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      Trump to barrel ahead with campaign reveal despite Republican pushback

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      Trump to barrel ahead with campaign reveal despite Republican pushbackSources say Trump will deliver the address from Mar-a-Lago Tuesday even though his candidates fared poorly in the midterms Donald Trump is expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday night as planned, according to multiple sources close to the former US president, inserting himself into the center of national politics as he attempts to box out potential rivals seeking the Republican nomination.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read moreTrump will deliver at 9pm ET a speech from the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he recently hosted a subdued midterm elections watch party, and detail several policy goals that aides hope could become central themes of the presidential campaign.Trump’s remarks were being finalized late into the night with a pair of speechwriters and his political team, the sources said, with aides keen for the former president to convey a degree of seriousness as he seeks voters to elevate him to a second term in the White House.The political team at Mar-a-Lago are aware nonetheless that Trump has a penchant for veering off script and delivering news as he pleases, often fixating on grievances over debunked election fraud claims that have historically done him no favors.Still, Trump appears to know that after the disappointing Republican results in the midterm elections, he is perhaps at his most politically vulnerable since the January 6 Capitol attack, and faces a critical moment to ensure he does not get discarded by the rest of the GOP.03:20The former president has been forced to shoulder some of the blame for poor performances in key races, including in Pennsylvania, where his handpicked Republican candidate, Mehmet Oz, lost to Democrat John Fetterman in a contest that allowed Democrats to keep the Senate majority.That prompted some of his trusted external advisers to urge him to delay announcing his 2024 candidacy until after the Senate runoff election in Georgia, where another of his Republican candidates, Herschel Walker, trailed Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock in a close general election.The group urging a delay feared that Trump could sink the Senate runoff for Republicans as he is widely considered to have done in 2020, when he focused on his own angry complaints about the 2020 election rather than helping the party’s two candidates, who both ended up losing.But Trump was told by top members of his political team to stick to the original schedule, the Guardian has previously reported, since delaying the announcement would give him the appearance of being wounded by the disappointing results in the midterms and would make him look weak.The calendar would also complicate an announcement later in the year, he was told, since waiting until the week after the runoffs in December would be the final week before Christmas – which would mean only several days of cable news coverage before the holiday season.A further consideration may have also been on Trump’s mind: the idea – though likely misguided – that declaring his candidacy would provide protection from the justice department as prosecutors investigate whether he criminally retained national security documents at Mar-a-Lago.Trump was swayed by the “go” advisers just a few days after election night for the midterms, the sources said. The decision was communicated as final and several “delay” advisers, like Jason Miller, reversed course to publicly support a Tuesday announcement.But Trump has remained unsettled about the possibility that Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who won re-election last week in a landslide, may consider a 2024 White House bid of his own – the one potential candidate he considers a genuine threat.To get ahead of rivals, reinforce his status as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, and if nothing else, seize the limelight, Trump has been itching for some time to launch his 2024 campaign and has already started laying the groundwork for the effort.The former president wanted to announce his candidacy at his final rally before the midterms when he stumped for Senate candidate JD Vance in Ohio, one of the bright spots for Trump’s endorsements given Vance’s comfortable victory.Instead, having been told to hold off his 2024 campaign launch for fear he could turn out more Democratic voters in the midterms, Trump ended up announcing that he would announce his candidacy – which his political team later rued as perhaps having the same effect.TopicsDonald TrumpRepublicansMar-a-LagoUS Capitol attackUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens

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      Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepensAlabama congressman Mo Brooks, a once-zealous Trump ally, comments after party fails to retake Congress in midterms Alabama congressman and once-zealous Trump supporter, Mo Brooks, has a remarkable new stance on the political future of his former hero. “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024,” he said.Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookRead moreThe stark judgment from Brooks was indicative of the deepening and brutal blame game among Republicans which continued on Monday, nearly a week after the party failed to retake Congress in the midterm elections and a day before Trump’s expected announcement of a new presidential campaign.Speaking to AL.com, Brooks, an Alabama congressman, added: “Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”That was a reference to Joe Biden and his precautions against Covid in the 2020 election the Democrat won by more than 7m votes and 306-232 in the electoral college.Brooks did not accept that result. On 6 January 2021, he donned body armor and spoke to Trump supporters at a rally near the White House. Repeating Trump’s lie about electoral fraud, he said: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” The mob then attacked the Capitol, a riot now linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.The election subversion Brooks supported is under investigation by the House January 6 committee, the Department of Justice and state authorities. But Brooks broke with Trump earlier this year, when the former president rescinded his endorsement for US Senate, because Brooks publicly urged him to stop re-litigating 2020.Trump’s eventual endorsee in Alabama, Katie Britt, won a Senate seat. But elsewhere last Tuesday high-profile Trump-endorsed candidates failed, ensuring Democrats held the Senate and stayed on course to hold the Republicans to a tight House majority.Trump is almost certain to announce his 2024 run at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday. But the fire from his own party keeps coming, the barrage widening to include shots at leaders in both houses of Congress.In the Senate, Marco Rubio of Florida, who retained his seat against a highly-rated Democrat, Val Demings, tweeted: “The Senate GOP leadership vote next week should be postponed.”Josh Hawley of Missouri, a potential challenger to Trump in 2024, added: “Exactly right. I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished.”That was a reference to the runoff for the last Senate seat to be decided, in Georgia and between the Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker, a controversial former NFL star, and the incumbent Democrat, Raphael Warnock. Warnock won a tight vote last Tuesday but did not pass 50%, teeing up the runoff.Victories in Pennsylvania – the only Senate seat to flip so far – Arizona and Nevada mean the Democrats will control the Senate even if Warnock loses, thanks to the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris.The other Florida senator, Rick Scott, is under pressure after leading the Republican election effort. The party leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is also feeling the heat.On Tuesday, Josh Holmes, a Republican operative who was formerly chief of staff to McConnell, told the Wall Street Journal the Senate campaign “was run basically as a Rick Scott super Pac, where they didn’t want or need to input any Republican senators whatsoever. That’s a huge break from recent history where members have been pretty intimately involved.”Democrats seized on an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” Scott issued earlier this year, in which the senator, widely thought to have presidential ambitions of his own, proposed that more Americans pay federal income tax and said Congress could “sunset” social security and Medicare within five years.Holmes said McConnell told Scott: “When you are in leadership you don’t have the ability to do something like this without other people carrying your water.”In the House, the defeat of the Trump endorsee, and election-denier, Joe Kent in Washington state quickly came to seem symbolic of Republican failures.In the primary, Kent defeated a six-term incumbent, Jamie Herrera-Beutler, who suffered for being one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Capitol attack. Kent went on to lose the seat, to the Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez.‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Read moreThe House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, faces a growing threat from the far-right of the party, jeopardising his hopes of becoming speaker should Republicans take control of the House.Andy Biggs of Arizona, another congressman investigated for his support of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, is reported to be teeing up a challenge to McCarthy.Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, like Herrera-Beutler a Republican who voted to impeach Trump, announced his retirement rather than face a primary defeat then went on to sit on the House January 6 committee.Amid post-election recriminations on Capitol Hill, he tweeted: “To GOP’ers: if Kevin McCarthy had not gone to Mar-a-Lago, had the Senate convicted, or had any more congressmen actually stood on principle, likely we would have no Trump, the alt-right would be a sick memory, and you could look in the mirror.“Just FYI. Maybe start now.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDonald TrumpRepublicansUS CongressUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new book

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      Pence risks Trump’s wrath by piling on criticisms of ex-president in new bookIn memoir, former vice-president protests loyalty but hits out over Charlottesville, Russia, both impeachments and more In his new book, Donald Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, protests his loyalty to his former boss but also levels criticisms that will acquire new potency as Trump prepares to announce another presidential run and the Republican party debates whether to stay loyal after disappointment in last week’s midterm elections.‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Read moreAccording to Pence, Trump mishandled his response to a march staged by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, a costly error that Pence says could have been avoided had Pence called Trump before a fateful press conference in which Trump failed to condemn “the racists and antisemites in Charlottesville by name”.Also in Pence’s judgment, “there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behaviour” early in his term while beset by investigations of Russian election interference on Trump’s behalf and links between Trump and Moscow.“Acknowledging Russian meddling,” Pence writes, would not have “somehow cheapen[ed] our victory” over Hillary Clinton in 2016.Pence does not stop there. Among other judgments which may anger his former boss, he says Trump’s claimed “perfect call” to Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine in 2019, the subject of Trump’s first impeachment after he withheld military aid in search of political dirt, was in fact “less than perfect” – if not, in Pence’s judgment, impeachable.Pence also says that in January 2021 he urged Trump to make a farewell address to the nation and to encourage unity after the deadly Capitol attack he says Trump incited, the subject of Trump’s second impeachment. Trump remains unrepentant.Pence, famously devout, writes that he prayed for Trump throughout his presidency, and after urging a farewell address as given by “every president since George Washington … urged him one more time to take time to pray”.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the thrice-married, genital-grabbing, greed-worshipping Trump does not appear to have taken the advice to pray or be prayed for. A few days after the conversation about a farewell address, Pence writes, he “reminded” Trump “that I was praying for him”.“Don’t bother,” Trump said.Trump’s reluctance to be told what to do, to be told he is wrong or to credit advisers for anything mean Pence’s book would risk provoking attacks as Trump prepares to announce his next presidential campaign even if Pence were not a potential rival.Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God, will be published in the US on Tuesday. It has been trailed in the US media, including in a column published by the Wall Street Journal which presented the former vice-president’s version of events before, on and after January 6, when supporters incited by Trump attacked Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Pence did not do as Trump demanded and reject electoral college results from key states while performing his ceremonial role in Congress. The House January 6 committee has presented Pence as something of a hero, but his reward on the day itself was a rampaging mob, members of which called for him to be hanged as a gallows was erected outside.In excerpts of an interview due to be broadcast on Monday, Pence told ABC News: “The president’s words [on 6 January 2021] were reckless and his actions were reckless. The president’s words that day at the rally endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol building.”Until last week, Pence’s book seemed likely to read as something of a balancing act, between loyalty to the president to whom in his own words he “always deferred” – and to that president’s supporters – and the service of ambition which has seen Pence visit early voting states and address conservative groups.Pence writes that after Biden’s victory, he advised Trump to follow a path to the 2024 nomination, treating his defeat as not “a loss – just an intermission”.“Thirteen days after the 2020 election,” Pence writes, “I had lunch with President Trump. I told him that if his legal challenges came up short, he could simply accept the results, move forward with the transition and start a political comeback, winning the Senate runoffs in Georgia, the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, and the House and Senate in 2022. Then he could run for president in 2024 and win. He seemed unmoved, even weary: ‘I don’t know, 2024 is so far off.’”Republicans lost the Senate runoffs in Georgia, won the Virginia governor’s race in large part by distancing their candidate from Trump, then missed their midterms target. Last Tuesday, an expected “red wave” failed to show.Instead, Democrats are celebrating while Republicans find themselves contemplating a narrow and unruly majority in the US House, the far right ascendant, and at least two more years in the Senate minority thanks to Democratic victories in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, the only seat flipped so far.A Republican backlash against Trump has formed quickly, particularly over his endorsements of election-denying candidates who lost Senate races and contests for governor and other state posts.01:41To make matters worse for Trump, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, enjoyed a landslide re-election, a rare bright spot for the GOP, and has shot to the fore in polls of the nominal field for 2024.Pence blames Trump for events leading to January 6 in new memoirRead moreRegardless, aides to Trump have indicated that he will plough ahead and announce his 2024 campaign – his third consecutive run – at his Mar-a-Lago resort in DeSantis’s state on Tuesday.Trump has repeatedly attacked DeSantis. But regarding the governor, at least, Pence keeps his own powder dry. In his book, the former vice-president and Trump coronavirus taskforce chief mentions his potential primary rival just once, praising him for his handling of the pandemic.Pence doggedly claims the Trump administration passed its Covid test with flying colours, even praising government scientists including Anthony Fauci – “a great source of comfort to millions of Americans” – who are now likely targets for investigation by House Republicans.Under DeSantis, more than 82,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Florida, the third-highest state total. The national death toll is close to 1.1m.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpMike PenceTrump administrationUS elections 2020US midterm elections 2022US elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      Court files show evidence Trump handled records marked classified after presidency

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      Court files show evidence Trump handled records marked classified after presidencyJustice department filing claims former US president kept secret documents in drawer at Mar-a-Lago with other files from after his time in office Donald Trump retained documents bearing classification markings, along with communications from after his presidency, according to court filings describing the materials seized by the FBI as part of the ongoing criminal investigation into whether he mishandled national security information.The former US president kept in the desk drawer of his office at the Mar-a-Lago property one document marked “secret” and one marked “confidential” alongside three communications from a book author, a religious leader and a pollster, dated after he departed the White House.‘Where’s the beef?’: special master says Trump’s Mar-a-Lago records claims lack substanceRead moreThe mixed records could amount to evidence that Trump wilfully retained documents marked classified when he was no longer president as the justice department investigates unauthorised possession of national security materials, concealment of government records, and obstruction.The classification status of the two documents is in dispute after Trump claimed that all documents at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified before he left office, though no such evidence has emerged and his lawyers have not repeated it in court.New details about the commingled documents came in a eight-page filing submitted by the justice department on Saturday to Raymond Dearie, the special master examining whether the 103 documents seized by the FBI should be excluded from the evidence cache.The justice department said towards the end of the filing: “Because plaintiff [Trump] can only have received the documents bearing classification markings in his capacity as president, the entire mixed document is a presidential record.”The commingled records appear to have some significance to the criminal investigation, since the two classified documents were the only ones found in Trump’s office besides those contained in a leather-bound box and one additional document that the FBI seized during its search on 8 August.The leather-bound box contained some of the most sensitive records found at Mar-a-Lago: seven documents marked “top secret”, 15 marked “secret”, two marked “confidential”, as well as 45 empty folders with “classfied” banners and 28 folders marked “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide”.Trump has attacked the investigation as a partisan effort designed to hurt him politically, as analysts speculate he will announce his 2024 campaign on Tuesday. The Guardian identified the nature and location of the commingled documents at issue by comparing the unique identifier numbers with a spreadsheet filed by the justice department showing they were part of “Item #4” seized by the FBI, which is described in another filing as “Documents from Office”.The documents investigation is expected to intensify in the coming weeks, with the midterm elections largely finished and federal investigators closing in on several key witnesses.The justice department gained testimony last Friday from top Trump adviser Kash Patel about claims that all the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were declassified, after he was forced to take limited immunity and appear before a federal grand jury in Washington.It comes after federal investigators also obtained contradictory accounts from Walt Nauta, a former White House valet who followed Trump to Florida after his presidency, about removing boxes from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago that was used to keep some documents marked classified.The justice department has also attempted in recent weeks to compel Trump to return more government documents that it believes to be in his possession, prompting some of Trump’s lawyers to discuss ideas such as having an outside firm certify that no more records remain, say people close to the matter.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsMar-a-LagonewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats celebrate retaining control of Senate as Republicans take stock

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      Democrats celebrate retaining control of Senate as Republicans take stockHouse control still undecided as Republicans lead and attention pivots to Florida, where Trump is expected to announce 2024 run As the balance of power in the US House of Representatives remained unresolved on Sunday, Democrats are celebrating the projection that they won control of the Senate, marking a significant victory for Joe Biden as Republicans backed by his presidential predecessor Donald Trump underperformed in key battleground states.While senior Democrats remained guarded Sunday about the chances of keeping control of both chambers of Congress, House speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed the party’s performance in the midterms following months of projections indicating heavy losses.“Who would have thought two months ago that this red wave would turn into a little tiny trickle, if that at all,” Pelosi told CNN.She added: “We’re still alive [for control of the House] but again the races are close. We don’t pray for victory… but you pray that God’s will will be done.”As of Sunday morning Republicans remained seven seats shy of the 218 needed to win control of the House, with Democrats requiring 14, an indication that a majority on either side will be slim. As internal discussions between House Republicans intensify over potential leadership roles, with minority leader Kevin McCarthy facing opposition from the far right freedom caucus, Pelosi remained circumspect about her own future, saying she would not make any announcements on her plans until after the House’s control is decided.“My decision will then be rooted in what the wishes of my family [are], and the wishes of my caucus,” Pelosi said, with reference to her husband Paul Pelosi’s ongoing recovery following an allegedly politically motivated violent burglary and attack at their family home in San Francisco last month. She added: “There are all kinds of ways to exert influence. The speaker has awesome power, but I will always have influence.”The Democrats were projected to maintain their control of the Senate on Saturday evening when a tight race in Nevada was called for the incumbent Catherine Cortez Mastro who defeated Adam Laxalt, a Trump-backed, former state attorney general.The result marks a substantial victory for the Biden administration’s agenda over the next two years, not only with regards to potential legislative negotiation but other powers which include appointments to the federal judiciary.Speaking to reporters in Cambodia during the Asean summit, Biden congratulated Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer but appeared to acknowledge how a Republican-controlled House might affect his agenda going forward.“We feel good about where we are,” Biden said. “And I know I’m a cockeyed optimist – I understand that – from the beginning, but I’m not surprised by the turnout.”Biden added that the party’s focus would move to the Senate runoff in Georgia next month, where incumbent Raphael Warnock will face Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker after neither candidate received over 50% of the vote. A victory for the Democrats in Georgia would hand them an outright majority of 51, without needing Biden’s vice-president Kamala Harris to break Senate ties in their favor.As fallout from the midterm elections continues, attention is likely to pivot to Florida next week, where Trump is expected to announce a 2024 run for the presidency at his private members’ club in Palm Beach.Although polling still indicates Trump is the preferred candidate among the Republican base, his support has shown signs of fracture after many of his endorsed candidates performed poorly last week. One poll released on Saturday showed Trump’s support declining by six points to 50%, while far-right governor Ron DeSantis, who cruised to re-election last week, saw support increase.On Sunday, Maryland’s outgoing Republican governor – Larry Hogan, a longtime Trump critic – urged the party to move away from the former president’s influence.“You know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” Hogan told CNN. “And Donald Trump kept saying: ‘We’re going to be winning so much, we’ll get tired of winning’. I’m tired of losing. That’s all he’s done.”Nonetheless, Hogan – who himself is believed to be considering a run in 2024 – acknowledged that ousting Trump from the potential presidential nomination would be an uphill battle.“He’s still the 800-lb gorilla,” Hogan said. “It’s still a battle and it’s going to continue for the next few years. We’re still two years out from the next election, and … the dust is still settling from this one. I think it would be a mistake, as I mentioned Trump’s cost us the last three elections and I don’t want to see it happen a fourth time.”The midterms also proved to be an electoral rebuke to unfounded accusations of electoral fraud in the 2020 election, a baseless claim Trump has continued to press since losing the White House to Biden.Many Trump-endorsed candidates in major races, including the governor’s election in Pennsylvania and the Senate race in Arizona, had denied the 2020 election results. In both of these contests, as well as several other high-profile races, the Trump-backed candidate lost to Democrats by significant margins.Although the gubernatorial election in Arizona, which pits high-profile election denier Kari Lake against Democrat Katie Hobbs, remained too close to call on Sunday, a number of Democratic gubernatorial victors argued their wins marked a rejection of election conspiracy theories and rightwing extremism.Michigan’s governor Gretchen Whitmer, who won in a landslide against a Trump-endorsed election denier, said Sunday that she believed her victory marked a rejection of political violence in the state.“Good people need to call this out and say we will not tolerate this in this country,” Whitmer, who was targeted by a failed kidnapping plot in 2020, told CNN. “And perhaps part of that message was sent this election.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsJoe BidenDonald TrumpUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats’ triumph may be miraculous but US is still split down the middle | Michael Cohen

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      Democrats’ triumph may be miraculous but US is still split down the middleMichael CohenThe midterms are a win for democracy but many Republicans await a third Trump bid Midterm elections in the United States are where the hopes and dreams of governing parties go to die. Since 1932, the party in power has lost on average 28 seats in the House of Representatives and four seats in the Senate. In 2018, two years after taking the White House and both Houses of Congress, Republicans lost 40 House seats and control of the chamber. In 2010, Democrats lost 63 seats. In 1994, it was 54 and eight Senate seats. Every two years, after electing a new president, voters, generally speaking, go to the polls with buyer’s remorse.But not this year. In a truly stunning outcome, Democrats reversed the historical trend lines and, at least for the time being, protected American democracy from the worst excesses of the Donald Trump-led Republican party.While all the votes still need to be tabulated, it appears that Democrats will keep control of the Senate and have an outside chance of maintaining their narrow majority in the House of Representatives. At the beginning of the year such a scenario was virtually unimaginable. Democrats were facing not only historical headwinds but also rising inflation, a teetering economy and an unpopular incumbent president. Traditionally, these are the kinds of political dynamics that portend a Republican-wave victory in November.But then in June the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, removed a 50-year constitutional guarantee protecting reproductive health rights and virtually overnight turned American women into second-class citizens. Over the summer, congressional Democrats achieved a host of notable legislative successes and President Biden announced billions in student loan forgiveness, fulfilling a promise he’d made during the 2020 presidential campaign.By the autumn, the political winds shifted in the Democrats’ direction – and no issue loomed larger than abortion. In August, a referendum in ruby-red Kansas, which would have made it easier for Republicans in the state legislature to outlaw the procedure, lost by a whopping 18 points.Democratic campaign advisers took their cues from Kansas and made abortion the centrepiece of the autumn campaign. And in the states where Republicans’ victories could have led to potentially greater abortion restrictions, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, Democrats won decisive victories. In suburban districts, the new linchpin of the Democratic coalition, white female college graduates, outraged by the supreme court decision, propelled House Democratic candidates to victory in toss-up races.Republicans compounded the problem by nominating a host of Trump-endorsed first-time Senate and gubernatorial candidates. The closer a Republican was to Trump, the worse they did on Tuesday.Indeed, for months, political commentators had portrayed the 2022 election as potentially the end of democracy in the US. In state after state, election deniers, parroting Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, appeared poised to take office. Yet across the board they lost. On an even more positive note, while Trump still refuses to accept that he lost the presidency to Joe Biden, his enablers and sycophants in the GOP (“grand old party”) refused to follow the same script. Virtually every Republican who lost their election – including the election deniers – has conceded defeat, in the best sign for the strength of American democracy in quite some time.How the fall of Roe shattered Republicans’ midterm dreamsRead moreThat’s the good news, but like everything these days in American politics it’s virtually impossible for us to have nice things. While Trump is arguably the biggest loser of the 2022 campaign, his stranglehold over the Republican party is not ending just yet. This week, he will announce his third bid for the White House and, while plenty of Republican leaders wish he would go away, a great many rank-and-file Republicans don’t feel the same.It’s easy to criticise Trump for his lousy record of endorsements, but it’s not as if he held a gun to the collective head of Republicans and forced them to vote for his preferred candidates. These are still the types of politicians that Republican voters want and there is little reason to expect that they are prepared to jettison Trump.What makes matters even worse for Republicans is that no matter how the presidential nomination contest turns out, it’s a no-win situation. Democrats have won the past three US elections, in large measure by running against Trump. If he is again the Republican nominee there is no reason to expect that 2024 would play out any differently.What if Trump loses? That might actually be a worse outcome because if there’s one thing we know about the former president, it’s that he is a thin-skinned narcissist who doesn’t care about anybody but himself. If he loses the GOP presidential bid, say to the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who just won a landslide re-election victory, one can expect that he will not respond well. There will not be a moment at the Republican national convention with Trump and DeSantis, their hands clasped together in party unity. Instead, Trump will handle himself probably no differently from the way he did after losing to Biden – again claiming fraud and denigrating DeSantis to his supporters. Indeed, Trump would probably prefer Biden wins re-election than watch DeSantis accomplish a feat that he could not.But beyond all that, the final numbers in the House and Senate tell a crucial story. Democrats will probably either maintain their 50-50 edge in the Senate or add one seat (the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, is the tie-breaking vote in the Senate). In the House, the most likely result is an incredibly narrow Republican advantage – somewhere between one and three seats. Governorships could be split evenly 25-25.America is almost perfectly divided between Democrats and Republicans and neither party can cobble together an effective majority. The 2022 midterms are, on the surface, a win for Democrats, but from a deeper perspective they have simply ratified the status quo of the US as a divided and divisive country.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansJoe BidenDonald TrumpcommentReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?

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      Analysis‘It’s time to move on’: have the US midterms finally loosened Trump’s grip on the Republican party?Chris McGreal in Columbus, Ohio and David Smith in WashingtonAfter the party came up short in another election, Ron DeSantis may be poised to become its new leader Sitting at the head table in a white and gold ballroom, beneath glistening chandeliers and an ornately corniced ceiling, Donald Trump looked sullen as midterm election results flashed up on a giant TV screen.Across Florida, 200 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago estate, the mood was quite different. In Tampa, Governor Ron DeSantis was celebrating his landslide re-election by repurposing lines from Winston Churchill.“We fight the woke in the legislature,” DeSantis declared as his photogenic young family looked on against a stars and stripes backdrop. “We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”‘Ron DeSanctimonious’: angry Trump lashes out at Republican rival Read moreAs the jubilant crowd chanted “two more years!”, suggesting that DeSantis, not Trump, should run for US president in 2024, was this the moment that power slipped inexorably from one to the other – that the Republican crown passed from old king to young pretender?Some in the party are ready to declare it so. David Urban, a longtime Trump ally, told the Washington Post: “It is clear the center of gravity of the Republican party is in the state of Florida, and I don’t mean Mar-a-Lago.”If such a shift has taken place, it did so gradually, then suddenly. Since he descended an escalator at his New York headquarters in June 2015, Trump has dominated and defined the Republican party, crushing rivals in the Republican primary then eking out a victory over Hillary Clinton to seize the White House.But the party of Trump suffered drubbings at the ballot box in 2018 and 2020. And despite forecasts of a “red wave” in 2022, it fell short again. From Michigan to Pennsylvania, novice candidates endorsed by the former president proved they were unready for prime time and too extreme for a wary and weary electorate.Finally, some Republicans admitted what everyone else could see: Trump is an albatross around the party’s neck. Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, once a vocal supporter, told the Fox Business channel: “The voters have spoken and they have said that they want a different leader. And a true leader understands when they have become a liability. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage. It is time to move on.”Rupert Murdoch already has, it seems. “Trumpty Dumpty”, boomed the front page of his tabloid the New York Post. “Trump is the Republican party’s biggest loser” was the verdict of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. A column on the Fox News website proclaimed: “Ron DeSantis is the new Republican party leader. Republicans are ready to move on without Donald Trump.”Indeed, if Trump was the big loser of the night, DeSantis was the big winner. His victory by nearly 20 percentage points was a personal vindication that appeared to put Florida, once the quintessential swing state, beyond Democrats’ reach for a generation.His stunning wins in big, majority Latino counties, including Miami-Dade and Osceola, set him up to make the case that, as a presidential candidate, he could repeat the formula in states such as as Arizona, Nevada and Texas. “We have rewritten the political map,” he told supporters.A DeSantis 2024 campaign would also promise generational change. At 44, the former navy lawyer and congressman would be similar in age to John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama when they ran for the White House, a sharp contrast from 76-year-old Trump or Joe Biden, who is turning 80 this month.Crucially, DeSantis could sell himself as Trump 2.0, an upgrade committed to the same “America first” policy agenda, media sparring and liberal-baiting (he recently flew Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard) but without the liability of multiple federal, state and congressional investigations.He could also break from Trump over the coronavirus pandemic, contending that he kept Florida open while the then president was urging lockdowns. Tim Miller, former communications director for Jeb Bush 2016, said: “He would try to paint Trump as somebody that lost, is a loser and is costing the party. He’d probably criticise Trump for not being stronger on Covid and say he should have fired [Dr Anthony] Fauci.”DeSantis is especially popular with conservatives for taking the lead on “culture war” issues related to race and gender. Last year he got into a spat with the Walt Disney Company over his support of the controversial law, nicknamed “don’t say gay” by opponents, prohibiting the teaching of gender identity concepts to young children.But if you come at the king, you best not miss. Trump has spent months preparing to strangle the DeSantis campaign at birth. At a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, last weekend, he casually rolled out a nickname, “Ron DeSanctimonious”, hoping to brand his opponent as he has so many before.On Tuesday, menacingly, he told Fox News: “I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly. I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering – I know more about him than anybody – other than, perhaps, his wife.”And on Thursday, with DeSantis buzz reaching a crescendo, Trump lashed out in a lengthy and angry statement berating Fox News and other Murdoch-controlled media for going “all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious DeSantis”, whom he called “an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations”, as he again took credit for DeSantis’s 2018 win.“Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” he wrote, comparing the race to his winning 2016 campaign. “We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”Soon after, he invited reporters to a “Special Announcement” at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, presumably confirming that he is mounting a third consecutive bid for the White House. Some allies were quick to offer pre-endorsements, with Elise Stefanik, the Republican chair in the House of Representatives, declaring herself on team Trump.JD Vance, who won a Senate senate race in Ohio with Trump’s backing, did likewise. And at a rally for Vance in Dayton the night before the elections, many supporters sporting Make America Great Again hats and T-shirts were hoping for Trump to announce his candidacy there and then.But even within a crowd of enthusiastic fans there were those who had doubts. Mandy Young said: “I think Trump was a great president but I don’t think he can win again. He is too divisive. The independents who voted for him before won’t vote for him again because of all the investigations.“Also, I don’t like the way he called DeSantis ‘DeSanctimonious’. I think DeSantis would be a great president. It makes me think Trump doesn’t care about the Republican party winning, only himself. He should step back. He would still have a lot of influence as a respected godfather giving advice.”On election day, Jeffrey Weisman, a consistent Republican supporter because he says the party is better for the economy and his jewellery store business, voted at the biggest Greek Orthodox church in Columbus, Ohio.Weisman supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections but would prefer the former president stayed out of the next one. “I like DeSantis. Having Trump going out there as well I think will hurt DeSantis’s chances. So for that reason, I do not want Trump to run,” he said.The strengths and weaknesses of Trump’s influence were on display in Ohio’s election for US senator. The former president’s endorsement of Vance pulled the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy and venture capitalist from the back of the field in the Republican primaries and won him the nomination. But Trump’s backing then dragged down support for Vance in Tuesday’s general election, even if he won.Mark R Weaver, a Republican strategist in Columbus, who has worked on several hundred state and national campaigns, said that has implications for any challenge from DeSantis both in Ohio and across the country.“Trump’s ability to improve a candidate’s chances is weakening. He’s no longer able to guarantee or even predict someone he endorses is going to win. Whatever charm he had has worn off, certainly in the general elections. In the primaries, he can still be a big factor. In Ohio he was.”Weaver said that while Trump would still win a Republican contest for the presidential nomination against DeSantis if it were held today, that may not be true by the time the primaries actually begin in early 2024.He said: “I have noticed a slow descent of Donald Trump’s popularity amongst Republicans. I’ve noticed a rapid ascent of Ron DeSantis’s popularity.“If those two trajectories continue, Trump slowly getting weaker and people looking for better options, and DeSantis quickly getting stronger and having more people support him, the trajectory lines could cross right about March of 2024. That sounds like a crazy statement right now but if those trajectories cross, Ron DeSantis can beat Trump in the primaries in 2024.”Trump’s political obituary has been written by Republican elites countless times before only to prove wishful thinking. An Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted about groping women’s private parts couldn’t do it. His half-hearted condemnation of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, couldn’t do it. His proposal that injecting bleach might cure coronavirus couldn’t do it. Even his incitement of a coup attempt at the US Capitol couldn’t do it. Can DeSantis do it by appealing to the bottom line: electability?Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “I’ve always said that the Republican party would not fully respond to offloading Trump until they lost enough elections. Political actors are single seekers in re-election, and once their power is threatened, that is usually where a course correction happens.“But they’ve gotten themselves into quite a quagmire with Donald Trump because he still has a solid 30%, at least, base of support, and that is large enough to still create headaches for the party if they try to offload him.”Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, added: “They also do not have a formidable enough heir apparent. It is not Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis is a paper tiger who was created and propped up by Donald Trump. He does not have the political talent, the charisma or the toughness to take on the onslaught coming his way from Trumpworld. It’s already beginning.”Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, agreed. “Trump would eat him alive,” he said. “Right now Trump is still the dominant player in the Republican party. Most of the base is still with him. DeSantis is utterly untested. He’s weird. He has zero charisma. He’s thin skinned. He can’t think on his feet. He’s never been tested and he’s easily offended. Trump will do and say anything.”Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 Republican primary, added: “Trump’s the king. If you try to slay the king and you don’t, your career is over. That’s a huge, huge risk a 44-year-old guy like DeSantis would be taking.”They are not alone in arguing that, while DeSantis is like Trump without the chaos, he is also Trump without the charisma. The former president’s rallies are rollicking, knockabout affairs that give his fans community, entertainment and laughs. DeSantis is said to be unskilled in retail politics and somewhat humourless.Jennifer Mercieca, a professor in the communication and journalism department at Texas A&M University, said: “Donald Trump is an authoritarian PT Barnum. He’s able to keep our attention and curiosity. He’s got great comedic timing. He has a good sense of drama and Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that kind of easily translatable appeal for media audiences. His affect is flat. He’s not as entertaining.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he’s really entertaining. He’s good at keeping our attention and primarily he does that through outrage and things that are very negative for politics and political problem solving. But in terms of a matchup between those two, I would put money on Trump.”Trump has shown himself perfectly capable of going scorched earth and burning the whole party down. A ferociously nasty bareknuckle primary fight between him and DeSantis will have Democrats reaching for the popcorn. At a valedictory press conference at the White House, Biden seemed amused at the prospect. “It’ll be fun watching them take on each other,” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpRon DeSantisRepublicansFloridaUS elections 2024US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?

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      Who were the big winners and losers of the US midterm elections?Biden and DeSantis are on the up, but Donald Trump and some of the Republicans’ more unhinged candidates flopped After months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent on advertising, the message from America’s midterm elections could essentially be boiled down to: “Not as bad as Democrats feared.”There were big wins for Republicans in Florida, and the party still seems likely to take the House, but elsewhere candidates endorsed by former president Donald Trump flopped, and there were key victories for supporters of reproductive rights.As Trump licks his wounds after being compared to an egg on legs by a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, and as Democrats celebrate avoiding a predicted “red wave”, here’s a look at who did well, and who suffered.WINNERSJoe Biden, US presidentMuch of the talk ahead of last Tuesday’s elections was about how Biden might tank the Democratic party’s candidates. Republicans across the country ran ads tying their opponents to Biden, banking that the unloved president would turn off voters. It didn’t work, as Democrats performed much better than expected across the board. Biden remains very unpopular – his approval rating dropped to 39% in a Reuters poll this week – but that doesn’t seem to be hindering his party. The results prompted Biden, who turns 80 later this month, to repeat his recent assertions that he will run for a second term as president in two years’ time.Ron DeSantis, Republican Florida governorIt’s not just that the Florida governor won re-election, in what is supposed to be a swing state, by almost 20 points. In the process, DeSantis, 44, has also found himself anointed by the rightwing media as the future of the Republican party – in the case of the New York Post, quite literally: “DeFuture”, blasted the front page of the tabloid on Wednesday morning. DeSantis, an anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ rights Republican, is seen as a more palatable, less hysterical version of Donald Trump. He has been cagey about whether he will run for president in 2024, but if DeSantis does want to launch a campaign, then this was a pretty good way to start.John Fetterman, Democrat Senate candidateThree years ago John Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, a town of fewer than 2,000 people. On Tuesday he was elected to the US Senate, and will represent 13 million Pennsylvanians. It has been a remarkable rise, made all the more astonishing by the fact Fetterman had a stroke days before the Democratic primary in May. The 6ft 8in, tattooed, permanently hoodie-clad senator-elect is still recovering – he relied on closed captioning to process questions in a debate in October – but overcame a stiff challenge from Trump-backed Mehmet Oz to win relatively easily on Tuesday. Fetterman, who has previously said he owns only one suit, is going to have to do some clothes shopping.Reproductive rightsAway from the noise and intrigue about Republican and Democratic candidates and races, Michigan voters approved a ballot measure to secure a constitutional right to abortion, blocking the imposition of a 1931 abortion ban in the state. In Kentucky, voters rejected a measure which would have denied constitutional protections for abortion. North Carolina Republicans failed to secure a majority which would have enabled them to ram through restrictive abortion bans, and it was a similar story in Wisconsin, where the re-elected Democratic governor, Tony Evers, will have the power to veto abortion laws proposed by the state legislature.LOSERSDonald TrumpThe one-term, twice-impeached president had a shocker of an evening, as one after another, many of his endorsed candidates flopped in key races across the country. The fact that many of the Republicans Trump had backed lost isn’t the only thing that will sting. Several of Trump’s people underperformed in states – including New Hampshire and Georgia – where Republicans who had not been anointed by Trump triumphed. To top it all off, Rupert Murdoch seems to have turned on Trump. On Thursday the New York Post, a Murdoch-owned tabloid, mocked up an image of Trump as Humpty Dumpty. “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall – can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?” read the accompanying text.Republicans – outside Florida and New YorkWith an unpopular Democratic president, soaring inflation, high gas prices and widespread doom and gloom about the economy, this was supposed to be the night that Republicans swept through Congress in a “red wave”. They didn’t. By Friday, with votes still being tallied in some states, the Republican party was still short of a majority in the House and the Senate, as Democrats out-performed expectations across the country. There were some exceptions. In Florida both DeSantis and Marco Rubio, the state’s incumbent senator, cruised to victory, and Republicans flourished in state-level races too. It was, the Tampa Bay Times declared, “an electoral catastrophe for Democrats”.(Some of) the unhinged candidatesIn Pennsylvania Doug Mastriano, a Christian nationalist state senator who paid for buses to take people to what became the January 6 insurrection and tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was swept away in the governor’s race. Matthew DePerno, a fellow election conspiracy theorist who had branded Democrats “radical, cultural Marxists” lost his bid to be Michigan’s attorney general, and his ideological counterpart Kristina Karamo failed to become secretary of state. Tina Forte, a Republican who attended the January 6 rally and has dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories, was crushed in her attempt to defeat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman, in New York.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Donald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsAbortionJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More