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      in US Politics

      I Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read

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      BooksI Alone Can Fix It review: Donald Trump as wannabe Führer – in another riveting read Gen Mark Milley saw that the US was in a ‘Reichstag moment’ – four days before the Capitol riot. With this and much more startling reporting, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post deliver the goods once againLloyd GreenFri 16 Jul 2021 07.37 EDTLast modified on Fri 16 Jul 2021 08.24 EDTCocooned at his resorts, the Trump Organization indicted, Donald Trump has come to embrace the insurrection.Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book saysRead more“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” he tells Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.Five people died after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on 6 January, seeking to overturn the election.Last week, Trump declared: “These were peaceful people, these were great people.”So much for blaming Antifa. Think Charlottesville redux, on a larger stage. Or something even more ominous.In their second book on the Trump presidency, Leonnig and Rucker report that on 2 January 2021, two months after election day and as Trump still refused to concede defeat, Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told aides: “This is a Reichstag moment.”He was referring to the fire at the German parliament on 27 February 1933, an incident seized as a pretext by Hitler to begin arresting opponents and to consolidate his power.“The gospel of the Führer,” the authors quote Milley as saying.According to the general, the US under Trump was experiencing its own version of the late Weimar Republic, complete with modern-day “Brownshirts”. A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Milley was not alone in seeing shadows of the past slither into the daylight.Trump, Leonnig and Rucker quote a senior official as saying, is a “guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless”, then says “‘I will protect you.’“That’s what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933.”This is a blockbuster follow-up to A Very Stable Genius, in which Leonnig and Rucker chronicled the chaos of Trump’s first three years in office. I Alone Can Fix It pulls back the curtain on the handling of Covid-19, the re-election bid and its chaotic and violent aftermath.The pair are Pulitzer winners, for investigative reporting. Their book is essential reading. They have receipts, which they lay out for all to see.Of Covid, they capture Marc Short, Vice-President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, telling folks in February 2020: “It’s not that bad.” The families of more than 600,000 dead Americans would probably disagree. (Short later contracted the virus.)Feeling burned by the authors’ first book, this time Trump sat for a two-and-a-half-hour interview. At the end of it, he let it be known – with a “twinkle in his eye” – that “for some sick reason” he “enjoyed it”.Much as he claims to hate the media and the elite, Trump craves their attention. Much as he believes in his own power of persuasion, Leonnig and Rucker were not converted.Trump’s hubris shines through. But for the pandemic, he claims re-election was inevitable. It’s a salesman’s pitch but one sufficiently rooted in reality. He also claims America’s two greatest presidents could not have defeated him. That is just surreal:
      I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me.”
      Before Covid, the economy was humming. Trump had taken down Qassem Suleimani, a top general in Iran’s Quds force, and the public approved.Joe Biden lost nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. His first win was on 29 February, days after the stock market’s Covid-induced crash, assisted by James Clyburn of South Carolina, dean of the Congressional Black Caucus and House majority whip.On the relationship between Covid and Trump’s defeat, Leonnig and Rucker describe Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister, sharing his thoughts with Tony Fabrizio, a pollster who worked for him and Trump, in early 2020.Netanyahu said: “The only thing that can beat President Trump is coronavirus.”With analytic capacity Trump could never muster and a sense of history he lacked, Netanyahu added: “If you don’t understand what a pandemic is and the mathematics behind how this will spread if we don’t contain it, it will collapse economies, and that changes the ball game tremendously.”In August, Trump reamed out Fabrizio after he warned the president the electorate was “really fatigued”. Trump bellowed: “They’re tired? They’re fatigued? They’re fucking fatigued? Well, I’m fucking fatigued, too.”The book’s rawest revelations concern 6 January. At best, Trump was blasé about Mike Pence’s plight, presiding over confirmation of Biden’s win, stuck inside the Capitol as halls and offices were plundered. Like Nero watching Rome burn, Trump fiddled in front of his TV.As for the rioters, Trump now claims he and they are one: “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before.”On 6 January, James Lankford of Oklahoma argued against certification, citing constituents’ concerns about voter fraud. He failed to mention it was Trump who spread that very concern.Hours later, however, the senator voted to certify. Months earlier, Tulsa was the venue for Trump’s infamous comeback rally, a flop which cost Brad Parscale his job as campaign manager and Herman Cain his life.Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarmingRead moreLiz Cheney also makes a telling appearance in Rucker and Leonnig’s story. In a 7 January call with Gen Milley, the Wyoming congresswoman unloaded on Jim Jordan, a hard-right Ohio representative and Trump favorite, as a “son of a bitch”.Stuck with Jordan during the Capitol siege, Cheney discounted his expressions of concern, saying: “Get away from me. You fucking did this.” Cheney is now a member of the House select committee charged with investigating the riot.Leonnig and Rucker also quote Doris Kearns Goodwin: “There is nothing like this other than the 1850s, when events led inevitably to the civil war.”Politicians and acolytes make pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s mecca in Palm Beach. Each dusk, Leonnig and Rucker write, he receives a standing ovation.Just the way he likes it.
      I Alone Can Fix It is published in the US by Penguin and in the UK by Bloomsbury
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS elections 2020US Capitol attackreviewsReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      How Dubai and Abu Dhabi See the World Cup

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      With the Euros over, attention outside the UK is turning to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. The focus in Britain, quite rightly, remains on the racist abuse directed at black members of the English football team and the extent to which the prime minister and the home secretary contribute to enabling a culture in which such abuse can flourish.

      Is Football Still a Bastion of White Supremacy?

      READ MORE

      In the Gulf, the lucrative rights to World Cup packages are now being awarded. In Kuwait, ITL World has been appointed the sales agent. The company’s CEO, Siddeek Ahmed, could hardly contain his delight at being able to offer “fans a unique opportunity to purchase ticket-inclusive hospitality packages” for the World Cup. In addition to game tickets, the packages include flights, accommodation, transport and “leisure” programs. According to Arabian Business, the deals for the main venue, the 80,000-seat Lusail Stadium, will run from $14,350 to $74,200. That buys you all 10 matches hosted there, including the quarter-final, semi-final and final. If you are not short on cash, you can pick up a 40-seat suite at the stadium for just $2.6 million.

      In Dubai, Expat Sport Tourism DMCC won the rights, with its website urging football fans to be a part of history to see the first World Cup held in the Arab world. “From the pinnacle in high end corporate experiences to individual hospitality solutions for football fans, we can cater for all those wishing to be part of FIFA World Cup 2022” is how the firm put it.

      Not Everyone Is Happy

      With an estimated 1.5 million fans heading to Qatar next year, Dubai, with its well-established tourism and entertainment sectors, sees itself as ideally placed to cash in on the World Cup bonanza. Yet others in the United Arab Emirates are less welcoming.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Mohammed al-Hammadi is the president of the Emirates Journalists Association and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Alroeya, based in Abu Dhabi. Among the core values listed on the paper’s website are “apply best practice in line with the journalism codes” and “be an objective and trustworthy information tool.”

      Hammadi is a strong proponent of normalization. He spoke at a webinar in October 2020, after the UAE and Bahrain had announced their plan to normalize relations with Israel. The event was organized by a pro-Israeli think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Hammadi said he believed in both peace and advancing the rights of Palestinians, but people like him who “speak in favor of peace are stigmatized … and find themselves falling under attack.” He added that the word normalizing “has a very negative connotation in our region.”

      In June, he drew the ire of African journalists with a ham-fisted attempt to have them join a coordinated media attack on the World Cup in Qatar. They adopted a resolution denouncing efforts to “use Africa and its institutions as political football in order to settle scores in a political dispute.” The statement said:

      “While journalists in the East African region struggle to preserve their independence and freedom from rogue government and commercial interests that threaten the integrity of journalists, an outside actor is behind attempts to manipulate, divert and involve journalists in an issue completely outside the scope and powers of journalists and their unions.
      In the same way that journalists and their unions in East Africa are calling, confronting and protesting against governments for their interference in the work of journalists and the curtailment of their freedoms, all foreign powers that have a negative and false agenda must be condemned and publicly challenged as a matter of principle and consistency.”

      Twelve days later, the website Emirates Leaks, citing what it called “reliable sources,” alleged that Hammadi had attempted to pressure the heads of the journalism unions of Norway and Finland. According to the site, he wanted them to influence journalism unions in Asia and Africa to “coordinate attacks against Qatar and tarnish its image before hosting the World Cup.”

      His efforts occasioned a written question on June 23 in the European Parliament from Fulvio Martusciello. The Italian MEP accused the head of the Emirates Journalists Association of leading a smear campaign against Qatar: “Al Hammadi asked the Finnish and Norwegian Journalists Federations to exercise influence on journalists unions that he supports financially to engage in the Abu Dhabi campaign and offend Qatar. He also tried to offer them financial bribes and expensive gifts in return for achieving Abu Dhabi’s inflammatory goals.”

      So, while Dubai can barely contain its World Cup excitement, Abu Dhabi appears set to continue its anti-Qatar campaign. Imagine for a moment that the UAE was a football side and its two big stars had separate agendas and were playing only for themselves. That is not a winning formula and it’s something a good manager, like England’s Gareth Southgate, would quickly sort out.

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest, a partner organization of Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Is Football Still a Bastion of White Supremacy?

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      On the morning preceding England’s narrow defeat in the European Championship final, The New York Times published an article containing a heart-warming lesson about the power of sport to overcome and eliminate the scourge of xenophobic racism. Rory Smith, The Times’ football specialist based in Manchester, England, wrote: “Euro 2020 has become, in other words, a moment of genuine national unity.”

      What Is Behind Football’s Persistent Racism?

      READ MORE

      Smith quotes the article by anti-racism activist Shaista Aziz in The Guardian. Ms. Aziz exulted in the humanizing effect England’s football team was having on a nation that has been “a tiptoe away from racism and bigotry.” She seemed convinced everyone in England believed “this team is playing for all of us.” That special “moment of genuine national unity” proved to be short-lived.

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      National unity:

      A fragile and often superficial sentiment of fraternity in modern nations provoked alternatively by the success of a team in a popular sport (e.g. winning a championship) or by the collective hatred of a real or imagined enemy following a destructive incident (e.g. 9/11)

      Contextual Note

      On Monday, The Guardian ran a story with the title, “Boris Johnson condemns ‘appalling’ racist abuse of England players.” Immediately following the England team’s defeat, social media provided proof of the illusory quality of the sense of national unity that the Three Lions’ success in reaching the final had provoked. It also highlighted the perverse link between political authority and the raw xenophobic emotion that some politicians feel they must encourage to establish and validate that authority.

      Modern democracies in our competitive, liberal civilization desperately want to believe in the gradual but inevitable triumph of virtue over vice. Thanks to the phenomenon of “progress,” which they define as their DNA, the superstitions and injustices of the past are condemned to fade away under the pressure of common sense and the respect of honest competition.

      The Times’ Rory Smith anticipated the thrill of knowing that “tens of millions of British fans would be watching avidly, glorying not just in the team’s success on the field but off it as well.” This would be a turning point in the nation’s history and its troubled relationship with its colonial past. In his mind, the spectacle offered by the gladiators in the arena heralded a new dawn for a people still in the throes of existential doubt after centuries of playing the role of a global empire that, seven decades after its dismantlement, was still seeking to understand its legitimate place in a diverse world.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Smith saw the fans “as a microcosm of a nation seemingly more enthusiastic about its evolving identity as a more tolerant, multiracial and multi-ethnic society than is often suggested.” On or off the field, inside or outside the stadium, Smith’s fervent wish appears to be just that, a vain wish. On social media, which exists in its own abstract space but reflects some of the deeper reality, a part of the nation insisted on reminding optimists like Smith of its competitive disunity.

      Ever since Pierre de Coubertin launched the modern Olympic Games in 1896, sport and nationalism have gravitated toward each other. This has created the hope in some sectors that the spirit of cooperative teamwork at the core of sport could triumph over the very human tendency to let petty rivalries lead to conflict, enmity and crime and even world war. But today’s liberal society is driven by two forces: winning — the proof of one’s superiority — and money. Because of that need for the most competitive talent, diversity has become a feature of all sports, including those like football, rugby and even tennis that were developed by Britain’s 19th-century white elite. Football emerged in the 20th century as the most universal and popular of British sports.

      The mingling of athletic performance, commercial interest, politics and nationalism was inevitable. The internationalization of sport’s economy that began obeying the super-competitive rules of economic globalization, based on optimizing the extraction of resources, led to an increasing focus on economic goals and the transformation of athletic performance into a form of hyperreal or superhuman spectacle.

      Until recently, politicians understood the advantage of defining sport as something entirely separate from politics. They showed a certain condescending respect for the performance of athletes, simply congratulating them for their competitive spirit. But the simultaneous effects of sport’s economic globalization, its financialization and the colonial heritage of Western nations led to a transformation of the traditionally perceived local and tepidly nationalistic character of teams. In Britain and the United States, for most of the 20th century, professional athletes were in their grand majority white. For a long time, non-whites were entirely excluded. Modern sport literally developed as a bastion of white supremacy.

      The pressures of economic competition combined with increasingly vocal frustration of excluded groups across Western societies led to the diversity now prevalent in all professional sports. A further trend, magnified by the media and the advertising dollars that support the media, has turned athletes into superheroes and hyperreal celebrities on a par with Hollywood actors. They belong to a stratosphere political leaders can no longer hope to rival.

      Historical Note

      Soon after his election in 2016, US President Donald Trump broke the entente cordiale that previously existed between sports and politics by intervening directly in the controversy that arose around Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest against police brutality toward black Americans. Trump deemed the act of kneeling during the national anthem an insult to the valiant troops that American presidents have the habit of sending abroad to be maimed and killed in the name of demonstrating the seriousness of the nation’s enduring mission, which consists of maiming and killing people elsewhere in the world who fail to pledge allegiance to the unimpeachable moral standards of the United States.

      After the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder last year, Kaepernick’s gesture became a universal symbol of passive resistance to persistent racism. Out of electoral expediency, Trump and his followers turned the issue into a major component of the ongoing “culture wars” that have effectively shattered the last trace of the illusion of unity in the profoundly Disunited States, a nation where insult, shaming, calumny and canceling have become an art, if not a science.

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      Once Kaepernick’s gesture had gone universal, most politicians sought to distance themselves from the issue. But not Boris Johnson and his team. As the political profiteer who achieved his life’s ambition of becoming prime minister thanks to his xenophobic campaign for Brexit in 2016, Johnson may have felt obliged to appeal to his base and encourage suspicion of the “darkies’” intent. Johnson’s team branded it “gesture politics,” denying its stated purpose focused on social justice. Home Secretary Priti Patel and Johnson himself declined to condemn the booing some members of the public addressed to the kneeling players.

      The symbolism of sport in today’s culture reflects the evolution of the modern economy. Just as the economy, despite its noble claims, is not really about innovation, efficiency, abundance and meeting the needs of the people, sport isn’t about developing and celebrating the beauty of “the beautiful game” and other popular sports. The money factor trumps all the old associations with personal and collective achievement.

      Now it’s simply about winning and losing. Just as the driving force of the economy is the profit motive — maximizing one’s earnings and crushing the competition, which also means depriving those involved of their livelihood — the only thing the public retains from a sporting event is the celebration of the winner and witnessing the humiliation of the loser. At least in sports, the losers are still well paid and their livelihood rarely compromised.

      Pierre de Coubertin famously claimed for the revived Olympic Games that the aim “is not to win, but to take part; the important thing in Life is not triumph, but the struggle. To spread these principles is to build up a strong and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity.” De Coubertin recounted that he was inspired to promote the Olympic Games by the link he saw between the emphasis on sport in Britain’s elite educational culture and the global triumph of its empire in the 19th century. Although it was for the most part officially dismantled in the 1950s, could this be a case of Boris’ empire striking back?

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      Landslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarming

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      BooksLandslide review: Michael Wolff’s third Trump book is his best – and most alarming Fire and Fury infuriated a president and fueled a publishing boom. Its latest sequel is required reading for anyone who fears for American democracyLloyd GreenMon 12 Jul 2021 19.00 EDTThe 45th president is out of office and Michael Wolff has brought his Trump trilogy to a close. First there was Fire and Fury, then there was Siege, now there is Landslide. The third is the best of the three, and that is saying plenty.Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from TrumpworldRead moreThree years ago, Trump derided Fire and Fury as fake news and threatened Wolff with a lawsuit. Now, Trump talks to Wolff on the record about what was and might yet be, while the author takes a long and nuanced view of the post-election debacle. Wolff describes Trump’s wrath-filled final days in power.Aides and family members have stepped away, leaving the president to simmer, rage and plot with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and other conspiracy theorists, all eager to stoke the big lie about a stolen election. Giuliani calls Powell “crazy”. Powell holds Giuliani in similar regard. “I didn’t come here to kiss your fucking ring,” she tells the former New York mayor.Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is elsewhere, hammering out the “Abraham Accords”, seeking to leave his mark on the world with some sort of step towards Middle East peace. Hope Hicks, a favorite Trump adviser, has gone. Two cabinet secretaries of independent wealth, Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, say adiós. As with hurricanes and plagues, the rich know when to head for high ground.Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s fourth and final press secretary, is awol. Even Stephanie Grisham, Melania Trump’s ultra-loyal chief of staff, has resigned rather than bear witness to the president’s implosion in the aftermath of the deadly assault on the US Capitol.Wolff’s interview with Trump is notable. It is held in the lobby at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort to which Trump retreated. The club’s “throne room”, in the author’s words, is filled with “blond mothers and blond daughters, infinitely buxom”. Fecundity and lust on parade. A palace built in its creator’s image.The interview is an exercise in Trumpian score-settling. He brands Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor brutally fired from the transition in 2016, a “very disloyal guy” – apparently as payback for a debate preparation session that stung Trump with its ferocity, laying bare his vulnerabilities as others watched.Christie told Trump what he didn’t want to hear about his handling of Covid-19. He bandied about expressions such as “blood on your hands” and “failure”. He also reminded Trump that while Hunter Biden, his opponent’s scandal-magnet son, was a one-off, there was a whole bunch of Trump kids to target. Their father was unamused.Turning to the supreme court, Trump lashes out at Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, the chief justice. Trump accuses Kavanaugh of lacking courage and vents his “disappointment” in his most controversial pick for the bench. Under Roberts, the justices refused to overturn the election. So Trump had little use for them. He also takes aim at the Republican leader in the House. Apparently, Kevin McCarthy’s abject prostration still left something to be desired.Trump calls Andrew Cuomo, now New York’s governor but once, in a way, Trump’s own lawyer, a “thug”. He has kind words for Roy Cohn, another Trump lawyer, before that an aide to Joe McCarthy in the witch-hunts of the 1950s who wore that four-letter word far better. But he’s long dead. Bill Barr, the attorney general who made the Mueller report go away but wouldn’t back the big lie and resigned before the end, fares badly.Trump laments four years of “absolute scum and treachery and fake witch-hunts”. Introspection was never his strongest suit. “I’ve done a thousand things that nobody has done,” he claims. Landslide homes in on the bond between Trump and his supporters. Wolff sees that the relationship is unconventional and organic. Trump was never just a candidate. He also led a movement: “He knew nothing about government, they knew nothing about government, so the context of government itself became beside the point.” The bond was rooted in charisma. Trump was “the star – never forget that – and the base was his audience”.Landslide acknowledges that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election were born of his disregard for democratic norms and inability to acknowledge defeat. His legal and political arguments wafted out of the fever swamps of the fringes. As drowning men lunge for lifebelts, so Trump, Giuliani and Powell clung on.Wolff is open to criticism when he argues that the path between the 6 January insurrection and Trump is less than linear. Those who stormed the Capitol may well have been Trump’s people, Wolff argues, but what happened was not his brainchild. Six months ago, Trump also put distance between himself and the day’s events. Not any more.Trump has embraced the supposed martyrdom of Ashli Babbitt, the air force veteran who endeavored to storm the House chamber, where members were sheltering in place.“Boom,” he said on 7 July. “Right through the head. Just, boom. There was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up, and why isn’t that being studied?”Nightmare Scenario review: Trump, Covid and a lasting national traumaRead moreBeyond that, ProPublica has produced a paper trail that supports the conclusion senior Trump aides knew the rally they staged near the White House on 6 January could turn chaotic. What more we learn will depend on a House select committee.Wolff also fails to grapple with the trend in red states towards wresting control of elections from the electorate and putting them into the hands of Republican legislatures.Trump’s false contention that the presidential election was stolen is now an article of faith among Republicans and QAnon novitiates. Ballot “audits” funded by dark money are a new fixture of the political landscape. Democracy looks in danger.Trump tells Wolff his base “feel cheated – and they are angry”. Populism isn’t about all of the people, just some of them. As for responsibility, Trump washes his hands. On closing Wolff’s third Trump book, it seems possible it will not be his last after all. All the trauma of 2020 may just have been prelude to a Trump-Biden rematch.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationMichael WolffUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Spooked review: exposé of murky world of private spies is a dodgy dossier itself

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      BooksSpooked review: exposé of murky world of private spies is a dodgy dossier itselfBarry Meier brings distasteful characters and episodes to light but is happy to leave out that which does not suit his aims Charles KaiserSun 11 Jul 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 11 Jul 2021 01.02 EDTWhen Christopher Steele’s dossier about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia was published by BuzzFeed News, the salacious part got more attention than anything else.Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book saysRead moreBut there was something else several reporters thought was much more intriguing: a description of a meeting between Carter Page, a Trump aide, and Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin collaborator and head of the Russian energy giant Rosneft.The dossier reported that Sechin “was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19% (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return. PAGE had expressed interest and confirmed that were TRUMP elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.”As the Mueller report pointed out, the dossier was wrong about the identity of the Rosneft official Page met: it was actually one of Sechin’s deputies, Andrey Baranov. The dossier was also off by half a percentage point about the size of the privatization.But just five months after Page’s Moscow meeting, Rosneft did in fact announce the privatization of 19.5% of the giant company, the largest privatization in Russian history. And Carter Page flew to Moscow the day after the deal was announced, for reasons that remain shrouded in mystery.Reuters assigned no fewer than 11 reporters to try to find out who actually purchased the shares in the company and where the financing came from. But the resulting story said the “full identity of the new owners of the Rosneft stake” remained “a mystery”, as did “the complete source of the funds with which they bought it”.In testimony before the House intelligence committee, Page denied discussing “specifics” about sanctions with the Rosneft official. But when he was asked if they discussed the privatization of the energy giant, he said Baranov “may briefly have mentioned it”.As Martin Longman wrote for Washington Monthly: “When we try to assess whether the Steele dossier is ‘fake news’, as [Trump] insists that it is, we should keep this Rosneft deal in mind. Someone who was just making things up and didn’t have real sources could never have invented something so close to the truth.”Spooked, by the former New York Times reporter Barry Meier, identifies the Trump dossier as one of its three principal subjects. One might think Steele’s correct prediction of an imminent privatization of Rosneft, and Page’s confirmation that he “may” have been told about it five months before it happened, would at least deserve a paragraph. But only a glancing reference to this story appears.Asked about this omission, Meier cited an FBI report that quoted a “sub-source” of Steele’s “primary sub-source”, who said there was no evidence Page had been involved in any kind of bribery scheme. Meier concluded there was no evidence that Page had done anything wrong, so he omitted the whole subject.Another reason for the omission is that including it might have contributed to a more nuanced view of the Steele dossier. Nuance is not one of Meier’s specialties.Steele was a collaborator of Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who became a private spy. The purpose of Meier’s book is to prove that all private spies are evil, a clear and present danger to ethical journalists like himself. He says he wrote the book because he “wanted to understand how a predatory industry was operating unchecked”.While Meier never hesitates to attack the speculations of other reporters, the author treats his own guesses as dispositive. He dismisses the idea of an incriminating tape of Trump with Moscow prostitutes because “blackmail works best when only a few people know about it”. If such a tape actually existed, “it was unlikely it would have been the talk of Moscow”. Therefore, it should have been “clear from the start” to Steele that there was a “basic problem with the story”.However, actual Russian experts have reached the opposite conclusion. John le Carré, for one, told told the New York Times: “As far as Trump, I would suspect they have [kompromat] because they’ve denied it. If they have it and they’ve set Trump up, they’d say, ‘Oh no, we haven’t got anything.’ But to Trump they’re saying, ‘Aren’t we being kind to you?’”Meier told the Guardian the fact the tape has never become public is another reason to believe it doesn’t exist.Spooked is both a clip job, frequently relying on other people’s stories, and a hatchet job, making its subjects as unattractive as possible. Meier disparages anyone who has written a story which hasn’t been confirmed by other news outlets, including a reporter for this newspaper.No detail is too small to contribute to the author’s character assassinations. Simpson, he writes, “had an unhealthy pallor, the apparent result of too much drinking, too little exercise or both … he appeared stiff and slightly robotic”. Simpson is said to have thrown frequent parties in Washington “fueled by lots of alcohol and plenty of pot”.The book does describe some genuinely loathsome activities, including the alliance between the law firm of the noted litigator David Boies and Black Cube, a private investigation company that employed former Israeli spies.Boies claimed he was unaware of his firm’s deal with Black Cube, which promised a $300,000 bonus if it stopped the New York Times publishing an exposé of Harvey Weinstein. After Ronan Farrow published details of the deal in the New Yorker, it turned out Boies was representing the Times in an unrelated libel case. The newspaper immediately cut ties.Harvey Weinstein hired Black Cube to block New York Times article, jury hearsRead moreMeier includes dozens of other anecdotes that make private spies look very bad. But nearly all have been reported elsewhere, usually with more coherent narratives.Not surprisingly, two of the book’s principal victims, Simpson and Peter Fritsch, hit back as soon as Spooked was published, alleging Meier had repeatedly asked them for help in his reporting.Meier acknowledges this at the end of his book, writing: “While I was at the New York Times, I spoke with Glenn Simpson on several occasions though I don’t recall writing anything based on our discussions.” He insisted to the Guardian that the one tip he got from Simpson about the location of court documents pointed him in the wrong direction.Simpson and Fritsch also accuse Meier of an obvious conflict of interest, because an excerpt from Spooked was published in the business section of the Times, which is edited by Meier’s wife, Ellen Pollock.Meier told the Guardian there was no conflict, because his wife hadn’t commissioned the excerpt. That was done by one of her colleagues.TopicsBooksEspionageTrump-Russia investigationUS politicsRussiaDonald TrumpreviewsReuse this content More

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      Frankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from Trumpworld

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      BooksFrankly, We Did Win This Election review: a devastating dispatch from Trumpworld As well as grabby headlines about Hitler, Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal shows us how millions have been led astrayLloyd GreenSat 10 Jul 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 10 Jul 2021 03.11 EDTOn election night in 2016, Donald Trump paid homage to America’s “forgotten men and women”, vowing they would be “forgotten no longer”. Those who repeatedly appeared at his rallies knew of whom he spoke. Veterans, gun enthusiasts, bikers, shop clerks. Middle-aged and seniors. Life had treated some harshly. Others less so.Trump told chief of staff Hitler ‘did a lot of good things’, book saysRead moreSome had voted for Barack Obama, only to discover hope and change wasn’t all it was advertised to be. Regardless, the Democratic party’s urban and urbane, upstairs-downstairs coalition didn’t mesh with them. Or vice-versa. Politics is definitely about lifestyles.In his new book, Michael Bender pays particular attention to those Trump supporters who called themselves “Front Row Joes”. They attended rallies wherever, whenever. It was “kind of like an addiction”, Bender quotes one as saying.No longer did they need to bowl alone. Trump had birthed a community. Their applause was his sustenance, his performance their sacrament.One Front Row Joe, Saundra from Michigan, was a 41-year-old Walmart worker. On 6 January, in Washington DC, she made her way up the west side of the US Capitol.“It looked so neat,” she said.She also said she and other Trump supporters who stormed Congress did not do so “to steal things” or “do damage”. They had a different aim.“We were just there to overthrow the government.”The next day, Saundra flew home. Trump’s wishes, real or imagined, were her command. Later in January, two days before Joe Biden’s inauguration, Senator Mitch McConnell declared that the mob had been “fed lies” and provoked by Trump.Bender covers the White House for the Wall Street Journal. Frankly, We Did Win This Election is his first book. It is breezy, well-written and well-informed. He captures both the infighting in Trump’s world and the surrounding social tectonics.Trump goes on the record. The interview is a solid scorecard on who is up or down. He brands McConnell “dumb as a rock”. The loathing is mutual – to a point. The Senate minority leader has made clear he will back Trump if he is the nominee again.Liz Cheney occupies a special spot in Trump’s Inferno. The Wyoming representative, daughter of a vice-president, now sits on a House select committee to investigate 6 January. But to most of Trump’s party, six months after the insurrection, what happened that afternoon is something to be forgotten or at least ignored.Mike Pence dwells in purgatory.“I don’t care if he apologizes or not,” Trump says of his vice-president presiding over the certification of Biden’s win. “He made a mistake.”Once before, in their second year in office, the two men reportedly clashed over a political hiring decision. Back then, Trump reportedly called Pence “so disloyal”.Pence still harbors presidential ambitions. Good luck with that.Bender’s book is laden with attention-grabbing headlines. He reports Trump telling John Kelly, then White House chief of staff, that Hitler “did a lot of good things”. Trump denies it. Kelly stays mum. More than 30 years ago, Trump’s first wife, Ivana, let it be known that he kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches by his bed. Everyone needs a hobby.Bender writes of Trump urging the military to “beat the fuck” out of protesters for racial justice, and to “crack their skulls”. The 45th president’s asymmetrical approach to law enforcement remains on display. “Stand back and stand by” was for allies like the Proud Boys. Law and order was for everyone else. Political adversaries were enemies.Trump now embraces the supposed martyrdom of Ashli Babbitt, an air force veteran who stormed Congress on 6 January and was killed by law enforcement.“The person that shot Ashli Babbitt,” he said this week. “Boom. Right through the head. Just, boom. There was no reason for that.”To say the least, that is highly contestable.Members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, cowered behind the doors Babbitt rushed. Hours later, the bulk of the House GOP opposed certifying Biden’s win. The party of Lincoln is now the party of Trump.Focusing on the 2020 election, a contest under the deathly shadow of Covid, Bender conveys the chaos and disorganization of the Trump campaign. After a disastrous kick-off rally in Tulsa, Trump began looking for a new campaign manager. Brad Parscale’s days were numbered. He was a digital guy, not a major domo.According to Bender, Trump offered the job to Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee – and niece of Mitt Romney, the Utah senator, 2012 nominee and, in Trumpworld, persona decidedly non grata. Her reply: “Absolutely not.”Nightmare Scenario review: Trump, Covid and a lasting national traumaRead moreTrump also sent word to Steve Bannon, his campaign chair in 2016. He declined too. Bannon was banished from the kingdom for trashing Trump and his family. But he understood the base better than anyone – other than Trump himself.There was a reason Saturday Night Live spoofed Bannon as the power behind the throne, and that he appeared on the cover of Time. There was no return to court but Trump did pardon Bannon of federal fraud charges. Not a bad consolation prize.Parscale was demoted and kicked to the curb. Within months he appeared in the news, shirtless, barefoot, drunk and armed. His successor, Bill Stepien, brought Trump to within 80,000 votes of another electoral college win.Bender makes clear that Trump is neither gone nor forgotten. His acquittal in his second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol attack, only reinforced his desire to fight another day.“There has never been anything like it,” Trump tells Bender. So true.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsPolitics booksreviewsReuse this content More

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      The Engagement review: a tour de force on the fight for same-sex marriage

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      BooksThe Engagement review: a tour de force on the fight for same-sex marriageDon’t let the length or density of Sasha Issenberg’s new book put you off – it is a must-read on the fight for true civil rights Michael Henry AdamsSun 4 Jul 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 4 Jul 2021 02.01 EDTSasha Issenberg’s tour-de-force, 900-word chronicle of “America’s quarter-century struggle over same-sex marriage” might have been even better had it been given even a few illustrations.This is the Fire review: Don Lemon’s audacious study of racism – and loveRead moreThe New Yorker contributor Michael Shaw’s cartoon of 1 March 2004 would have been one candidate. Its arch question, “Gays and lesbians getting married – haven’t they suffered enough?”, seems to encapsulate how an unlikely issue, consistently championed, achieved a broader vision of “gay liberation” than many dreamed could be attained so rapidly.Thanks to works of scholarship like Charles Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis and The Deviant’s War by Eric Cervini, it has become clear that the seemingly impossible is often achievable. With The Engagement, Issenberg adds to such proof that one can write LGBTQ+ history in a way that is engaging, authoritative and impeccably sourced.He conveys a telling truth for activists beyond the campaign for gay rights. Brimming with a promise of inclusion, of acceptance beyond mere toleration, his book shows there are indeed more ways than one to skin a cat. Awakened and empowered by Black Lives Matter and Trumpism’s exposure of widespread white supremacist alliances, many progressives were certain that only the most radical policy positions – “defund the police”, anyone? – and candidates offered any real remedy. But older black voters were certain of a different way of maneuvering. And it looks as if they were right, just as proponents of marriage equality were right – to a point at least.If The Engagement lacks snappy cartoons or colorful or insightful photographs, Issenberg manages nonetheless to present compelling depictions of fascinating individuals. Their pursuit of gay marriage propels his narrative, lawsuit by lawsuit, legislative victory by legislative victory and political endorsement by political endorsement.False starts, setbacks, losses – they are all here too. But then finally, on 26 June 2015, with Obergefell v Hodges, the supreme court invalidated same-sex marriage bans all across the land. In time, a court-sanctioned right to self-determination expanded the rights of transgender people too.Gay marriage declared legal across the US in historic supreme court rulingRead moreIf the quest began with an almost stereotypically flamboyant figure, Bill Woods, Issenberg shows with deft sensitivity how for all Woods’ drive and flair for manipulating media and politicians, two more reticent lesbians played a pivotal role. Their relatable story is one of opposites determined to fashion a life together, just three months after meeting in 1990. Initially, the LGBTQ+ community was compelled to fight just to be allowed to love one another. But this committed couple’s saga goes a long way to showing how marriage, as opposed to a brave new world of sexual revolution and limitless pairings, emerged as the definitive cause of gay civil rights.When Genora Dancel, a broadcast engineer, presented a ruby ring to Nina Baehr, she “thought our love could withstand anything”. Coming home to find Baehr in pain from an ear infection, Dancel learned otherwise. Baehr’s university health coverage had yet to take effect. Her new “wife” had two policies from her employers but could not use them for her partner. She had to pay out of pocket to to aid her.Out of this practical desire to care for each other, the pair joined two other same-sex couples organized by Bill Woods. On 17 December 1990, in Honolulu, they applied for marriage licenses. When they were denied, Dan Foley, an attorney who was straight, sued the state on their behalf. After a battle lasting nearly three years, they were vindicated. The Hawaii supreme court was the first in the US to determine that the right to wed was a basic civil right.Many, like the lesbian feminist Paula Ettelbrick, were convinced there was an alternative to marriage and that “making room in our society for broader definitions of family” was better. They saw little utility in such a gain.Jasmyne Cannick, a journalist from Los Angeles, was dubious as well. Following the passage of Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage in California, she outlined the looming disconnect between disaffected queers of color and our sometimes oblivious white brethren.
      The white gay community is banging its head against the glass ceiling of a room called equality, believing that a breakthrough on marriage will bestow on it parity with heterosexuals.
      But the right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both Black gays and Black straights. Does someone who is homeless or suffering from HIV but has no healthcare, or newly out of prison and unemployed, really benefit from the right to marry someone of the same sex?
      In books such as Nigel Nicholson’s Portrait of a Marriage and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr’s King Lehr and the Gilded Age, one gets a poignant look at how especially for upper-class gays, conventional alliances, with partners of the opposite sex and children, are as old as time, assuring inheritances and perpetuating dynastic ties. George Chauncey’s Gay New York tells of how in Harlem same-sex couples, from the 1920s on, staged elaborate nuptial ceremonies, anticipating current trends.The Deviant’s War: superb epic of Frank Kameny and the fight for gay equalityRead moreYes, one way or another, even in the realm of queers, marriage still seems to constitute a profound idea.Issenberg contends that without overwhelming opposition, gay marriage would never have subsumed gay activism; that conservatives, lying in wait, biding their time, are poised to try to take it away. When they do, will we be ready, armed with the lesson of Issenberg’s book?Today, self-segregated into competing camps of righteous activists and dogged pragmatists, freedom fighters still at struggle and insiders who just happen to be gay, do we sincerely value the efficacy of throwing down our buckets where we stand? Have we lost hope that every road leads to a common victory? That in a street fight, every contribution adds value to our effort?
      The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage is published in the US by Penguin Random House
      TopicsBooksLGBT rightsSame-sex marriage (US)US constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsActivismnewsReuse this content More