Prior to the impeachment vote, Pelosi wrote a letter to her Democratic colleagues saying it is “clear that we will need to establish a 9/11-type commission to examine and report upon the facts, causes and security relating to the terrorist mob attack on January 6”. She renewed her support for the commission after Trump’s acquittal.A commission on the Capitol riot would need to be approved via legislation like the 9/11 commission was, and lawmakers may ultimately disagree on who should sit on it. Still, the idea has been gaining steam.“For the first time in however many years, we had an insurrection incited by the president of the United States where five people died, more have died since, hundreds were injured, people lost fingers, lost eyesight,” said Madeleine Dean, one of the House impeachment managers, said on ABC.“Of course there must be a full commission, an impartial commission, not guided by politics, filled with people who would stand up to the courage of their conviction,” she said. More

Democrats defended their prosecution of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Sunday and hinted at the possibility of criminal charges, after failing to convince enough senators the former president was guilty of inciting the deadly Capitol attack.The 57-43 vote for a conviction, which fell short of the two-thirds majority required, was still the biggest bipartisan impeachment vote in US history and amounted to “a complete repudiation” of Trump’s conduct, lead House manager Jamie Raskin insisted. Seven Republicans crossed party lines to vote with every Democratic and independent senator after the five-day trial.But the tactics of Raskin and his team have come under scrutiny, with some Democrats asking if the decision not to seek witness testimony, after senators voted early on the trial’s final day to allow it, was a mistake.Specifically, evidence was not heard from the Washington congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler about a call between Trump and Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy during the 6 January riot showing that the president would not call off his supporters.“Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election theft than you are,” Beutler said Trump replied when the House minority leader pleaded for him to recall the mob who overran the Capitol in support of the president’s false claims of a stolen election.On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that the question of whether to call witnesses sparked lengthy debate among the House managers, who ultimately agreed to a deal to accept Beutler’s statement as a written record. The decision diverted the likelihood of the trial extending days, if not weeks as both sides deposed witnesses.“I know that people are feeling a lot of angst, and believe that maybe if we had this, the senators would have done what we wanted,” Stacey Plaskett, a congressional delegate from the Virgin Islands and impeachment team member, told CNN’s State of the Union.“We didn’t need more witnesses, we needed more senators with spines. We believe that we proved the case, we proved the elements of the article of impeachment. It’s clear that these individuals were hardened, that they did not want to let the [former] president be convicted, or disqualified.”Raskin concurred.“These Republicans voted to acquit in the face of this mountain of unrefuted evidence,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press. “There’s no reasoning with people who basically are acting like members of a religious cult.”Among the 43 senators to vote to acquit Trump was Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader who nonetheless followed his “not guilty” vote with a fiery and contradictory post-trial speech on the Senate floor, in which he condemned Trump for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty”.“There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” McConnell said. “No question about it.”“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen,” the Kentucky Republican added, raising the prospect of criminal charges for the 45th US president over the riot. “He didn’t get away with anything. Yet.”Neither Raskin nor Madeleine Dean, an impeachment manager who told ABC’s This Week McConnell was “speaking out of two sides of his mouth”, ruled out criminal prosecution for Trump, saying the decision would be up to others.Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland and a frequent Trump critic, went further.“There was yesterday’s vote, but there’s still a number of potential court cases that I think he’s still going to face, in criminal courts and the court of public opinion,” he told CNN. “This is not over and we’re going to decide over the next couple of years what the fate of Donald Trump and the Republican party is.”Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating calls by Trump and an ally, Lindsey Graham, in which state Republican officials were pressured to overturn Biden’s victory.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, said Trump’s acquittal proved he was still firmly in charge of the Republican party, and that trial witnesses would not have swayed any more senators.“They weren’t going to get any more Republican votes than they had and I think they made the right decision to move to closing arguments,” he told CNN. “I don’t know that they would have lost votes, I just am pretty confident they were at their high watermark yesterday morning. I know that [among the] Senate Republican caucus, I can’t figure out who their eighth or ninth vote was going to be.“Donald Trump’s going to be in charge of their party for the next four years. As they were deathly afraid of him for the last four years, they are going to continue to be afraid of him for the next four years.”Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana senator who was among the Republican dissidents, expanded on his reasoning for his vote after declaring on Saturday it was simply “because [Trump] is guilty”.“We can see the president for two months after the election promoting that the election was stolen,” he told ABC. “He scheduled the rally for 6 January, just when the transfer of power was to take place. And even after he knew there was violence taking place, he continued to basically sanction the mob being there. And not until later did he actually ask them to leave.”Cassidy said he was unconcerned by a backlash in Louisiana, where the state GOP has censured him and the chair of the Republican caucus warned him not to expect a warm welcome back.“I have the privilege of having the facts before me and being able to spend several days deeply going into those facts,” he said.“As these facts become more and more out there, and folks have a chance to look for themselves, more will move to where I was. People want to trust their leaders, they want people to be held accountable.” More

Donald Trump emerged from his second impeachment trial almost completely politically intact. But amid widespread laments (or celebrations, depending on the affiliation of the speaker) about the former president’s grip on the Republican party, some prominent voices suggested a changing of the guard may still be due.“Losing the bully pulpit is a big difference,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas told the Hill, of Trump’s ejection from the White House and from major social media platforms, in the aftermath of the US Capitol attack.“I think that [we’re] already beginning to see some groundwork being laid by other people who aspire to succeed him.”By a vote of 57-43, the Senate voted to convict Trump on the charge that he incited the mob assault on the Capitol on 6 January. Seven Republicans joined every Democrat and independent in a verdict which would have barred Trump from running for office again. But the vote did not pass the two-thirds votes required.Only one Republican, Mitt Romney, defected in Trump’s first impeachment trial last year. But as Trump’s supporters brushed off the stronger show of opposition inside the party, so did Trump himself.The former president will be 78 in 2024 and has not committed to running again. But his post-acquittal statement did preview a resumption of a more visible role in US politics in the coming months.“Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun,” Trump said. “In the months ahead I have much to share with you, and I look forward to continuing our incredible journey together to achieve American greatness for all of our people. There has never been anything like it!”In interviews on Sunday, Republicans who dared to turn against Trump were asked about the likely consequences of their votes.In Louisiana, the state Republican party voted to censure Senator Bill Cassidy, who the chair of the Louisiana Republican Caucus warned not to “expect a warm welcome when you come home to Louisiana!”Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Cassidy said: “I’m attempting to hold President Trump accountable and that is the trust that I have from the people who elected me and I am very confident that as time passes people will move to that position.”Trump’s allies argued that he remains the center of the Republican universe.“Donald Trump is the most vibrant member of the Republican party,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, told Fox News Sunday. “The Trump movement is alive and well.”Jason Chaffetz, a former congressman from Utah, framed the impeachment as a quixotic Democratic failure.“I don’t think history will treat this very well,” he told Fox. “It didn’t have the legitimacy that Democrats hoped it would. They really didn’t sway anybody. I think it was a complete waste of time and now Democrats are 0 for 2 and America wants to move on.”At the same time, there are indications that unity remains elusive within Republican ranks. In an interview with Politico, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader who excoriated Trump after the impeachment trial but nonetheless voted for acquittal, indicated he would wade into primaries in which a Trump-backed candidate seemed set to win.“My goal is, in every way possible, to have nominees representing the Republican party who can win in,” McConnell said. “Some of them may be people the former president likes. Some of them may not be. The only thing I care about is electability.”McConnell added: “I’m not predicting the president would support people who couldn’t win. But I do think electability – not who supports who – is the critical point.”Graham indicated how McConnell’s Senate speech had gone down among Trump supporters.“He got a load off his chest,” he said, “obviously, but unfortunately he put a load on the back of Republicans. That speech you will see in 2022 campaigns.[embedded content]“I would imagine if you’re a Republican running in Arizona or Georgia, New Hampshire, where we have a chance to take back the Senate, they may be playing Senator McConnell’s speech and asking you about it as a candidate. And I imagine if you’re an incumbent Republican, they’re going to be people asking you, ‘Will you support Senator McConnell in the future?’”Close allies of Trump are running for major offices in those next midterms. In Arkansas, former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is vying for the Republican nomination for governor. In North Carolina, Graham suggested, Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter in law, may well run for Senate to replace Richard Burr, the retiring senator who voted to convict Trump.There is also talk that Ivanka Trump could run for Senate in Florida, challenging Marco Rubio.Prominent anti-Trump figures see conflict ahead. Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland who is widely expected to mount a presidential run in 2024, said anti-Trump sentiment would continue to grow.“We’re only a month in to the Biden administration,” Hogan told CNN’s State of the Union. “I think the final chapter of Donald Trump and the Republican party hasn’t been written yet.” More