US Politics

The daughter of former president Ronald Reagan has hit out at contemporary White House politics, saying she thinks her late father would be “appalled” by the personal tenor of current political discourse.“I think he’d be appalled … it was just more civilized,” Patti Davis told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “He didn’t understand lack of civility. He didn’t understand attacking another person. … He didn’t understand cruelty. And that’s what we’re dealing with now.“I think he would be really scared for our democracy,” Davis added.Davis, 71, supposed that her father – a former Republican California governor who served two terms as president beginning in 1980 and gained a reputation as “the great communicator” – would have sought to address voters rather than opposing candidates.“I think he would address the American people at what has divided us,” Davis – the author of a new book, Dear Mom & Dad – told Meet the Press. She added that she thought Reagan would interpret contemporary political division as fear that had translated into anger.“There are people on the public stage and on the political front who understand very well that synergy between fear and anger and who are masterful at exploiting it,” Davis remarked.Reagan was 69 when he took office and 77 when he stepped down – four years younger than Democratic incumbent Joe Biden and the same age as the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge him, former president Donald Trump.Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1994 but may have been suffering from aspects of dementia during his second term.Davis said that cognitive tests for presidential candidates was “probably” appropriate.Her comment on cognitive tests came as the Biden White House continued to push back on a special counsel Robert Hur, who assessed the president to be a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in a report declining to prosecute Biden over his retention of some classified documents before his presidency.Trump, too, has faced questions about his mental acuity after, for instance, confusing Biden with Barack Obama as well as his fellow Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley with former Democratic US House speaker Nancy Pelosi.Davis said: “We know about what age can do. It doesn’t always do that, but it would probably be a good idea.” More

The New York governor has told business owners in her state that there is “nothing to worry about” after Donald Trump was fined $355m and temporarily banned from engaging in commerce in the state when he lost his civil fraud trial Friday.In an interview on the New York radio show the Cats Roundtable with the supermarket billionaire John Catsimatidis, Kathy Hochul sought to quell fears in some quarters that the penalties handed to Trump for engaging in fraudulent business practices could chill the state’s commercial climate.Asked if businesspeople should be worried that if prosecutors could “do that to the former president, they can do that to anybody”, Hochul said: “Law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior.”She added that the fraud case against Trump resulted from “really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance”.Hochul’s comments were directed at some New York business leaders who said they were concerned that the attorney general Letitia James’s case against Trump could deter businesses and investment from coming to the state. Hochul noted James’s case demonstrated how Trump and some allies obtained favorable bank loans and insurance rates with inflated real estate values.The governor said most New York business owners were “honest people, and they’re not trying to hide their assets and they’re following the rules”.Hochul said most business owners would not merit state intervention.“This judge determined that Donald Trump did not follow the rules,” Hochul added. “He was prosecuted and truly, the governor of the state of New York does not have a say in the size of a fine, and we want to make sure that we don’t have that level of interference.”Trump, who denied wrongdoing in the case and maintained there were no victims, now has 30 days to come up with a non-recoverable $35m to secure a bond – a third-party guarantee – against his real estate holdings to show that he can pay the full fine if his appeals fail.Alternatively, he could put the $355m into an escrow account but would get the money back if he wins on appeal.Either way, the ruling is a blow to the developer-politician whose sense of self is tied to financial success. And James has said Trump is actually in line to pay more than $463m when interest is taken into account.In September, Trump’s former lawyer Christopher Kise argued in court that the decision against the ex-president would cause “irreparable impact on numerous companies”. It would also threaten 1,000 employees within the Trump empire, Kise maintained.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the judge, Arthur Engoron, who found the former president liable for fraud and assessed the fine and three-year disqualification from doing business in New York, dropped an earlier ruling to dissolve all the companies that Trump owns in the state that could have led to a liquidation.“This is a venal sin, not a mortal sin,” Engoron wrote in a 92-page ruling that allowed the Trump businesses to keep operating and appointed two overseers to monitor “major activities that could lead to fraud”.Engoron said he could renew his call for “restructuring and potential dissolution” based on “substantial evidence”.Trump has lashed out at the ruling, vowing to appeal and calling James and Engoron “corrupt”.But James said on Friday: “This long-running fraud was intentional, egregious, illegal.” She added: “There cannot be different rules for different people in this country, and former presidents are no exception.” More

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley on Sunday criticized her party’s leading contender for the White House nomination, Donald Trump, for avoiding meaningful comment on the death of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned political nemesis of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.“Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents – or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Haley said Sunday on ABC News This Week. “Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.”The attack which Haley aimed at Trump with respect to Navalny came six days before her home state of South Carolina was scheduled to host its Republican presidential preference primary. With the rest of the Republican field having dropped out, polls show Haley, the ex-governor of South Carolina, trails the former president by more than 30 percentage points.Haley joined other prominent US politicos – including Democratic president Joe Biden – in blaming Putin for Navalny’s death Friday at a Russian penal colony. Trump, on the other hand, has declined to directly remark on the death of Navalny, which authorities reportedly explained to his mother as occurring from “sudden death syndrome”.The former president – who once appointed Haley to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations – has only pledged on social media to “bring peace, prosperity and stability” if he is given another term in the Oval Office.Haley on Sunday said that Trump’s response had not gone nearly far enough.“I think it’s important to stand with the Russian people who believe Navalny was really talking for them,” Haley told the host of This Week, Jonathan Karl. “I mean you look at this hero – he was fighting corruption, he was fighting what Putin does. And what did Putin do? He killed him just like he does all his political opponents. And I think that’s very telling.”Haley added that the 47-year-old Navalny’s death was an opportunity for political leaders in the US “to remind the American people that Vladimir Putin is not our friend”.“Vladimir Putin is not cool. This is not someone we want to associate with,” Haley said. “This is not someone we want to be friends with. This is not someone that we can trust.”Haley’s remarks alluded to how Trump – during his presidency from 2017 to 2021 – demonstrated favor and, arguably, subservience to Putin. They also came a little more than a week after Trump caused global alarm with a campaign speech in South Carolina during which he declared that he would encourage Russia to attack any Nato allies whom he considered to have not paid enough to maintain the alliance.The former UN ambassador on Sunday called Trump’s earlier Nato comments “bone chilling”.“All he did in that one moment was empower Putin,” Haley said.Throwing in a reference to Russia’s jailing of Wall Street reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges which the US have dismissed as bogus, Haley continued: “All [Trump] did in that one moment was he sided with a guy who kills his political opponents – he sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage.“And he sided with a guy who wanted to make a point to the Russian people: ‘Don’t challenge me in the next election, or this will happen to you, too.’”Haley said Americans needed to “start waking up to what this means”, and she called it essential for Ukraine to fend off the invasion Russia launched nearly two years earlier.Trump was entering the South Carolina primary under indictment on more than 90 criminal charges, including for trying to illegally nullify his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election. He is also faced with having to pay civil judgments in excess of half a billion dollars after being adjudicated a business fraudster as well as being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming magazine columnist E Jean Carroll.Nonetheless, polls at the moment show Trump enjoys a relatively slight advantage with the American electorate over Biden. More

At 81 years old, Joe Biden has a wealth of experience to draw on. There is just four years difference between him and Donald Trump. And his rival is as well known as the president for misspeaking and making gaffes. Yet something has changed. Unease has been growing about Biden’s perceived frailty and his mental acuity – and that was before a bombshell report by the US Justice Department’s special counsel. In the report Robert Hur, the Republican special counsel, said Biden would not face criminal charges for mishandling classified documents. The ruling should have been good news for Biden, except the reason given – that Biden would appear to any jury as a “sympathetic well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” – was so damning. Biden hit back in a press conference slamming the inference that he was old and doddery. But as he did so he managed to mix up the names of the presidents of Mexico and Egypt. Biden’s supporters argue that Trump is just as prone to making mistakes and is hardly more reliable, the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith, notes. Yet somehow the mistakes Biden makes are all taken to be a sign he is losing his grip. Michael Safi asks why the same charges against Trump don’t stick and how Biden’s campaign can prove the president is fit and sharp enough for another four-year term. More

There are so many elections this year but how to go about winning them? Labour has a sub-optimal, but impressively consistent strategy: waiting (usually a decade and a half in opposition).It’s paying off again with huge swings to them in last week’s two byelections. But this approach requires patience and most parties around the world are less keen on waiting that long. So they spend a lot of time and money trying to win, which means election adverts. In the US, TV ads are centre stage. In the UK, those are largely banned (even GB News is meant to be providing news when Tory MPs interview each other) but online ads are big business.Those involved in politics have very strong views about the kind of ads that work. They absolutely have to be positive about your offer. Or negative about your ghastly opponent. It’s imperative they’re about issues, not personalities. Or the opposite. The only problem with those election gurus’ certainties? Different kinds of ads work at different times and places. So found research with access to an intriguing data source: experiments conducted by campaign teams during 2018 and 2020 US elections to test ad options before choosing which to air; 617 ads were tested in 146 survey experiments.Researchers showed that quality matters – it’s not unusual for an advert to be 50% more or less persuasive than average. But one kind is not generally more persuasive and the type of ads that worked in 2018 didn’t have the same effect in 2020.So, if you’re trying to get yourself elected, my advice is to base your campaign on the evidence, not just your hunch. See it as good practice. After all, we’d ideally run the country that way. More

If this week’s hearing about Fani Willis’s affair with her assistant Nathan Wade has piqued America’s interest in the character of the Fulton county district attorney, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman have written the perfect book for this moment.Isikoff has been a dogged investigator for the Washington Post, NBC and Yahoo, while his longtime friend and collaborator Klaidman is a former managing editor of Newsweek now a newly minted investigative reporter for CBS. Together they have produced the most readable and authoritative account to date of all of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.At its center is a nuanced portrait of Willis, who at least until a couple of days ago appeared to be Trump’s most effective nemesis, having indicted him, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, as well as 16 other co-conspirators.Whether Willis’s affair with one of her principal assistants is a valid reason to force the presiding judge to dismiss her from the case remains to be seen. But the revelation seems to have been as much of a bombshell for her biographers as it was for everyone else.Contacted by the Guardian, both authors declined to predict the outcome of the current proceeding. But Isikoff sounded optimistic that Willis would survive this latest assault.“How did the relationship between Willis and Wade prejudice any of the other defendants?” Isikoff asked. “There is simply no evidence that it did.”Willis is a daughter of the civil rights movement. In the 1960s, her father, John C Floyd III, migrated from the politics of John F Kennedy and the non-violence of Martin Luther King Jr to the much tougher ideology of the Black Panther Party of Los Angeles, which he co-founded in 1967. After that he became a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer.Isikoff and Klaidman say Floyd’s odyssey gives us “a glimpse into his daughter’s pugnacious personality and her deep-seated loathing of bullies” – both of which were on prominent display when she defended herself in the hearing room.While it was her personal passion that brought Willis into an unwelcome spotlight, it was her own focus on allegations of sexual harassment against her previous boss and mentor that made her election as the first woman district attorney of Fulton county possible. Paul Howard became the first Black person to hold the job of Fulton county DA in 1996, and made Willis a star by giving her some of his Atlanta office’s most famous cases. She became famous as the lead prosecutor in an indictment of 35 public school officials for alleged violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act. The Atlanta schools superintendent, six principals, two assistant principals and 14 teachers were accused of faking students’ test scores, in response to the requirements of No Child Left Behind.That law, championed by George W Bush, put schools at risk of losing federal aid if students didn’t meet minimum standards for success on standardized tests. All but one of the defendants was Black, which made the prosecution even more controversial. By the time Howard gave Willis the case she was chief of the office’s trial division. Isikoff and Klaidman say she proved a “hands-on micromanager” who “plunged into every detail of the case”. Its complexity turned out to be the perfect training for Willis to use the same Rico statute to go after Donald Trump and his co-conspirators.One of this book’s most important contributions is to remind us of the breadth and viciousness of the president’s efforts to undermine democracy – and the horrendous effects they had on the lives of decent, honest election officials in every swing state Trump lost.After multiple lawsuits alleging voter fraud were thrown out by nearly every judge who heard them, Trump famously turned his attention to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, one of several Republicans whose resistance proved heroic. When Trump got Raffensperger and his assistants on the phone, they were shocked by how many QAnon conspiracy theories Trump seemed to have accepted as fact – just because so many of his supporters had retweeted them. A particular favorite of the president’s was the notion there had been 200,000 forged signatures on absentee ballots in Fulton county – even though the total number of absentee votes had been 148,319.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the same call, Trump repeated the big lie that the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss had run between 18,000 and 56,000 bogus ballots through election scanners. Trump said Freeman was “known all over the internet”. This was the same lie promoted by Giuliani, which ultimately cost him a richly deserved verdict of $148m for libeling the two innocent women.In one of the many telling details of Isikoff and Klaidman’s book, the authors remind us that the other hero from that phone call was the Georgia deputy secretary of state, Jordan Fuchs.“Fuchs did what was arguably the single gutsiest and most consequential act of the entire post-election battle,” the authors believe. To protect her boss, she decided to tape the phone call – without telling Raffensperger. After the tape leaked to the Washington Post, it quickly became the single most powerful piece of evidence against the ex-president in any of the four prosecutions he is still facing.When you see all of Trump’s alleged crimes piled together in a single narrative, it is beyond belief that he remains the favorite of a majority of Republican primary voters. But these same facts should surely be enough to guarantee his defeat if he actually gets the chance to face the larger electorate in November.
Find Me the Votes is published in the US by Twelve More

The verdicts keep coming.

On Friday US time, the three-month hearing focused on Donald Trump’s business dealings in New York came to an end. Trump was ordered to pay back more than $US350 million (A$537 million), plus interest. He and two of his associates are banned from directing any business in New York for three years. His two sons, Donald Jr and Eric Trump, have also been handed two-year bans, and ordered to pay US$4 million (A$6.1 million) each.

In his judgement, New York Judge Arthur Engoron gave his own insight into the Trump phenomenon, describing what he saw as a “complete lack of contrition and remorse” that “borders on pathological”.

While Engoron was referring specifically to business fraud in New York, the judge’s observation might also apply to Trumpism writ large.

Coverage of the case and its stunning end has consistently focused on Trump’s celebrity – after all, he built his national profile on the back of his supposed business acumen, trading on his long stint as host of the popular television show The Apprentice.

Read more:
Should Donald Trump be disqualified from state ballots in presidential election? Here’s how the US Supreme Court might rule

The results of this civil case certainly seem to poke holes in the image of Trump as a consummate businessman. Combined with the money he owes as the result of his loss of a second civil defamation trial brought by E. Jean Carroll, Trump is now in upwards of half a billion dollars of debt. It’s not clear where this money will come from, or what will happen to Trump’s existing New York businesses.

This has led some commentators to argue this most recent case represents a “stunning”, “devastating” and “shocking blow” to the image of Trump as a successful real estate mogul better placed than anyone to run the world’s largest and most important economy.

The pathology of Trumpism

It is certainly possible to argue Trump’s reputation as the embodiment of rugged American entrepreneurship played an important role in his successful bid for the presidency in 2016. At least some of his support was drawn from the sense that a political outsider and ruthless businessman would shatter the stale consensus of establishment politics.

But if it were possible to make that argument eight years ago, it is less convincing now.

Read more:
Does Trump actually have to pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll? Not immediately, at least

Trump’s celebrity profile was, of course, critical to his campaign. His rise to political prominence, though, came not so much as a result of his reputation as a successful businessman, but on the back of his unabashed peddling of racist conspiracy theories about the first Black president.

Trump’s ability to tap into a particularly American form of racial revanchism – his political acumen in marrying conspiracy, racism, and political grievance in an increasingly unequal society – is what brought him to power. It is what sustains him still.

The pathology of Trumpism revolves around his politics, not his personal economics. It at least partly explains why this latest case, plus the 91 separate felony charges in four criminal cases, are unlikely to affect Trump’s political support, particularly with his base in the Republican Party.

That base is too far down the road Trump began mapping out when he staked his political reputation on the argument that a Black man could not possibly be qualified for the presidency of the United States. Even a half a billion-dollar hole punched through his business reputation will not change that.

Trump’s extensive Republican base will likely be unperturbed by the latest judgement against him.
EPA/Randall Hill

Nothing, or everything, might change

That does not mean, however, that continued support for Trump is inevitable.

In another New York courtroom this week, a judge ruled that Trump’s first criminal trial will begin in just over a month. On March 25, for the first time in American history, a former president will face criminal charges in court.

In what will likely become the first of four possibly consecutive criminal trials, Trump will face a potential six-week hearing on his efforts to cover up politically damaging information about his relationships with two women in advance of the 2016 presidential election. Dubbed the “hush money” case, this trial represents more than the sordid dealings of an alleged serial adulterer; it represents, arguably, the beginning of a pattern of deliberate election interference that began even before Trump took office.

If it goes ahead as planned, a late March trial date will likely mean these hearings will barely be over before the next set begins. The classified documents case, centering on Trump’s alleged illegal removal of highly classified documents from the White House, is scheduled to begin in Florida in late May. Scheduling for the other two cases, focused on on Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection and election interference in the state of Georgia, remains unclear.

Read more:
Donald Trump’s stroll to victory in Iowa was a foregone conclusion. This doesn’t make it any less shocking

None of this has ever happened before. There is really no telling what it will mean for Trump, his campaign, or American democracy more broadly.

Polling suggests that a criminal conviction may dent Trump’s national support. It is certainly possible such a conviction (or convictions), combined with eye-watering levels of debt, and the sheer logistics of conducting a national campaign amid multiple criminal trials, will have an impact.

But the pathology of Trumpism has so far proven resistant to what should be crushing blows.

The verdicts will keep coming. Trump may well, too. More

Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a desperate plea for fresh arms on Saturday as his army commanders announced that Ukrainian troops were pulling out of the key eastern city of Avdiivka, handing Moscow its first major military victory since last May, just days before the second anniversary of the Russian invasion.Ukraine’s leader told the Munich Security Conference that the slowing of weapons supplies was having a direct impact on the frontline and was forcing Ukraine to cede territory.“Keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit of weapons, particularly in deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war,” he said.The retreat from Avdiivka hands the initiative in the conflict to Vladimir Putin, a month before rubber-stamp elections that will hand him another six years in office, and a day after the death of the leading Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.Referring to the US Congress’s decision to call a two-week recess instead of voting on a $60bn military aid package, Zelenskiy warned that “dictators don’t go on vacation”.“Hatred knows no pause,” he said. “Enemy artillery is not silent due to procedural troubles. Warriors opposing the aggressor need sufficient strength.”Ukraine’s military announced in the early hours of Saturday that it was withdrawing forces from Avdiivka, a decision that has been regarded as inevitable for some time as Russian forces cut off the industrial city on three sides. “I decided to withdraw our units from the town and move to defence from more favourable lines in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen,” said the newly appointed army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi in a statement.Soldiers had raised concerns that Avdiivka could be “another Bakhmut” – the city that Ukraine defended fiercely last spring, but which ultimately fell after heavy losses.Soldiers involved in the retreat painted a chaotic picture of risky and terrifying withdrawal, in which they were sometimes forced to leave wounded behind. A top army commander wrote on the messaging service Telegram that “a certain number of Ukrainian servicemen” were taken prisoner during the retreat.Viktor Biliak, a soldier with the 110th Brigade, described earlier in the week how he and others had left a garrison in the south of Avdiivka. “There was zero visibility outside,” he wrote on Instagram. “It was just plain survival. A kilometre across a field. A group of blind cats led by a drone. Enemy artillery. The road to Avdiivka is littered with our corpses.”View image in fullscreenFewer than 1,000 civilians are left in the town, which was once home to 30,000 people and a sprawling coke plant. Close to the major city of Donetsk, which has been occupied since 2014, it has long been a fortified outpost, and has been the scene of intense fighting since October.Ukrainian forces are under pressure along the length of the frontline as the anniversary approaches on 24 February, and in Munich, the mood at the conference was darkened by Zelenskiy’s sombre warning that Ukraine will lose without more long-range weapons, drones and air support.The US Senate has approved a bill that allocates $60bn in new aid for the Ukrainian military. But it has been held up in the House of Representatives, which last week announced a sudden two-week recess. At a joint press conference with Zelenskiy, the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said that Washington “must be unwavering” and that “we cannot play political games”.Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said at a side meeting that everything depended on when Ukraine received further aid. “I am optimistic but the timing is critical,” he said. He was dubious that European aid, without sufficient US support, would be enough to prevent Ukraine ceding further territory.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAmong the politicians present, there was frustration not just with US isolationists, but with Europe’s failure to turn its promises of extra ammunition into a reality. The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said she did not understand why countries such as Germany and France that did have extra ammunition were not sending it to the frontline now. “The sense of urgency is simply not clear enough in our discussions,” she said. “We need to speed up and scale up.”Addressing Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, Zelenskiy said Putin was responsible. “Putin kills whoever he wants, be it an opposition leader or anyone who seems like a target to him,” he said.On Friday, the Munich conference was rocked when Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, addressed the conference hours after reports of his death broke.Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, said investigators in the city of Salekhard had refused to release Navalny’s body to his mother, who had arrived there on Saturday morning.Georgy Alburov, another ally, said that authorities wanted to prevent an independent autopsy by delaying the release of Navalny’s body.Prison authorities claim Navalny “fell unconscious” during a walk at the IK-3 prison in the Yamalo-Nenets region where he was serving a 19-year sentence widely seen as politically motivated.OVD-Info, a Russian NGO that monitors law enforcement, said that at least 359 people in 32 cities had been detained at vigils held in support of Navalny across Russia. Many had laid carnations at makeshift memorials under the eye of riot police. More