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      Convicted criminals take Republican stage despite focus on ‘law and order’

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      The Republican party that promised in its 2024 policy platform to restore “law and order” as a “pillar” of “American civilisation” packed up and left Milwaukee on Friday after a convention featuring numerous felons.The most prominent was the keynote speaker: Donald Trump, the former president turned nominee who in May was convicted in New York on 34 criminal charges of falsifying business records arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star.Trump also awaits trial on at least 14 and as many as 54 other criminal charges, and in addition has been fined hundreds of millions of dollars in civil cases for business fraud and defamation arising from a rape claim a judge said was “substantially true”.But there was also Peter Navarro, once Trump’s trade adviser, who addressed the convention on Wednesday fresh out of a Florida jail where he served four months for criminal contempt of Congress.“I went to prison so you won’t have to,” declared Navarro – who was convicted for refusing to comply with subpoenas from the House January 6 committee – to a jubilant crowd that responded with a standing ovation.Another former Trump aide turned convicted criminal in attendance was Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager in 2016. Three years later he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on charges including bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering and witness tampering, arising from the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.In 2020 Trump pardoned Manafort, who later wrote a memoir called Political Prisoner. At the convention, Manafort was briefly linked with an organising role before backing off, though he was still in Milwaukee to tell Fox News: “I’ve done 10 conventions. This is the best.”Roger Stone, who like Manafort is a longtime operative convicted on charges arising from the Russia investigation, was also at the convention in Milwaukee.Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison after being convicted of criminal charges including witness tampering and obstructing Congress. He never set foot in jail, as Trump commuted his sentence.Rod Blagojevich attended as well. In July 2011, the former Democratic governor of Illinois was convicted on 17 criminal charges, including bribery, fraud and extortion, arising from an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s US Senate seat.Blagojevich was jailed for 14 years. In 2020, Trump commuted his sentence. This week, Blagojevich told NBC: “I think President Trump is the most demonised political figure in American history, and I know something about being demonised.”Another former Trump aide jailed for criminal contempt of Congress over January 6 did not make it to the convention hall, but Steve Bannon was getting updates via phone from his daughter in Wisconsin to his federal prison in Connecticut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He’s doing good,” Maureen Bannon told Politico. “He’s able to see the news in there. Read. We can email him articles. So he’s still getting a sense of what’s going on while he’s a political prisoner.”The irony of “the party of law and order” being led by one criminal and welcoming other criminals was not lost on many observers.One of the defining elements of authoritarianism is selective application of the law,” wrote Will Saletan in the Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative publication.“In fascist movements, ‘law and order’ is invoked against scapegoats and political enemies, while the leader and his allies are exempt from legal accountability.“This distinction has become central to Donald Trump’s Republican party.” More

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      Donald Trump’s run of good luck could end this weekend – if Joe Biden does the right thing | Jonathan Freedland

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      You can see why they think he’s God’s anointed one. You can understand why Republicans cheered when Donald Trump repeatedly claimed the divine as his number one supporter, declaring with certainty that he had God on his side. To the faithful gathered at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Thursday night, none of that would have sounded like exaggeration – and not only because their nominee for the US presidency had survived an assassin’s bullet. It’s also because Trump has been on a run of extraordinary good fortune – one that might be just about to end.Of course, it was that brush with death at a rally in Pennsylvania last weekend that the former and would-be future president had in mind when he spoke of “a providential moment”. The shooting, and Trump’s ability to shrug off injury, raising his fist in bloodied defiance, has prompted his most fervent believers to cast him as a living martyr to their cause. The Republican party had already transformed itself into a cult of personality. But to see delegates wearing bandages on their right ears as a mark of love for, and identification with, their leader is to realise that that cult has become messianic.Still, even the most godless Republican may have found themselves wondering if Trump does indeed have a friend upstairs. For three straight weeks, everything has gone his way.Trump’s hot streak began with the TV debate against Joe Biden at the end of June – a debate that, it’s worth remembering, would typically have taken place in the autumn had not the Biden team insisted it must happen sooner. That was a 90-minute disaster for the president who, when he wasn’t struggling to complete sentences, stared vacantly into space, looking every one of his 81 years.That triggered a panic among Democrats, three long weeks of internal agonising as elders and bigwigs sought to navigate between the pride, and stubbornness, of a president who they believe deserves respect for a consequential term in office, and a party ever-more convinced that he will not only lose the White House, but will take Democratic candidates for the House and Senate down with him. That process may reach its climax this weekend, but not before it has handed Trump a delicious contrast: Democrats divided and distracted, Republicans unified and focused.Meanwhile, the courts have been smiling on Trump, whether it’s six judges of the supreme court, three of whom were appointed by him, granting presidents near total immunity for their official acts, or a Trump-appointed judge throwing out what most agreed was the strongest of all the legal cases against him, relating to his alleged retention of classified documents.That’s allowed him to sit back and enjoy the show. He’s watched as, to take one example, Biden gave a decent performance at a post-Nato summit press conference, giving detailed answers on foreign policy – while all anyone remembers is that he introduced Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “President Putin” and referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice-President Trump”.View image in fullscreenBut it’s the assassination attempt and the TV debate that are the bookend events of these remarkable few weeks, reinforcing what was already Trump’s chosen frame for the campaign: strong v weak. As one senior Democrat put it to me: “The Republicans have a guy who bullets bounce off of. We have a guy who can’t handle a flight of stairs.” The polls are bleakness itself for Democrats, with Trump leading Biden not only in all the key swing states, but even in once solidly Democratic terrain – with Virginia and even, incredibly, New York now deemed “battleground” states. No wonder Republicans were talking this week of a November landslide.Then, just in case any part of the narrative was insufficiently vivid, while Trump was being hailed as a messiah in Milwaukee, Biden contracted Covid. Now he is isolated, in every possible sense.Except maybe it’s possible to be too lucky. Trump is so far ahead, his numbers so strong, that Democrats have stepped up their post-debate push to get Biden to withdraw from the race. Privately at first and then, when Biden refused to budge, publicly via well-placed leaks, congressional leaders, big league donors and arguably the party’s sharpest political brain, the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have spelled it out for the president, telling him he cannot win. “It’s over,” one party veteran tells me. “He’ll be gone by Monday.”If that’s right, then Trump’s lucky streak will surely be at an end. His entire campaign has been predicated on Biden being his opponent. Facing someone else means three fundamentals of the race would be altered. First, media attention will shift away from him to the shiny object of a new Democratic nominee. Second, he, not his opponent, will be the oldest person in the race. And third, Trump should no longer have the “change” message – so potent in this age of anti-incumbency – all to himself.That last element depends on whom Democrats choose and how they do it. If Biden stands aside and there is a quick coronation of his deputy, Harris, then Trump will cast her as the status quo. There will be a cacophony of racist and misogynist dog whistles, along with a related effort to present her as lacking a democratic mandate and dangerously leftwing.But there is another way to do it. Even some of Harris’s backers favour a mini-primary, which could amount to a fortnight or so of TV debates before the 4,000 or so Democratic delegates cast their votes. Not enough, to be sure, but that would bestow some democratic legitimacy on the eventual winner and offer at least a glimpse of who flourishes and who wilts under national scrutiny. The ballot itself should happen before the party convention in Chicago on 19 August, so that that gathering can be a showcase rather than a floor fight.I know – we’re getting ahead of ourselves. But as Democrats head into a fateful weekend, they should know they have little to fear from what may lie ahead. A contest could demonstrate the party’s energy and vigour, its deep bench of new talent, drawing the contrast with the creepy cult it opposes. Given the number of Americans who have been saying for a year or more that they want a choice other than Trump v Biden, there is every chance the election could be upended, with the polls looking radically different almost straight away.And Trump showed again on Thursday night how eminently beatable he is. His speechwriters wanted him to adopt a kinder, gentler tone – a man chastened by his brush with death, bent on healing and national unity. He managed it for a while. But soon he was veering away from the teleprompter, with rambling diversions into all the old, dark greatest hits: “crazy” Pelosi, migrants as an “invasion” of killers and criminals, the election that was stolen from him.The stakes are too high, for the US and the world, to let Democrats cede the 2024 contest to Trump, which is what a continued Biden candidacy would do. The hope is that Biden himself reaches that conclusion in the next day or two, and performs what will be his last great act of public service. Because whatever the Republican faithful may say, this decision is not in the hands of the Almighty – it is in the hands of human beings who, whatever their fears and frailties, need to act and act now.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Is there anything that JD Vance actually believes? | Moira Donegan

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      How many faces does JD Vance have? For one thing, he looks a lot different these days. Around the time the election denier first ran for Senate in Ohio, in 2022, he grew a beard, perhaps to cover up his decidedly childlike countenance. As rumors swirled this summer that Donald Trump would choose Vance as his running mate – replacing Mike Pence, who left the vice-presidency after a mob of angry Trump supporters tried to hang him – some wondered if maybe Vance would shave. Trump, it seems, doesn’t like beards, and prefers his underlings clean-shaven. And JD Vance is – has always been – willing to do just about anything to secure the approval of the powerful.According to historian Gabriel Winant, Vance has spent much of his life clinging to a series of mentors, whom he has used for professional advancement before moving on from – and, ultimately, betraying. There was his grandmother, or “Meemaw”, the hardscrabble woman who raised him in rural Ohio – but whom he depicted as ignorant and ultimately culturally pathological in his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. There was his Yale Law School mentor Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and wife of Jed Rubenfeld, who was suspended from Yale Law after an investigation found that he sexually harassed his students. (Chua also mentored Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, whom she helped secure a clerkship with Brett Kavanaugh.) But Vance left this center-right Yale Law milieu for Silicon Valley, where he made his fortune as a venture capitalist under the tutelage (and with the funding) of the far-right techo-libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, who would later go on to bankroll Vance’s Senate campaign. Thiel seems to have introduced Vance to his other mentor, the reactionary “neo-monarchist” and favorite intellectual of the Silicon Valley right, Curtis Yarvin.But he pushed aside these old mentors for Donald Trump, whose endorsement he sought with near-slavish sycophancy in his 2022 race. He did this despite having once characterized Trump as “cultural heroin”, “a total fraud”, “reprehensible”, “a moral disaster” and “America’s Hitler”. Vance made those statements back when it suited his ambitions to be critical of Trump: after the release of his book, just before the election in 2016, Vance had been hailed as a “Trump whisperer”, translating the then candidate’s supporters in terms that were palatable for coastal liberal elites. But it does not suit him to be anti-Trump anymore. Now it suits him to be the running mate for “America’s Hitler”.Is there anything JD Vance really believes? He is not a consistent man, but he has embraced a virulent, creepy and inventive sexism that appears too irrepressible to be insincere. Vance is a prolific demeaner of women. He supports a national abortion ban and has opposed rape and incest exceptions, calling rape “an inconvenience” and insisting that abortions should not be allowed in such circumstances because “two wrongs don’t make a right”. In a bizarre episode, he characterized a national abortion ban as necessary to prevent “George Soros” from flying “Black women” to California for abortions.The VP pick of the twice-divorced Trump also opposes no-fault divorce, which allows women to leave unhappy marriages without having to prove abuse in court. Though to be clear, he doesn’t think women should leave abusive men, either. He characterized the ending of marriages that were “maybe even violent” as selfish frivolity: “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” Vance said. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”An adamant “pro-natalist”, Vance has an abiding and obsessive contempt for childless adults, especially women. Blaming the “childless left” for a host of political and cultural problems, Vance has proposed extending extra votes to people with children, so as to dilute the political representation of those without them. He has demeaned non-breeding women as “childless cat ladies”.For those women who do have children, Vance seems to think that they should be confined to the home: he has characterized childcare subsidies – which allow mothers of young children to earn money, obtain professional experience or education, and preserve their independence – as “class war against normal people”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNormal, I guess, is relative. Who counts? Certainly not everyone. Vance’s droolingly misogynist pro-natalism has shaded, as such positions always do, into an endorsement of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that the “elites” Vance so often rails against are trying to replace white “real” Americans with a compliant underclass of immigrants. “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves,” Vance told the 2019 National Conservatism Conference. “That should bother us.” He did not define “us” or “our people”, and he did not elaborate on what he meant by “replacement”. But Vance, though he is craven and dishonest, is not a dumb guy. He did not use those words by accident.Does Vance really believe in the passionately, obsessively sexist things he says? I think he probably does. But it might not matter: what will matter – what has always mattered to Vance – is not what he believes, but what he finds expedient. Vance has already tried to distance himself from his extreme position on abortion, wiping his call to “End Abortion” from his website and delivering mealy-mouthed statements to reporters about his desire for a “national standard” – a phrase that is meant to confuse, since he doesn’t specify what he wants a national standard of. To ask what JD Vance really believes is a bit like staring into a black hole: there is an unknowable blankness behind his tiny, tight blue eyes. What it is certain that Vance has is ambition – ruthless, insatiable and unburdened by principle. Other people believe in ideals, moral principles, right and wrong. The only thing we can say for sure that JD Vance believes is that he, personally, should have as much power as possible.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      How JD Vance’s path to being Trump’s VP pick wound through Silicon Valley

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      When JD Vance was a student at Yale Law School in 2011, he attended a talk featuring Peter Thiel, the conservative tech billionaire. Although Vance didn’t know Thiel at the time, over the next decade he would become Thiel’s employee, friend and the recipient of his largesse. Thiel’s millions paved the way for Vance to become a senator.Thiel’s talk was “the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School”, Vance would write in a 2020 essay for The Lamp, a Catholic magazine. In Vance’s telling, Thiel’s talk of the failures of elite institutions and belief in Christianity made him reconsider his own faith and immediately make plans for a career outside of law – one that wound through the worlds of tech and venture capital before politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Vance is best known for the hardscrabble origin story he laid out in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, in the years following his graduation from Yale he developed extensive ties with Silicon Valley’s investors and elites. His time as a venture capitalist, coupled with his status as a rags-to-riches media fixture, helped him make connections central to his political rise, as well as garner him influential supporters that pushed Trump to make him his vice presidential pick.Following a brief period of work in corporate law after he graduated Yale, Vance moved to San Francisco and got a job at Thiel’s Mithril Capital venture firm in 2015. After Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller in 2016 and brought him to national prominence, Vance joined the venture capital firm Revolution, founded by the former AOL CEO Steve Case.Vance remained a part of the tech VC world after returning to Ohio and leaving Revolution in early 2020. He received financial backing from Thiel to co-found the venture firm Narya Capital – which, like Thiel’s enterprises, was named after an object from The Lord of The Rings, this time a ring of power made for elves. Other prominent investors in Narya included Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO,and Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist, who announced his own support for Trump this past week. The stated goal of Vance’s firm was to invest in early-stage startups in cities that Silicon Valley tended to overlook.Narya Capital in 2021 led a group of conservative investors, including Thiel, to put money into Rumble, the video streaming platform that positions itself as a less-moderated and more rightwing friendly version of YouTube. Vance’s co-founder at Narya, Colin Greenspon, touted the investment as a challenge to big tech’s hold on online services – a frequent conservative talking point during the backlash to content moderation around the pandemic and 2020 presidential election. It was also around this time that Thiel, who heavily backed Trump financially during the 2016 campaign, brought Vance to first talk with Trump during a secretive meeting at Mar-a-Lago in February of 2021, according to the New York Times.Vance’s long association with Thiel also proved lucrative during his run for senator in 2022. Thiel put a staggering $15m into Vance’s campaign and, according to the Washington Post, helped court Trump’s endorsement, leading to Vance winning a tightly contested Republican primary race and then the senate election.Although Thiel has pledged in recent years to stay out of donations to the 2024 election, Vance has since flexed his other Silicon Valley connections to ingratiate himself to Trump. The Ohio senator introduced David Sacks, a prominent venture capitalist, to Donald Trump Jr in March, the New York Times reported, and attended Sacks’ pro-Trump fundraiser in June, co-sponsored by Chamath Palihapitiya, Sacks’ co-host on the popular podcast All In. The event, which cost as much as $300,000 to attend, was held at Sacks’s San Francisco mansion and featured the investor thanking Vance for his help making the fundraiser happen. During an informal conversation at the dinner, Sacks and Palihapitiya told Trump to nominate Vance as his VP choice.Sacks spoke at the Republican national convention Monday. In the days prior, he had also called Trump to advocate for Vance as the VP pick, as had Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, the ex-Fox News host, according to Axios. Thiel also expressed his support for Vance in private calls with Trump, the New York Times reported. When Trump confirmed Vance would be his running mate, Sacks and Musk posted fawning celebrations on Twitter – with Musk saying the ticket “resounds with victory”.Many of Vance’s wealthy tech elite and venture capitalist supporters now appear to be preparing to offer even more tangible support. Investors including Musk, Andreessen and Thiel’s co-founder in Palantir, Joe Lonsdale, are all reportedly planning to donate huge sums of money to back the Trump and Vance campaign. More

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      Digested week: the nice blond lady from England delivers | Emma Brockes

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      MondayTo the Republican national convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, where a longstanding tradition of British journalists interviewing Americans in a style euphemistically known as “irreverent” continues to deliver results.A recent hit in this particular genre: Andrew Neil interviewing Ben Shapiro, the rightwing American commentator, by repeatedly barking: “What’s your answer?”, giving him withering looks over his specs, and parrying Shapiro’s incredulous meltdown – “I frankly don’t give a damn what you think of me given I’ve never heard of you” – with the cheerful retort: “I’d never heard of you!”The latest addition to the canon comes this week from the RNC in Wisconsin courtesy of Kari Lake, a former TV anchor and Republican candidate for senator in Arizona, who sat down with Emily Maitlis with the innocence of a babysitter in the opening scenes of a horror movie. Lake, who has previously identified as a Democrat and an independent and now supports Trump, starts to twig something is wrong at around the 40-second mark, and truly, it’s a beautiful thing to see.“The tone [of political discourse] is really disturbing when the media is calling a man like Donald Trump ‘Hitler’,” says Lake, deftly deflecting a softball opener from Maitlis and seemingly unaware of the house about to fall on her head.“Like JD Vance did, you mean,” says Maitlis, leaning slightly forward and wearing her guileless-as-a-fawn face, at which British viewers jump behind the sofa and Lake looks momentarily confused. It’s all downhill from there as the slow, terrible realisation dawns on Lake that this nice blond lady from England, despite all her encouraging nods and “yeps”, is in fact her worst nightmare.By the end of the interview, Maitlis is asking: “Do Republicans need to lie … because you don’t believe you can win at the ballot box?” and Lake has been transported to a place of such incandescent rage she can only respond: “You’re just a sad case of a human being and I feel sorry for you,” and: “I actually think you need your head examined.” To which, smooth as oil and in the best Paxonian tradition, Maitlis replies: “Kari Lake: thank you very much.”View image in fullscreenTuesdayNot enough sympathy has been extended to the real victim of JD Vance’s ascent to public life, Amy Adams, whose career took a meteor-sized hit in 2020 thanks to her appearance in Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy, the movie adaptation of Vance’s bestselling memoir of 2016.As Vance’s voice rings across the US this week after becoming Trump’s pick to be vice-president, spare a thought for Adams, who can never shake off the visual memory many of us have of her as Bev, Vance’s rackety mother, chain-smoking in dungarees while Glenn Close staggers about in the background like a cross between Catherine Tate’s Nan and an Appalachian Deirdre Barlow.Hillbilly Elegy, and Vance himself, unpacking his backstory at the RNC this week, tell the heartwarming tale of a boy’s rise from poverty and despair to the world of Yale law school, a job in venture capital, and eventually the sunny uplands of radicalised ultra-right opinion, including the one Vance shared in 2021 – that staying in a violent marriage is a better option than divorce. That we must suffer Vance daily in the news is bad enough. That America’s sweetheart has somehow been dragged into all this is, on top of everything else, frankly intolerable.WednesdayA politician who puts her money where her mouth is: Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, who alongside the president of the Paris Olympic committee and several unhappy-looking political aides who’ve been vacuum-packed into wetsuits, jumped in the Seine this week to prove to dithering Olympians that it’s not full of poo.Observing the scene from the river bank, ranks of Parisiens milled about using various Gallic expressions to communicate scepticism. “I don’t like the colour of the water,” remarked one woman to the New York Times, triggering a response in the mayor’s office that can only be guessed at. Helpfully, she added: “I hope she doesn’t get spots tomorrow.”Nine days before the Olympics opens, Hidalgo’s press stunt was an effort to calm fears among international athletes that the river is too polluted for use during outdoor swimming events and, to that end, she laughed and joked, open-mouthed, in the water. Although, notably, I see she took care to get in rather carefully feet first.ThursdayBillie Eilish is rapidly losing goodwill among young fans by sticking exorbitant ticket prices on her six-night gig at the O2 in London. According to the Daily Mail this week, sales of seats starting at £250, or £145 for standing, have been so sluggish that much of the arena’s 20,000 capacity remains empty.This is, surely, the inflationary ripple effect of Taylor Swift and Madonna’s recent world tours, for which tickets exchanged hands for thousands of dollars and fans flew around the world to attend multiple dates. Earlier this year, in an apparent reference to the Swift’s Eras tour, Eilish referred to the notion of doing a three-hour show as “literally psychotic” and now faces the experience of playing to a semi-full stadium.View image in fullscreenFridayIn a straight contest between the summer heat of New York and the (usual) summer rain of the UK, there are years when I’d have taken the heat every time. This year is different. After weeks of temperatures feeling as though they are pushing up towards 100F (37.7C), a cold summer sounds like heaven. At 7.45am, I left my house to run a 10-minute errand and by the time I got back, I looked as if I’d been through a car wash. Shivering around the barbecue has never sounded so good. More

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      Trump speech mixes unity and hate as he caps off Republican convention

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      As Donald Trump recounted the terrifying moment when a would-be assassin attempted to kill him on Saturday, the adoring audience at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee hung on his every word. Trump then accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the third time with a momentary message of unity, calling on the country to come together in the wake of the violent attack.“As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny,” Trump said on Thursday night. “We rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America.”Then Trump, as he so often does, stepped on his own message. Often veering away from his prepared remarks displayed on a teleprompter, Trump peppered his speech with interjections about the former Democratic House speaker (“crazy Nancy Pelosi”) or a hated news program (“De-Face the Nation”).While promising to “make America great once again”, he painted a picture of an American hellscape under Joe Biden’s leadership, torn apart by “a devastating inflation crisis” and “a massive invasion on our southern border”. And even though past convention speakers largely avoided litigating the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump couldn’t help himself, accusing Democrats of having “used Covid to cheat”.The speech reflected a pattern that played out again and again over the course of the week in Milwaukee, as Republicans tried to project a message of unity with decidedly mixed success. Trump’s newly minted running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, preached a message of economic opportunity for all as convention attendees waved signs reading: “Mass deportation now!” Nikki Haley emphasized the need for Republicans to build a big-tent party based on decency just before Ron DeSantis stepped up to sneer at Biden’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” presidency.The conflicting messages foreshadowed the weighty task that Republicans face looking ahead to November, even with an edge in the polls; they must reach out to independent voters, many of whom disapprove of both the major presidential candidates, without alienating the hard-right loyalists who elevated Trump to his third nomination.In an implicit acknowledgment of that dual task, many of Trump’s most controversial opinions received little air time over the first three days of the convention. Mentions of election denialism, pardons for January 6 insurrectionists and Trump’s criminal cases were few and far between – even as the nominee himself could not resist attacking the “fake documents case” and the “partisan witch-hunts”. They also avoided mentions of pressing issues like abortion access, the climate crisis and gun safety, all of which are sure to be a primary focus at the Democratic convention in Chicago next month.Instead, many speakers attempted to paint a softer picture of Trump. Family members, friends and former colleagues described Trump, who was recently convicted on charges related to paying hush money to his alleged mistress, as a devoted family man. They praised the former president, who infamously boasted about his tendency to “grab ‘em by the pussy,” as a champion of women in the workplace.The message was clear: forget what those awful Democrats have told you, the speakers said. This benevolent, innocent and powerful man is a paragon of good virtue who absolutely can – and should – be trusted with another four years in the White House, they argued.The argument relies on a certain amount of amnesia of Trump’s chaotic first term, which often saw the then president firing members of his cabinet by tweet or musing about buying Greenland. But it would seem that a sort of national forgetfulness has already started falling over Trump’s years in office; a growing number of Americans now say that he left the nation better off, even though his presidency ended when the country was still in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic.Somehow – after four criminal indictments, two impeachments and one failed assassination attempt – Trump is not only still standing but is now the favorite to win the presidential election in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe attendees of the Republican convention this week appeared optimistic and even relaxed, a mood that may reflect their confidence heading into the final stretch of election season. As “everyday American” speakers praised Trump’s policies on everything from the economy to foreign policy, convention-goers seemed secure in the knowledge that the man they view as a savior would soon return to the nation’s highest office.Democrats have spent recent months trying to remind voters of the chaos that defined Trump’s presidency, but that argument has been somewhat undermined by the drama now encircling Biden’s campaign. Since Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, more than 20 Democratic members of Congress have called on him to withdraw from the presidential race, with the Montana senator Jon Tester joining their ranks just moments before Trump took the stage on Thursday.As Biden quarantines in his home state of Delaware after testing positive for Covid (again), it remains deeply unclear whether he will be the Democrat facing off against Trump in November. Those questions overshadowed much of the Republican convention this week, and they bolstered Republicans’ efforts to present themselves as the more unified and organized party.If Republicans can maintain that image through the next four months, they might see an overwhelming victory in November. But if the past week has taught Americans anything, it’s that much can change in just a short time. More

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      ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’: Trump emerges as an American messiah with swagger

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      “Fight! Fight! Fight!”The crowd had thought he was dead, Donald Trump recalled on Thursday night, and he wanted to let them know he was OK. “So I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’”The sublime image of Trump at last Saturday’s rally, face bloodied, fist raised, with Secret Service agents and the Stars and Stripes completing the tableau, flashed up on giant TV screens. Delegates at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee responded as one.“Fight! Fight! Fight!” they chanted, punching their own fists in the air in unison. Trump had taken a bullet for them. Their fervour suggested they would be willing to take a bullet for him. A Maga army on the march. A frightening spectacle for American democracy.In that moment it was clear that Trump’s survival of an attempted assassination had turned him into a figure that transcends politics, an American messiah with swagger. His power over the crowd, summoning anger and sympathy and ecstasy with a flick of a switch, evoked dark chapters in Europe in the 20th century.Like demagogues of the past, Trump understands spectacle. His instinctive response to a bullet shaving his ear, sparing his life by a quarter of an inch, was a masterpiece of self-mythology. At the convention on Thursday, in an arena that normally hosts the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, he delivered raw political entertainment.Big screens showed Trump doing his awkward, fist-pumping, flat-footed dance to the sound of Village People’s Y.M.C.A. To Democrats, comedians and much of the world, it is a preposterous sight. To the Trump faithful, it makes him human and lovable.His wife, Melania – rarely seen these days – walked out to the strains of Beethoven’s Symphony No 9 in D minor, joining Trump children Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany in the stand. Musician Kid Rock, wearing black hat, dark glasses and shiny cross, sang: “Say fight fight, say fight fight! Say Trump, say Trump!” The crowd repeated the lines in response.Then came Lee Greenwood singing God Bless the USA, in effect the Trump theme song. Again the crowd joined in. Bright lights began flashing on stage. A white panel slid upwards like a curtain for the big reveal. There stood Donald J Trump, 78, former US president and Man of the Ear, against the backdrop of five giant letters: “TRUMP.”It was camp and gaudy and kitsch and very Trumpy. Soon after, the entire stage set was transformed into a digital image of the White House – four years after Trump broke protocol by addressing the Republican convention from the actual White House. “USA! USA!” chanted a crowd that held “Make America great again!” and “Fire Joe Biden!” signs. Some shouted: “We love you!”Then, in a hushed arena, came Trump’s retelling of the attempted assassination and warning that he may never tell it again “because it’s too painful to tell”. He delivered it in a cadence that, as one former Barack Obama aide noted, was like a bedtime story for kids when the goal is to lull them to sleep.“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said, wearing dark suit, red tie and ear bandage. “In watching the reports over the last several days, many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was.”Indeed, numerous convention speakers at the convention have suggested that Trump was saved by divine providence. Ben Carson, his former housing secretary, suggested that God “lowered a shield of protection” over Trump. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, quoted Benjamin Franklin: “God governs in the affairs of men.” Trump’s son Eric offered: “By divine intervention and the angels above, you survived.”For nine years Trump had tapped into the great American trauma of race and made it about him. Now he has turned religion into a personality cult.He recounted: “Once my clenched fist went up, high into the air – you’ve all seen that – the crowd realised I was OK and roared with pride for our country, like no crowd I have ever heard before. Never heard anything like it.”This was the man who once inspired a crowd to storm the US Capitol in an attempted coup. Now the scene in Milwaukee recalled Eleanor Roosevelt’s account of her husband Franklin’s inauguration as US president in 1933: “The crowds were so tremendous. And you felt that they would do anything – if only someone would tell them what to do.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere was more theatre from the greatest showman. Paying tribute to Corey Comperatore, who died at the Pennsylvania rally, Trump walked over to Comperatore’s fire jacket and helmet, which were hanging on a stand behind him. He leaned over and kissed the helmet and asked for a moment of silence in honour of the former fire chief.It was so far, so good for “New Trump”, the man who had supposedly been changed forever by a near-death experience. He would now be “contemplative” and “softer” and “unifying”, we were told. And he began promisingly enough, telling the convention: “I am running to be president for all America, not half of America because there is no victory in winning for half of America.”But it did not take long for the old unhinged demagogue to come roaring back. In a 90-minute speech cribbed from his rallies, he vowed to “drill baby drill” and “close those borders” on his first day in office. He baselessly accused Democrats of “cheating” in elections , denounced Washington DC as “a horrible killing field” and warned of a planet “teetering on edge of world war three”.Trump also spoke of a “massive invasion at our southern border” and claimed immigrants were flooding in from prisons, mental institutions and insane asylums. Cue his now familiar and dated Hollywood film reference: “The late great Hannibal Lecter. He’d love to have you for dinner.” Having promised to mention Joe Biden by name, he did so 40 minutes in with scathing criticism.David Axelrod, a former Obama strategist, told CNN: “This is the first good thing that’s happened to Democrats in the last three weeks. This really reminded everyone why Donald Trump is fundamentally unpopular outside this room.”The long, rambling speech was at odds with an otherwise disciplined convention that, while shocking by the conservative standards of Ronald Reagan or George W Bush, felt less raucous and extreme than the “Lock her up!” chants of 2016. The red meat came with a hint of pink and garnish of moderation.There were few references to “stop the steal” or January 6 insurrectionists being “hostages”. There was little boasting about the overturning of Roe v Wade, the constitutional right to abortion. There was no real effort to blame Democrats for the attempt on Trump’s life. Even the vendors were selling mostly pro-Trump products rather than anti-Biden gear.In short, it was a do-no-harm convention for a party feeling confident but cautious as Democrats implode over whether to ditch Biden. But Trump, of course, blew all that up with his grievances and lies. When the divine demagogue finally wrapped, his family joined him on stage as thousands of gold, red, white and blue balloons descended. A singer performed Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot. None shall sleep indeed. More