Donald Trump

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans ramp up attacks on Kamala Harris amid swirl over Biden future

      by

      With the state of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign in turmoil, Donald Trump and his Republican allies are stepping up attacks on a familiar and, some say, possibly more threatening, political foe: his vice-president, Kamala Harris.In the weeks since Biden’s stumbling debate performance, Republicans have intensified what many call racist and misogynistic criticism. They have questioned Harris’s competency, mocked her demeanor, and accused her of concealing concerns about the president’s health. Trump unveiled a new, derisive nickname for the vice-president, “Laffin’ Kamala”, which he tested at a campaign rally in Florida this week.In the rambling, falsehood-filled speech, Trump dedicated several minutes to assailing Harris, whose shortcomings as vice-president, he said, were in effect an “insurance policy” for the embattled incumbent.“If Joe had picked someone even halfway competent, they would’ve bounced him from office years ago, but they can’t because she’s got to be their second choice,” he said.While the Trump team insists they are not intimidated by Harris, supporters say the pre-emptive strikes against the vice-president – the highest ranking woman in American politics and the first Black and Asian American vice-president – are a reflection of her strength at a moment when concerns about Biden’s fitness to serve have thrust her into the spotlight. In response, a group of Democratic strategists and donors are amplifying their defense of the vice-president, an effort they say is necessary to win in November.“We need to have a surround sound around Kamala that promotes the best of her strength – that she fights for our freedoms, that she works for a better life for all Americans, that she is ready to challenge Trump,” said Tory Gavito, the president and co-founder of Way to Win, a Democratic donor network.Though the group has not weighed in on whether Biden should remain the nominee, Gavito said Harris is a major asset to the party – whether as his running mate or his replacement. New battleground state polling released this week by her group found Harris running strong with the parts of the Democratic coalition Biden is struggling to energize: young people and Black and Latino voters.“She brings in factions of that coalition that, right now, are a little concerned,” Gavito said. “So it’s an important moment to lift up the full ticket.”For much of Biden’s presidency, Republicans have warned that a vote to re-elect the 81-year-old president was really a vote for Harris. Nikki Haley, in her unsuccessful run against Trump for the Republican nomination, once told voters that the possibility of a Harris presidency should “send a chill up every person’s spine”.In the presently unlikely scenario Harris becomes the Democratic nominee, Republicans say they have plenty of material ready to deploy against her from her years as a vice-president and her short-lived run for president against Biden in 2020. As the other half of the Biden-Harris administration, her record is tied to the president’s, Republicans argue, which means she is equally to blame for Americans’ frustration over the economy and the border.Republicans have sought to make Harris the face of the administration’s response to record migration at the US southern border, casting her as its absentee “border tsar”. But she was never charged with overseeing US border policy; rather, she was tasked, as was Biden during his vice-presidency, with a diplomatic mission to address the root causes of migration.In a preview of what Trump’s strategy against Harris might look like, his campaign released an online ad alleging a “Great Kamala Cover-Up”. The video overlays images of Biden looking lost and disorientated with comments from Harris defending his fitness for office. “Kamala lied to us for years about Biden,” it says. Trump’s campaign also referred to the vice-president as “Low IQ Kamala” this week.View image in fullscreen“No one has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years more than Cackling Co-pilot Kamala Harris,” Caroline Sunshine, deputy director of communications for the Trump campaign, said in a statement to the Guardian. She also assailed the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy and immigration, among Biden’s most vulnerable issues with voters.Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who was a spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said the attacks by Trump and his campaign were part of an old political “playbook” used to undermine women in positions of power.“It’s things like attacking her intelligence, attacking the tone of her voice, her laugh, the othering language,” Finney said. Those are pretty common tropes that we see used against women.”Several Democratically aligned women’s organizations, including UltraViolet and Emily’s List, have joined forces to combat what they described as the “racist and sexist disinformation campaigns” against the vice-president that are proliferating online and on the campaign trail, sometimes with the explicit endorsement of Republican officials.“There’s always legitimate reasons to critique any public figure, especially politicians,” said Jenna Sherman, campaign director at UltraViolet Action. But she said many of the rightwing attacks on Harris mix personal insults with myths and falsehoods about Democrats’ positions on issues such as abortion and immigration.“This is about misogyny,” she said. “This is about the society that we live in trying to normalize, essentially, the berating of women.”Since the presidential debate last month, some surveys have found Harris performing as well as or marginally than better than Biden in a hypothetical contest against Trump, which some suspect have prompted the new wave of attacks.“Vice-President Harris is proud to be President Biden’s running mate,” Brian Fallon, Harris’s campaign communications director said in a statement to the Guardian.“As a former district attorney and attorney general, she has stood up to fraudsters and felons like Donald Trump her entire career. Trump is lying about the vice-president because she has been prosecuting the case against him on the biggest issues in the race.”The former California attorney general, elected as a senator in 2017, had a rocky start to the vice-presidency, stumbling in media appearances and struggling to stand out as Republicans relentlessly attacked her performance. But since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Harris has become the administration’s lead messenger on reproductive rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue.On the anniversary of Roe’s fall last month, Harris declared Trump “guilty” in the “case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America”. She has also been at the forefront of democracy protection efforts, rushing to Tennessee last year to stand beside Black lawmakers expelled from the state legislature for protesting against gun violence.“She is qualified to be president,” Biden said at his Nato press conference on Thursday night. “That’s why I picked her.”He praised Harris as a “hell of a prosecutor” and a “first-rate person”, casting her as fighter for reproductive rights and an agile lieutenant who has effectively managed a wide portfolio. But even as Biden promoted Harris, he mistakenly referred to her as “Vice-President Trump”, the exact type of verbal gaffe that has unnerved Democrats in recent weeks. Trump immediately seized on the misstep.“By the way: yes, I know the difference,” the president’s campaign replied later on X. “One’s a prosecutor, and the other’s a felon.”Earlier on Thursday, Harris rallied supporters in North Carolina, delivering the kind of fiery denunciations of Trump that many Democrats long for in their nominee. Ticking through the Biden administration’s legislative and foreign policy achievements, Harris warned that a second Trump term would hurt the country’s standing in the world and make Americans less safe.“As Trump bows down to dictators, he makes America weak,” Harris said, a reference to the former president’s flattery of Vladimir Putin. “And that is disqualifying for someone who wants to be commander-in-chief.”Sharing a clip from her campaign stop in North Carolina, Representative Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said on X: “VP Harris is on fire. She’s vetted, tested, and has been Democrats’ strongest messenger throughout this campaign. She’s next up if we need her, and we might.”Biden’s insistence that he is the candidate best positioned to defeat Trump has not quelled dissent within his party. A growing number of elected Democrats have called on the president to step aside, while speculation mounts over whether Harris could realistically replace him atop the ticket.Amid the uncertainty, the New York Times reported that the Biden campaign has commissioned a survey to measure how Harris would fare in a head-to-head matchup against Trump. It comes amid a series of media reports that advisers close to the president have lost confidence in his ability to beat Trump in November, which the White House and the president’s campaign have denied.In a memo outlining the “path ahead”, Biden’s re-election campaign chair, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, and his campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said there was no indication that any other candidate would fare better than Biden against Trump. It noted that an alternative Democratic nominee would face an onslaught of negative media, which is already “baked in” to his candidacy.Yet a separate memo circulating among Democrats makes a counter-argument. Titled “The case for Kamala”, the document, written anonymously by Democratic strategists, argues that making Harris the party’s nominee is the “one realistic path out of this mess”.It argues that her weaknesses are “real but addressable” and that she enjoys structural advantages over other potential alternatives: she has already been vetted on the national stage, has the highest name recognition and would have immediate access to the re-election campaign’s war chest.With just little over a month left before Democrats meet in Chicago for their convention, Harris remains the most obvious and, for now, the most popular choice to replace Biden in the apparently unlikely event he ends his run for a second term.But regardless of what happens with the ticket, attention will remain fixed on Harris as the next-in-line to a president who has raised public concern about his ability to serve another four years. That is why Democrats such as Gavito of Way to Win say it is important to defend her aggressively across all media platforms.“The anti-Maga coalition is bigger than Maga,” she said, referring to Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. “We have proven that for the last three cycles. They have lost consistently. We can prove it again. But that requires a full-throated response on every platform available that shuts down people who are afraid of strong women.” More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Rule of the lawless’: what does the authoritarian playbook look like?

      by

      Donald Trump has glibly remarked that he would be “a dictator on day one” if elected to a second term, and experts on authoritarianism say we should take him seriously.The supreme court’s ruling earlier this month giving presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution heightened the risk that Trump could follow through with that plan.“It is a democratic emergency,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and professor of Italian studies whose work has focused on fascism.In her most recent book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, Ben-Ghiat explores the conditions in which democracies, including vibrant and apparently healthy ones, can fall – and the “playbook” aspiring authoritarians use to take power. According to Ben-Ghiat, Trump’s habit of maligning immigrants, casting himself as a victim, and attempting to discredit the media all align with the playbook.The Guardian spoke to Ben-Ghiat about the contemporary threat of authoritarianism in the US.This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.You have written and spoken extensively about the “authoritarian playbook”. What does that look like?At its most basic, authoritarianism is when the executive branch of government domesticates or overwhelms or politicizes the judiciary, critiques and tries to silence the press, and when the leader has a party that he’s made into his personal tool, and in general, seeks to remove or neutralize any threats to his power.As I described them in my book, the tools of rule are one: propaganda, so that the leader can go against the press early on; two: corruption itself – buying people off and getting a compliant civil service; the use of violence, which ranges from intimidation and threats to physical harm and the elimination of critics; and machismo – it’s the leader who’s the man of the people, but he’s also the man above all other men, and he’s the savior of the nation.Trump just got a huge gift from the supreme court last week with the ruling that presidents enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution, and I’m wondering what exactly we should be preparing for now that he’s been emboldened by the court.Trump is part of the category of authoritarians who run for office, or they run to get back into office, because they have charges against them, and they must get into power so they can make their legal problems go away. Regular politicians don’t want to run for office if they have indictments or charges, but the strongman must run for office because he must make himself feel safe from prosecution.Authoritarianism is about replacing the rule of law with rule by the lawless.It’s about taking away the rights of many such as voting rights or reproductive rights, and giving the leader and the elites more liberties to do what they want to do without fear of regulations or prosecution. So the fact that the supreme court agreed to hear the immunity case and then gave him immunity – even if he kills political opponents – is the autocrat’s fantasy.So I guess preparing for the most dire possible outcome is something that we should be considering at this point – like the possibility of Trump throwing political opponents in jail, or, you know, assassinating them.The United States is an outlier nation in having someone running for office who staged a violent coup to try and keep himself in power, illegally. In other places, where these are called “self-coups,” like in Guatemala, Indonesia, or Peru, the leader ended up in jail or had to go into exile in the United States.Trump is also uniquely dangerous because he has long indulged in fantasies of violence, and he made violence his brand. This is someone who started off his campaign saying he could stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any followers. And he has used his rallies for almost 10 years now to preach that violence should be seen in a positive light. He’d say in the old days, you could beat up people, and that violence is necessary, sometimes, to “save the nation”.This is someone who talks about executions. The reason he admires foreign leaders such as Xi and Putin is that they have the power to execute people and pay no consequence.Something we’ve been reporting on at the Guardian is Trump’s habit of taking accusations from his political opponents, and spinning it back at them. For example, promising to go after his enemies, but then simultaneously claiming that he’s the victim of a witch-hunt, or claiming that actually, Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. What’s the function of this kind of “I’m rubber, you’re glue” rhetoric as a form of propaganda?So you mentioned two separate things, and both of them are classic authoritarian maneuvers. The first is depicting yourself as simultaneously the defender of the nation, the all powerful man who can protect people and at the same time, the victim.For Mussolini, the enemy of Italy – which was a poor nation – was the League of Nations. Today, Trump says the enemy is the deep state. Erdogan talks about witch hunts. Berlusconi talked about witch hunts by the press and prosecutors. It makes people get on board with any aggressive actions that this leader takes, because it becomes self defense. So for example with January 6, Trump said that he was a victim of a witch hunt and that the election had been stolen from him, and he summoned everybody to the rally, and he said, If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have any country any more.The other thing that goes with this is the prospect of some kind of existential threat – in fact, what does Trump say? He says: “They’re going after me, but I’m just standing in the way. They’re really going after you.”From Putin to Orbán, all these authoritarians say that democracy is the real tyranny, and they present their way – whether it’s fascism or Trumpism – as the way to free the people. And so this idea that Biden is a threat to democracy – this is part of it.View image in fullscreenAny aggression that Trump does is because he’s the defender of freedom, and the Democrat represents real tyranny.And this goes into Project 2025, with its fake populism, which says, we are going to liberate the American people and allow them to have “self government from the tyranny of the administrative state”.So it’s very seductive rhetoric, but it’s an inversion, so that democracy becomes the threat and tyranny and fascism, or whatever we’re calling Trumpism, becomes freedom, and that is how in history, we’ve gotten into situations where mass repression is hailed as something positive.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThink about the gates of Auschwitz: “Work makes free.” It’s a whole scary, horrible lineage. When you have this kind of inversion, I call this the upside-down world of authoritarianism.I think there’s this common idea that American institutions are so strong they couldn’t possibly be worn down to the point of where we are facing mass repression. Or that a second Trump term might look illiberal, but that we could never go down the path of full dictatorship. What do you say to people who have that kind of strong faith in American democracy to persevere?When I did the research for my book, I saw that around the world, people have always been unprepared, and thought that their institutions would hold. For example, Germany was one of the most sophisticated nations in the world in the late 20s and early 30s; it had one of the highest rates of literacy, it was known for science, technology, graphic design – it was so advanced, and people didn’t think in Germany that this ranting lunatic, Hitler, could possibly do the damage he did. And then he came in, and he did things very quickly.And then in Chile, a coup occurred – and that’s like instant martial law, repression. The conservative Christian Democrats, who were the leading party, actually thought that the junta and Pinochet would establish order in the country and then give back power to them.View image in fullscreenSo my point is that it can be very scary to think that you’re in a situation of true emergency, and people are reluctant to see what’s in front of them – sometimes, because that means they might have to get out of their comfort zone and do something and become political in ways they they’ve never been before.When Trump declared he was running for president, many major media, not the Guardian, but many major US media, they didn’t even mention January 6 in the announcement.I don’t like to blame the media, so I don’t want to overstate it, but there are many ways in which the American public has been encouraged to feel that it’s not an emergency, when in fact it is a democratic emergency.On the topic of the US media, I also wanted to ask how you see the media rising to the occasion in documenting the rise of the far right, and where do you see it failing to do so?One of the best ways to go after authoritarians, whether left- or right-wing, is to investigate their corruption, and that’s one of the most dangerous things to do. The big, powerful papers that have resources, like the New York Times and The Washington Post, have done really good investigations into Trump’s corruption. In that way, they’ve been superb.View image in fullscreenIn other ways, the problem is that we have a very unique situation. We are a bipartisan republic in which one party has exited democracy. Here all the GOP lawmakers, they go on talk shows, and none of them will commit to accepting the results. They have exited democracy. And they also support January 6. They don’t disavow January 6 at all. They support Trump, even though he’s a convicted felon.All of their behaviors are authoritarian, but the media has continued to have a coverage model that is suited for two parties that are in one political system.On a similar point, I also wanted to ask about the role that liberals have historically played in either resisting rising fascism or, on the other hand, enabling it. Where do you see the Democratic party, as the largest political organ representing an alternative to the rightwing, doing correctly here? And where has the Democratic party failed?There’s been a kind of timid stance in the Democratic party to be fully progressive. And if you look at what Biden and Harris have actually done, they have been one of the most progressive, socially-conscious administrations in history. Not only have they improved the economy and jobs, but they have stood up for America as a multiracial democracy, very, very strongly with their programs, with their legislation, they have helped working people.So one of the lessons from the history of authoritarianism is if you have a far-right authoritarian threat, you shouldn’t move to the center, or even become center right, thinking you can placate. You have to have a progressive alternative. And in the Netherlands, in Israel, in Italy, in Hungary, for example, the opposition failed because it did not make a really strong progressive stance when faced with a far-right authoritarian. I think that the Democrats have not gone far enough in this.At this point, what do we do to oppose this agenda?I think Trump is one of the most successful propagandists in history. I know that sounds exaggerated, but he managed working not in a closed state, like Mussolini or Putin, but in a full democracy, with a pluralistic media, he still managed to convince tens of millions of people that he won the election in 2020. That’s how skilled he is, and he continues to have this enormous, enormous impact. So there’s a crisis of disinformation.One of the best things we can do as regular people is to try and educate those around us as to the outcome. What is going to happen if Trump comes back in, how is it going to affect them? More

    • 188 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Don’t believe it – the Republicans aren’t ‘softening’ their stance on abortion | Judith Levine

      by

      The press has pointed to the near erasure of the word abortion from the new Republican platform as evidence that the mind and soul of the Republican party now reside in the body of Donald J Trump. The document omits the right’s top-priority goal of a federal abortion ban and replaces it with Trump’s preference to let the states do the dirty work. Missing too is the holy grail of the antiabortion movement: a “human life amendment,” which would extend to fetuses and embryos the constitutional protections that were seized from pregnant people when the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022.The consensus is that the changes from the 2016 platform, which was used in the 2020 elections, to the 2024 version subordinate the Republican party’s long-held principles and strategies – not just on abortion but also on trade, entitlement cuts, and same-sex marriage – to the transient political needs and desires of its leader.On abortion, news outlets from CNN to Fox to Roll Call have called the shift a “softening” of the party’s stance.Don’t be fooled. Apart from the fact that voters don’t read platforms and elected officials rarely abide by them, the “new” abortion position will make no practical or political difference.First – if this doesn’t go entirely without saying – Trump’s word is as good as the paper he flushes down his golden toilet. If a Republican Congress handed a President Trump a federal ban, does anyone think he’d veto it? Trump doesn’t really care about abortion anyhow. His stated opinions have swung every which way, from “I’m very pro-choice” in 1999 to “God made the decision” to overturn Roe in 2022, not a US supreme court packed with the far-right justices he appointed.Second, the court is already taking care of things. Yes, it rejected a challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone – but did so only on the grounds that the plaintiffs, an ad hoc group of antiabortion medical professionals, did not have standing to sue. Public health and legal experts say that the ruling almost guarantees another challenge, this time with more carefully vetted plaintiffs. And state laws banning mifepristone are untouched.The supreme court also left in place two FDA regulations loosening the prescription and use of mifepristone, but only while the regulations are under appeal. And if the appeal reaches the high court? This session, the majority declared itself the boss of the federal agencies. Should the anti-abortion activists challenge the FDA’s authority again, there’s a good chance they will prevail.So far, neither judges no state lawmakers have succeeded in shutting down abortion access. In fact, the number of pregnancy terminations increased in 2023, after Roe’s undoing, thanks to telemedical providers prescribing and a global feminist underground sending pills into abortion deserts. Laws still protect these activities. Statutes in liberal states shield providers from prosecution by authorities in conservative states, and the fourth amendment protects first-class letters and packages from illegal search and seizure.However, federal postal inspectors can get a warrant to open the mail if they have probable cause to believe the contents violate federal law. The 1873 Comstock Act prohibits the mailing of anything that can be used to cause an abortion. It is still on the books. The executive branch holds authority over the US Postal Service. With the president’s nod, the Postal Service could train its dogs to sniff out the little white pills and direct its enforcers to tear open parcels in search of contraband. US Customs is authorized to check international mail for prohibited items – whether that’s gold, fresh fruit, animal fur, or illegal drugs.The 2024 Republican platform may be no more than a script for political theater. But, there’s another document – finally discovered by the media – that shows the party ain’t playing: Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan for transition to an extreme-right America under an imperial presidency. All the positions Trump finessed or “softened” in the platform are laid out in flagrant detail in the 900-page tome.Trump has disavowed connection with it, while proudly owning the platform. “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and unlike our very well received Republican platform, had nothing to do with it,” he posted on Truth Social. But CNN found at least 140 people involved in Project 2025 who served in the Trump administration, including six cabinet members.While peeved that the Republican platform committee flouted their input, antiabortion leaders have dismissed it as a temporary setback. “The 2024 platform is a decent statement of campaign priorities,” said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, “but not necessarily the enduring principles of the party.”Whoever ends up in the White House, the antis will not rest until every baby that can be born is born and anybody who gets in the way is punished – slandered, delicensed, sued, fined, imprisoned, even executed for homicide, or, hardly least of all, forced to carry and bear a child they do not want.Republican-dominated state legislatures have indicated their eagerness to enact the most stringent limitations and the harshest penalties. And because the supreme court has immunized presidents from criminal prosecution (with the insane proviso that they commit the crime as an official act), a second-term President Trump would be free to follow his instincts and impose his will over the bodies of women. That’s what he has always done. But this time he will be accountable to nobody.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Bitter tensions as reporters feel misled by White House over Biden health

      by

      It was the moment when long-simmering media resentment at a seemingly opaque White House broke through the surface with startling intensity.With Joe Biden’s candidacy teetering in the wake of last month’s alarming debate showing, journalists who had covered his presidency full-time for years suddenly asserted that it lacked that most basic political element: credibility.The trigger was the revelation – disclosed in several news outlets – that a specialist in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House eight times in as many months. The press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was forced in a live televised briefing on to the defensive over a supposed lack of transparency.“My first [question] to you is on the credibility of this White House when it comes to talking about the president’s health,” the Associated Press correspondent, Zeke Miller, asked Jean-Pierre, who, taken aback, responded by calling for “a little respect”.The exchange quickly devolved into an angry back-and-forth over whether Jean-Pierre had given an accurate picture about the president’s health and her continuing refusal to confirm the name of the visiting specialist, despite it already being in the public domain. The White House ultimately clarified matters in a subsequent news release that confirmed the specialist as Kevin Cannard and explained that he had visited the White House in January to carry out the neurological part of Biden’s annual medical check-up.Yet the flare-up went beyond one narrow episode.Many journalists increasingly feel they have been bamboozled by a White House culture of denial and non-disclosure. People who pride themselves in holding power to account in the world’s leading democracy have been asking how they could have been so blinded to Biden’s diminishing state before it burst into the open so vividly on the debate stage in Atlanta.At least some have reached the conclusion they have been misled by a campaign of obfuscation by White House staff – some of whom themselves privately complain of feeling deprived of access to the president that their seniority would normally have assured.Wider staff access, the argument runs, could have given more people a clearer picture of whether Biden was in decline – which, in turn, would have created a higher chance of the true state of his functioning coming to light.But Biden’s age-related decline was a media issue long before his disintegration at the debate, which the Biden campaign asked for partly in an effort to discredit such speculation. Little more than a week beforehand, widely circulating videos purporting to depict the president in varying states of confusion were reported in several respected outlets as tendentiously-edited “cheap fakes”.“The evidence was there for people to see, and it’s somewhat disingenuous in the press corps to say, well, you know, we were kept in the dark,” said W Joseph Campbell, professor emeritus of communication of American University in Washington.“Trump was ranting about Biden’s troubles and his gaffes in the 2020 campaign, so I think it depends on what outlets you were following. And to use a phrase the administration seems to be employing these days, this is a big-boy town and you find your news where you can – it doesn’t necessarily have to be ladled out to you by the White House press office.”Yet those who did report the matter quickly found themselves rounded on by an outraged White House. When the Wall Street Journal published a 3,000-word front-page article in early June carrying detailed anecdotes that questioned Biden’s cognitive faculties, an administration spokesman, Andrew Bates, dismissed the stories as “false claims” made by Republicans.The article – which has since been vindicated by reports in other US news sources, including the New York Times – was also attacked by the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a Biden supporter who later called on him to stand aside after the debate.In a social media post showing that disquiet over Biden’s cognitive faculties was neither secret nor new, James Rosen, White House correspondent of the hard-right Newsmax outlet, recalled being ostracised after asking Biden in a press conference two and a half years ago about polling showing public concern about his perceived decline.“When I asked Potus on January 19 2022, ‘with utmost respect for your life accomplishments and the high office you hold’, why the electorate harboured such profound concerns about his cognitive fitness, it was considered rude, and I was blackballed in briefings for eight months,” he wrote on X the day after the debate, accompanying his post with a transcript of the exchange.Just as the whisperings over the president’s age and health have escalated into a roar, so too have the long-running tensions between the administration and the New York Times, which this week published its second editorial in 10 days urging Biden to end his campaign.The calls have been in line with similar pleas from rival outlets but animus may have been sharpened by a lack of access to the president, keenly felt by an organisation that styles itself as America’s newspaper of record.“The newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright,” Politico reported earlier this year.Biden has given fewer press conferences and media interviews than any US president since Ronald Reagan, in what now looks like a deliberate strategy to conceal his deterioration. Trump – who has frequently denounced the media as “enemies of the people” – gave nearly three times more news conferences and interviews in office than Biden.With a rash of hastily organised interviews and a high-profile news conference at Thursday’s close of the Nato summit, the administration is now trying to rectify that – a panicked tactical change which, if it results in more verbal flubs, may only serve to justify the previous approach.It is an unintended irony that the White House has been shielding Biden from media accountability – a key component of the democratic process – and rubbishing questions over his age in an effort to maintain his credibility as a self-proclaimed defender of democracy and a bulwark against Trump’s authoritarian visions, which the administration insists is inimical to press freedom.That circle, says Campbell, cannot easily be squared.“It does seem to be in conflict with this greater goal as a protector or defender of democracy if you’re protecting the chief executive for an extended period of time, and then really criticising any attempts to pierce the veil.” More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Meta lifts restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts

      by

      Meta has removed previous restrictions on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Donald Trump as the 2024 election nears, the company announced on Friday.Trump was allowed to return to the social networks in 2023 with “guardrails” in place, after being banned over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection. Those guardrails have now been removed.“In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for president on the same basis,” Meta said in a blogpost, citing the Republican national convention, slated for next week, which will formalize Trump as the party’s candidate.As a result, Meta said, Trump’s accounts will no longer be subject to heightened suspension penalties, which Meta said were created in response to “extreme and extraordinary circumstances” and “have not had to be deployed”.“All US presidential candidates remain subject to the same community standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including those policies designed to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence,” the company’s blogpost reads.Since his return to Meta’s social networks, Trump has primarily shared campaign information, attacks on Democratic candidate Biden, and memes on his accounts.Critics of Trump and online safety advocates have expressed concern that Trump’s return could lead to a rise of misinformation and incitement of violence, as was seen during the Capitol riot that prompted his initial ban.The Biden campaign condemned Meta’s decision in a statement on Friday, saying it is a “greedy, reckless decision” that constitutes “ a direct attack on our safety and our democracy”.“Restoring his access is like handing your car keys to someone you know will drive your car into a crowd and off a cliff,” said campaign spokesperson Charles Kretchmer Lutvak. “It is holding a megaphone for a bonafide racist who will shout his hate and white supremacy from the rooftops and try to take it mainstream.”In addition to Meta platforms, other major social media firms banned Trump due to his online activity surrounding the 6 January attack, including Twitter (now X), Snapchat and YouTube.The former president was allowed back on X last year by the decision of Elon Musk, who bought the company in 2022, though the former president has not yet tweeted.Trump returned to YouTube in March 2023. He remains banned from Snapchat.Trump founded his own social network, Truth Social, in early 2022. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Hakeem Jeffries reportedly did not offer Biden his endorsement in private meeting – live

      by

      CNN reports that Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries did not offer Joe Biden his endorsement when they met following the president’s press conference yesterday.Jeffries “bluntly” shared the views of his caucus in the meeting, though CNN notes it is unclear if Biden asked for his support.Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries announced that he had met with Joe Biden following his closely watched press conference yesterday, and conveyed “conclusions about the path forward” that he had heard from lawmakers. CNN later reported that Jeffries did not offer Biden his endorsement, though it was unclear if the president asked for it. Later in the day, Biden called in to a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic caucus, which reportedly did not go very well. Some lawmakers were not allowed to ask questions, while one who did told Biden he should step aside. Despite all that, his campaign says they remain on track, and that donations “exploded” during his press conference last night.Here’s what else happened today:

      James Clyburn, a House Democrat close to the president, reiterated his support for Biden, but noted that the party has until the start of their convention next month to make decisions about replacing him.

      A new poll may undercut arguments that Biden has lost significant public support following his debate, after it found him in a statistical tie with Donald Trump.

      Speaking of Trump, the former president wants congressional Republicans to insist on the passage of a law, opposed by the White House, to require people to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote, raising the possibility that a government spending fight could break out just weeks before the 5 November election.

      The former president also said that he would take a cognitive test if Biden took one, and that all future presidential candidates should follow suit.

      Melania Trump, who has generally been absent from the campaign trail, will reportedly make an appearance at the Republican national convention next week.
      In a briefing to reporters as Joe Biden flies to Michigan for a campaign event in Detroit, Biden-Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said they had seen a surge in donations during the president’s press conference last night.“Since last night, we’re seeing strong support across our coalition, but most importantly, we’re seeing it with our grassroots base. We have close to 40,000 donations last night alone. Donations exploded during the president’s press conference. In fact, we hit seven times our average during the press conference,” Tyler said.He also said the campaign believes polls are in his favor.“Polling continues to show the same race we’ve been seeing, right, one that is close and unaffected by the debate. President Biden has enduring strength with high propensity voters, while Donald Trump demonstrates a low ceiling, unable to expand his support,” Tyler said.Biden yesterday told reporters he remained confident in his ability to win, and spoke at length about foreign policy topics, but made a few blunders in the closing hours of the Nato summit, including by accidentally introducing “president Putin”, when he meant Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Tyler downplayed those moments, saying, “Joe Biden has been making gaffes for 40 years. He made a couple last night. He’ll probably continue to do so. Our opponent is somebody who, every single day out on the stump, is calling for a bloodbath if he loses, is pledging to rule as a dictator on day one, and is pledging to ban abortion nationwide, across the country,.”Here is a look back at press conference:Donald Trump has more harsh words for George Clooney, over the actor and director’s New York Times column in which he called for Joe Biden to stand aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, given concerns about the 81-year-old’s fitness for office.“I thought George Clooney was very disloyal,” Trump, 78 and the presumptive Republican nominee, told The Clay and Buck Sexton show on Friday.“Because whether you like Biden or not, you know, he’s been nice to Clooney. I thought it was very disloyal, backstabber, third-rate movie actor.“He was a television actor and never made really a good movie. So he’s sort of third-rate as a movie actor. Clark Gable, he’s not. I thought it was a great act of disloyalty.”The Times column was headlined “George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.”Clooney wrote: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”Biden’s disastrous debate against Trump in Atlanta last month fueled a crisis for Democrats, with members of Congress and reportedly donors calling for the president to quit.Trump had already attacked Clooney, writing on social media after the Times column: “He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything?“Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television.”Trump famously got out of television and went into politics, having made his name as a cartoon version of himself on The Apprentice for NBC.Clooney has not commented.As the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports, Trump and his aides are keen to see Biden stay in the race.A conference call between Joe Biden and lawmakers in the Congressional Hispanic caucus left many with a bad taste in their mouth, Notus reports, as the call’s organizers prevented some members from speaking and one congressman told the president that he should drop out.Only two members of the Democratic group were initially allowed to ask questions, but after Biden opened the floor to more questions, California’s Mike Levin told the president he thought he should make way for another candidate.Notus said the president responded to Levin, though they did not report what he said. Then, the call’s host, Representative Linda T Sánchez, ended the call, and Levin later went public with his belief that Democrats would be better with another candidate. Here’s what he had to say:
      Like so many of you, I was naturally concerned about President Biden’s performance in the recent debate.Since then, I’ve made my opinions known in the appropriate manner with House Democratic leadership and my colleagues. And I called upon all Americans to give the president a window to make an expeditious decision about his candidacy.
      In the two weeks since the debate, I’ve had a chance to connect with so many of you, our constituents and supporters. The response from literally several hundred of you has been overwhelming, and I’m very grateful for your candor.First, let me say that President Biden has been an outstanding leader, not only of our nation, but of the entire free world. Making this statement is not easy. I have deep respect for President Biden’s five-plus decades of public service and incredible appreciation for the work we’ve done together these last three and a half years. But I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch.
      In a string of posts on Truth Social spent insulting Joe Biden over his debate performance, Donald Trump said that he will take a cognitive test if the president undergoes one, and that such exams should be mandatory for all presidential candidates:
      Joe should immediately take a Cognitive Test, and I will go with him, and take one also. For the first time we’ll be a team, and do it for the good of the Country….And from now on, all Presidential candidates should be mandated to take a Cognitive Test and Aptitude Test, regardless of their age!!!
      Nikki Haley, Trump’s former United Nations ambassador who made a quixotic bid for the Republican presidential nomination, had campaigned on making such tests mandatory for politicians over the age of 75. Both Trump and Biden would meet that criteria.Republican senator Lindsey Graham took up the call following the first debate, in which the president struggled to counter attacks from Trump, who attracted criticisms of his own for repeatedly lying:Melania Trump, the wife of former president Donald Trump, will make a rare appearance at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee next week, CNN first reported.Melania’s appearance at the RNC was confirmed by two sources familiar with the former first lady’s plans.Melania has been mostly absent from the Trump campaign trail. It is unclear if she will give remarks at the convention or participate in any significant way.As Biden works to rebuild trust among Democratic lawmakers and voters, the president will be speaking at the same high school in Michigan where he campaigned with high-ranking Democrats in 2020.According to CNN:
      Biden will speak at same site in Michigan where he promised to be a “bridge” to next generation in 2020, in their ‘live’ piece: The president is set to speak at the same high school in Detroit where he stood hand-in-hand with then-Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as he cast himself as a link to the future.“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said on March 9, 2020 during the Democratic event. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
      Over the weekend, Biden also will be meeting with the Congressional Progressive Caucus in a virtual meeting, Punchbowl News reported.Biden has already received support from key progressive lawmakers following his widely criticized debate performance, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders.Biden will also meet with the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) on Friday as well, several outlets have reported.CNN and Punchbowl News have said that Biden will meet with CAPAC as he continues to assuage fears among lawmakers concerning his ability to be the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.The meeting will take place virtually.Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries announced that he had met with Joe Biden following his closely watched press conference yesterday, and conveyed “conclusions about the path forward” he heard from lawmakers. CNN later reported that Jeffries did not offer Biden his endorsement, though it was unclear if the president asked for it. Later today, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, whose leaders say they support Biden, will reportedly meet with the president, while one more House Democrat has announced that they think Biden should “pass the torch”. We will see if any others join her, and are also keeping an eye on the president’s campaign visit to swing state Michigan this evening.Here’s what else has happened today so far:

      James Clyburn, a House Democrat close to the president, reiterated his support for Biden, but noted that the party has until the start of their convention next month to make decisions about replacing him.

      A new poll may undercut arguments that Biden has lost major support following his debate, after it found him in a statistical tie with Donald Trump.

      Speaking of Trump, the former president wants congressional Republicans to insist on the passage of a law, opposed by the White House, to require people present proof of citizenship when registering to vote, in a sign that a government spending fight could break out just weeks before the 5 November election.
      Teamsters president Sean O’Brien nearly threw hands with a Republican senator during a hearing on Capitol Hill last year, but that apparently has not discouraged the union leader from planning to address the Republican national convention. The Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports that is not sitting well with senior members of the union:The Teamsters International president, Sean O’Brien, has been accused by senior members of the union of disgracing it by agreeing to an unprecedented appearance at next week’s Republican national convention.O’Brien’s decision was branded “unconscionable” by John Palmer, vice-president at large at the Teamsters, who accused him of lending support to the “most anti-union party and president” in a generation.In a letter seen by the Guardian, Palmer urged members of the union to demand that O’Brien cancel his planned appearance. The Teamsters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Teamsters is one of the largest labor unions in the US, with 1.3 million members. While other large labor unions and the largest coalition of labor unions, the AFL-CIO, have already endorsed Joe Biden, the Teamsters has yet to make an endorsement in the 2024 presidential election.CNN reports that Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries did not offer Joe Biden his endorsement when they met following the president’s press conference yesterday.Jeffries “bluntly” shared the views of his caucus in the meeting, though CNN notes it is unclear if Biden asked for his support.Semafor reports that members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus plan to meet with the president today:Earlier this week, the all-Democratic caucus’s chair Nanette Barragán and deputy chair Adriano Espaillat reaffirmed their support for Joe Biden, saying in a joint statement:
      We stand with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden heads to Michigan to shore up support as calls to quit persist

      by

      Joe Biden was headed for the battleground state of Michigan on Friday, to campaign both for re-election and for his survival as the Democratic presidential nominee.In Washington, calls for the 81-year-old president to quit continued, while the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives said he had discussed the issue with Biden on Thursday, after Biden’s press conference following the Nato summit.In a letter to colleagues, Hakeem Jeffries of New York said discussions about Biden’s age and fitness for office had been “candid, clear-eyed and comprehensive”.“On behalf of the House Democratic caucus,” he said, “I requested and was graciously granted a private meeting with President Joe Biden.“That meeting occurred yesterday evening … I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward.”Biden’s response was not disclosed, nor details of Democratic “conclusions”. But as the letter was released, an 18th congressional Democrat said Biden should let someone else face Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November.The 19th Democrat to say Biden should go, Mike Levin of California, was reported by Politico to have told the president so to his face on Friday, during a virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic caucus. Levin then stated his position publicly.Politico also quoted a “pro-Biden Democrat who attended the meeting” as saying the president “sounded very lucid, sharp, engaged”.There was further worrying news for Democrats when the New York Times reported that so long as Biden remains the nominee, major donors will put on hold “roughly $90m in pledged donations”.The Sunrise Movement also called for Biden to quit. Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led climate-focused activist group, said she was “concerned Joe Biden isn’t in a position to mobilise young voters and win”.As Biden headed for Detroit, the capital remained abuzz. At the Nato summit on Thursday, Biden spoke assertively and showed his foreign policy experience but also made embarrassing slips, introducing Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as “President Putin” and referring to Kamala Harris, his vice-president, as “Vice-President Trump”.Trump seized on that, posting on social media: “Crooked Joe begins his ‘Big Boy’ press conference with, ‘I wouldn’t have picked Vice-President Trump to be vice-president, though I think she was not qualified to be president.’ Great job, Joe!”Biden had appeared to say: “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice-President Trump to be vice-president [if] I think she’s not qualified to be president.”Online, Biden fired back, posting: “By the way: Yes, I know the difference. One’s a prosecutor, and the other’s a felon.”Trump, 78 and facing questions about his own cognitive fitness, was convicted on 34 charges arising from hush-money payments to an adult film star. He faces 54 other criminal charges, concerning election subversion and retention of classified information, and was fined millions of dollars in civil cases over business fraud and defamation arising from a rape allegation a judge called “substantially true”.Harris came to prominence as a prosecutor in San Francisco before becoming attorney general of California, a US senator and Biden’s running mate.Michigan is a swing state, choosing Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, its Black voters a key part of Biden’s support. The Oscar-winning actor Octavia Spencer was set to appear with Biden in Detroit on Friday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden’s campaign said he would target Project 2025, a policy plan led by the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank. Trump has tried to disavow the project, which Democrats say shows his extremist agenda.There was good news for Biden on Friday: a poll showing him improving since the disastrous debate against Trump in Atlanta that pitched Democrats into crisis.“Biden actually gained a point since last month’s survey, which was taken before the debate,” wrote Domenico Montanaro of NPR, which carried out the poll with PBS and Marist. “He leads Trump 50%-48% in a head-to-head matchup. But Biden slips when third-party options are introduced, with Trump [leading] 43%-42%.”But Politico noted telling dissonance in responses to Biden’s Nato performance. One unnamed Biden aide said the president exceeded expectations and had some great lines. A Democratic aide said Biden had “lowered the bar … until it’s on the floor”.Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the dean of the Congressional Black caucus, told NBC Biden “sometimes mangles words and phrases but all of that is almost natural for people who grew up stuttering”.He added: “He has one of the best minds that I have ever been around … and so I would hope that we would focus on the substance of this man … and how he has run this country.“… The conversation should focus on the record of this administration, on the alternative in this election, and let Joe Biden make his own decisions about his future.“If he decides to change his mind later on then we will respond to that. We have until 19 August to open our convention” in Chicago.Asked “Is this the same Joe Biden that we saw four years ago?”, Clyburn said: “No!”“I’m not the same Jim Clyburn that I was four years ago and in 10 days I’ll be 84. But I’m a bit wiser than I was before … It’s biblical. When I became a man I put away childish things. Joe Biden has put away childish things because he has become a man. His opponent [Trump] is still a child.”Biden, Clyburn said, “knows what a democracy is all about.” More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Anne Applebaum on autocracies and signs of America’s move to join them – podcast

      by

      Back in December Donald Trump said the quiet bit out loud when he announced he wanted to be a dictator – if only on day one. Looking around the world in the 21st century, autocracy is getting a new lease of life – authoritarian regimes are working together, and the danger to democracies like the United States is getting closer to home.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland is joined by the political commentator and author Anne Applebaum to look at what the US should be doing to tackle the growing threat of autocracy

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More