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      On trial, Trump is a shadow of the superhero his supporters crave | Sidney Blumenthal

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      Donald Trump is already in jail. He is pressed into confinement every weekday, except Wednesdays, beginning bright and early, no excuses, at 9.30 in the morning, in the dreary courtroom in Manhattan, where his impulse to mouth off wearies and worries his lawyers, and he must listen, for the first time since his father slapped him down, to an authority telling him to gag himself. He had more leeway when Fred Trump shipped the problem child to the New York military academy where Donald bullied his classmates.Trump’s required attendance in the courtroom as a criminal defendant is his first loss of liberty.His image there is raw, uncut and unfiltered, like Andy Warhol’s film Sleep,in which Warhol fixed a camera on his slumbering lover for six hours. It’s not a Trump rally. The withering focus – without the introduction of the thumping music, his emergence from a dry ice-generated cloud of fog and the predictably orgasmic reception of frenzied minions – reveals something less than the conquering hero in a “Make America Great Again” red baseball cap clapping his hands.Day after day, Trump slumps in his chair, his eyes narrowing and closing, his facial features sagging, until he suddenly jerks to life, once muttering a seemingly veiled threat to a potential juror that earned him a rebuke from Judge Juan Merchan that if he persisted he would be in contempt for witness intimidation. Without self-discipline, Trump invites being disciplined. Lacking control, he fails to control himself. Time and again, he falls asleep, “appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest”, Maggie Haberman reported in the New York Times.He appears to pass through the seven ages of man in a blink of the eye without having gone through those of adulthood, leaping from caterwauling infant to angry curmudgeon, the stages from napping to napping.Trump clearly prefers to be where he is when his eyes are closed rather than when they are open. His sleeping might be a form of passive aggression, showing his hostility, and at the same time willful avoidance and denial. Railing on his Truth Social account, while minute by minute the price of the market-listed “DJT” dives, he wails in capital letters against the trial – “THIS SCAM ‘RUSHED’ TRIAL TAKING PLACE IN A 95% DEMOCRAT AREA IS A PLANNED AND COORDINATED WITCH HUNT” – and the judge – “POSSIBLY THE MOST CONFLICTED JUDGE IN JUDICIAL HISTORY, WHO MUST BE REMOVED FROM THIS HOAX IMMEDIATELY.”For Trump, the trial is an ordeal – literally an ordeal, in the sense of a medieval trial in which the offender is subjected to torture to determine guilt or innocence. Documents and witnesses did not figure into those trials in the Middle Ages. The verdict was procured by ordeals of walking on fire or boiling in water. Trump, for his part, flips the historical script. He is out to discredit the documents and witnesses. He acts as if the only truth appears when he speaks outside the courtroom. He wants his devotees to see the trial as an ancient ordeal by combat in which he is warrior, not the offender.In a waking moment, Trump’s promise that he will testify shows his understanding of the trial as more than a matter of the law, but a spectacle that raises the central issue at stake in his cult of personality. Of course, if he were to take the stand, inevitably to allegedly lie, as he has in past depositions, and inescapably to present himself to the jury as an unsympathetic narcissist, he would undermine his case, and possibly face additional severe penalties for obstruction of justice and perjury up to a separate sentence of seven years in jail.But it is likely that Trump will not take the witness chair to subject himself to the prosecutor’s cross-examination. Trump’s dissembling is a gesture of false bravado showing that he intuitively grasps that for his followers his image as a strongman is on trial. He needs to tell them he fears nothing. He’ll think of an excuse later. He is on trial because he has been accused of bribing people not to tell the truth, but he has to lie to maintain his myth.The trial is a morality play that has also become a mortality play. His elemental appeal is that he can do whatever he wants, that his power derives from making a mockery of the rules. He wants more than presidential immunity for anything he has done, from the attempted coup of January 6 to stealing national security secrets. He demands absolute immunity from social norms and conventions. His defiance, so far without consequences, is essential to demonstrating his strength. He appears immune to ordinary strictures. But strongmen can’t exist within someone else’s regime. The trial is a prequel of Trump caged. He doesn’t play by the rules, but now he has to obey them.Trump has strategized that he could use the trial as his platform to depict himself as the superhero against the system. He would invert the terms of the prosecution to persecution and convert the trial into his campaign trail. As a victim of the forces of evil elites, he would inflate himself into a larger fighter for his followers. “I am your retribution!”But the action hero can’t move without permission. “Sir, would you please have a seat,” the judge ordered when he stood up to walk out before adjournment. Superman can’t fly. He may dream of racing like Batman through Gotham, but he is facing the judge on the high bench issue a ruling about his contempt for violating the gag order.He has lost more than his ability to articulate; he is becoming disarticulated as a figure. “It is a shame,” he whined. “I am sitting here for days now, from morning until night in that freezing room. Everybody was freezing in there! And all for this. This is your result. It is very unfair.” Under the weight of the trial, he is decaying, “haggard and rumpled, his gait off-center, his eyes blank”, according to the Times.Trump is widely seen as obnoxious, vile and no model for children, even by some who support him, but he retains one great political asset that has allowed him to transcend his toxicity. He is perceived as a “strong and decisive leader”, according to the Gallup Poll. For his followers his strength has been immutable. This image is at the heart of his cult of personality, the center of his political theology and the core of his authoritarianism.The trial is about facts, fiction and putrefaction. The prosecution will present its facts to strip Trump of his lies, his fiction. That regular and expected process has surprisingly but naturally disclosed his physical deterioration, which is hardly incidental but critical to his projection, which is another fiction.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn the kitsch art of Trumpism, a cross between Stalinist socialist realism and comic books, his true believers always, without exception, portray him as a physical strongman. In popular versions, there is Trump in leather jacket on a Harley, Trump on a galloping horse holding a flag, and Trump in fatigues holding an AR-15 rifle standing next to Lincoln and Washington, also in fatigues.Trump, used to living the life of a sloth of the leisure class, actively encourages and profits from these images of virility. When he announced his re-election campaign for president in December 2022, he sold a deck of digital cards for $99 showing himself as Superman (with a “T” on his muscled chest), a Star Wars-like hero, and another holding a lightning bolt in his hand with jet planes in the background and the logo: “Superhero.”His obsession with cultivating the strongman image, like that of Vladimir Putin posing shirtless on a horse, reached an apogee in October 2020, when he was released from the Walter Reed medical center for treatment of Covid, and planned to rip open his shirt to reveal a Superman’s letter “S”. Instead, he stood on the White House balcony and tore off his mask.Trump now aspires to be a dictator “only on day one”. His desire to be an absolute despot is another of his wishful medieval anachronisms. “Be a king, be a killer,” Fred Trump told him. If he is the personification of the Leviathan, the state itself, a divine monarch above the law, his corporeal body merges with that of the body politic. His followers already accept implicitly that tenet of his myth, whether they know it or are Know Nothings. It is vital to his cult.But, if true, the physical decline of his body must be reflected in the decline of his body politics, his kingdom of Maga, which is not the state, at least yet, unless there is a new law of succession, not yet introduced by the Freedom Caucus. Trump’s putrefaction in the courtroom is refutation of his pretension to royalty apart from any legal argument that might be considered by the conservatives on the supreme court to grant his plea of immunity as if he were king.Being tried on the evidence trail of his pathetic old affairs is a cruel irony for the lumpish former man-about-town forced to sit today in the courtroom. He is being visited by the ghost of Playboy Mansion past.“I am supposed to be in Georgia; in North Carolina, South Carolina. I’m supposed to be in a lot of different places campaigning, but I’ve been here all day,” Trump complained. “It’s a whopping outrage and it is an outrage. Everybody is outraged by it.”
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Tulsi Gabbard repeats false Hillary Clinton ‘grooming’ claim in new book

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      Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman, has repeated a discredited claim about Hillary Clinton that previously saw Gabbard lodge then drop a $50m defamation suit in a new book published as she seeks to be named Donald Trump’s running mate for US president.Accusing Democrats of making up “a conspiracy theory that [Trump] was ‘colluding’ with the Russians to win the election” in 2016, Gabbard claims: “Hillary Clinton used a similar tactic against me when I ran for president in 2020, accusing me of being ‘groomed by the Russians’.”Gabbard ran for the Democratic nomination. Clinton did not accuse her of being “groomed by the Russians”.What Clinton said, in October 2019 and on a podcast hosted by the former Barack Obama adviser David Plouffe, was that she thought Republicans would encourage a third-party bid in 2020, aiming to syphon votes from the Democratic candidate in key states as Jill Stein, the Green candidate, and the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, did four years before.“They are also going to do third-party again,” Clinton said, “and I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.”Gabbard was then in the Democratic primary, though she never made any impact.Clinton continued: “She is a favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And, that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset. Totally. And so they know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee they’ll have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most need it.”Amid uproar, a spokesperson for Clinton said she had been referring to Gabbard and the Russians – saying “If the nesting doll fits”, thereby stoking media coverage in which Clinton’s remarks about “grooming” and “assets” were conflated.Clinton’s meaning was soon cleared up, but Gabbard seized on the “grooming” remark. She penned an op ed in the Wall Street Journal under a headline, I Can Defeat Trump and the Clinton Doctrine, that might now prove an awkward fit with her political ambitions.Later, after dropping out of the Democratic primary and endorsing Joe Biden, who she said had “a good heart” and would “help heal” a badly divided country, Gabbard sued Clinton for $50m over the “Russian asset” comment, rather than the remark about “grooming”. That lawsuit was dropped in May 2020.Four years on, Gabbard has completed a remarkable journey across the political aisle, from being seen as a rising Democratic star in the US House to hosting on Fox News and speaking at events including CPAC, a hard-right annual conference. Her book – For Love of Country: Why I Left the Democratic Party – will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.On the page, Gabbard presents a mix of memoir – from growing up in Hawaii to service in Iraq, from entering Congress to her failed presidential run – and pro-Trump screed. Light on detail and heavy on invective, the book includes excoriations of US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. It will hit shops, however, in the aftermath of the passage in Congress of billions of dollars in new Ukraine aid.Gabbard is widely reported to be a contender for Trump’s running mate in his rematch with Biden. In her book, she defends the 88-times criminally charged former president on many legal fronts.Her complaint about Clinton’s remarks about Russia seems designed to stir up familiar Trump campaign furies over Clinton and the investigation of Russian election interference in 2016, which US intelligence agreed was carried out in his support but which prompts Gabbard to write: “None of it was true.”She also accuses Democrats of planting evidence and stories with a compliant press, aided by a “deep state” consisting of “active and retired officials from within the justice department and other national security agencies”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe deep state conspiracy theory, which holds that a permanent government of operatives and bureaucrats exists to thwart populist leaders, is popular with Trump and followers notably including Liz Truss, a former UK prime minister. However, one of its chief creators and propagators, the Trump aide and ally Steve Bannon, has said it is “for nut cases”.Gabbard does not only repeat conspiracy theories in her book, but also makes elementary mistakes. In rehashing her inaccurate complaint about Clinton saying she was being “groomed” by Russia, she writes that Clinton was speaking to David Axelrod, also a former Obama advisor but the host of a separate podcast to Plouffe’s.Gabbard also claims that “the propaganda media repeated Clinton’s lies over and over, without ever asking for evidence or fact-checking her themselves”.In fact, Gabbard’s claims against Clinton were widely fact-checked or made the subject of article corrections.In October 2019 – months before Gabbard filed suit – the Washington Post, a leading exponent of the fact-checking form, said: “The initial news reports got it wrong, perhaps fueled by the ‘nesting doll’ comment, with many saying Clinton said the Russians were grooming Gabbard for a third-party bid.”Clinton, the paper added, “certainly said Gabbard was backed by Russian bots and even suggested she was a Russian asset”. But “within a 24-hour news cycle, Clinton’s staff made it clear she was talking about the GOP, not the Russians, eyeing Gabbard as a possible third-party candidate. A simple listen to the podcast confirmed that.“In other words, this was all cleared up 12 days before Gabbard published her [Wall Street Journal] article, making the inaccurate version of [the] ‘grooming’ statement the very first sentence. So there’s little excuse for getting this wrong.”The paper therefore awarded Gabbard three Pinocchios – denoting “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions” – out of a possible four. More

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      Trump fangirl Liz Truss channels Maga menace at US conservative thinktank

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      Was that Donald Truss? Or Liz Trump? A former British prime minister turned up in Washington on Monday channeling the Maga menace who once lorded it in the Oval Office and now spends his days in a dingy courtroom.Liz Truss was at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank in Washington, within sight of the US Capitol dome, to promote her grandly titled book Ten Years to Save the West. Why does she keep coming back to America? It was not hard to figure out.Far from the London literary critics sharpening their knives, Heritage offers Truss a happy place, full of gushing sycophancy with an audience hanging on her every word. In this regard the 48-year-old has gone all Trumpy: the ex-president loves to surround himself with oleaginous flatterers who dare not cross him.How divine that the politicians who whine about “groupthink” and “safe spaces” are the ones who cling to groupthink and safe spaces.To illustrate the point, Truss’s war on “the global left” establishment evidently includes the Guardian. Last Friday, this reporter received an email from Heritage about the Truss event that said: “Due to space limitations, we unfortunately must rescind your in-person invite.”Curiously, come Monday morning, Truss posted a tweet encouraging members of the public to register the event and enclosing a link. So much for space limitations. But those who did attend were informed they couldn’t get a signed copy of the book due to “supply chain issues”.Others were still able to watch a live stream on YouTube where, three hours after it ended, the event had just over 700 views. (Heritage’s biggest hit on the site is a Tucker Carlson speech that attracted a million views.)Heritage is the thinktank behind Project 2025, a sprawling plan for a second Trump presidency. Wearing a dark blue jacket and trousers, white blouse and shiny black shoes, Truss noted that when she was first invited to Heritage as environment secretary in 2015, she was warned against not to go by then British ambassador Kim Darroch.“He says to me, ‘You’ve got to be wary of this organisation. They’ve spoken out against President Obama. They’ve even been critical of Prime Minister Cameron. Are you really sure, minister, that you want to go and see them?’” Truss recalled, speaking from a wooden lectern against a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes and a blue wall dotted with Heritage Foundation logos.“And I said, yes, I’m sure because I’m a conservative and they’re a conservative thinktank in the United States of America, our closest ally. So eventually, I prevail because I am a determined person but the car from the embassy dropped me off two blocks away from the Heritage Foundation so that the British flag wouldn’t be sitting outside the building.”Making a lot of sub-Trump hand gestures with open palms, Truss proceeded to deliver her standard speech railing against left-dominated institutions, an anti-growth coalition, the IMF and Conservatives in name only. Naturally there was a swipe at wokery as “another bad neo-Marxist idea developed from Foucault and all those crazy postmodernists in the 1960s, the idea that biological sex is not a reality”.She blamed these forces for making her the shortest serving British prime minister in history (49 days that sparked mayhem on the financial markets). She reeled off a list of foes, foreign and domestic, who joined the “pile on”. Among them was Joe Biden, who had the temerity to criticise her radical mini-budget’s tax plans “from an ice cream parlour in Oregon”. There was some laughter in the auditorium. So vanilla!The Trump fangirl had some advice to impart: “I come today with a warning to the United States of America. I fear the same forces will be coming for President Donald Trump if he wins the election this November.”Truss repeated her plea from the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland for the right to grab a “a bigger bazooka” to combat the activist left with their money and “friends in high places”. She called for a “bonfire of the quangos” and, echoing Trump ally Steve Bannon, declared: “We need to dismantle the administrative state.”In her book, Truss writes that she was an early fan of the reality TV show The Apprentice and “enjoyed the Donald’s catchphrases and sassy business advice”. She also pays little heed to the convention that senior British politicians stay out of US elections.She told the audience on Monday: “I worked in cabinet whilst Donald Trump was president and while President Biden was president and I can assure you the world felt safer when Donald Trump was in office… Getting a conservative back in the White House is critical to taking on the global left.”Praise for Truss was laid on think by Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and a former foreign policy researcher for Thatcher herself. He has been named one of the 50 most influential Britons in the US by the Daily Telegraph.In God we Truss; no lettuce jokes here. The baby-faced, bespectacled Gardiner proclaimed her book “an absolutely tremendous read”, “very robust”, “very gutsy”, “very courageous”, “a wonderful read”, “very powerful”, “a thrilling read”, “a tremendous book” and “a wonderful message”. He speculated that the current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, might be writing memoirs in the near future but “yours are far more conservative and interesting”.Truss and Gardiner sat on plush white armchairs with glasses of water on a table between them. Truss warned that another Biden term would mean “the promotion of leftwing ideology”, girls unable to use bathrooms in privacy and no policy to deal with immigration and the southern border. “Four more years of this would be a disaster for the US internally. I think Bidenomics has been a failure.”Gardiner wondered what a second Trump term would mean for Britain. Truss said free the world needs conservative leadership. “It’s only Britain that has a conservative government. We’ve got Biden in the US, we have Trudeau in Canada, we have Macron in France, we have Scholz in Germany and it’s not working. The west is not winning.”Trump has said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any Nato country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines on defence. But Truss echoed Trump’s call for Europe to spend more. “There are too many countries free riding at the moment who are in serious threat. If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he won’t stop there… Donald Trump is right to say to Europe: you need to pay up.”Elise Stefanik? Kristi Noem? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Forget it. Trump-Truss 2024 would have been unstoppable. If only she had been born in Kansas. More

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      Prosecutors accept modified $175m Trump bond in New York civil fraud case

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      New York state lawyers and an attorney for Donald Trump settled their differences on Monday over a $175m bond that Trump posted to block a large civil fraud judgment while he pursues appeals.The agreement cut short a potential day-long court hearing in Manhattan that was to feature witnesses.As part of a deal struck during a 20-minute recess, lawyers for former president Trump and Knight Specialty Insurance Company agreed to keep the $175m in a cash account that will gain interest but faces no downside risk. The account so far has grown by more than $700,000.The bond stops the state from potentially seizing Trump’s assets to satisfy the more than $454m that he owes after losing a court case brought by the Democratic New York attorney general, Letitia James. She had alleged that Trump, along with his company and key executives, defrauded bankers and insurers by lying about his wealth.The ex-president and presumptive Republican nominee denies the claims and is appealing the judgment.Judge Arthur Engoron, who in February issued the huge judgment after concluding that Trump and others had deceived banks and insurers by exaggerating his wealth on financial statements, presided over Monday’s hearing and at times was caught in a testy exchange with Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise.Engoron challenged Kise with examples of how the money Trump had posted might not be available for collection if the judgment were upheld, leading Kise to respond in one instance that the judge’s “hypothetical is … wildly speculative”.At another point, Kise expressed frustration with the James’s office, saying: “It appears that no matter what we do they’re going to find fault with it.”But Andrew Amer, an attorney for New York state, proposed settlement terms soon after he began speaking at the hearing. He said the state wanted extra assurances because Trump had raised the money with help from a relatively small out-of-state insurance company.As part of the deal, Knight Specialty Insurance, a Wilmington, Delaware-based part of the Los Angeles-based Knight Insurance Group, will have exclusive control of the $175m and will submit to the jurisdiction of the New York state court while agreeing not to move the money into mutual funds or other financial instruments.Speaking to reporters in the hallway outside Trump’s separate criminal hush-money trial, his attorney Alina Habba, said Engoron “doesn’t even understand basic principles of finance.“We came to an agreement that everything would be the same,” she said. “We would modify terms and that would be it.”Trump also railed against Engoron, accusing him of not understanding the case.“He challenged the bonding company that maybe the bonding company was no good. Well, they’re good. And they also have $175m dollars of collateral – my collateral,” he said. More

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      The Guardian view on arming Ukraine: US Congress votes against appeasement | Editorial

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      In chaos theory, the flapping of butterfly wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. This weekend, Ukraine experienced a butterfly moment. Donald Trump’s efforts to conceal the fact that he bought the silence of a porn star before the 2016 election landed him in court, facing charges that preoccupy him enough for congressional Republicans to reject his policy of prematurely ceding territory to Russia in return for peace in Ukraine. Kyiv will now get billions of dollars to buy the weapons crucial for it to defend against, and push back, the Russian advance. It is fitting that Mr Trump’s divisive appeasement has been defeated – for now – by a bipartisan defence of democracy.The presumptive Republican nominee had, in an election year, counted on using his mendacious, inflammatory rhetoric to further convert his party into a truth-denying sect prepared to abandon the rule of law for the rule of revenge. Instead, he is required to attend every day that the Manhattan court is in session, for a trial expected to last at least six weeks. The proceedings will be closely followed around the world. But they will not be televised. It will be a circus, but without its ringmaster. Deprived of the camera’s attention, the former president won’t be able to bully Republican lawmakers or rally his followers so effectively.Mr Trump’s diminished status was not lost on many Republicans in Congress. President Joe Biden had first called on them to back Ukraine with arms and cash last October. However, it was not until Mr Trump’s attention was elsewhere that the House on Saturday passed the $61bn aid bill for Ukraine. The vote was 311 for and 112 against, with all the Democrats and 101 Republicans voting in favour of the bill and 112 Republicans voting against. It can only be good news that there are still Republicans who want America to be governed effectively. It also signals that Ukraine should deal with Russia from a position of strength not weakness.In the last two months, most Democrats and a sizeable number of Republicans have voted to pass bills to avoid government shutdowns and commit to traditional national security priorities. This governing coalition is on the right side of history. But it may not last. Mr Trump faces four separate indictments. The current case is about sex, money, deception and blackmail. It’s more tawdry than the other, weightier trials about alleged election interference and the mishandling of classified documents. However, only the jury in New York is likely to produce a verdict before the election in November.Mr Trump is an unscrupulous demagogue without the slightest qualification to be president. The US, under his presidency, was maintained at the edge of chaos, between too much and too little control. The long-festering problems in the GOP gave rise to a leader only nominally affiliated with it.By being the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in a single term, Mr Trump has gained a reputation for being a loser. But the billionaire is not interested in restoring Republican dominance, only shaping it into a cult of personality. He will only fail if he faces active, sustained opposition. Mr Biden has done that by highlighting the choices that divide congressional Republicans. But challenging Mr Trump also means challenging the system that produced him. Mr Biden still has work to do on that score.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      Rightwing media mock Marjorie Taylor Greene after Ukraine aid bill passes

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      A New York Post front page on Monday blaring “Nyet, Moscow Marjorie”, its mocked-up picture showing Marjorie Taylor Greene wearing a Soviet cap, was the latest sign of sections of the US right turning on the extremist, pro-Trump Georgia congresswoman over her opposition to military aid for Ukraine.“The score in Congress is now ‘Jewish space lasers lady 0, common sense 1’,” the Murdoch-owned tabloid said, celebrating the fact that Greene and other “Republican renegades” failed to stop passage of the Ukraine aid on Saturday, though they long delayed it.“Jewish space lasers” refers to one of the many conspiracy theories Greene has spread since entering national politics, in that case concerning a supposed cause of wildfires.The aid bill that passed the Republican-led House on Saturday despite opposition from Greene and other GOP rightwingers also funnels military support to Israel and Taiwan.Greene was defiant, telling Fox News Mike Johnson’s “speakership is over” after he oversaw passage of the aid bill, and calling for the Louisiana Republican, a stringent rightwinger himself, “to do the right thing to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process”.She again threatened to trigger the motion to remove the speaker that she filed last month – a move that also generated significant criticism in rightwing media circles.But though 112 members of the House voted no on Ukraine aid, and though Johnson must lead the chamber with only a tiny majority, Greene faces an uphill path to remove him, should Democrats who supported the military aid bill stay ranged on his side in an unusual bipartisan coalition that has emerged in recent weeks after legislative paralysis overcame the House.On Saturday, Johnson told reporters: “Three of our primary adversaries, Russia, Iran and China, are working together … and they’re a global threat to our prosperity and our security. Their advance threatens the free world, and it demands American leadership.“If we turn our backs right now the consequences could be devastating. It’s an old military adage, but we would rather send bullets to the conflict overseas than our own boys, our troops.”In opposing such aid, Greene has widely been seen to be doing the bidding of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president who had strongly opposed more aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders. However he appeared to soften last week after having dinner with Andrzej Duda, Poland’s far-right president, in New York after Trump had spent the day in court for jury selection at his criminal trial, with a post on social media that did not directly oppose more US aid for Ukraine.Poland is very wary about the power of an emboldened neighbor, Russia, to threaten eastern Europe.Meanwhile, Greene has said she has hopes of being named Trump’s running mate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut rightwing criticism of Greene and her cohorts in opposing Ukraine aid has been gathering nonetheless.Last week, before Ukraine aid passed, Fox News itself posted an op-ed column with the stark headline: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot. She is trying to wreck the GOP.”On Friday, Ken Buck – a recently retired conservative congressman who did much to name Greene “Moscow Marjorie” – spoke to CNN.“Moscow Marjorie has reached a new low,” he said. “You know, during the Russian Revolution, [Vladimir] Lenin talked about American journalists who were writing glowing reports about Russia at the time as ‘useful idiots’.“And I don’t even think that Marjorie reaches that level of being a useful idiot here. She is just mouthing the Russian propaganda, and really hurting American foreign policy in the process.” More

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      Liz Cheney urges US supreme court to rule quickly on Trump’s immunity claim

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      The former congresswoman and co-chair of the House January 6 committee Liz Cheney is urging the US supreme court to rule quickly on Donald Trump’s claim that he has immunity from prosecution for acts he committed while president – so that his 2020 election interference trial can begin before the 2024 election this November.“If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for January 6 to account,” Cheney wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times, published on Monday.Trump faces four federal election subversion charges, arising from his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020, fueled by his lie about electoral fraud and culminating in the deadly attack on Congress by extremist supporters, urged on by the then president, on 6 January 2021.Cheney warned: “I know how Mr Trump’s delay tactics work,” adding: “Mr Trump believes he can threaten and intimidate judges and their families, assert baseless legal defenses and thereby avoid accountability altogether.”The special counsel Jack Smith, prosecuting the case against Trump, has urged the court to reject Trump’s immunity claim as “an unprecedented assault on the structure of our government”.Cheney, a Republican and the daughter of the former vice-president Dick Cheney, was ousted from her congressional seat, representing Wyoming, after she became one of the strongest voices from the GOP demanding Trump be held accountable for inciting and failing to stop the January 6 insurrection.She has since said she would prefer Democrats to win in the 2024 elections over members of her own party as it has become more extreme, because she feared the US was “sleepwalking into dictatorship” and that another Trump White House presented a tangible “threat” to American democracy.Cheney said in her New York Times article: “The special counsel’s indictment lays out Mr Trump’s detailed plan to overturn the 2020 election … [and that] senior advisers in the White House, Justice Department and elsewhere repeatedly warned that Mr Trump’s claims of election fraud were false and that his plans for January 6 were illegal.”She added: “If Mr Trump’s tactics prevent his January 6 trial from proceeding in the ordinary course, he will also have succeeded in concealing critical evidence from the American people – evidence demonstrating his disregard for the rule of law, his cruelty on January 6 and the deep flaws in character that make him unfit to serve as president. The Supreme Court should understand this reality and conclude without delay that no immunity applies here.”The court’s nine-member bench leans very conservative, especially after Trump nominated three rightwing justices while he was president. The court hears oral arguments in the immunity case on Thursday.Trump and his team urged the court to find that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts they take in office and therefore dismiss the federal criminal case. More

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      Who will Trump pick as his 2024 running mate? A VP shortlist

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      Donald Trump has secured the necessary delegates to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive election. That result was never in much doubt, but the contest to be Trump’s running mate is harder to predict. Once again, the Republican primaries demonstrated his strength among white men in rural areas, leading to speculation that he will choose a woman or person of colour to broaden his appeal in November.Here are some factors to consider and a look at the likely contenders.Why does Trump need a new running mate?Former vice-president Mike Pence was a useful ally during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, a Christian conservative who shored up support among Republicans suspicious of the thrice-married reality TV star. But Pence’s refusal to comply with his boss’s demand to overturn the 2020 election led to a falling out and made Pence a perceived traitor and target of the January 6 insurrectionists. After a failed bid for president in 2024, Pence recently said in an interview that he will not be endorsing Trump.What is Trump looking for in a 2024 VP?He may decide he needs a female running mate to make himself less toxic to suburban women, especially with abortion rights looming large as an election issue. But history suggests that he will have three priorities: a person who displays loyalty; a person who looks like they are from “central casting”; a person who knows their place and will not outshine him on the campaign trail.Will Trump’s VP pick matter in the 2024 election?Probably not a lot. There is little evidence that a woman on the ticket draws more female voters or that a running mate’s home state will necessarily back them. Dan Pfeiffer, a White House communications director under President Barack Obama, told the New York Times: “The vice-presidential pick is something that generates a massive amount of press coverage but has the most minimal of impacts on the election.”But perhaps a bad pick can do damage: Republican nominee John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 probably didn’t help. This year, however, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are, again, the two oldest candidates in history, giving new meaning to their VP picks being only “a heartbeat away from the presidency”.How many VPs have gone on to become president?Fifteen. Eight of these succeeded to the office on the death of a president, including Lyndon Johnson, who was sworn in onboard Air Force One after the assassination of John F Kennedy. Gerald Ford was the only unelected vice-president and president following the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon. Biden served as vice-president under Barack Obama, who was succeeded by Trump, who was then defeated by Biden for the presidency.What to know about the Republicans on Trump’s vice-president shortlistView image in fullscreenGreg AbbottAge: 66Occupation: Governor of TexasThe Texas politician is a Trump loyalist and hardliner on border security who has fought a series of legal battles with the Biden White House. Trump said he “would very much consider Abbott” for vice-president during a joint Fox News interview in February. Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, said he was “committed to governing Texas” and to his own re-election campaign.View image in fullscreenTucker CarlsonAge: 54Occupation: Conservative political commentator and writerThe former Fox News host is a strong ideological match. Like Trump, he relishes offending liberals, praising autocrats such as Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orbán of Hungary (he conducted fawning interviews with both) and pushing the far-right “great replacement” theory that western elites are importing immigrant voters to supplant white people. Although Carlson once wrote of Trump in a text message, “I hate him passionately”, more recently he has praised him as “sensible and wise”.View image in fullscreenBen CarsonAge: 72Occupation: Retired neurosurgeonBorn in Detroit to a single mother with a third- grade education who worked multiple jobs to support her family, Carson rose to become a leading neurosurgeon – a life story that the Trump campaign could promote as it seeks to win over aspirational Black votes. As housing secretary, Carson was among Trump’s longest-serving cabinet members. He remained loyal to the outgoing president after the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol and campaigned with him in Iowa before the caucuses.View image in fullscreenRon DeSantisAge: 45Occupation: Governor of FloridaDeSantis tried and failed to dethrone Trump as king of the Republican party, flaming out during the primary season. He once made a campaign ad in which he read Trump’s book about getting rich, The Art of the Deal, to one of his children and encouraged them to “build the wall” along the US-Mexico border by stacking toy bricks. But when he ran for president, Trump branded him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and seems unlikely to forgive the perceived disloyalty.View image in fullscreenByron DonaldsAge: 45Occupation: US representative for Florida’s 19th congressional districtThe Freedom Caucus Republican is one of Trump’s most prominent African American supporters and backed him against state governor Ron DeSantis in the primary election. He is short on experience, having only started in Congress in 2021. At an event hosted by Axios, Donalds suggested that he would be willing to decline to certify the 2028 election results if he were vice-president.View image in fullscreenTulsi GabbardAge: 42Occupation: Rightwing media personality.The former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate has rebranded herself as a rightwing media personality. She campaigned for election-denier Kari Lake and other Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections. Her provocative critiques of the western foreign policy establishment, and her overtures to dictators such as Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, are likely to resonate with Trump. Asked in March by Fox News if she would consider a vice-presidential slot, Gabbard replied: “I would be open to that.”View image in fullscreenMarjorie Taylor GreeneAge: 49Occupation: Republican congresswomanThe far-right flamethrower from Georgia personifies the age of Trumpism with her pugnacious style, bizarre conspiracy theories, indications of support for political violence, and racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic statements. She once suggested that, if she had led the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the mob would have been armed and victorious in its efforts to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory (she later claimed this was “sarcasm”).View image in fullscreenNikki HaleyAge: 52Occupation: Politician.The former South Carolina governor was Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations and, as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India, could help neutralise charges of sexism and racism against him. But her persistence as his most durable opponent during the Republican primary, in which she questioned his age and mental acuity, would be hard for Trump – who called her “Birdbrain” – and the Maga base to forgive. They are also at odds on aid to Ukraine.View image in fullscreenKari LakeAge: 54Occupation: Candidate for US Senate in Arizona.The firebrand former TV anchor was the breakout Republican star of the midterm elections but lost the race for governor of Arizona, a result she has never accepted. She was endorsed by Trump and continued to repeat his election lies while campaigning as a surrogate for him during the Republican primary. But she may be seen as more valuable running for Senate because she could help Republicans take control of that chamber if she wins.View image in fullscreenKristi NoemAge: 52Occupation: Governor of South Dakota.The former pageant queen and congresswoman is serving her second term as South Dakota’s governor after a landslide re-election victory in 2022. She gained national attention after refusing to impose a statewide mask mandate during the coronavirus pandemic. She quashed speculation about her own presidential ambitions by endorsing Trump early. But her conservative stance on abortion – and media reports of an affair with the former Trump aide Corey Lewandowski – could be an electoral liability.View image in fullscreenVivek RamaswamyAge: 38Occupation: Business executive.The former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is a political neophyte who shook up the Republican primary debates, acting as unofficial Trump surrogate and earning the scorn of Haley. Trump condemned Ramaswamy as “not Maga” when he gained traction in the opinion polls but has since praised the biotech entrepreneur, who dropped out and threw his weight behind the former president. Ramaswamy is a young person of colour, although his views on the climate crisis are out of step with young voters.View image in fullscreenSarah SandersAge: 41Occupation: Governor of Arkansas.She was a devoted White House press secretary, tirelessly promoting Trump’s agenda and insisting that he was neither racist nor sexist. Last year she was inaugurated as the first woman to serve as governor of Arkansas and she is currently the youngest governor in the country. Her father, former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, is the creator of The Kids Guide to President Trump and an ex-pastor who might help shore up the Christian evangelical vote.View image in fullscreenTim ScottAge: 58Occupation: Senator for South Carolina.The Black evangelical Christian made his own bid for the presidency but dropped out two months before the Iowa caucuses, endorsing Trump and telling him: “I just love you.” The senator might be seen as a way to build on Trump’s recent progress among male African American voters. Asked about potential running mates during a Fox News town hall in February, Trump pointed to Scott and said: “A lot of people are talking about that gentleman right over there.” Scott is single but, with impeccable timing, recently presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring.View image in fullscreenElise StefanikAge: 39Occupation: US representative for New York’s 21st congressional districtThe New York politician is the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives and one of the first members of Congress to endorse Trump. Once a moderate, she gained national prominence last year after embarrassing the heads of three top universities about antisemitism on their campuses during a congressional hearing, which prompted two of them to later resign. She has also parroted Trump’s use of the term “hostages” to describe those convicted of crimes on January 6.View image in fullscreenJD VanceAge: 39Occupation: US senator for OhioThe venture capitalist rose to prominence with his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. A one-time Trump critic, he is now an ardent supporter and claims to be fighting for the working class by taking on liberals who “populate the upper echelons of American government, business, media, entertainment and academia”. He echoes the former president’s populist views on immigration and an “America First” foreign policy on Ukraine. Donald Trump Jr told Newsmax in January: “I’d love to see a JD Vance. People who are principally in alignment as well as aggressive.” More