US Politics

The sitting Democratic president is not running for re-election. His vice-president has inherited his campaign – and refuses to disown an unpopular foreign war. Robert Kennedy is running for president. The Republican candidate is a corrupt authoritarian. A Planet of the Apes movie is in theaters. And anti-war protesters are threatening to disrupt the Democratic convention in Chicago.Am I discussing 2024 or … 1968?Now, I’m far from the first columnist to make this comparison. Plenty of pieces have been published on the uncanny and, yes, undeniable similarities between these two consequential election years. “History,” as Mark Twain is said to have remarked, “does not repeat itself. But it rhymes.”Joe Biden, after all, is the first president to announce he is not running for re-election since Lyndon Johnson, 56 years ago. And just as Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket is his vice-president, Kamala Harris, so too was Johnson’s.Vice-President Hubert Humphrey had been a popular, well-respected senator from Minnesota and one of the architects of postwar American liberalism. He had served as a loyal deputy to Johnson over four years, even publicly defending a bloody quagmire in Vietnam on the president’s behalf that he himself had privately opposed.Yet in August 1968, the “Happy Warrior”, as Humphrey had been nicknamed, arrived in Chicago for the Democratic convention depressed and demoralized, trailing his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, in the polls by a whopping 16 points. The war had become a millstone around his neck, and yet Johnson had threatened to “destroy” his vice-president if he dared take a different line on Vietnam. When Humphrey in Chicago, as the official Democratic presidential nominee, tried to insert a compromise “peace” plank into the party’s platform that seemed to satisfy both hawks and doves alike, the Democratic president called from his ranch in Texas to block him.In the wake of that disastrous convention, where police brutally assaulted anti-war protesters on the streets of Chicago, the demonstrations against the hapless Humphrey intensified. “Dump the Hump” was on the gentler side; some protesters arrived at the VP’s rallies with placards denouncing him as “Johnson’s War Salesman” and a “Killer of Babies”. One woman spat in his face.“Let’s face it, as of now we’ve lost,” Humphrey’s national campaign director, Larry O’Brien, told him a few weeks after Chicago. “Unless you change direction on this Vietnam thing and become your own man, you’re finished.”On 30 September 1968, Humphrey finally became his “own man”, committing “$100,000 of the campaign’s dwindling funds to buy a half-hour on NBC television”, and delivering a speech from a TV studio in Salt Lake City calling for an end to the war. In his address, Humphrey made clear that Johnson was still in charge of the effort to reach a peace deal in south-east Asia, but by 20 January 1969, there would “be a new president” and “if there is no peace by then” then there must be a “complete reassessment” of the conflict because “the policies of tomorrow need not be limited by the policies of yesterday”.The vice-president laid out a four-point plan to end the conflict. First, “a stopping of the bombing”. Second, “a de-Americanization of the war”. Third, an immediate “internationally supervised ceasefire”. Fourth, “free elections”, which he described as “the ultimate key to an honorable peace”.It was a powerful intervention from Humphrey, aired to tens of millions of Americans, which allowed the Democratic presidential candidate to hit reset with the party’s base and, in particular, with younger voters and people of color. “He was a new man from then on,” O’Brien later declaimed. “It was as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. And the impact on the campaign itself was just as great.”Humphrey experienced an immediate surge in the polls, narrowing the gap with Nixon. By election day, the final polls “pointed to a dead heat”.Few now remember that the 1968 presidential election, in terms of the popular vote, was super-close. Nixon defeated Humphrey by less than a percentage point, or about 500,000 votes. The question is: what if the Vietnam war hadn’t dragged him down? What if he had been willing to break with Johnson over Vietnam much earlier than he did? Would the US have avoided Nixon, Watergate and the rest? Had he stood up to Johnson “over Vietnam in 1968”, writes Humphrey’s biographer Arnold Offner, “he might have won the presidential election”.The war, agrees Yale historian Michael Brenes, “alienated Humphrey from liberals, civil rights activists and young Americans – the same people who, for decades, had loved Humphrey for his support of racial justice, full employment and the labor movement – and ultimately cost him the presidency in 1968”.Has the 2024 Harris campaign learned any lessons from the 1968 Humphrey campaign?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo be clear: Gaza isn’t Vietnam. There is no military draft and US troops are not bogged down in rice paddies 8,000 miles from home. And Harris, unlike Humphrey, is leading right now in most of the polls.Complacency, however, would be a huge mistake for the Democrats. Harris, ideally, needs to maintain a sustained two-point lead over Trump to overcome the pro-Republican bias of our broken electoral college. Despite her clear momentum, she continues to struggle in the key swing state of Michigan, where “Uncommitted” voters are demanding a Gaza ceasefire paired with an arms embargo on Israel.Agreeing to such a demand should be a moral, geopolitical, and – for the Democrats – electoral no-brainer. Gaza may not be Vietnam but Harris should, nonetheless, be distancing herself from Biden on Gaza in the same way that Humphrey distanced himself from Johnson on Vietnam. She should be advocating for all four of the steps that he advocated for in Salt Lake City, beginning with a call for an immediate halt to the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza’s schools, apartment buildings and refugee camps.Crucially, however, she should do it more than a month before he did; she should do it in her acceptance speech to the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Thursday night. (“I fear she will be Humphrey and break too late,” one prominent House Democrat texted me last week.)What does she have to lose? As the Financial Times pointed out last month, the polling suggests there is “less downside” on Gaza than one might expect: “a Democrat who is soft on Israel (as Biden is seen as having been) loses support on the left, but a candidate who takes a more critical line wins those voters back without losing votes among moderates.” A poll last week from YouGov and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) showed over a third of voters in three swing states say they are more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if they pledge to withhold weapons to Israel, while only 5 to 7% said they would be less likely to do so.So what is Harris waiting for? More anti-war hecklers at her rallies? Even more civilian deaths caused by Biden administration-supplied munitions?Some might say that it is impossible for a serving vice-president to go against the sitting president, even a deeply unpopular sitting president, on a major foreign policy issue. They would be wrong. Humphrey did it – he just did it too late in the campaign to reap an electoral advantage.Harris is in a much stronger position than Humphrey. Biden would never dare try to humiliate her the way that Johnson regularly did to Humphrey. (On one memorable occasion, the then president insisted Humphrey continue reciting aloud from a draft speech of his on Vietnam as Johnson walked into a toilet: “Keep talking Hubert, I’m listening.”)Humphrey spent much of 1968 defending both Johnson and the war. He was less a candidate for change and “more like a son who feared a punitive father”, to quote Offner. “I don’t even know who Johnson would prefer as the next president,” the fearful vice-president told the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, “Nixon or me.”Harris is not Humphrey. Gaza is not Vietnam. 2024 is not 1968. Nevertheless, the similarities that do exist are too glaring to ignore.Biden may want to continue sending more and more weapons to an Israeli government accused of war crimes at the international criminal court and of genocide at the international court of justice, but Harris should take a different stance – a bolder stance, a stance that is more in line with her party’s base, as well as with the American public at large.The current vice-president would do well to recall the words of the then vice-president after his narrow defeat in 1968. “I ought not to have let a man who was going to be a former president dictate my future.”

Mehdi Hasan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo More

Joe Biden will take centre stage for perhaps the last time on Monday night when he addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago – as the US president faces a backlash over one of his most complex legacies.Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to converge in the host city to demand that the US end military aid to Israel for its ongoing war in Gaza. Activists have branded Biden “Genocide Joe” and called for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, to change course.Just over a month ago Biden had been expecting to give Thursday’s closing speech as he accepted the Democratic nomination for 2024. But his withdrawal from the race last month, and the party’s consolidation around Harris, means that Biden will speak on opening night and then set off on a holiday.The president has been reportedly working on his address with his long-time adviser Mike Donilon and chief speechwriter, Vinay Reddy. He is expected to return to a familiar theme – the defence of democracy against Donald Trump – and tout Harris as the ideal presidential candidate.Biden is likely to receive a far more electrifying welcome as an outgoing president than he ever did as a candidate. The convention will honour his half-century career in politics as senator, vice-president and president, with the first lady, Jill Biden, among those paying tribute. Harris is likely to join Biden on stage.It will be a bittersweet moment for the 81-year-old, who is still reportedly irked by the role that the senior Democratic figures Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer played in pressuring him to step aside amid questions about his mental fitness.Still, the mood among Democrats is buoyant as opinion polls show Harris leading or tied with Trump in crucial swing states. The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, told CNN’s State of the Union programme that the convention would be “like a rock concert”. A-list stars are likely to inject further energy.Wiley Nickel, a congressman from North Carolina who was with Harris in Raleigh last Friday when she unveiled her economic policy agenda, said in a phone interview: “The feeling is like it was back in 2008 when I worked for President Obama. People are incredibly excited. They’re focused on the issues instead of Joe Biden’s age. When we have a campaign focused on the issues we’re going to win.”But the party is eager to avoid any repeat of their Chicago convention in 1968, when anti-Vietnam war protests and a police riot led to scenes of chaos that stunned the nation and contributed to the party’s defeat in November.The death toll in Gaza has exceeded 40,000, according to the health ministry there. The biggest protest group the Coalition to March on the DNC has planned demonstrations on Monday and Thursday to coincide with Biden and Harris’s speeches. Organisers say they expect at least 20,000 activists to demonstrate, including students who protested against the war on college campuses.The switch at the top of the ticket has given some activists pause but others contend that Harris is part of the Biden administration and so complicit. Her speech on Thursday will be watched closely for signs that she is willing to take a harder line against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.Peter Beinart, a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York, argues that Harris can distinguish herself simply be enforcing an existing law that bars the US from assisting any unit of a foreign security force that commits “gross violations” of human rights.“The premise of the Leahy law is that all lives, including those of Palestinians, are equally precious,” Beinart wrote in the New York Times. “Kamala Harris can show, finally, that a major-party nominee for president agrees.”On Sunday, there was march along Michigan Avenue against the war in Gaza and for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. The march began in late afternoon and stretched into the night. Police lined the march route and there were no signs of major conflict. At one point, anti-abortion activists staged a small counter-protest.The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to America’s third-biggest city including delegates, activists and journalists. Security will be tight, with street closures around the convention centre, while police have undergone de-escalation training.On the eve of the convention, Democrats released their party platform, a document of more than 90 pages presenting their policy priorities. The platform was voted on by the convention’s platform committee before Biden’s exit and repeatedly refers to his “second term”.On Monday, the convention will focus on the Biden administration’s policy accomplishments and feature former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton; Tuesday will contrast Trump’s and Harris’s visions for America; Wednesday will emphasise the importance of protecting individual freedoms; Thursday is entitled “For Our Future”, underlined by Harris’s speech.Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, will spend the week counter-programming the Democratic convention with a tour of battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. More

In Chicago this week Democrats will officially welcome Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee. Just a few months ago this was, for many people, an unlikely if not unthinkable scenario. Harris was a lacklustre vice-president, the narrative went, and her previous bid to be a presidential candidate had not gone well. Today things could not be more different. Celebrities are falling over themselves to endorse her, and there is genuine excitement over her entry into the race. She is said to be enthusing young voters and those who could not muster much interest in Joe Biden. So what’s changed? Janell Ross began researching Kamala Harris’s life months ago. To her, the turnaround in the politician’s fortune came as no surprise. She explains to Michael Safi why Harris has undergone a political transformation in the past two years. But she also delves into which of Harris’s life experiences have helped formed her outlook, from being bussed to a predominantly white school, to the influence of her mother. And she looks at what her past can help us glean about her future and her approach to leadership More

Some 40,000 protesters are expected to gather outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on Monday to demonstrate against the Biden administration’s position on Israel, with some groups saying they will push for amendments to the party’s platform.The party is on guard for disruptions to high-profile speeches at the DNC, with one pro-Palestinian group called Delegates Against Genocide, angry at US support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza, saying it will press for an arms embargo this week.Delegates Against Genocide said it would exercise its freedom of speech rights during main events at the four-day convention. Its organisers declined to give details, but said they would offer amendments to the party platform and use their rights as delegates to speak on the convention floor.The group wants to include language backing enforcement of laws that ban giving military aid to individuals or security forces that commit gross violations of human rights.“We’re going to make our voices heard,” said Liano Sharon, a business consultant and delegate who signed an alternative platform along with 34 other delegates. “Freedom of expression necessarily includes the right to stand up and be heard even when the authority in the room says to shut up.“They want the convention to go smoothly. They don’t want to have any kind of disruption or any kind of statement or anything like that,” he told Reuters at an event hosted by Chicago’s large Palestinian population. “I’m sorry. A convention is a political engagement vehicle, OK? And if we’re not using it for that, then it’s just a beauty pageant.”The Harris campaign declined to comment on the group’s plans.The Uncommitted National Movement, a separate effort pushing Democrats to change policy on Israel that won more than 30 delegates in primary elections, also wants an arms embargo. But it has focused, unsuccessfully so far, on winning a main-stage speaking slot for a Palestinian American or Gaza humanitarian worker.Uncommitted has said it is not planning to disrupt the convention proceedings.Late on Saturday, convention organisers added a daytime panel discussion on Arab and Palestinian issues to Monday’s agenda and one on antisemitism.Nadia Ahmad, a law professor at Florida’s Barry University and a delegate, said there were about 60 Muslim delegates, a fraction of the 5,000 overall. But their concerns were shared by others, she said.Demonstrations are expected every day of the convention and, while their agendas vary, many activists agree an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war is the priority.The largest group, the Coalition to March on the DNC, has planned demonstrations on the first and last days of the convention. Organisers say they expect at least 20,000 activists, including students who protested the war on college campuses.“The people with power are going to be there,” said Liz Rathburn, a University of Illinois Chicago student organiser. “People inside the United Center are the people who are going to be deciding our foreign policy in one way or another.”The Democratic party’s draft platform released in mid-July calls for “an immediate and lasting ceasefire” in the war and the release of remaining hostages taken to Gaza during the 7 October attack by Islamist militant Hamas fighters in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed.The platform does not mention the more than 40,000 people that Palestinian health authorities in Gaza say have been killed in Israel’s subsequent offensive. Nor does it mention any plans to curtail US arms shipments to Israel. The United States approved $20 billion in additional arms sales to Israel on Tuesday.Mediators including the US have sought to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza, based on a plan Biden put forward in May but so far have not succeeded.Pro-Palestinian activists say Harris has been more sympathetic to people in Gaza than Biden has been. Her national security adviser said on X this month that she does not support an arms embargo on Israel. After meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Harris told reporters not only that Israel had a right to defend itself but also in reference to Gaza: “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”Organisers of Monday’s planned-protest said the numbers outside the convention could swell to over 100,000.The city has designated a park about a block from the DNC’s venue, the United Center, for a speakers’ stage. Those who sign up get 45 minutes.The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to the nation’s third-largest city, including delegates, activists and journalists. Activists say they learned lessons from last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and are predicting bigger crowds and more robust demonstrations in Chicago, a city with deep social activism roots.The city says it has made necessary preparations with police and the Secret Service. Security will be tight, with street closures around the convention centre.With Associated Press and Reuters More

The Republican senator and Donald Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham has warned that Trump is in danger of losing the US presidential election if he continues to talk about Kamala Harris’s race and make other personal attacks instead of focusing on policy issues.Graham’s comments came on Meet The Press when asked whether he agreed with Nikki Haley’s recent admonition that Trump and Republicans should “quit whining” and stop “talking about what race Kamala Harris is”.“Yeah. I don’t think – I don’t look at vice-president Kamala Harris as a lunatic,” Graham told moderator Kristin Welker. “I look at her as the most liberal person to be nominated for president in the history of the United States.”He said the election should be fought on policy. “A nightmare for Harris is to defend her policy choices,” he said.“President Trump can win this election,” Graham continued. “If you have a policy debate, he wins. Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”Trump’s ad hominem digs against Harris have ranged from disparaging and false comments about her race and intelligence to snide remarks about her appearance. During a Saturday rally Trump said: “I’m a better looking person than Kamala” and that Harris had “the laugh of a crazy person”.With Harris rising in the polls many saw Trump’s rally, in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, as an opportunity for him to reboot his campaign by focusing on issues of importance to voters, but he has instead continued to emphasize personal differences.Trump has repeatedly questioned the racial identity of Harris, whose mother is Indian and father is Jamaican. In a chaotic appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists several weeks ago, Trump incorrectly claimed that Harris suddenly “became a Black woman” and falsely stated that she had only identified with her Indian background.“Is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump remarked, prompting audible gasps. “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of sudden she became a Black woman.”Harris on Sunday suggested without naming him directly that Trump’s habit of constantly attacking opponents made him a “coward”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Over the last several years there’s been this kind of perversion that has taken place, I think, which is to suggest that the measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down. When what we know is the real and true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up,” Harris said at a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania. “Anybody who’s about beating down other people is a coward.”JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, has previously described Harris as a coward, too, in keeping with his running mate’s personal attacks on her.“President Trump walked right into the NABJ conference and showed he had the courage to take tough questions, while Kamala Harris continues to hide from any scrutiny or unfriendly media like the coward she is,” Vance wrote last month. More

So Liz Truss thinks the lettuce joke is “puerile” but supports Donald Trump, whose unhinged rants largely comprise pitifully childish schoolyard insults (Liz Truss leaves stage over ‘I crashed the economy’ lettuce banner, 14 August). Trump and Truss are united not just in their politics but also in their absolute lack of self-awareness, sense of humour, and belief in demonstrable fact.Hilary KnightVictoria, British Columbia, Canada Banksy’s rhino is described as an “artwork”, a “mural” and an “installation” (Banksy rhino artwork in London defaced with graffiti tag, 13 August), yet the individual who added their own composition to the image is a “mindless vandal”. Double standards perhaps?Stuart HarringtonBurnham-on-Sea, Somerset Letters on accents (Letters, 15 August) reminded me of my educational ambitions in 1960s Liverpool. My Toxteth teacher learned of my aspirations for further education and counselled: “You’ll have to lose your Liverpool accent. But don’t worry, the catarrh will disappear when you move away.”Dr Ken BrayBath A while ago, I was surprised that a delicious delicacy was signed on one of the market stalls as asparagu’s, thus becoming, perhaps, a medieval mid‑European warlord (Letters, 16 August). I taught English in town for years.Ian RunnaclesBury St Edmunds, Suffolk Re “How to rein in the malign influence of Elon Musk” (Letters, 15 August). Hands up all those who own a Tesla.John PeacheyWoking, Surrey More

Kamala Harris is set to appear in Chicago next week to formally accept the nomination for president of the Democratic party, less than two months after Joe Biden dropped out of the race. She will appear alongside her running mate, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, at the party’s national convention.Typically a party formally nominates their candidate at the convention – as the Republicans did for Donald Trump in July – however, Democrats changed the rules to put in place a virtual roll call. Harris and Walz were officially nominated earlier in August.Here’s what else to know about next week’s Democratic convention.Where and when is the Democratic national convention?The Democratic national convention will be held in Chicago from 19 to 22 August.Chicago previously played host to the convention in 1996, when Bill Clinton was nominated for re-election, and 1968 when Hubert Humphrey was nominated.Two venues in Chicago will host the convention: the United Center arena for evening programming, and McCormick Place convention center for daytime sessions.Who is speaking at the convention?Harris and Walz will both speak at the convention, and Biden is also expected to give an address. The full lineup of speakers has not yet been released (Republicans only released the names of confirmed speakers the day of their July convention).However, several big names have been reported:

Monday, 19 August: Biden will speak on the opening night, along with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Tuesday, 20 August: Former president Barack Obama will give an address on the second night.

Wednesday, 21 August: Former president Bill Clinton will join Walz on the convention’s third night.

Thursday, 22 August: Harris will close out the fourth night of the convention.
In 2020, the virtual convention included speeches from Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jill Biden and a host of other elected officials.How can I watch the convention?The party will livestream the convention on its Democratic national convention website and on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.The Guardian has a team of reporters in Chicago and will be covering the convention in depth, including live blogs each night.Major news networks are likely to carry prime-time programming. PBS will have live coverage beginning at 8pm each night.What happens at the Democratic convention?The primary functions of the convention is to formally nominate the party’s candidate, adopt the party’s platform, unify the party and boost enthusiasm for the ticket.The convention usually includes a roll call to formally nominate their candidate. However, the rule-making group for the Democratic National Committee established procedures for candidates to contest the primary nomination ahead of the convention.Harris was confirmed as the party’s nominee after a virtual roll call vote earlier in August – the first time Democrats have used such a process. Harris and Walz will formally accept the nomination at the convention.The rest of the week will focus on the party’s platform and speeches from notable figures. The party says that more than 5,000 delegates and alternates will be at the convention, with 50,000 total visitors in Chicago for the convention (which includes delegates and the media).Who else is speaking?The party has signaled its plans to foreground up-and-coming Democrats in its programming. Likely speakers include the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland governor, Wes Moore, and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, among others.Meanwhile, many political influencers have been credentialed, including the socialist podcast host Daniel Denvir.Will there be protests?Yes. Organizers expect tens of thousands of people to protest outside the Democratic national convention to pressure the party to stop the war in Gaza. Inside the convention, uncommitted delegates plan to push anti-war demands in hopes of winning more allies to the cause and influencing the party platform.Chicago is home to the country’s largest Palestinian population – with Bridgeview, Illinois, known as Little Palestine. More than 200 groups have joined together for the March on the DNC, with protests planned for the opening and closing nights of the convention.Protests are not unique to the Democratic convention; during the Republican convention in July, protesters led a demonstration against Trump and his party in downtown Milwaukee.What’s ahead on the US election calendar?The next presidential debate is scheduled for 10 September, with both Harris and Trump confirmed.A debate between JD Vance and Walz has been confirmed for 1 October. More

Every time someone complains that our new prime minister is boring, I rue the day that politics became a performing art. The degradation began, as the entertainment journalist Ramin Setoodeh relates, when Donald Trump was catapulted into power by The Apprentice, a reality/talent/gameshow over which he presided on NBC from 2004 until 2017. Before this, Trump was best known as a loud-mouthed, laughable vulgarian, a fixture in tabloid gossip columns whose business career mostly consisted of bankruptcies. The British producer Mark Burnett endowed him with a new persona as a charismatic leader, a “godlike character” worshipped by teams of ruthless young entrepreneurs who fought for the chance to serve as apprentices in his property company. It was in this phoney guise that Trump won the election in 2016; installed in Washington, he nationalised the show’s cut-throat scenario by stoking social and ideological feuds, then sat back to enjoy the mayhem that ensued.Trump’s rabid animosity energised The Apprentice. The show’s ethos was supposedly aspirational, but success proved less telegenic than the gloating spectacle of failure: at the climax of every episode Trump eliminated losers by abusively booming: “You’re fired!” This catchphrase became a clarion call. “When I said it,” he boasts to Setoodeh, “the whole building shook. The place just reverberated. People were screaming, they went crazy.” Was their reaction ecstasy or hysterical alarm? Either way, they heard a megaphonic deity trumpeting doom.As president, Trump shrank from recreating that eschatological reign of terror. Afraid of real-life confrontations, he sacked chiefs of staff and cabinet members remotely, in small-voiced tweets, not thundering public denunciations. But in interviews with Setoodeh after he was voted out of office in 2020, this hunched, dejected “shadow of a famous man” physically bulks up again as he recalls a time when he was judge, jury and executioner. Play-acting authority on television was his forte; by contrast, running the country turned out to be both a chore and a bore.On The Apprentice, as in the White House, Trump disdained preparation and refused to read briefs, “purely focused on maximising his screen time”. The only protege to whom he paid attention was the back-stabbing diva Omarosa Manigault Newman, who saw herself as a female Trump. He subsequently eased her into a job at the White House, where what Setoodeh calls her “weaponised incompetence” soon caused her to be marched off the premises in disgrace. Although she then underwent a “total Trump detox”, he still speaks of Manigault Newman admiringly. He tells Setoodeh that in her first season on the show “she was evil”, which from him is high praise, then adds that the next year “she tried to be evil – and when you try it doesn’t work”. It’s a revealingly self-reflexive remark: is Trump himself authentically malign, or just pretending to be? He probably doesn’t know. As one would-be apprentice puts it, “Trump conducts himself like an actor playing Trump”; to further complicate matters, he plays the part badly.View image in fullscreenListening as he rants and rambles, Setoodeh likens him to “a novelty talking Trump doll, its battery on the fritz”. But that battery has recently been recharged: he now resembles a dummy perched on a ventriloquist’s knee, compliantly voicing the diatribes of the homegrown fascists who are his handlers. He has also revived the demeaningly competitive format of the show that launched him, and at a rally this July he claimed to be remaking The Apprentice by goading JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Tim Scott to outdo one another in sycophancy as they vied to become his vice-presidential running mate.The framing conceit of Setoodeh’s book comes from Alice in Wonderland. Trump, he argues, “took America through the looking glass” and warped government into nonsensical farce. Other literary antecedents cast darker shadows. Burnett “envisioned a Lord of the Flies society” and devised initiatic trials as exercises in psychological torture. Auditions even included invasive STD tests. One male competitor shudders as he describes “a funnel that they stuck in there”; scraping his urethra, it extracted a sample that somehow testified to his aptitude for a business career. The ritualised firings were brutal, “carried out like public floggings”.The show’s title had an equally sinister provenance. Burnett chose it as a homage to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Goethe’s ballad about a trainee magus who runs amok with his master’s spells. In the poem, acted out by Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, the absent sorcerer returns to chasten the apprentice and immobilise all those strutting broomsticks and sloshing pails of water. Trump’s mischief-making, however, has continued unchecked, and his current wheeze is to pretend that the burgeoning crowds at Kamala Harris’s rallies are conjured up by AI, like a digital version of Mickey Mouse’s phantasmagoric broomsticks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSetoodeh – whose parents emigrated from Iran in the 1970s to live the American dream – seems so resigned to Trump’s victory in November that he raises a white flag in the book’s dedication. Choking on the fatal name in disgust or dismay, he offers it “To my dad, who is voting for him”. Sticking to pronouns, let’s hope that more Americans vote for her.

Apprentice in Wonderland by Ramin Setooheh is published by HarperCollins (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply More