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      in Elections

      Cassidy Hutchinson says Republicans face ‘make-or-break’ moment on Trump

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      The former Donald Trump White House aide who became a crucial witness to the January 6 attack says she believes the Republican party is facing a “make-or-break moment” over whether to nominate him in the 2024 presidential race.“We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day, and he wants to do it again,” Cassidy Hutchinson said of Trump during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow on Monday, a clear reference to the assault on the US Capitol that the ex-president’s supporters staged after his electoral defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden nearly three years ago.“He wants to run for president to do it again.”Alluding to the more than 90 charges pending against Trump across four separate criminal indictments, Hutchinson added: “He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican … that supported Donald Trump. And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious trouble.”In a separate notable portion of her interview with Maddow, Hutchinson addressed and summarily dismissed rumors that she had dated Matt Gaetz, the far-right Republican US congressman from Florida who helped spread the claims himself.“I will say on behalf of myself – I never dated Matt Gaetz,” said Hutchinson, who appeared on Maddow’s show to promote her memoir Enough, hitting bookshelves on Tuesday. Explaining that the pair had an “amicable working relationship” and “were good friends at points”, she added: “I have much higher standards in men.”Those remarks seemingly build on a cameo from Gaetz in Enough, in which the congressman is shown to unexpectedly take Hutchinson up on an offer to meet several Washington DC political aides out for drinks one night. Later that evening, according to Enough, Gaetz brushes his thumb across Hutchinson’s chin and tells her: “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a national treasure?”Despite the prominence of men like Trump and Gaetz in her party, Hutchinson reiterated that she still considered herself a Republican, though more in the mold of Senator Mitt Romney or the late president Ronald Reagan, whom some see as more moderate conservatives in retrospect.“I do not believe that Mr Trump is a strong Republican,” Hutchinson said. “In this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican party. Now is the time if these politicians [in the party] … want to make the break and want to take the stand – they have to do it now.”Under subpoena, Hutchinson gave some of the most dramatic testimony about the Capitol attack during live congressional hearings in the summer of 2022. One key moment she described being told about was Trump’s accosting of a Secret Service agent and his lunging for the steering wheel of the car he was in when he was told he would not be driven to the Capitol on the day of the attack.That wasn’t all she endured that day. In Enough, Hutchinson recounts how on January 6 she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, the Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor.A short while after Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell”, they mounted the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a desperate but unsuccessful maneuver aimed at preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election weeks earlier.The uprising has been linked to nine deaths. More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the attack, and the majority of them have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by judges or juries at trial.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges filed against him. The various charges collectively accuse him of retaining classified documents after his presidency, hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, and efforts to subvert his 2020 defeat which led to the January 6 attack.Despite the legal peril, Trump maintains dominant polling leads over other candidates pursuing the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Enough plots out the 27-year-old Hutchinson’s trek from being an earnest believer in Trump to disenchantment with him. She was working for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, at the time of the January 6 attack.Martin Pengelly contributed reporting More

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      in US Politics

      Top Trump aide burned so many papers wife noticed ‘bonfire’ smell, book says

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      Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir.The New York Times reported the passage about Meadows burning documents, before MSNBC confirmed it.Hutchinson, a senior aide to Meadows, emerged as a key witness before the House January 6 committee, which investigated the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited in an attempt to stay in power.Hutchinson’s book, Enough, will be published on Tuesday. Last week, the Guardian first reported Hutchinson’s description of being groped by Rudy Giuliani backstage on January 6. Giuliani denied it.For the Times, Robert Draper wrote: “It was, by [Hutchinson’s] telling, an administration awash in paranoia, with Mr Meadows and others refusing to dispose of daily litter in ‘burn bags’ for fear that someone from the ‘deep state’ might intercept the contents.“Instead, she writes, Mr Meadows burned so many documents in his fireplace in the final days of the Trump presidency that his wife complained to Ms Hutchinson about how expensive it had become to dry-clean the ‘bonfire’ aroma from his suits.”Meadows’ habit of burning documents was previously known. In May last year, the New York Times and Politico reported that Hutchinson had in testimony described Meadows burning papers. Politico said he did so after meeting Scott Perry, a hard-right Pennsylvania Republican congressman involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Later, transcripts released by the committee showed Hutchinson saying she saw Meadows burn documents around a dozen times between December 2020 and January 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs MSNBC pointed out, ahead of its own interview with Hutchinson on Monday night, Trump himself has without evidence accused the January 6 committee of “destroy[ing] all ‘evidence’ and records”.Last week, the former US president claimed to NBC the committee “burned all the evidence, OK? They burned all the evidence.” More

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      in US Politics

      Rust Belt Union Blues: how Trump wooed workers away from the Democrats

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      Consider the following social science experiment: go into a unionized steel mill parking lot in western Pennsylvania, look at the bumper stickers and track the political messages. Given the longstanding bond between unions and the Democratic party, you might predict widespread support for Democratic candidates. Yet when the then Harvard undergraduate Lainey Newman conducted such unconventional field research during the Covid pandemic, encouraged by her faculty mentor Theda Skocpol, results indicated otherwise. There was a QAnon sticker here, a Back the Blue flag there. But one name proliferated: Donald Trump.It all supported a surprising claim: industrial union members in the shrunken manufacturing hubs of the US are abandoning their historic loyalty to the Democrats for the Republican party.“The most interesting point, how telling it is, is that those stickers were out in the open,” Newman says. “Everyone in the community knew. It was not something people hide.“It would not have been something old-timers would have been OK with, frankly. They stood up against … voting for Republicans, that type of thing.”Newman documented this political shift and the complex reasons for it in her senior thesis, with Skocpol as her advisor. Now the recent graduate and the veteran professor have teamed up to turn the project into a book: Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party.The book comes out as organized labor is returning to the headlines, whether through the United Auto Workers strike at the big three US carmakers or through the battle to buy a former industrial powerhouse, US Steel. In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Trump is again wooing union voters. On the 3 September edition of ABC’s This Week, the Manhattan Institute president, Reihan Salam, noted that Trump “was trying to appeal to UAW members to talk about, for example, this effort to transition away from combustion engine vehicles”.Newman reflects: “It is relatively well-known [that] union members aren’t voting for Democrats like they used to. What we say is that for a very long time, Democrats did take unions for granted. They didn’t reinvest in the relationship with labor that would have been necessary to maintain some of the alliances and trust between rank-and-file labor and the Democrats.”Once, the bond was as strong as the steel worked by union hands across western Pennsylvania, especially in Pittsburgh, known to some as “The City That Built America”. Retirees repeatedly mentioned this in interviews with Newman and Skocpol. An 81-year-old explained longtime hostility to the Republican party in unionized steel mills and coal mines: “They figure that there was not a Republican in the world who took care of a working guy.” A union newsletter, one of many the authors examined, urged readers to “Vote Straight ‘D’ This November”. Even in the 1980 presidential election, which Ronald Reagan won decisively, union-heavy counties in Pennsylvania were a good predictor of votes for the incumbent Democrat, Jimmy Carter.The subsequent sea change is summed up in one of Newman and Skocpol’s chapter titles, From Union Blue to Trump Red. In 2016, the connection between Pennsylvania union voters and Democratic support all but evaporated as Trump flipped the normally Democratic state en route to victory. His showing that year set a new bar for support for a GOP presidential candidate among rank-and-file union members, bettering Reagan’s standard, with such members often defying leadership to back Trump.“It’s a myth that it all happened suddenly with Reagan,” says Skocpol. “Not really – it took longer.”‘In Union There Is Strength’To understand these changes, Newman and Skocpol examined larger transformations at work across the Rust Belt, especially in western Pennsylvania. It helped that they have Rust Belt backgrounds: Newman grew up in Pittsburgh, where she returned to research the book, while Skocpol was raised in the former industrial city of Wyandotte, Michigan, located south of Detroit.Once, as they now relate, unions wove themselves into community life. Union halls hosted events from weddings to retirement parties. Members showcased their pride through union memorabilia, some of which is displayed in the book, including samples from Skocpol’s 3,000-item collection. Among her favorites: a glass worker’s badge featuring images of drinking vessels and the motto “In Union There Is Strength”.That strength eventually dissipated, including with the implosion of the steel industry in western Pennsylvania in the 1970s and 80s. (According to one interviewee, the resulting population shift explains why there are so many Pittsburgh Steelers fans across the US.) In formerly thriving communities, cinemas and shoe stores closed down, as did union halls. The cover of Skocpol and Newman’s book depicts a line of shuttered storefronts in Braddock, Pennsylvania, the steel town whose former mayor, the Democrat John Fetterman, is now a US senator.Not all union members left western Pennsylvania. As the book explains, those continuing in employment did so in changed conditions. Steelworkers battled each other for dwindling jobs, capital held ever more power and Pittsburgh itself changed. The Steel City sought to reinvent itself through healthcare and higher education, steelworkers wondering where they stood.Blue-collar workers found a more receptive climate among conservative social organizations that filled the vacuum left by retreating unions: gun clubs that benefited from a strong hunting tradition and megachurches that replaced closed local churches. The region even became a center of activity for the Tea Party movement, in opposition to Barack Obama, a phenomenon Skocpol has researched on the national level.In 2016, although Trump and Hillary Clinton made a nearly equal number of visits to western Pennsylvania, they differed in where they went and what they said. Clinton headed to Pittsburgh. Trump toured struggling factory towns, to the south and west. In one, Monessen, he pledged to make American steel great again – a campaign position, the authors note, unuttered for decades and in stark contrast with Clinton’s anti-coal stance. As president, Trump arguably followed through, with a 2018 tariff on aluminum and steel imports. The book cites experts who opposed the move for various reasons, from harm to the economy to worsened relations with China.The authors say their book is not meant to criticize unions or the Democratic party. Democrats, they say, are taking positive steps in response to union members’ rightward shift.“We didn’t have time to research at length all the new kinds of initiatives that have been taken in a state like Wisconsin, like Georgia,” says Skocpol. “They have learned some of the lessons, are trying to create year-round, socially-embedded presences.”In 2020, Joe Biden made multiple visits to western Pennsylvania and ended up narrowly winning Erie county, which had been trending red. As president, he has sought to have the federal government purchase more US-made products, while launching renewable energy initiatives through union labor. Skocpol says Trump’s more ambitious promises, including an across-the-board 10% tariff, propose an unrealistic bridge to a bygone era.“Will Trump promise to do all these things?” asks Skocpol. “Of course he will. Will he actually do them more effectively if he becomes president again? God help us all.”
      Rust Belt Union Blues is published in the US by Columbia University Press More

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      in US Politics

      Key takeaways from Michael Wolff’s book on Murdoch, Fox and US politics

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      Michael Wolff’s new book, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, was eagerly awaited even before the Guardian published the first news of its contents on Tuesday.Since then, other outlets have reported more revelations familiar in tone and sometimes in cast list from the gadfly author’s blockbusting trilogy of Trump tell-alls: Fire and Fury, Siege and Landslide.In response, Fox News pointed to a famous impersonation of Wolff by comedian Fred Armisen when it said: “The fact that the last book by this author was spoofed in a Saturday Night Live skit is really all we need to know.”Nonetheless, what have we learned about Rupert Murdoch, Fox and US politics from The Fall so far? Here are some key points:Murdoch did not expect Dominion to prove so costlyDominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for $1.6bn, over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud in 2020. According to Wolff, in winter 2022, an irate Rupert Murdoch told friends of his then-wife, Jerry Hall, “This lawsuit could cost us fifty million dollars.” When the suit was settled, in April, it cost Fox a whopping $787.5m.Murdoch thought Ron DeSantis would beat TrumpMurdoch reportedly predicted the Florida governor would beat Trump for the Republican nomination next year, siphoning off evangelical voters because “it was going to come out about the abortions Trump had paid for”. But it seems Murdoch’s radar was off again: a few months out from the first vote in Iowa, notwithstanding 91 criminal charges, Trump holds gigantic polling leads over DeSantis, whose campaign has long been seen to be flatlining.Murdoch wishes Trump dead …Murdoch, Wolff says, directs considerable anger Trump’s way, at one point treating friends to “a rat-a-tat-tat of jaw-clenching ‘fucks’” that showed a “revulsion … as passionate … as [that of] any helpless liberal”. More even than that, Wolff reports that Murdoch, 92, has often wished out loud that Trump, 77, was dead. “Trump’s death became a Murdoch theme,” Wolff writes, reporting the mogul saying: “‘We would all be better off …?’ ‘This would all be solved if …’ ‘How could he still be alive, how could he?’ ‘Have you seen him? Have you seen what he looks like? What he eats?’”… but Lachlan just wipes his bottom on himRupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, is in pole position to take over the empire. According to Wolff, the younger man is no Trump fan either. As reported by the Daily Beast, Wolff writes: “In the run-up to the 2016 election, the bathrooms at the Mandeville house featured toilet paper with Trump’s face, reported visitors with relief and satisfaction. [Lachlan] told people that his wife and children cried when Trump was elected.”Rupert has choice words for some Fox News starsThe Daily Beast also reported on the older Murdoch’s apparent contempt for some of his stars. Considering how, Wolff says, Sean Hannity pushed for Fox to stay loyal to Trump, the author writes: “When Murdoch was brought reports of Hannity’s on- and off-air defence of Fox’s post-election coverage, he perhaps seemed to justify his anchor: ‘He’s retarded, like most Americans.’”Hannity may have been on thin iceAlso reported by the Daily Beast: Wolff says Murdoch considered firing Hannity as a way to mollify Dominion in its defamation suit, with Lachlan Murdoch reportedly suggesting that a romantic relationship Hannity had with another host could be used as precedent, given the downfalls of media personalities including Jeff Zucker of CNN.DeSantis may have kicked Tucker Carlson’s dogAccording to the Daily Beast, and to a lengthy excerpt published by New York magazine, Wolff writes that in spring of this year, Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey DeSantis, visited another leading Fox host, Tucker Carlson, and his wife, Susie Carlson, for a lunch designed to introduce Murdoch’s favored Republican to his most powerful primetime star. What Wolff says follows is worth quoting in full:
      The Carlsons are dog people with four spaniels, the progeny of other spaniels they have had before, who sleep in their bed. DeSantis pushed the dog under the table. Had he kicked the dog? Susie Carlson’s judgment was clear: She did not ever want to be anywhere near anybody like that ever again. Her husband agreed. DeSantis, in Carlson’s view, was a ‘fascist’. Forget Ron DeSantis.
      Carlson saw a presidential run as a way to escapeCarlson has said he “knows” his removal from Fox after the Dominion settlement was a condition of that deal. Dominion and Fox have said it wasn’t. On Wednesday, New York magazine published Wolff’s reporting that Trump openly considered making Carlson his vice-presidential pick. But Wolff also fleshes out rumours Carlson considered a run for president himself – reported by the Guardian – and says the host seriously pondered the move “as a further part of his inevitable martyrdom – as well as a convenient way to get out of his contract”. This, Wolff says, left Rupert Murdoch “bothered” – and “pissed at Lachlan for not reining Carlson in”.Wolff is no stranger to gossip …… often of a salacious hue. Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chief, features prominently throughout The Fall, a font of off-colour quotes and pungent opinions, including that Trump, whom he helped make president, is a “dumb motherfucker”. Ailes died in disgrace in 2017, after a sexual harassment scandal. According to a New York Times review, Wolff describes the Fox-host-turned-Trump-surrogate Kimberly Guilfoyle “settl[ing] into a private plane on the way to Ailes’s funeral”, adding: “What was also clear, if you wanted it to be, was that she was wearing no underwear.”Jerry Hall called Murdoch a homophobeSticking with the salacious, the Daily Beast noted a focus on “Murdoch’s attitude towards homosexuality”. Hall, the site said, is quoted as responding to a discussion of someone’s sexuality by asking: “Rupert, why are you such a homophobe?” Repeating the charge, the former model reportedly told friends: “He’s such an old man.” More

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      in US Politics

      Texas teacher fired for showing Anne Frank graphic novel to eighth-graders

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      A Texas teacher was fired after assigning an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary to her middle school class, in a move that some are calling “a political attack on truth”.The eighth-grade school teacher was released after officials with Hamshire-Fannett independent school district said the teacher presented the “inappropriate” book to students, reported KFDM.The graphic novel, written by Ari Folman and illustrated by David Polonsky, adapts the diary of 13-year-old Anne Frank, who wrote while hiding in an annexe in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.The district sent an email to parents on Tuesday, notifying them that the book, which district officials say was not approved, would no longer be read.“The reading of that content will cease immediately. Your student’s teacher will communicate her apologies to you and your students soon, as she has expressed those apologies to us,” read the email, reported KFDM.By Wednesday, district officials had emailed parents, informing them that the teacher had been fired following an investigation into the incident.“As you may be aware, following concerns regarding curricular selections in your student’s reading class, a substitute teacher has been facilitating the class since Wednesday, September 13, 2023,” said the district to parents, adding that a search for a new instructor was under way.District officials have not released details about the incident, including which school the teacher taught in.Eighth-grade students were reportedly shown a section of the graphic novel where Frank reflected on her own genitals and wanted to see a female friend’s breasts, according to KFDM.Discussions of sexuality were included in the original written version of Anne Frank’s diary, but were edited out in subsequent reprints.A spokesperson for Hamshire-Fannett ISD declined to comment on the incident during a phone call with the Guardian.Notably, this particular graphic novel has been subject to book bans before.A Florida high school removed the graphic novel after a chapter of Moms for Liberty, an extremist advocacy group, objected to the book’s sexual contents and claimed it did not teach the Holocaust accurately, the Associated Press reported.The graphic novel was also removed from Texas’s Dallas-Fort Worth’s Keller independent school district.The latest firing in Texas comes as education laws restricting teaching of race, sexuality and other topics are being implemented in classrooms across the US.The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, signed legislation in 2021 severely limiting how educators can teach topics of race and gender. Texas has also banned more books than any other state, with more than 430 books banned in Texas schools.Clay Robison, a spokesperson with the Texas State Teachers Association, called the latest incident “troubling” to the Guardian.“No teacher should be fired for teaching the Diary of Anne Frank to middle school students,” Robison said. “Teachers are dedicated to teaching the truth, the whole truth,” he said, emphasizing the diary’s importance.Robison added that many Texas teachers are experiencing fear, anger and anxiety about navigating restrictions in the classroom.“It’s a political attack on truth,” Robison said of legislative attempts to limit education. “It’s not a woke agenda. It’s not a liberal agenda. It’s a truth agenda.” More

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      in US Politics

      Rupert Murdoch often wishes Donald Trump dead, Michael Wolff book says

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      Rupert Murdoch loathes Donald Trump so much that the billionaire has not just soured on him as a presidential candidate but often wishes for his death, the author Michael Wolff writes in his eagerly awaited new book on the media mogul, The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty.According to Wolff, Murdoch, 92, has become “a frothing-at-the-mouth” enemy of the 77-year-old former US president, often voicing thoughts including “This would all be solved if … ” and “How could he still be alive, how could he?”The Fall was announced last month and will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.Wolff has written three tell-all books about Trump – Fire and Fury, Siege and Landslide – and one about Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News. In his second Murdoch book, he says he may be “the journalist not in his employ who knows [Murdoch] best”.Wolff also describes his source material as “conversations specifically for this book, and other conversations that have taken place over many years … scenes and events that I have personally witnessed or that I have recreated with the help of participants in them”.After Trump entered US politics in 2015, winning the White House the following year, he, along with an increasingly extreme Republican party, Fox News and other properties in Murdoch’s rightwing media empire formed a symbiotic relationship.But Murdoch has long been reported to have soured on Trump – a process which, according to Wolff, saw Murdoch personally endorse the Fox News call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020 that fueled Trump’s campaign of lies about voter fraud, culminating in the deadly January 6 attack on Congress.By the beginning of this year, Wolff writes, what Murdoch “adamantly didn’t want … was Trump.“Of all Trump’s implacable enemies, Murdoch had become a frothing-at-the-mouth one. His relatively calm demeanor from the early Trump presidency where, with a sigh, he could dismiss him merely as a ‘fucking idiot’ had now become a churning stew of rage and recrimination.“Trump’s death became a Murdoch theme: “We would all be better off …? “This would all be solved if …” “How could he still be alive, how could he?” “Have you seen him? Have you seen what he looks like? What he eats?”Trump has regularly claimed to be exceptionally fit for his age, claims backed by doctors when he was in the White House. He also claims to be more mentally fit for office than Biden, his 80-year-old successor, claims many observers increasingly doubt.After Trump left office, Wolff writes, Murdoch “like much of the Republican establishment … had convinced himself that Trump was, finally, vulnerable. That his hold on the base and on Republican politicians had weakened enough that now was the time to kill him off, finally.”But now, as another election year approaches, Trump is in rude political health.Notwithstanding 91 criminal charges – for state and federal election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments – and assorted civil cases, Trump leads the Republican primary by vast margins in national and key state polling, the overwhelming favourite to win the nomination to face Biden in another White House battle. More

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      in US Politics

      For Elon Musk, the personal is political – but his march to the right affects us all

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      The personal is political. The phrase was popularized by 1960s second-wave feminism but it sums up Elon Musk’s ideological journey. Once a “fundraiser and fanboy for Barack Obama”, to quote his biographer, Walter Isaacson, the sometime world’s richest man now plays thin-skinned, anti-woke warrior – a self-professed free-speech purist who in fact is anything but.His rebranding of Twitter to X having proved a disaster, he flirts with antisemites for fun and lost profits. He threatens the Anti-Defamation League with a multibillion-dollar lawsuit. The ADL never suggested the name “X”. That was a long-term fetish, now a clear own-goal.Like the building of Rome, Musk’s march to the right did not take only one day. A series of events lie behind it. Musk is a modern Wizard of Oz. Like the man behind the curtain, he is needy. According to Isaacson, outright rejection – and gender transition – by one of Musk’s children played an outsized role in his change. So did Covid restrictions and a slap from the Biden White House.In March 2020, as Covid descended, Musk became enraged when China and California mandated lockdowns that threatened Tesla, his electric car company, and thus his balance sheet.“My frank opinion remains that the harm from the coronavirus panic far exceeds that of the virus itself,” he wrote in an intra-company email.But Musk jumped the gun. Moloch would take his cut. In the US, Covid has killed 1.14 million. American life expectancy is among the lowest in the industrialized west. Thailand does better than Florida, New York and Iowa. For their part, Ohio, South Carolina and Missouri, all Republican-run, trail Thailand. Bangladesh outperforms Mississippi. Overall, the US is behind Colombia and Croatia. Under Covid, Trump-voting counties became killing fields.But in May 2020, amid a controversy with local government in California, Musk tweeted, “take the red pill”. It was a reference to The Matrix, in which Neo, the character played by Keanu Reeves, elects to take the “red pill” and thereby confront reality, instead of downing the “blue pill” to wake happily in bed. Ivanka Trump, of all people, was quick to second Musk: “Taken!”Musk’s confrontation with California would not be the last time he was stymied or dissed by those in elected office. In summer 2021, the Biden administration stupidly declined to invite him to a White House summit on electric vehicles – because Tesla was not unionized.“We, of course, welcome the efforts of all automakers who recognize the potential of an electric vehicle future and support efforts that will help reach the president’s goal. And certainly, Tesla is one of those companies,” Biden’s press secretary said, adding: “Today, it’s the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers and the UAW president who will stand with President Biden.” Two years later, the UAW has gone on strike. At midnight on Thursday, 13,000 workers left the assembly lines at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.For all of his talk of freedom, Musk sidles up to China. This week, he claimed the relationship between Taiwan and China was analogous to that between Hawaii and the US. Taiwan is “an integral part of China that is arbitrarily not part of China”, Musk said. Such comments dovetail with Chinese talking points. He made no reference to US interests. He is a free agent. It’s not just about Russia and Ukraine.Musk’s tumultuous personal life has also pressed on the scales. In December 2021, he began to rail against the “woke mind virus”. If the malady were left unchecked, he said, “civilization will never become interplanetary”. Musk apparently loves humanity. People, however, are a different story.According to Isaacson, the outburst was triggered in part by rejection and gender transition. In 2022, one of his children changed her name to Vivian Jenna Wilson, telling a court: “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form.” She also embraced radical economics.“I’ve made many overtures,” Musk tells Isaacson. “But she doesn’t want to spend time with me.” His hurt is palpable.James Birchall, Musk’s office manager, says: “He feels he lost a son who changed first and last names and won’t speak to him anymore because of this woke mind virus.”Contradictions litter Musk’s worldview. Take the experiences of Bari Weiss, the professional contrarian and former New York Times writer. In late 2022, she was one of the conduits for the Twitter Files, fed to receptive reporters by Musk in an attempt to show Twitter’s bias against Trump and the US right. On 12 December, Weiss delivered her last reports. Four days later, she criticized Musk’s decision to suspend a group of journalists, for purportedly violating anti-doxxing policies.“He was doing the very things that he claimed to disdain about the previous overlords at Twitter,” Weiss charged. She also pressed Musk over China, to his dismay. He grudgingly acknowledged, she told Isaacson, that because of Tesla’s investments, “Twitter would indeed have to be careful about the words it used regarding China.“China’s repression of the Uyghurs, he said, has two sides.”“Weiss was disturbed,” Isaacson writes.Musk is disdainful of Donald Trump, whom he sees as a conman. This May, on X, Musk hosted a campaign roll-out for another would-be strongman: Ron DeSantis. A glitch-filled disaster, it portended what followed. The Florida governor continues to slide in the polls, Vivek Ramaswamy nipping at his heels.Musk remains a force. On Monday, he is slated to meet Benjamin Netanyahu, the indicted rightwing prime minister of Israel who will be in New York for the United Nations general assembly. Like Musk, Netanyahu is not a favorite of the Biden White House. Misery loves company. More

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      in US Politics

      Christine Blasey Ford to release memoir detailing Kavanaugh testimony

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      Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, pitching the then conservative US supreme court nominee into huge controversy, will release a memoir next year that she sees as a call for people to speak out about wrongdoing.Publisher St Martin’s Press said Ford’s book would share “riveting new details about the lead-up” to her Senate testimony and “its overwhelming aftermath”, including receiving death threats and being unable to live in her home.The publisher also said Ford would discuss “how people unknown to her around the world restored her faith in humanity”. The book, to be called One Way Back, will be published in March.In a statement, Ford said: “I never thought of myself as a survivor, a whistleblower, or an activist before the events in 2018.“But now, what I and this book can offer is a call to all the other people who might not have chosen those roles for themselves, but who choose to do what’s right. Sometimes you don’t speak out because you are a natural disrupter. You do it to cause a ripple that might one day become a wave.”Kavanaugh, a former Republican operative, was the second of Donald Trump’s three nominees to the supreme court, tilting the court decisively in favor of conservatives and leading to rightwing rulings including the removal of the right to abortion.Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University and Stanford University School of Medicine.In September 2018, she told the Senate judiciary committee Kavanuagh sexually assaulted her at a high-school party in the 1980s.He pinned her on a bed, she said, pressing his hand over her mouth while trying to remove her clothes.In prepared testimony, Ford said: “I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help … I thought Brett was accidentally going to kill me.”Ford escaped when a friend of Kavanaugh jumped on the bed, she said, famously telling senators: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two. They’re having fun at my expense.”The assault, Ford said, “drastically altered my life. For a very long time, I was too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone the details”. She told “very few friends” and her husband, she added.Kavanaugh angrily denied the accusation, and others about alleged drunken behaviour which roiled confirmation proceedings in a way not seen since the scandal over Clarence Thomas’s alleged sexual harassment of Anita Hill, in 1991.Backed by Republicans on the committee vociferously including the then chair, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kavanaugh was confirmed to the court by 50 votes to 48. Only one Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, declined to support him. More