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    Gavin Newsom is taking the fight to Trump – but for whom is he fighting? | Arwa Mahdawi

    Every time you think US politics could not possibly get any stupider, it does. Today’s instalment of “we live in hell, where politicians are passing around the last remaining brain cell” comes via New York and the latest shenanigans of the city’s mayor, Eric Adams. Desperate to distract voters from a steady stream of scandals, the latest of which involves a former aide giving a reporter a crisp packet filled with cash after an Adams mayoral campaign event, he is trying hard to flex his social media muscles.This weekend, Adams joined Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who is running as an independent in November’s election, and others in mocking Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic Democratic candidate and frontrunner, for his weightlifting efforts at a community event. Adams posted a side-by-side video on X of himself and Mamdani bench-pressing with the caption: “67 vs. 33 … The weight of the job is too heavy for ‘Mamscrawny.’ The only thing he can lift is your taxes.” This post was quickly deleted and replaced with one that got Adams’s age right: he is 64.Inventing childish nicknames for your rivals? Classic Donald Trump. Getting basic facts embarrassingly wrong? Super Trumpy. Obsessing over your manliness, rather than focusing on issues voters care about? Trumpy to the max.Adams isn’t the only politician emulating the president’s idiosyncratic communication style. Across the globe, we are witnessing the seemingly unstoppable rise of the trollitician. From the Australian senator Ralph Babet tweeting tirades about “woke ass clowns” to the US vice-president, JD Vance, insulting the IQs of his detractors, an increasing number of politicos seem to be operating like attention-seeking edgelords rather than dignified statespeople. If it worked for Trump, their reasoning seems to go, they too may have a shot at shitposting their way to the top.Playing Trump’s social media game rather better than anyone else at the moment is Gavin Newsom. In recent weeks, the governor of California, clearly readying himself for a 2028 presidential run, has been giving his caps lock key quite the pounding to troll Trump by adopting his social media vernacular. “TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN … THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE’D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD,” reads one mocking tweet from the governor’s press office this month.Newsom has also opened an online “Patriot shop”, poking fun at Trump’s tasteless merchandise. There are red-and-white baseball caps emblazoned with “NEWSOM WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!” and tank tops proclaiming “Trump is not hot”. There is also a Bible priced at $100 (£74). It’s sold out, but if God is good, and supply chains oblige, it will be back in stock soon.Some of Newsom’s posts have been very amusing; they have certainly generated a lot of publicity for him and delighted many liberals. I am no Newsom fan – he has flip-flopped opportunistically on transgender issues and taken a questionable stand on pro-Palestine campus protests – but it’s refreshing to see energy from the opposition. The Democrats are losing voters at a staggering rate and the party’s out-of-touch leaders can’t seem to pull themselves together to challenge Trump effectively. By contrast, Newsom seems ready for a fight.This isn’t to suggest that snarky tweets are the way to defeat Maga. Newsom has said his bombastic posts are meant to shine a light on Trump’s unpresidential behaviour: “If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president.” But it doesn’t matter if you shine a stadium’s worth of floodlights on a problem if people wilfully avoid looking. You can’t shame many of Trump’s supporters because they have no shame; you can’t use logic with people in a personality cult.Crucially, however, Newsom isn’t stopping at mean tweets. He has shown that he will not just sit down and whine as the Republicans use dirty tricks such as redrawing the voting map in Texas; he will try to use the same redistricting tactics in California. Newsom has grasped what so many other Democrats are loth to admit: you can’t keep playing by the same old rules when the other side has ripped up the rulebook.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUltimately, though, being willing to fight isn’t enough. To win, Democrats need to show normal people that they will fight for them. People don’t want silly tweets and underhand tactics; they want politicians who will lower the cost of living and direct taxes towards healthcare and infrastructure rather than bombing starving children in Gaza. Running on popular policies and seemingly authentic empathy is what has made Mamdani – who is still being shunned by Democratic leadership – such an effective candidate. Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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    Zohran Mamdani leads in fundraising for New York City mayoral contest

    Zohran Mamdani pulled in almost double the funds of his nearest rivals for New York City mayor between early July and mid-August, as the candidates prepare for the crucial post Labor Day push to the November poll.New York’s City’s campaign finance board said on Saturday that the democratic socialist, who won the Democratic party nomination in June against former state governor Andrew Cuomo, raised $1,051,200, with an average donation of $121 recorded equally from donors in and outside the state.Cuomo raised $541,301, with an contribution size of $646. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, running as an independent, raised $425,181, with an average donation of $770. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa brought in $407, 332.Mamdani’s fundraising dominance is mirrored in a polling advantage. Last week, a Siena poll placed him at 19 points ahead of Cuomo, his nearest rival, who is also running as an independent. A 12-poll average from Decision Desk HQ puts Mamdani ahead of Cuomo by 13 points.Mamdani, who has proposed rent freezes on almost a million rent-stabilized apartments in the city, free buses and childcare, city-run grocery stores, and elevated taxes on Columbia and New York University to subsidize city colleges and trade schools, has been consistently ahead in fundraising over rivals.In March, he asked his campaign’s grassroots supporters to stop donating, and directed his primary campaign staff to encourage supporters’ focus to volunteering efforts. His campaign funds on hand are put at $4.4m, and his campaign is eligible for $2.2m more in matching public funds.Last week, it was revealed that the anti-billionaire candidate had received a donation of $250,000 to a political action committee from Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of late hedge fund billionaire Jamie Simons.Adams is barred from receiving matching campaign funds, the city campaign finance board having found he had violated related laws. Cuomo has begun transferring money from a $7.5m state campaign account to his city campaign account and has $1.2m on hand. Cuomo is in line for a payout of about $400,000 from public funds.Pressure on the two trailing candidates, Adams and Sliwa, to step out of the race is likely to increase next month, but both have said they are unwilling to do so.Last week, Adams repeated his resistance to dropping out after a close adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was indicted for allegedly running a political-favors scheme that included receiving seafood and an acting role opposite Forest Whitaker.Politco reported last week that Cuomo told supporters at a fundraiser he expects Republican leaders, including Donald Trump, to urge Republican voters to switch from Sliwa to stop Mamdani, whom Trump has branded “a 100% Communist Lunatic”. Mamdani has said he is “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare”.Cuomo said on Friday that “a lot is going to happen” between now and the November vote. “I don’t think the public even knows who the assemblyman is, what he represents, what his positions are. So I think the more they find out about him, the less they’re going to like him, and … his appeal is going to drop dramatically.”Mamdani, meanwhile, has accused Cuomo of lying about his coordination with Trump and says the former governor, who bitterly clashed with Trump while in office, is now seeking the president’s help.“It’s par for the course for Andrew Cuomo,” Mamdani said on Tuesday. More

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    New York mayor frontrunner Mamdani trains fire on Trump as Cuomo attacks

    New York City’s mayoral race is heating up, with Zohran Mamdani, the young progressive who leapt ahead of establishment figures in the primary to win the Democratic party nomination, appearing to widen his lead over his main rivals this week.Mamdani, 33, edged further ahead of the former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo, with the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, far behind, in advance of the election this November to pick a leader for the largest city in the US.In a metropolis that leans Democratic, he was also far ahead of the Republican talkshow host Curtis Sliwa, and also another independent, the sky-diving former federal prosecutor Jim Walden.According to a poll released on Tuesday, Mamdani, who has been endorsed by fellow leftwingers on the national stage such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, held a 19-point lead over Cuomo, his nearest rival.It was however, a small-scale survey, in which the Siena poll sampled just 317 registered voters and cited an unusually wide 6.7% margin of error.Mamdani is a Muslim, which garnered some negative attacks ahead of the primary, and a member of the Democrat Socialists of America’s nine-member “State Socialists in Office” bloc in New York’s state assembly.Cuomo had been expected to win the Democratic primary, but despite his almost universal name recognition, he was beaten after being weighed down by an overly conventional campaign and a damaged political past having resigned as governor in a torrent of accusations of sexual harassment and bullying on the job.Mamdani was deemed on Tuesday by Siena to be 32 points ahead of Sliwa and held a 37-point lead over Adams, who has been plagued by allegations of corruption.With Mamdani as the candidate to beat, his credentials are now under attack and he has just four years under his belt as a state legislator. Cuomo has hit Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized – or rent-regulated – apartment – where the rent is $2,500 a month when the market rate would be $8,000, while he earns $147,000 a year and is campaigning on housing affordability and calling for higher taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers.Cuomo has accused Mamdani of “callous theft” and proposed a new means-test law, “Zohran’s Law”, that would control who gets to live in the city’s 1m rent-stabilized dwellings. The Mamdani campaign has said their candidate would have met Cuomo’s proposed qualify 30% rent-to-income standard when he moved in and was earning $47,000 a year, and described Cuomo’s proposal as “petty vindictiveness”.However, the Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said the issue was an opening for New York City voters who are leaning against Mamdani.“It won’t move the numbers for younger people who are the base of his support, but the argument could benefit both Cuomo and Adams because it makes Mamdani look like a hypocrite,” he said.Mamdani, meanwhile, has launched a “Five Boroughs Against Trump” tour of the city, shifting his focus to what many Democratic New Yorkers could agree is the common enemy, the Republican US president.Trump has threatened to intervene in New York – a threat made vivid with the national guard now patrolling Washington DC’s streets – if Mamdani is elected, and Cuomo posted that that was likely to happen and that “Trump will flatten him like a pancake”.Sheinkopf said Mamdani’s switch to attacking Trump was a wise political strategy because it deflects from his lack of governing experience. “He can be beaten but the problem is will any of these guys be able to figure it out? Cuomo’s numbers have to be much lower for Adams to win, and Adams has to pick up momentum.“The only way he [Mamdani] can get the Black vote back is offer a mea culpa that he made some mistakes early on but argue that crime is down, education and job numbers are up, tourist numbers are great, but what I need is more time to make sure 85,000 new housing units already budgeted for come through,” Sheinkopf says.Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assembly Democrat whose district includes much of eastern Brooklyn, is among moderates who are coming aroundto the leftwinger and attended a Mamdani-led anti-Trump meeting on Tuesday.“Democrats, both moderate and progressive, are uniting around urgent issues like affordability, housing, and protecting our democracy,” Hermelyn said. More

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    New York City mayoral race: Mamdani leads Cuomo by 19 points, poll shows

    The closely watched New York mayoral and governor’s races appear to be forming into shapes that will bring little comfort to centrist Democrats, with both elections happening in November.A new Siena Institute poll released on Tuesday shows New York City’s Democratic socialist mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, leading former New York governor Andrew Cuomo by 19 percentage points – while the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik is chipping away at incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul’s lead in a hypothetical contest for the New York governor’s mansion in 2026.Hochul’s lead over Stefanik, who was nominated to be US ambassador to the United Nations before withdrawing to help Republicans maintain a majority in Congress, has now dropped from 23 points in June to 14 points.Stefanik has not officially decided on whether to seek the governor’s office, but she has been noticeably attacking Hochul’s record. The poll found that 49% of voters in the state said it would be bad for New York if Stefanik were elected governor.In the mayoral race, the poll found 44% of registered New York City voters backing Mamdani, followed by 25% for Cuomo, 12% for the Republican party nominee, Curtis Sliwa, and only 7% for the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams.However, Cuomo leads among Black and Jewish voters, two groups that Mamdani underperforms with. But Mamdani holds a towering lead with younger voters, leading Cuomo by 49% among voters aged 18 to 34 but trailing Cuomo by 6% among voters 55 years and older.Mamdani is the Democratic party candidate in the race. Cuomo and Adams – who are both Democrats – are running as independents.Tuesday’s poll also signaled that outside New York City, surveyed voters have a negative impression of Mamdani, with 37% having an unfavorable opinion and 28% positive. But Cuomo scored lower, with 61% of voters polled statewide holding a poor impression.Yet leading centrist New York Democrats, including the US Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, US House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Hochul have yet to throw their weight behind Mamdani.“We still have many differences,” Hochul said two days earlier on Fox News Sunday. “I don’t know how you whitewash that away.”But she said she was willing to work with “whoever the voters elect” in New York City.On Monday, Mamdani kicked off a week-long tour titled Five Boroughs Against Trump, highlighting what he maintains are the dangers posed to the city by the presidential administration.Cuomo, meanwhile, is attempting to highlight what he sees as a flaw in Mamdani’s position on the key issue of housing and affordability.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCuomo’s campaign has pitched a state law to keep the rich out of rent-stabilized apartments that it calls “Zohran’s Law”. Cuomo has been bashing his rival for living in a $2,300 rent-stabilized, one-bedroom while making more than $140,000 a year as a state assembly member.Cuomo proposed that rent-stabilized apartments should go to individuals who pay no less than 30% of their income in rent to qualify. The Mamdani campaign has said their candidate would have met this standard when he moved in and was earning $47,000 a year.Mamdani responded to Cuomo’s accusation that he is too wealthy for his rent-stabilized apartment on Monday, saying: “I live rent-free in his head.”The Mamdani campaign also hit back in a video with insinuations of links between Cuomo and Jeffrey Epstein, the late disgraced financier who pleaded guilty in Florida to charges of prostitution and solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008.The video demanded that Cuomo release his list of consulting clients, noting the ex-governor once worked on a yacht marina project in Puerto Rico with Andrew Farkas, a former partner of Epstein on Caribbean marinas. More

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    Zohran Mamdani’s videos are a masterclass. Eric Adams’ posts are getting more bizarre | Arwa Mahdawi

    Eric Adams, possible resident of New Jersey and mayor of New York City, is a man of many talents. He is the city’s “most famous vegan”, albeit one who eats fish. He has a knack for scoring freebies from foreign governments. He managed the great feat of being the first mayor in the city’s history to be indicted while in office. And, on top of all that, he may well be the most unintentionally hilarious man on the internet.Please see, as exhibit one, a classic piece of Adams surrealism from 2011, shot when the mayor was just a humble state senator. Dressed like an undertaker, Adams instructs viewers to search their child’s room for contraband. Per Adams, a jewelry box may have a gun in it, and the bullets may be behind a picture frame. Unappreciated for many years, the video finally found an audience when it went viral during Adams’s indictment.More recently, the mayor posted a very weird Instagram video of him listening to Katy Perry, and another one captioned, “Make an important call with me,” in which he fake chats to Usher to announce a free concert series in New York City. And, of course, there was his famous “trash revolution” press conference where he helpfully demonstrated how to use a wheelie bin. You open the lid and then you close it: magic!In another Instagram video, Adam shares his morning routine. The mayor once told an audience: “I get out of the shower sometimes and I say: ‘Damn!’” This little bit of the routine, alas, did not make it into the cut. Instead he irons a shirt, munches a carrot stick in his bizarre industrial kitchen, and rants about how he is being guided by his GPS (“God positioning satellite”). The video was posted a month ago but it really took off this week after internet detectives pointed out that a clock in the footage tells a completely different time than the purported time on the screen. In other words, the whole “routine” was about as natural as a ski slope in Dubai.One glaring reason for Adams suddenly trying to up his Instagram game is the rise of Zohran Mamdani, the Queens assemblyman whose socialist ideas and (admittedly elite) TikTok strategy recently propelled him to victory in New York City’s mayoral primary. Adams is currently slated to run as an independent in the general election against Mamdani, and he’s clearly running scared.Adams is not the only Democrat making headlines this week for attempting to make waves on the internet. There’s an influential web series called Subway Takes in which the New York-based comedian Kareem Rahma solicits hot takes from strangers, and the occasional celebrity, on the train. Kamala Harris was on it last year, but you wouldn’t have seen the segment because it was reportedly so bad that it didn’t run. “Her take was really confusing and weird, not good, and so [we] mutually agreed we shouldn’t publish it,” Rahma told Forbes. One day it may fall out of a coconut tree, but right now it is hidden from scrutiny.Then there’s the Democratic house minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who was recently mocked for posting what appeared to be a badly photoshopped picture of himself, altered to make his waist thinner, on Instagram. (He seems to have deleted the photo on Thursday.)Jeffries was also just ridiculed (mainly by conservatives) for an Instagram photo in which he holds a baseball bat in metaphoric opposition to Donald Trump’s “One Big Ugly Bill”. The 82-year-old congresswoman Virginia Foxx was not impressed by this; Foxx tweeted the photo with the caption “low energy”.Jeffries certainly does seem to have a few energy issues. He can give record-breaking long speeches but he, along with other senior Democratic figures, can’t seem to summon up the energy to endorse Mamdani. Democrats love saying “vote blue no matter who” – except in situations where they have got a charismatic candidate who resonates with ordinary people.Meanwhile, Mamdani has no trouble with social media: his TikTok videos are one of the reasons the Queens assemblyman has surged from relative obscurity to mayoral frontrunner. Some of his rivals seem to think they are the cause for his success. “I regret not running for mayor in 2021,” state senator Jessica Ramos said during the mayoral primary debate. “I had been in the senate for two years. I’d already passed over a dozen bills. I thought I needed more experience. But turns out you just need to make good videos.”Of course, Mamdani doesn’t resonate with so many people because he’s studied vertical videos strategies. He’s successful because his core messaging connects with the needs of normal New Yorkers rather than the 1%. He’s been successful because he seems to genuinely want to fight for people rather than just collect a paycheck and then head off for a cushy job at whatever lobbying company donates the most to him. He’s relatable and authentic and those are two things that are very hard to manufacture. Although that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from trying: they have discussed throwing millions of dollars into creating a “Joe Rogan of the left”.This isn’t to say that you can’t buy yourself a great social media strategy. John Fetterman, the soulless ghoul who is senator of Pennsylvania, certainly did. He made some brilliant hires, who ran a very entertaining campaign against Dr Oz in 2022. Now that Fetterman seems more obsessed with bombing Gaza than serving his constituents, many of those staffers have left, however. I doubt he’ll be able to pull off another campaign like his first.Speaking of pulling things off, now that Adams has posted his morning routine I wouldn’t mind seeing other politicians post theirs. Please Cuomo, and every other establishment politician: stream the 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People over TikTok. I can’t wait to see Cuomo walk to a bagel shop and order an English muffin before telling passersby “I’m not perverted, I’m just Italian.” Surely that will convince New Yorkers to Pokémon Go to the polls. More

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    Self-identifying ‘hot girls’ are mobilizing to elect a progressive as New York City mayor

    “Hot girls” may not be a pollster-approved voting bloc in the way that young men or the college-educated are, but since the 2020 election the demographic has held a particular status – at least for the very online.It started in 2020, when the model Emily Ratajkowski officially endorsed Bernie Sanders’s pre-pandemic presidential campaign. Inspired by Ratajkowski, self-professed hot girls piled on their endorsements, posting selfies with the hashtag #HotGirlsForBernie. Some saw it as a way to counter the persistent “Bernie bro” narrative, a rebuke of the idea that Sanders’s fandom consisted solely of obnoxious, socialist-in-name-only men who lived their lives on Twitter.Five years later, “Hot Girls for Bernie” is a relic, one of the last gasps of hope young progressives felt before the reality of Trump 2.0 took hold. Nevertheless the phrase has returned, this time in support of Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist and state assemblyman from Queens who is running for New York City mayor. This week, a social media account called “Hot Girls 4 Zohran” dropped on X and Instagram to give away free Mamdani swag.View image in fullscreenThough the account is unaffiliated with the Mamdani’s official campaign (and Mamdani’s representative declined to comment), it speaks to the grassroots enthusiasm fueling the millennial’s run for office.Mamdani does not have the widespread name recognition of contenders such as the current mayor, Eric Adams, who is running as an independent after a series of scandals, or Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor of New York in 2021 after facing multiple sexual harassment accusations, which he denied. But Mamdani’s campaign has tapped a hyper-progressive wellspring by putting forth policies that sound ripe for a Fox News scare segment. They include increasing the city’s minimum wage from $16.50 to $30, opening city-owned grocery stores, and making childcare and bus fares free.Mamdani, a failed rapper and son of the indie filmmaker Mira Nair, is most at home on social media, especially TikTok. He exudes a kind of nerdy-cool vibe, which has earned him a GQ profile and a spread in Interview Magazine, where he fielded questions from New York luminaries such as Chloë Sevigny, Cynthia Nixon, Eileen Myles and Julio Torres. Last month, more than 18,000 citywide donors helped his campaign secure $8m, hitting the fundraising limit set by the city.Hot Girls 4 Zohran is run by two friends, Cait, 24, and Kaif, 28, who live in Brooklyn and did not want their last names published due to privacy concerns. Cait, who is very active on X, says she has been harassed by users who don’t agree with her political opinions. But she’s fine with her face being out there – she posed for the account next to a box of Hot Girls 4 Zohran T-shirts.Cait and Kaif say they are supporting Mamdani because he wants to make the city more affordable for the working class and courts individual donors over the super-rich. “We’re both fairly skeptical of institutional politicians, especially given the last election,” said Cait, who works in marketing. “We really just want to get his name out there.”And hot girls help. Not in an ogling way, but as a tongue-in-cheek way for voters to self-identify and convince others to do so too. “It’s empowering for women, and it brings us together,” Cait said. “There’s an intersectionality to it.” Kaif says that they use the “girl” descriptor liberally – it’s more of a mindset than a gender classification. “So many men have also reached out to us asking for T-shirts,” he said.Cait was in high school when Hot Girls for Bernie went viral. “I was still pretty young, but I noticed it even back then,” she said.She has Danaka Katovich to thank for the inspiration. In 2020, after seeing playful memes about Ratajkowski’s support for Sanders, the then student at DePaul University in Chicago made a group chat for “hot girl” Bernie supporters. Katovich told Vox that 50 friends joined the group, which dropped a social media campaign featuring equally sexy and silly selfies.“I’m surprised people are still doing this,” said Katovich, who is now 25 and working for a feminist non-profit aimed at ending US warfare and imperialism. “Back then, journalists asked me: ‘What does Hot Girls for Bernie mean to you?’ I was 20 – it didn’t mean anything to me, since it started as a joke.”Katovich remembers people criticizing the “hot girls” label for being glib or exclusionary, but she insists it was inclusive. “Anyone could post a picture, non-binary people were included,” she said. “Sure, there were some dudes who would comment on a picture and say, ‘You’re actually more of a seven,’ but at the time, it didn’t feel like anyone who mattered really cared what you looked like at all.”View image in fullscreenKari Winter, a professor in the global gender and sexuality studies department at the University at Buffalo, agreed that “hot girls” can mean whatever posters want. “Although I personally would not use the term ‘hot’ or ‘girl’ as a trend, I like the way young women, LGBT, non-binary and disabled people use it to claim their own multi-faceted existence in the world,” she said. “It reminds me of a time when a lot of us had bumper stickers and T-shirts that said, ‘This is what a feminist looks like,’ and the point was to be inclusive, because feminists look like everything and anything.”A recent AARP New York and Siena College poll shows that Cuomo holds a strong lead of 34% in the Democratic primary pack, thanks to older voters. Mamdani follows at 16%, and 20% of Democratic voters say they are undecided among the nine total candidates. The June primary is ranked-choice voting, a confusing system that has New Yorkers listing candidates in order of preference. The winner will probably face off against Adams and a Republican in November.Despite Cuomo’s early lead, Winter says that Mamdani’s intense focus on courting working-class voters can serve as a lesson to Democrats. “Democrats need to understand that the way to energize people is not to keep trying to play to some mythical middle, but to galvanize people who are so sick of corruption and the pandering to wealth,” she said. “The only way forward is to galvanize people who care about common people and the common good.”View image in fullscreenThe Democratic national convention might not recognize a hot girl delegation, but Bernie evangelists say the movement wasn’t all frivolous. Hadiya Afzal, a former DePaul University student who was active in the Sanders group chat, says that many of her friends went on to work in progressive politics and still dedicate much of their time to the causes they care about.“I think that’s what folks should take away from this kind of campaign: at the end of the day, it’s about the policies,” Afzal said. “There would have been no Hot Girls for Bernie without an actual policy platform. That’s the backbone of what made it meaningful.”Over at Hot Girls 4 Zohran, Cait and Kaif want people do more with the T-shirts than pose in them for social media. “If you wear the shirt out and about, then it spreads the word, and we really want to mobilize voters of all ages,” Kaif said. Ultimately, he and Cait hope the moniker will aid the candidate in his goal of building “the single largest volunteer operation” of any New York mayoral race ever. With a force of 10,000 door knockers, Mamdani is well on his way.One of those volunteers is Joshua Leirer, a 37-year-old who lives in Ridgewood, Queens. When Leirer canvassed in one of Brooklyn’s parks in March, there were so many volunteers that they had to spread into the “outskirts”. And, crucially, “the volunteers are hot.”“The people I talked to were really cool and friendly,” Leirer said. “A lot of glasses, a lot of beanies. I would call it a Brooklyn hot.” More

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    What is a ‘criminal’ immigrant? The word is an American rhetorical trap | Jonathan Ben-Menachem

    Last month, the Trump administration flew 238 Venezuelan immigrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador. Federal officials alleged that the detainees were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, calling them “heinous monsters” ,“criminal aliens”, “the worst of the worst”. The federal government has also revoked visas for a thousand international students over their alleged participation in protests against Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Some were abducted, like Mahmoud Khalil, who has spent more than a month incarcerated in one of the worst jails in the US. Officials alleged that Mahmoud “sided with terrorists … who have killed innocent men, women, and children”.Media reports quickly revealed that the Trump administration is lying about “innocent” people to justify abducting them. But this raises a more important question: if Trump’s victims weren’t “innocent”, does that make them disposable? I worry that emphasizing the innocence of victims creates a rhetorical trap. It’s like carefully digging a pit that the fascists can shove us into.Instead, we should interrogate the fact that the Trump administration chose to target “gang members” and “terrorist supporters” in the first step of its ethnic cleansing project. Criminals and terrorists are the bogeymen animating bipartisan racism against Black, Latino and Arab people, and Trump is weaponizing these myths because many liberals have already written them off as less than human. The political context that enabled US residents to be shipped to El Salvador’s Cecot facility is a bipartisan project more than 50 years in the making, largely unquestioned by people who are rightfully horrified by recent escalations.Allegations of criminality have long been an effective pretext for anti-Black violence in the US – this is the “war on crime”. So long as there are “criminals” to fight, vicious police brutality becomes politically palatable. This is true in blue and red states alike. The gang member is the latest symbol used to dehumanize Black and Latino people, replacing the “superpredator”. In practice, police and prosecutors invoke the specter of monstrous gangs to continue targeting entire neighborhoods while evading allegations of explicit discrimination.You can be added to a gang database because of your tattoos, the color of the clothing you wear or even for using certain emojis on social media. These lists are riddled with errors, sometimes naming toddlers and elders. More commonly, gang databases index the thousands of people – often children – swept up by police because of where they live or whom they socialize with. The consequences of gang policing are devastating: it can lead to federal prosecution or potential deportation, not to mention a lifetime of state harassment.Gang membership isn’t the only tool the Trump administration can use to portray its victims as guilty. When the “war on crime” morphed into the “war on terror”, Arab and Muslim residents suffered from discriminatory surveillance and repression – the “terrorist” category matches the “gang member” category in that it justifies racist dragnet policing practices. The “counter-terrorism” net has already widened, targeting Stop Cop City activists in Atlanta. This problem is not limited to Republicans – liberal politicians and university stakeholders laid the groundwork for Trump’s deportation efforts. Last year, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, called student Palestine activists proxies for Iran, and New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, smeared us as terrorist supporters to justify an incredibly violent police raid.The widening net of who is considered a criminal not only chills dissent among immigrants and activists. It further dehumanizes and renders disposable people who have genuinely committed harm.We must defend the rights of people who do have criminal records. No one deserves to be whisked away to a brutal prison that deprives them of basic human rights – no matter if it’s in El Salvador, Louisiana, California, Pennsylvania or New York. Criminal records and bona fide gang membership don’t turn human beings into monsters. If Trump goes through with his plan of sending citizens to El Salvador, he could initially target people convicted of heinous crimes. This would allow federal officials to ask: “Why do liberals care about pedophiles and murderers?”We should be prepared to defend the basic rights of all of Trump’s targets with our full strength. If a single person becomes disposable, anyone could become the next target. Last week, Trump said he “loved” the idea of sending American “criminals” to El Salvador, and law professors are sounding the alarm about citizen student activists being subjected to terrorism prosecutions. First it will be the “migrant gang member” or “terrorist on a student visa” sent to Cecot. Next it will be the domestic gang member and the terrorist-supporting citizen. Eventually, perhaps any political opponent could be construed as a criminal-terrorist.Trump may not even need to rely on the justice department to criminalize his enemies – dozens of local cops joined the 6 January 2021 putsch at the US Capitol, and local prosecutors have eagerly charged student activists with felonies. This is another reason to avoid the innocence trap: many police love Trump, and law enforcement can very easily make their adversaries seem like criminals.The innocence trap is dangerous because allegations of criminality have always been deployed to justify state violence. If we only defend the “innocent”, the fascists will argue that their victim “was no angel”. An anti-fascist rhetoric that carves out exceptions for imperfect victims is a gift to our opponents.

    Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a PhD candidate in sociology at Columbia University, where he researches the politics of criminalization More

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    Sycophancy and toadying are de rigueur in Trump’s court of self-aggrandizement | Sydney Blumenthal

    Sycophancy is the coin of the realm. In Donald Trump’s court, flattery is the only spoken language. He does not need an executive order to enforce it. Fear is the other side of the coin. Loyalty must be blind. Obedience is safety. Cronyism secures status. His whim is dogma. Criticism is heresy. Debate is apostasy. Expertise is bias. Objectivity is a hoax. Truth is just your opinion. Lies are defended to the death as articles of faith. New ones are manufactured on an industrial scale by his press office for social influencers to spread. Denying facts proves fealty. The rule of law is partisan. Russia is our trusted ally. Britain and France are “random counties”. Retribution is policy.The deeper the submission to madness, the greater his supremacy. The subjugation is more thorough if the things people are forced to accept are irrational or, better, the reverse of what they had believed. When previously held beliefs are abandoned to conform to their opposite, like the secretary of state Marco Rubio’s formerly adamant support of Ukraine, which went to his core as the son of refugees from Castro’s Cuba, the more Trump’s dominance is demonstrated. Rubio has gone full circle, from his family fleeing one kind of tyranny to Trump sneering at him as “Little Marco” to ambitious embrace of his tormentor. He finds himself as a supplicant to Trump complaining about Elon Musk’s mindless wreckage of the state department. Formally the ranking constitutional officer of the cabinet, Rubio is below Musk in Trump’s hierarchy.Each of the concentric rings of Trump’s court require different nuances of servility. At mid-level, the ethos is to mimic the irrational impulses of the ruler in order to be seen as his willing helper. In 1934, a middle-rank German minister explained that “it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Führer along the lines he would wish.” “Working toward the Fuhrer” – auf den Führer hinarbeiten – became the governing style, or else.At the cabinet level, Rubio’s renunciation is an essential conversion to prove subservient allegiance to the Fuhrerprinzip. “The higher one rose in the hierarchy, the more servile one became,” wrote Albert Speer, Hitler’s war manufacturing minister, in his memoir. At the height of power, in the innermost circle, at the leader’s right hand, sits JD Vance, who taunts and threatens on the leader’s behalf, demanding obsequious “respect” while slyly deploying his sycophancy to goad the leader.Upon passing through the gates of Trump’s White House, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, entered into a domain that would have been intimately familiar to him. It would have been reminiscent of the claustrophobic despotism in Ukraine under communism. It would have been a reminder of what was called “the Family” of kleptocratic oligarchs, lackeys and political operatives surrounding the Putin-backed Ukrainian ruler Viktor Yanukovych before he fled the country during the popular uprising of 2014 – a gangster culture that included the US consultant Paul Manafort, also Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, whom he would pardon for a host of criminal felonies.A western world shocked at Trump’s orchestrated humiliation of Zelenskyy should have seen the staged event as the culmination of hundreds of similar transgressions since he became president again. The difference between the rest of his rampage and his denigration of Zelensky was only in its momentousness. But not even Elon Musk systematically shredding the federal government approached the historic scale of Trump’s crime against Ukraine, which reduced the United States through a few insults to the lowest ebb of its international power and prestige since a century ago, when, in a spasm of partisan isolationism, the Senate rejected joining the League of Nations after the first world war. But, for the appalled and disoriented Europeans who must pick up the pieces as they adjust to the reality of an American president discarding them in order to forge a grand alliance with Russia, the revealing signs of Trump’s malignancy have been present in a never-ending series of less than world historical but dramatically squalid scandals.“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized,” New York mayor Ed Koch once quipped. Now, Trump tried to erase the infamy of being a figure of ridicule in New York by planting his hooks into the current mayor, Eric Adams. A predator recognizes vulnerability. After ordering the Department of Justice to drop its corruption charges against Adams, Trump’s precipitate action prompted the resignation of the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, who stated that it was “a quid pro quo” in exchange for supporting the Trump administration’s “enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed”, and which was followed by the resignations of seven prosecutors from the justice department’s public integrity unit, who refused to participate in the deal.With Adams under his heel, Trump next crushed the Republican Senate through the confirmation process of his unqualified collection of quacks for his cabinet. Intimidation and smears did the work of cowing the august senators. Then, through his installation of his largest donor, Elon Musk, as his self-advertised “Dark Maga” overlord, Trump launched the massacre of the entire federal government. Off with their heads everywhere. The purges have no trials. Tick off the execution list of Project 2025. Let the courts slowly try to catch up to the devastation.Trump’s repetitive compulsion to create disorder allows him to present himself as its would-be master. He can’t temper his impulses. His bedlam provides his only arena for self-validation. He must always fabricate scenes for the exaltation of himself through the humiliation of others to confirm that he is strong. Musk magnifies his abuse.In two speeches, one by the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, and the other by the vice-president, JD Vance, the Trump administration shifted the ground under Ukraine and the western allies to Russian advantage. On 12 February, at the Ukraine Contact Group in Brussels, Hegseth conceded conditions to Russia before any negotiations had begun. He stated the return of occupied territory “unrealistic”, opposed Nato membership and rejected US participation in a security force. Two days later, on 14 February, Vance delivered a second shock, reciting the talking points of the far-right parties in Europe in a virtual endorsement a week before the German election of the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany Party.Some Republicans appear to have a good idea about the agents of influence floating around the Trump administration. Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, said after Hegseth’s speech, “I don’t know who wrote the speech – it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.” The former Fox News talkshow host, now with his own podcast, has deep ties to the regimes of Putin and Orbán of Hungary. A fount of Russian disinformation, he is at the center of a circle that includes Donald Trump Jr and JD Vance, bonded as lost boys, abandoned in childhood, and who persuaded Trump to name Vance as his running mate. Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, a pro-Russian echo chamber, now the national director of intelligence, were brought into their orbit.Tucker Carlson’s son, Buckley Carlson, is Vance’s deputy press director. Jack Posobiec, a far-right conspiracy monger of Pizzagate and white supremacist, was invited to travel with Hegseth, to whom he is close, and has traveled with the secretary of the treasury, Scott Bessent, on his trip in February to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky.In 2017, according to a report of the Atlantic Council, Posobiec was a key player in aiding the Russian “coordinated attempt to undermine Emmanuel Macron’s candidacy, with a disinformation campaign consisting of rumors, fake news, and even forged documents; a hack targeting the computers of his campaign staff; and, finally, a leak – 15 gigabytes of stolen data, including 21,075 emails, released on Friday, May 5, 2017 – just two days before the second and final round of the presidential election”.In 2024, Posobiec addressed the Conservative Political Action Committee: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”Making nice with Trump has never proved to be a winning strategy. If Zelensky had bent to shine Trump’s shoes under his desk, he would still have been in a trap. Obsequious gestures to neutralize Trump have been repeatedly tried and failed. If anyone could cajole Trump, it would have been David Rubenstein, the billionaire founder of the Carlyle Group who built his firm with a bipartisan board. Rubenstein has been a pillar of the Washington community, who cherishes the constitution and has lent the National Archives his copy of the original Bill of Rights, personally paid for the restoration of the Washington Monument, and is a patron of the arts, the longtime chair of the Kennedy Center. He recently bought the Baltimore Orioles. Rubenstein wined and dined Donald and Melania Trump, attempted to ingratiate himself and bring them into his charmed circle. Rubenstein’s civilizing mission ran aground.Rubenstein presented Trump with a golden opportunity to gain the kind of acceptance he had sought for a lifetime. He has nursed his injury over rejection by the great and the good in New York, where his crudity, vulgarity and narrow greed constantly undermined his social ambitions. He was also a spectacular failure in the New York real estate market. But Trump still harbored resentment from the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors, when two of the recipients, choreographer Carmen de Lavallade and legendary TV producer Norman Lear, declined to attend a reception at the White House. Trump never appeared at any of the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term. He never came to a single of the thousands of the wide variety of cultural events there, not one. He was not boycotting; he had no interest in theater, music, dance, anything. He is a void.On 12 February, Trump unceremoniously fired its entire board, claimed that the national centerpiece of the performing arts in the capital was “woke” and a “disgrace,” denounced Rubenstein, who does “not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture”, and announced as his replacement “an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” Rubenstein was privately stunned and surprised at his shabby treatment. But Trump cared less for Rubenstein’s diplomatic approach than for acting out his endless drama of victimization and self-promotion.Trump’s interim director inserted at the Kennedy Center, Ric Grenell, a rightwing activist who was universally despised in Germany when he was ambassador there in the first Trump term, declared that to “make the arts great again” the Kennedy Center would stage a biblical pageant about the birth of Jesus. Trump named Melania’s former modeling agent, Paolo Zampolli, to the board. He held forth to an Italian newspaper, Il Foglio, about Zelenskyy: “He should rebuild Gaza with all the money he stole.”Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy was preceded two days, earlier on 26 February, by his first cabinet meeting that rehearsed scenes of belittlement, disparagement and deprecation. It was a sham cabinet meeting without any proper presentations by the secretaries of their departmental work, a scene of collective submission. (I had been present in many cabinet meetings during the Clinton administration, where informative review and discussion were the regular order.) Trump’s meeting was a made-for-TV more-than-hour-long reality show with the cabinet as props, two among the 21 Fox News personalities appointed to administration posts.At his cabinet meeting, Trump began by calling on Scott Turner, the secretary of housing and urban development, the only Black person in his cabinet, a former journeyman professional football player, briefly a far-right Texas state legislator and a motivational speaker. “Thank you God for President Trump,” prayed Turner. “So Scott Turner’s a terrific young guy,” said Trump. Turner is 53 years old. “He is heading up HUD and he’s going to make us all very proud, right?” Turner did not speak again in the meeting.Trump introduced Musk, who took control of the meeting, declaring the country would “go bankrupt” if he were not allowed to destroy the government untrammeled. He stood above the cabinet secretaries, wearing all black, a T-shirt reading “Tech Support”, a black Maga cap, and condescended: “And President Trump has put together, I think, the best cabinet ever, literally.” The questions came from the reporters in the room. The nervous cabinet members sat silently, worried about not one but two overlords. Musk was asked questions about his demand that federal employees justify their work every week and wondered how many “you’re looking to cut, total”. Musk gave no answer. Trump intervened: “We’re bloated, we’re sloppy. We have a lot of people that aren’t doing their job. We have a lot of people that don’t exist. You look at social security as an example. You have so many people in social security where if you believe it, they’re 200 years old.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt the end of the meeting, as the press was led out, Trump jeered, “Thank you. Thank you very much. Pulitzer prize.” JD Vance mocked them with a sarcastic rhetorical question: “Sir, how many peacekeepers are you going to send … ” Trump joined in: “What will you do? How will it be?” Vance continued his mocking merriment. “How will you dress them?” The cabinet members nervously tittered. Vance was the king’s goad and jester. Trump called to one reporter, “Lawrence. Look at Lawrence. This guy’s making a fortune. He never had it so good. He never had it so good. Lawrence, say we did a great job, please. OK? Say it was unbelievable.” The tone for the meeting for Zelenskyy was already on display.That day, Trump banned the traditional press pool chosen by the correspondents that cover the White House. From then on, the pool covering him would be selected by Trump’s press office. The Associated Press and Reuters would continue to be banished altogether for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, following Trump’s order. Those news organizations had failed to meet the threshold of submission.Both Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, one after another, arrived in advance of Zelenskyy to butter up Trump without losing their dignity. They treated him with delicacy as a borderline personality. Yet both corrected Trump’s central falsehood that the US had given $350bn to Ukraine while the Europeans gave loans of $100bn for which they were repaid, when in fact the US expended $120bn, most of which went to US weapons manufacturers, and Europe spent $250bn and had not been repaid a euro. Macron touched Trump’s sleeve as he corrected him. Starmer gestured in that direction but never made the physical contact. Trump was undeterred in lying about it afterward.Starmer presented the coup de grace, a handwritten invitation for a state visit from King Charles III to Donald I, royalty to faux royalty. Trump carefully opened the envelope and held up the letter. “Beautiful man, wonderful man,” he said. But there was trouble brewing in paradise when the vision of another man, Vladimir Putin, crossed his mind. His attitude passed from the ecstasy of Charles’s letter to the agony of “the Russia hoax”. “We had to go through the Russian hoax together,” Trump said. “That was not a good thing. It’s not fair. That was a rigged deal and had nothing to do with Russia. It was a rigged deal with inside the country and they had to put up with that too. They put up with a lot. It wasn’t just us. They had to put up with it with a phoney story that was made up. I’ve known him for a long time now.”Trump’s blurted non sequitur after non sequitur was the beginning of his self-revelatory statements about his relationship with Putin, whose actual nature he has devoted decades to covering up. Trump said he had known Putin for “a long time”. How long he did not say. The “phoney story”, which was a true one about Russia’s extensive efforts to interfere in the US election on Trump’s behalf involving hundreds of contacts between Russian agents and the Trump campaign, was stressful not only for Trump but, according to Trump, also for Putin. They went through the “hoax”, the incomplete investigations, “together”. The Mueller report concluded with a referral of 10 obstructions of justice committed by Trump to block its inquiry, but they were never prosecuted. The Senate intelligence committee report contained a lengthy section on Trump’s sexual escapades in Russia creating “compromising information” that could be used by the Russians and “posing a potential counterintelligence threat”. Babbling away about his sympathy for Putin, Trump did not understand that he was engaging in an oblique confession. “Russia, if you’re listening … ”After Trump was shut out of the New York banks, Donald Trump Jr remarked, in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Trump’s architect Alan Lapidus stated in 2018: “He could not get anybody in the United States to lend him anything. It was all coming out of Russia. His involvement with Russia was deeper than he’s acknowledged.”Trump turned to Deutsche Bank, the only financial institution willing to do business with him. The bank served as a conduit for Russian money-laundering operations and in 2017 was fined $630m by American and British financial regulators for a $10bn scheme. In 2008, the bank sued Trump for non-payment for $40m on a $640m loan, and Trump counter-sued. Contrary to all normal practices, they settled and continued to do business. But after the January 6 insurrection even Deutsche Bank cut ties with him. His debt to the bank was more than $300m.Trump’s plot to switch sides, punish Zelenskyy, ditch the allies and partner with Putin was hatched before Zelenskyy flew to the US grudgingly to sign a deal for raw earth mineral rights in his country. Trump’s initial exorbitant insistence on $500bn may have been a ploy to get Zelenskyy to reject the deal out of hand. No rational leader could agree to such terms. Though the details of the next contract are not publicly known, Zelenskyy’s acceptance and willingness to negotiate might have come as a surprise. Terminating military and intelligence support for Ukraine required a different pretext. If one pretext doesn’t work, another could be contrived, even a flimsy one.After Putin invaded Ukraine, Trump called him a “genius”. He has always admired the Russian strongman as a model. He has been hostile to Zelenskyy personally since Trump’s “perfect phone call” to him in July 2019 to blackmail him into providing false dirt about Joe Biden in exchange for releasing already congressionally authorized missiles: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” Trump’s attempt at coercion led to his first impeachment.On 18 February, Trump launched into a tirade of old Russian talking points, that Zelenskyy was a “dictator”. You never should have started it,” Trump said about the war. And, he added, “I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings.” Zelenskyy’s response that Trump’s remarks were “disinformation” helped set the stage for the meeting on 28 February.The meeting was a wide lens on Trump’s small mind, incapable of grasping any ideas and their practical applications, like alliances, coalitions, national sovereignty or the western world. His ignorance of history is fairly complete. He sees the world like a map of Manhattan real estate that his apologists project as the revival of Great Power politics. He’ll take the West Side Highway development. Putin can get an East River stake. Trump is insistent that Ukraine owes the US money. He sees the country is a vulnerable debtor – “you don’t have the cards.” He may be influenced by his losses and liability stemming from the E Jean Carroll sexual assault and New York state financial fraud cases, where he accrued enormous penalties.Trump once again voiced his identification with Putin. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phoney witch-hunt where they used him and Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia … You ever hear of that deal?”JD Vance triggered the implosion with his charge that Zelenskyy was “disrespectful”. He scolded Zelenskyy for not “thanking the president”. He accused him of bringing observers to Ukraine for “a propaganda tour”. Vance’s demand for “respect” was a knowing self-abasement to awaken Trump to Zelenskyy’s absence of sycophancy. Vance’s ultimatum that Zelenskyy degrade himself revealed his own posture. But Vance is the corrective to Mike Pence, who failed at the critical moment on January 6 (“Hang Mike Pence!”). Vance ingratiated using Zelenskyy to manipulate Trump.Zelenskyy fell into the trap, trying to explain the rudiments of 20th-century history, that the geographic isolation of the US could not protect it. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel,” Trump snapped. “You don’t have the cards right now.” Zelenskyy replied, “I’m not playing cards right now.” Trump repeated a common Russian talking point: “You’re gambling with world war three.” Vance jumped in: “Have you said thank you once?” “A lot of times. Even today,” said Zelenskyy. In fact, he offered thanks six times in the conversation, with a “God bless you”.Trump kept talking about “the cards”. He brought up how he had given Zelenskyy missiles. He clearly wanted Zelenskyy to exonerate him for the high crime of his first impeachment. “You got to be more thankful because let me tell you, you don’t have the cards with us.” And the confrontation wound down. “This is going to be great television. I will say that,” said Trump.So the fate of Ukraine and the western alliance turned on the issue of flattery. Despite Trump’s obliviousness to history, the scene recalled Edward Gibbon’s comment in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The emperors, secure from contradiction, were abandoned to the intoxication of unlimited power, which their flatterers encouraged with the vilest servility.”

    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 More