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      As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaigns

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      As Trump’s star wanes, rivals signal presidential nomination campaignsRepublicans vying for the party’s nomination have taken the ex-president’s midterm losses as a sign for them to step up Potential rivals to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will this week be reading the runes of political fortune with their families ahead of the New Year – typically the time that nomination contenders begin to make themselves formally apparent.January 6 report review: 845 pages, countless crimes, one simple truth – Trump did itRead moreAmid a lackluster start to Trump’s own campaign and a string of scandals and setbacks to hit the former US president due to his links to far-right extremists and his own legal problems, a field of potential rivals is starting to emerge for a contest that only a few months ago many thought was Trump’s alone for the taking.They include multiple ex-members of Trump’s own cabinet, including his own former vice-president, his former UN ambassador and his former spy chief. Adding to that are a raft of rivals with their own political power bases, such as Florida’s increasingly formidable right-wing governor, Ron DeSantis.Now the hints of ambitions to taking on Trump are coming thick and fast, especially in the wake of the defeat of a host of Trump-backed candidates in November’s midterm elections which have triggered a reckoning with Trump’s grip on the Republican party.“I can tell you that my wife and I will take some time when our kids are home this Christmas – we’re going to give prayerful consideration about what role we might play,” former vice-president Mike Pence, 63, told CBS’ Face the Nation last month.Maryland’s term-limited Republican governor Larry Hogan, and Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor and US ambassador to the UN, have said the holidays would also be a time for deliberation.“We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is,” Haley said in November. Hogan, a fierce critic of Trump, told CBS last week “it won’t be shocking if I were to bring the subject up” with his family during the break. Come January, he said, he would begin taking advice to “try to figure out what the future is”.“I don’t feel any pressure or any rush to make a decision … things are gonna look completely different three months from now or six months from now than they did today,” Hogan, 66, added.Others in the running are also readily apparent. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s team has reached out to potential campaign staff in early primary states, the Washington Post reported over the weekend. “We figured by the first quarter next year, we need to be hard at it if we’re going to do it,” Pompeo, 58, said in an interview with Fox News.Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson is reportedly talking to donors to determine his ability to fund the 18-month “endurance race” of a nomination process. Hutchinson has said that Trump’s early declaration, on 15 November, had “accelerated everyone’s time frame”.“So the first quarter of next year, you either need to be in or out,” the outgoing, 72-year-old governor told NBC News earlier this month.New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, 48, said this week he doesn’t believe Trump could win in 2024. He’s voiced concerns that the Republican party could repeat the nomination experience of 2016, when he was a contender, when a large, divided field allowed Trump’s “ drain the swamp” insurgent candidacy to triumph.“We just have to find another candidate at this point,” Sununu told CBS News. While Trump could be the Republican nominee, he added, he’s “not going to be able to close the deal”.Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, 56, has said he’s “humbled” to be part of the 2024 discussions but in the convention of most candidates, he’s focused on his day job.Youngkin telegraphed his fiscal conservative credentials to wider Republican big-money interests by pushing $4bn in tax cuts through the Virginia legislature and meeting with party megadonors in Manhattan in June.“2024 is a long way away,” he recently told Fox News. “We’ll see what happens”.Helping to break the gender-lock on potential candidates is also South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Her name has emerged as a potential Trump running mate, but she recently said he did not present “the best chance” for Republicans in 2024.“Our job is not just to talk to people who love Trump or hate Trump,” Noem, 51, told the New York Times in November. “Our job is to talk to every single American.”The biggest dog in the potential race – aside from Trump himself – is by far Florida’s DeSantis, who recently won re-election in his state by a landslide. Some of the Republican party’s biggest donors have already transferred their favors from Trump, 78, toward the 44-year-old governor.Republican mega donor and billionaire Ken Griffin, who moved his hedge fund Citadel from Chicago to Miami last year, described Trump as a “three-time loser” to Bloomberg a day after the former president’s declaration.“I don’t know what he’s going to do. It’s a huge personal decision,” Griffin said of DeSantis. “He has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well-served by him as president.”Similarly, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of private-equity giant Blackstone, told Axios he was withdrawing his support from Trump for 2024 but stopped short of backing DeSantis. “America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” he said. “It is time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders.”DeSantis has yet to rule a run in or out, but has signaled his interest by beginning to plant ads on Google and Facebook that target an audience beyond Florida.But in the post-midterm political environment, with Trump-backed candidates performing poorly in most contests, and the former president besieged by investigations and questions about his associations, the running is open.Maryland’s Hogan has described Trump as vulnerable, and “he seems to be dropping every day”. Hutchinson has said “you never know when that early front-runner is going to stumble”. Polls suggest Trump trails DeSantis in a nomination head-to-head, but leads over Pence and Haley.Other potential names in the pot include Texas governor Greg Abbott, 65; Florida senator Rick Scott, also 65; former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, 60; and Texas senator Ted Cruz, 52, who ran for the Republican nomination in 2016.In a provocatively titled “OK Boomers, Let Go of the Presidency” column last week, former George W Bush advisor Karl Rove warned that 2024 may resemble 1960 when voters were ready for a generational shift. In that year, they went for the youngest in the field, John F Kennedy, aged 43.“Americans want leaders who focus on the future,” Rove wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “The country would be better off if each party’s standard bearer came from a new generation … It’s time for the baby boomers and their elders to depart the presidential stage. The party that grasps this has the advantage come 2024”.TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpRon DeSantisUS politicsNikki HaleyMike PompeoMike PencefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump made up audit excuse for not releasing tax returns on the fly, new book says

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      Trump made up audit excuse for not releasing tax returns on fly, book saysIn eagerly awaited book Confidence Man, Maggie Haberman of the New York Times depicts scene on campaign plane in 2016 According to a new book, Donald Trump came up with his famous excuse for not releasing his tax returns on the fly – literally, while riding his campaign plane during the 2016 Republican primary.Kushner camping tale one of many bizarre scenes in latest Trump bookRead moreEvery American president or nominee since Richard Nixon had released his or her tax returns. Trump refused to do so.In her eagerly awaited book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman describes the scene on Trump’s plane just before Super Tuesday, 1 March 2016.Trump, she says, was discussing the issue with aides including Corey Lewandowski, then his campaign manager, and his press secretary, Hope Hicks. The aides, Haberman says, pointed out that as Trump was about to be confirmed as the favourite for the Republican nomination, the problem needed to be addressed.Haberman writes: “Trump thought for a second about how to ‘get myself out of this’, as he said. He leaned back, before snapping up to a sudden thought.“‘Well, you know my taxes are under audit. I always get audited,’ Trump said … ‘So what I mean is, well I could just say, ‘I’ll release them when I’m no longer under audit. ‘Cause I’ll never not be under audit.’”Haberman’s book will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.She writes that Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who became a Trump surrogate after dropping out of the primary himself, “looked puzzled”, then told Trump there was no legal prohibition against releasing tax returns under audit.“‘But my lawyers,’ Trump said. ‘I’m sure my lawyers and my counsel will tell me not to.’ He then told his bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to coordinate with his assistant, Rhona Graff, once they landed.”It is not clear Trump received any legal advice before starting to use the excuse.“Almost immediately,” Haberman writes, Trump “began citing the claim that he couldn’t possibly release his under-audit taxes”.Trump’s tax returns remained at issue throughout his time in power.Haberman says “Republicans who knew Trump in New York” always said he would not release his tax records, “speculating that he was more worried that people would see the actual amount of money he made than he was about scrutiny into his sources of income”.Nonetheless, Trump’s refusal fueled endless speculation, particularly during the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Trump tax returns were eventually revealed by the New York Times, showing that he paid little federal tax.The paper said: “The tax returns that Mr Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public.“His reports to the [Internal Revenue Service] portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes.”Now, Haberman’s book arrives less than two weeks after the New York attorney general, Letitia James, announced a civil lawsuit over Trump’s financial practices, alleging “staggering” fraud and seeking tough penalties against Trump, his company and his three oldest children.New York attorney general lawsuit accuses Trump of ‘staggering’ fraudRead moreHaberman describes numerous episodes from Trump’s picaresque New York business career.She writes: “Former employees said he followed unusual business practices, such as accepting cash for lease payments and maintenance services, recalling that one parking garage leaseholder for the General Motors building sent over the cash portion of the lease in dozens of gold bars.”Trump, Haberman says, “told aides he didn’t know what to do with [the gold] when the cardboard Hewlett-Packard box arrived” at Trump Tower.Ultimately, he “ordered” Matt Calamari – a bodyguard who became an executive vice-president in the Trump Organization – “to take them to his penthouse apartment.“A lawyer for Calamari declined to comment on the gold bricks incident; Trump called it ‘a fantasy question!’”TopicsBooksDonald TrumpChris ChristieUS taxationUS politicsUS elections 2016Politics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Chris Christie: Trump knows better about election lies – or is just ‘plain nuts’

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      Chris Christie: Trump knows better about election lies – or is just ‘plain nuts’Former New Jersey governor’s new book bound to put him at odds with former president as 2024 approaches Chris Christie’s comeback tour will continue next week with publication of a book, Republican Rescue, in which the former New Jersey governor seeks to present himself as the face of the party after Donald Trump, and a plausible contender for the presidential nomination in 2024.Trump defended rioters who threatened to ‘hang Mike Pence’, audio revealsRead moreSuch efforts have already seen the one-time presidential candidate clash with Trump, who did not take kindly to Christie warning in a speech in Nevada last weekend: “We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections – no matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over.”In a statement, Trump, who is likely to run again in 2024, claimed Christie was “absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past, meaning the 2020 election fraud”.Christie then told Axios, in an interview due to run on Sunday, he was “not going to get into a back-and-forth” with the longtime friend he helped prepare for debates with Joe Biden and who nearly made him White House chief of staff.But Christie’s book seems guaranteed to anger Trump further. In a copy obtained by the Guardian, Christie writes that Republicans “need to renounce the conspiracy theories and truth deniers, the ones who know better and the ones who are just plain nuts”.The former governor does not say if he thinks Trump knows better about his claims of electoral fraud, or is one of those who is “nuts”.But he adds: “We need to give our supporters facts that will help put all these fantasies to rest, so everyone can focus with clear minds on the issues that really matter. We need to quit wasting our time, our energy and our credibility on claims that won’t ever convince anyone or bring fresh converts onboard.”Condemning the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right Georgia congresswoman who has expressed support for conspiracy theories, Christie says Trump indulges such figures because he likes “anyone who says nice things about him”.Discussing the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that high-profile Democrats are involved in satanic child abuse, Christie writes that such beliefs “would be ridiculous” if they were not “so sad”.The FBI considers QAnon a potential terrorist threat. Trump, however, has said its followers share his concern about crime, “love our country” and “like me very much”.Told last year that QAnon supporters believe he is “secretly saving the world” from a “satanic cult of paedophiles and cannibals”, Trump said: “I haven’t heard that but is that supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?”“Many in our society,” Christie writes in Republican Rescue, “use these wild, untrue conspiracy theories to advance their political agendas.”Christie left office in New Jersey under the cloud of the Bridgegate payback scandal and with historically low approval. Regardless, he continues to tout his pugnacious Jersey persona – a political proposition roundly rejected by Republican voters in the presidential primary in 2016 – writing that “everyone knows I never pull my punches” and “I call things as I see them”.Some observers, however, question Christie’s sincerity in his stand against Trumpism, given his longstanding closeness to Trump.Eric Boehlert, author of the Press Run newsletter, wrote critically on Friday about a CNN special, Being Chris Christie, due for broadcast on Monday.“Today,” Boehlert wrote, “Christie is promoting himself, with the help of CNN, as a brave truth-teller who’s standing up to Trump and his Big Lie about the 2020 election … but Christie may have had the longest delayed conversion to the anti-Trump crowd of any Republican in America.“Just last year Christie helped Trump prep for a presidential debate. After watching Trump get impeached, Christie still jumped at the chance to be near the center of power to help the maniac get re-elected … Days after helping with Trump’s prep, where everyone was unvaccinated and unmasked, Christie was hospitalised with Covid.”In his book, Christie describes both his role in Trump’s debate prep and the bout with Covid which sent him to intensive care.On the debate stage, in Cleveland, Trump notoriously refused to condemn the far-right Proud Boys, instead telling them to “stand back and stand by”.The New Jersey columnist Charles Stile said then Christie’s defence of Trump’s words “served to remind us of his own trajectory” as a “one-time truth-telling, center-right darling of the GOP [who] embraced his role as a trusted adviser in Trump’s orbit”.Another Jersey columnist, Alan Steinberg, called Christie “a person of irrepressible ambition, without limits or guard rails … and an essential component of that ambition is an obsessive quest to be relevant”.Republican Revival will be published on Tuesday.TopicsBooksChris ChristieDonald TrumpUS elections 2024RepublicansUS politicsPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

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      Should the American Way of Life Be a War on American Life?

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      On March 16, French President Emmanuel Macron was the first head of state to declare war in the battle against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. In a televised address to the French nation, he repeated the phrase “we are at war” as obsessively as Cato the Elder more than two millennia ago, who insisted […] More