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      Which Home Alone child star should everyone blame if Trump is re-elected? | Stewart Lee

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      The assassination attempt on Donald Trump last weekend is a tragedy; a tragedy for democracy, a tragedy for America and, above all, a tragedy for the whole world, because it means Donald Trump will be re-elected. And it is a tragedy for Donald Trump, who, whatever one thinks of his politics or his personality, is still a living creature, and as such, like Eamonn Holmes, is capable of suffering.Last week, I had a standup special, Basic Lee, on Sky Comedy, which even came as a surprise to me. I wish someone had shot me last weekend. The resulting publicity might have driven some traffic towards my work. Here’s hoping I’m at least wounded by a gunman while it’s still available to view on the Now streaming service. (Did you see what I did there?)When the free world’s last line of defence against a Trump MacTatorship ™ ® is Joe Biden, we are already doomed. I’m quitting quitting drinking. Stubborn Biden is too selfish to become the focus of a popularity elevating tragedy, preferring instead to let the world burn while he clings to his candidacy, a limpet in linen trousers, sitting there smiling, like something futile made of felt you’d win at a travelling fair.The now inevitable re-election of demagogue Donald, and the implementation of the puritanical Project 2025 agenda by Oliver Dowden’s Heritage Foundation friends, makes a Handmaid’s Tale-style Christian fascist America a certainty, ending not only the shared enlightenment values of the postwar western world, but also the Fifty Shades of Grey women’s erotica franchise. And Trump’s fandom for fossil fuels will hasten the inevitable extinction of all life on Earth, the only positive being that he may yet see his Scottish golf courses reclaimed by rising seas.American liberals and intellectuals with means and money, like Kacey Musgraves and the singer from Tool, must already be considering escape options as the nation begins its descent into the hell of an evangelical religious dictatorship. Trump’s presidency will, however, strengthen ties between Trump and the Clacton constituency of his right-hand man Nigel Farage, which is poised to be bulldozed and made into a private golf course-cum-leisure facility-cum-seaside stolen document storage unit.I’m joking, of course. But the attempted assassination of Trump and its butterfly flap consequences are no joke. Last Saturday, a piece of Trump’s ear was shot away by a gunman. Trump, with a presence of mind Biden might have benefited from when trying to remember the name of the president of Ukraine, struggled to his feet and, in a spirit of peace and reconciliation, shouted: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, energising supporters who three years ago forced entry to the Capitol aiming to lynch Mike Pence, the Hartlepool monkey of American politics.But what if it had been Trump himself who had been shot away, and only Trump’s ear fragment had been saved by security? Could Trump’s meat ear rim itself have been persuaded to run for the presidency? Could Trump’s ear flesh fragment have beaten Biden in a democratic election? Almost certainly. And would an America governed by a small severed slice of Trump’s ear have offered the world a more secure future than an America governed by Trump, or an America governed by Biden? Again, the answer, sadly, is a resounding yes.The American Christian right believes that Trump, despite his obvious moral corruption, is a massive tool of a God bent on shaping America into their own twisted theocracy. Evangelical Christian America believes their selectively myopic deity actually intervened to save Trump from the gunman, while leaving a heroic volunteer firefighter to take the bullet. Blessed are the firefighters. But how much more useful to this morally equivocating God is a simple severed ear, unencumbered by accusations that it tried to overturn an election, or paid an adult film star hush money, or stole classified documents, or sexually assaulted a woman in a department store. The ear would be innocent and pure and good, like Jesus, or the unborn child.And if an ear had, as Trump did, repeatedly socialised with the unsavoury sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his young friends, it is unlikely it would have been able to do anything inappropriate, due to its being an ear. And should the ear be found to have lost the public trust, it could, due to its inability to defend itself or argue its case, be easily dispensed with by the Republicans without too much fuss. Ear today, gone tomorrow.Imagining different ways the Trump shooting might have played out raises deep ethical questions. Philosophers call this concept “killing baby Hitler”. Would it be ethical for someone to travel back from the future and kill Hitler in his cot in order to prevent the second world war? And would it be ethical to travel back in time and carry out an attack on Trump that ensured future government by Trump’s ear alone? Of course not. And the idea of replacing Trump himself with Trump’s own ear is, at this stage, neither ear nor there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRather than risking the future on the policymaking of Trump’s unpredictable ear, the precise political leanings of which remain ill-defined at best, would it be better to go further back in time and stop the rise of Trump sooner? Perhaps, when he encountered Trump in Home Alone 2, Macaulay Culkin could have comforted the troubled billionaire with the same innocent friendship he gave to the sad dancer Michael Jackson, on the proviso that Trump abandon political ambition. But Macaulay Culkin didn’t do that. And now we all suffer for his selfishness. Macaulay Culkin has blood on his astonished infant face. Stewart Lee’s Basic Lee is on the streaming service Now. He is previewing 40 minutes of new material in Stewart Lee Introduces Legends of Indie at the Lexington, London, in August with Connie Planque (12), Swansea Sound (13) and David Lance Callahan (14)

      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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      in US Politics

      Films, fashion, law,d politics: George and Amal Clooney’s growing global reach

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      It took a famous TV doctor to diagnose the patient. After two weeks of turmoil in the US Democratic party over President Biden’s re-election bid, it was ER’s Doug Ross, AKA George Clooney, who wrote up a devastating evaluation of the incumbent president.The 63-year-old actor was not in theatrical mode when he wrote a more-in-sorrow letter published by the New York Times last week that called on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race that the White House reportedly begged him not to submit, coming three weeks after Clooney helped raise $30m for the Biden-Harris ticket at a lavish Hollywood fundraiser.But Clooney’s bedside manner was impeccable: “I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice-president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him,” he wrote. “But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can.”Clooney was speaking for ­himself – and for a large swathe of liberal-leaning Hollywood donors angry at what they see as White House deception over the apparent decline of Biden’s health. Clooney said the man at the fundraiser “was the same man we all witnessed” in his debate performance two weeks later.In the current spirit of panic and recrimination, with a White House press corps turning every Biden appearance into a test of competence, Democrat money bundlers, including co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign and movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, are under suspicion of helping to cover up Biden’s apparent health issues.Clooney’s letter has put the Ocean’s Eleven actor out of political harm’s way. The Democratic party may not be so lucky. Democrats, says James Carville, the Clinton strategist who last week called for a blitz primary to select a new candidate, “are hellbent on a mission to force the American people to do something they don’t want to do – to vote for Joe Biden”.“George has come out, [former house speaker] Nancy Pelosi has come out – I don’t know what else people can do,” Carville told the Observer. “Other than a few people in Congress, everybody thinks this is a terrible idea [for Biden to run]. But you’re up against a guy who doesn’t want to leave, and that’s just where we are.”View image in fullscreenGeorge Clooney is not the only Clooney making waves on a global stage. Last month his wife Amal Clooney was revealed to have played an important role in making the case for arrest warrants to be issued by the international criminal court (ICC) to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defence minister Yoav Gallant and three top Hamas leaders.Biden called the ICC move “outrageous” and said that whatever the ICC prosecutor might imply, “there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas”. According to the Washington Post, George Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, counsellor to the US president, to protest about the administration’s willingness to impose sanctions in which his wife could get caught.This week, the Biden-Harris campaign attempted to blame Clooney’s letter on “pre-existing tensions” – hinting at the ICC dust-up. A Hollywood producer familiar with the couple told the Observer that the White House’s explanation for the letter was “bullshit” and the lawyer had been smeared because her work is on human rights irrespective of political division.“George has power in Hollywood. Amal doesn’t, except as George’s wife,” they added. “Her power is in the UK, at the Hague and on the pages of Vogue.”The lawyer has not commented on her husband’s political intervention, which may have come with Barack Obama’s tacit approval. But after 10 years together, George and Amal Clooney are seen as one of the most stable couples in Hollywood.View image in fullscreenThey’d met at the actor’s home in Lake Como, Italy, when a mutual friend brought her by. Clooney’s agent had also got wind of the ­introduction, the actor later revealed. “My agent said: ‘I met this woman who is coming to your house, who you’re going to marry.’ It really worked out that way.”“It felt like the most natural thing in the world,” Amal said. “I always hoped there could be love that was overwhelming and didn’t require any weighing or decision-making.”A safari in Kenya to see giraffes sealed the deal. In 2014 he proposed, they married in Venice and now have twins.The political instinct which had surfaced in Clooney films including Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) and The Ides of March (2011), soon took flight. By 2016 the couple were meeting with then-German chancellor Angela Merkel to talk refugee policy; that year they were at a UN refugee summit and soon after established the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which focuses on legal rights for those targeted by oppressive governments, tracking the money of human rights abusers and those profiting from war crimes.“We’re both inspired by the young people out there challenging injustice in their communities, a new generation that won’t accept the status quo,” the actor said in an awards acceptance speech two years ago.But Clooney’s intervention comes with potential costs. The Bidens, like the Clintons and Obamas, may see themselves as benefiting from rubbing shoulders with celebrities, but the intersection of entertainment and politics, and the money and ideologies that underpin it, is repulsive to many outside political-entertainment enclaves. In an echo of Trump, Biden now says the rising chorus against him is coming from members of “the elites”, despite the bad timing of first lady Dr Jill Biden appearing on the cover of the August US Vogue.The tradition of celebrity-political endorsements goes back to Frank Sinatra, who organised his friends, the Rat Pack, to campaign for John F Kennedy. Two decades later, disagreements over Ronald Reagan forced celebrities to choose where they belonged.“That’s where we are still,” explains veteran Democrat strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Celebrities see themselves as an important part of the Democratic fundraising and thought-based operation, which a lot of Americans would not agree with.”View image in fullscreenSheinkopf says that the fight over Biden’s future is as much about the future of the Democratic party as it is about Biden’s health – and Clooney’s intervention will make Maga Republicans fight harder for candidate Trump.“Democrats are the party of the elites despite the fact that they see themselves as the party of the non-elites,” he says. Regardless of who is writing the cheques – Hollywood celebrities or a rightwing Texas industrialist – “what all elites want is a party that does what they want because they think it’s right”.“But that’s not who Joe Biden is. He represents the old pro-union, almost colour-blind left, but that’s not who the operators behind the scenes are,” he adds.Peter Bart, previous editor of the Hollywood trade bible Variety, wrote in a Deadline column that he had “great respect for Clooney’s decision” but it was also one that “will cost him”.He recalled other Hollywood stars who had mixed politics with entertainment, including Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston and John Wayne. “Apart from potential career damage, Clooney must confront donors who have spent millions at his ­urging to support a ticket he now renounces,” Bart, 91, warned.He recalled a conversation he’d had with Ronald Reagan about Nixon. “I want people to like me, even voters who vote against me,” Reagan told him. “Nixon doesn’t seem to care, but I’m still an actor.”Still, Clooney’s intervention has set him up for criticism. The progressive left and African-American voters, both voting blocs Biden is courting to firm up his support, slammed the actor for taking a position afforded him by being famous, white and male.Others have implied that perspectives are different from the window seat of a Gulfstream jet flying between homes in Los Angeles, England, France and Italy. (Besides being a successful actor, known for pranking friends, Clooney and partner Rande Gerber, husband of Cindy Crawford, split up to $1bn from the sale of their tequila brand Casamigos.)Clooney has been criticised, too, from the other side. Trump weighed in, saying Clooney “turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are”, and some have questioned why Clooney, and Hollywood more broadly, waited until after the debate to disclose what they had witnessed at the fundraiser.Still, the New York Times letter establishes the Kentucky-born actor as a modern-day Warren Beatty, the actor who made his political beliefs part of his public image. Beatty never ran for office and quipped it would be “more like running for crucifixion”, nor has Clooney, allowing both to ride over the humdrum day-to-day of retail politics.“George’s op-ed was provocative, well done, but voters don’t want this anyway: 73% of the voting public say they want something different,” says Carville. “They’re not asking for anything difficult – just a different nominee. We’re in a crisis.” More

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      in US Politics

      Will Biden’s loss of celebrity support make a real difference?

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      The last two US presidential election cycles haven’t been especially notable in the already-marginal world of celebrity endorsements. Both 2016 and 2020 pitted a well-established Democrat with heavy ties to previous administrations against a fringe-gone-mainstream Republican candidate whose own previous occupation was as a celebrity, and not a particularly hip one. So it wasn’t surprising to see an even more dramatic divide between mainstream celebs endorsing the Democrat (or saying nothing more controversial than a bland “vote!”) and a bunch of C- and-D-listers stumping for Trump, as they might any number of faulty late-night infomercial products.This might well have gone similarly in 2024, if not for Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate a few weeks ago. Now a less lopsided divide has formed as a form of anti-endorsement has come in: celebrities who have called upon Joe Biden to step aside from the presidential race and let a younger candidate attempt to take the Democrats across the finish line.At first, it was an interestingly eclectic group, notable for aligning the likes of Michael Moore – who isn’t exactly the core constituency for a career politician fixated on bipartisan cooperation in the first place – with the likes of classic limousine liberals like Rob Reiner and Stephen King. This suggested some real traction to the idea that Biden should drop out, but was still largely limited to figures who seem a bit more likely to hop on social media and fire off some opinions. More writers than actors, in other words; same goes for figures with mock-pundit experience, like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. So there was particular headline-news grabbiness when George Clooney – who recently attended a Biden fundraiser – wrote a New York Times op-ed saluting the man’s service and integrity while also arguing that it was time for Joe to go. It may be the most talked-about celeb endorsement (or anti-endorsement) since Taylor Swift came out for Biden (and, probably more importantly, against Trump) shortly before the 2020 election. It even prompted a Biden response, with the president claiming – somewhat nonsensically – that Clooney, only being at the fundraiser he referred to for a brief period, couldn’t have gotten a proper impression of the president’s acuity.View image in fullscreenThough he doesn’t give off the glamour of his former running mate Barack Obama, Biden has long been able to claim some degree of default and/or anti-Trump A-list support: Julia Roberts attended the same fundraiser as Clooney earlier this year, while Robert De Niro, an outspoken critic of fellow New Yorker Trump, narrated a campaign ad, though this seems likely to stem from De Niro’s genuine – and, frankly, delightful! – seething hatred for Trump more than some personal allegiance to Biden. (In the meantime, who has been one of Trump’s biggest boosters on Insta? You guessed it: Frank Stallone.) Dwayne Johnson, who long identified as some manner of Republican, endorsed Biden late in the 2020 race. Earlier this year, though, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t be endorsing any candidates for 2024, Biden apparently not having done enough to help change the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe.It would be easy to see a shift like that as evidence of eroding support for Biden, and it probably is; having a major star specifically say, months and months before the election, that they don’t endorse either candidate (implying that this is unlikely to change), when it would be easy enough to simply say nothing or bide his time, feels unusual – just as it’s unusual for another major star to write an op-ed suggesting that a presidential candidate from his party must step down for the good of the country. But it’s also a sign of how micro-targeted a celebrity niche has become – maybe by force – in the social media era, where even silence has begun to seem like a tacit statement, rather than PR-managed decorum. Biden’s once-solid base of A-listers still skews on the older side, reflecting a time when endorsing a candidate felt at once simpler and less conspicuous. That’s true, too, of celebrities who have called for Biden to drop out: Michael Douglas and John Cusack are big names, but they’re sure not south of 50. Younger celebrities, mirroring younger demographics in general, may not be especially impressed with Biden’s handling of Israel and attendant failure to stop the bloodshed – which means they may not have been endorsing him to begin with.Of course, there’s a certain tempest-in-a-designer-teapot quality to tracking the whims of celebrity endorsements, which at least some of the general public probably views with skepticism – those clueless stars and their pet causes! George Clooney isn’t casting his vote in a swing state – or, for that matter, against Joe Biden, if it comes down to it. Biden could even argue that the shifting tastes of celebrities don’t interest him, as he’s maintained the image of a folksy, get-it-done underdog for much of his political career, even after ascending to the vice-presidency. Courting celebrity? Isn’t that a Trumpian hunger to begin with? Yet big celebrities can help with big-donor fundraising – and smaller ones arguably have bigger platforms than ever before. (John Cusack movies may not bring a million-plus people to the box office in a weekend, if they’re even released theatrically at all. But that’s his social-media audience.)From Hollywood’s love of Obama to Trump’s resurgence beginning on NBC to the sheer number of meme-based campaign posts, celebrity and politics have become more entwined than ever. Biden may not need celebrities to win, or for his sense of worth. But he does need actual support, and Clooney’s op-ed helped make him seem more like a cause than a candidate. More

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      George Clooney implores Biden to step aside in opinion article

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      The Hollywood actor George Clooney, one of the Democratic party’s biggest fundraisers, has called on Joe Biden to step aside to save democracy from Donald Trump.In an opinion article in the New York Times, Clooney expressed deep affection for the US president but said that personal interaction with him at a recent fundraising event in Los Angeles – the Democratic party’s most successful ever, raising more than $30m – suggested that the stumbling performance in last month’s debate in Atlanta was not an aberration.“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” the actor and longtime Democratic party member and fundraiser wrote.“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.“Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw,” he said, referring to explanations from the White House and Biden himself for his bad debate performance.More bluntly, he said explicitly that Biden could not prevail in an electoral rematch with Trump: “We are not going to win with this president.”Stressing that his call was made reluctantly, Clooney paid tribute to the political battles that Biden had won throughout his career but said his age represented an insurmountable adversary.“But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,” he wrote.Clooney’s plea came as Biden continues to insist on staying in the race while senior Democrats agonise about how to apply pressure on him to change his mind, and serious questions continue over Biden’s health and viability for re-election.The actor called on leading party figures to come off the fence and make the case to Biden, while dismissing as “disingenuous” the president’s argument – stated in a letter to Democrats in Congress this week – that the party’s membership had already chosen the nominee in the primaries.‘Most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks,” he wrote in remarks clearly critical of continuing inaction. “But the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe concluded: “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.”Clooney’s intervention comes weeks after a disagreement with the White House over Biden’s criticism of the international criminal court’s move to issue an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.The actor’s wife, Amal Alamuddin Clooney, worked on the case. Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, the president’s counsel, to complain about Biden’s labeling the warrant as “outrageous”.Warrants were being sought for the arrest of Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, and three leaders of Hamas, which controls Gaza.Shortly afterwards, however, Clooney appeared at a huge fundraising event in Los Angeles for the campaign, which headlined with Biden and Barack Obama. More

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      in Elections

      Publisher of debunked voter-fraud film apologizes to falsely accused man

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      The publisher of 2000 Mules issued a statement Friday apologizing to a Georgia man who was shown in the film and falsely accused of ballot fraud during the 2020 election.The widely debunked film includes surveillance video showing Mark Andrews, his face blurred, putting five ballots in a drop box in Lawrenceville, an Atlanta suburb, as a voiceover by the conservative pundit and film-maker Dinesh D’Souza says: “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.”Salem Media Group said in the statement that it had “removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem”.“It was never our intent that the publication of the 2000 Mules film and book would harm Mr Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr Andrews’ image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr Andrews and his family,” the statement said.A state investigation found that Andrews was dropping off ballots for himself, his wife and their three adult children, who all lived at the same address. That is legal in Georgia, and an investigator said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by Andrews.The film uses research from True the Vote, a Texas-based non-profit, and suggests that ballot “mules” aligned with Democrats were paid to illegally collect and deliver ballots in Georgia and four other closely watched states. An Associated Press analysis found that it is based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data.Salem said it “relied on representations by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc (‘TTV’) that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr Andrews, illegally deposited ballots”.Lawyers for D’Souza and True the Vote did not immediately respond to emails Friday afternoon seeking comment on Salem’s statement.Andrews filed a federal lawsuit in October 2022 against D’Souza, True the Vote and Salem. The case continues, and representatives for Salem and for Andrews’ legal team did not immediately respond to emails asking whether the statement came as a result of the lawsuit. More

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      Abigail Disney evokes Old Yeller in plea to reject Republicans after Kristi Noem kills dog

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      Evoking the classic Disney tearjerker Old Yeller, in which a family is forced to put down their beloved dog, the US film-maker and campaigner Abigail Disney exhorted voters to oppose the Republican party of Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor whose story of killing Cricket, a 14-month-old dog, shocked the world and seemingly dynamited her hopes of being Donald Trump’s running mate.“My great-uncle Walt Disney knew the magic place animals have in the hearts of families everywhere,” Disney wrote in an email released by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) and obtained exclusively by the Guardian.“When he released Old Yeller, the heart wrenching story stayed with people because no one takes the killing of a family pet lightly.“At least that’s what I thought until I read about potential Trump VP Kristi Noem shooting her family’s puppy – a story that has shocked so many of us.”Noem describes the day she killed Cricket (and an unnamed goat) in No Going Back, a campaign memoir published this week but first reported late last month by the Guardian.Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, met her fate in a gravel pit because Noem deemed her “untrainable” after she disrupted a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens. The goat, which had not been castrated, was deemed too aggressive and smelly and a danger to Noem’s children. By the governor’s own admission, it took two blasts with a shotgun to finish the goat off.Noem has repeatedly defended her story as indicative of her willingness to do unpleasant but necessary things in life as well as politics. Nonetheless, she has reportedly slipped way down Donald Trump’s list of possible vice-presidential picks, should the presumptive Republican nominee avoid prison on any of 88 criminal charges and should he beat Biden in November.Two weeks after the Guardian report, shock and revulsion over Noem’s story continues to ring throughout the US. This week, amid a string of uncomfortable interviews even on usually friendly rightwing networks, also questioning an untrue claim to have met the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, the governor cut short a promotional tour for her book.In her email in support of the PCCC, Disney said: “Walt Disney also understood story telling. Together, we must make sure all voters see how this sad Kristi Noem episode is part of the larger story of the 2024 election: America could vote into the White House extremists that glorify cruelty and lack basic empathy and compassion.”View image in fullscreenAsking readers to post pictures of beloved pets and the hashtag #UnleashTheVote, Disney also promoted a petition against “Trump and extreme Republicans who lack the character to lead our nation”.Old Yeller, which the Guardian called “one of the best and most poignant boy-and-his dog movies”, was released in 1957. It tells the story of a family in Texas in 1869 that adopts a large yellow dog.Disney said: “In Old Yeller, the family comes to see the lovable stray dog as an indispensable member of the family. The film’s climactic moment is a heartbreaking one, when the father has no choice but to shoot Old Yeller when the dog contracts rabies because of the inevitable threat to their lives – and, out of compassion, to end the suffering the dog would have to endure.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Noem shot her family’s 14-month-old puppy after a hunting trip, in her own account, because she was too hard to teach. ‘I hated that dog,’ she wrote, framing the killing of a puppy as an example of strength.“Kristi Noem is not strong. Like Trump, she is cruel and selfish.”Listing positions taken by Trump and supporters like Noem, Disney said: “If Kristi Noem was actually strong, she would stand up to the January 6 insurrectionists instead of celebrating them. Or she would make billionaires pay their fair share of taxes instead of lining up for their campaign donations.“If she had real courage, she might even criticise the supreme court for abolishing abortion rights or making it easier to flood our streets and schools with guns.“True strength is not demonstrated through harshness, brutality, or callous indifference, but through steadfast kindness and compassion. Our pets teach most of us this lesson every day through their loyalty and unconditional love.“Let’s make sure Americans demand leaders who do the same when it comes time to vote.” More

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      Civil War is a terrifying film, but Trump: The Sequel will be a real-life horror show | Simon Tisdall

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      Director, cast and critics all agree: Civil War, the movie depicting America tearing itself to bloody bits while a cowardly, authoritarian president skulks in the White House, is not about Donald Trump. But it is, really.Likewise, the first ever criminal trial of a US president, now playing to huge audiences in New York, is ostensibly about claims that Trump fraudulently bought the silence of a former porn star called Stormy after a tacky Lake Tahoe tryst. But it isn’t, really.Both movie and trial are about a Trump second term. They’re about sex, lies and Access Hollywood videotape, about trust and betrayal, truth and division. They’re about democracy in America, where political feuds and vendettas swirl, guns proliferate and debates over civil rights are neither civil nor right.Alex Garland’s smash-hit “post-ideological” dystopian nightmare and the Manhattan courthouse peak-time showdown are both ultimately about the same things: the uses and abuses of power, about a nation’s journey to extremes where, as in Moby’s song, it falls apart.Talking of disintegration, what a diminished figure Trump now cuts in court. Slouched, round-shouldered and silenced alongside his lawyers, he acts up, sulky, aggrieved, childishly petulant. The room is cold, he whinges. Potential jurors rudely insult him to his face! It’s all so unfair.Trump never did dignified, not even in the Oval Office. Yet even by his tawdry standards, this daily demeaning before an unbending judge is irretrievably, publicly humiliating. The loss of face and sustaining swagger begin to look terminal. For Trump the alleged criminal conspirator, as opposed to Trump the presidential comeback king, the familiar campaign cry of “Four More Years!” has a disturbing ring. Four years in chokey is what he faces if found guilty on 34 felony charges.It’s no coincidence, so Trump camp followers believe, that Civil War premiered in election year. No surprise, either, that a Democratic district attorney pushed for the trial. Or that latest polling by the “liberal media” suggests Trump is losing ground to Joe Biden.Despite all that, the Make America Great Again screenplay is unchanging. Trump’s blockbuster second march on Washington is merely on pause, Maga-men say. He’s making an epic sequel and he’ll be back in November with all guns blazing – which is the problem, in a nutshell.If you doubt it, just look at Pennsylvania. Even as the defendant, dozy and defiant by turns, snoozed in court and slandered witnesses on social media, this same presumed 2024 Republican champion was effortlessly sweeping last week’s party primary with 83% of the vote.View image in fullscreenThere’s no real-world contradiction here. A grumpy Trump scowling at the bench and a Civil War-like wannabe dictator hot for White House power and glory are united in one unlovely, vicious personage. Two sides of the same bent cent. The list of Trump’s crimes for which he has yet to be tried extends far beyond the New York indictment and the charge sheets in three other pending cases. Like Tom Ripley, the sociopathic narcissist anti-hero of Netflix’s popular TV mini-series, Trump is violently dangerous beyond all knowing.The lethal 6 January insurrection he incited and applauded was stark treason against the republic. No argument. The racist relativism of Charlottesville in 2017 foreshadowed recent, unrepentant talk of “poisoning the blood of our country”. His corrosive words burn like acid through the social fabric. No Civil War paramilitary crazy could wish for more than Trump’s eager feeding of America’s gun addiction, support for domestic execution and assassination overseas, collaboration with murderous dictators, debasement of the supreme court and hostility to open government, free speech and impartial reporting.No Ripley-style conman or fraudster could hope to emulate the master criminal’s arm-twisting of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden’s son, Hunter, his political protection rackets and shameless nepotism, his suborning of his party, Congress and the legal system or his rich man’s contempt for the ordinary Joe who actually pays taxes.A prospective second Trump term presages obsessive score-settling at home and abject appeasement abroad. Judges, law officers, witnesses, female accusers, military men, diplomats, academics and critical media may be among the early victims of a national revenge tragedy – a personalised purge of the institutions of state that could prove fatal to democracy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s fawning obsequiousness towards Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and vendetta against Kyiv’s leadership, spell disaster for Ukraine. Nor can there be much confidence, for all his bluster, that he would stand up to China should it invade Taiwan.Prepare, too, for a likely European rupture and trade war, a Nato split and an unravelling of 75 years of transatlantic collaboration. Prepare for an out-of-control global arms race, unchecked nuclear weapons proliferation on Earth and in space and the wholesale abandonment of climate crisis goals. A Trump success in November, with all the ensuing chaos, schism and constitutional outrages, would bring closer both an end to peaceful, rational debate within America and the demise of US global leadership.So truly, is Civil War so very far off the mark? Is it really not about Trump and Trumpism? It’s certainly more comforting to frame the movie as an entertainment, to interpret its studied avoidance of direct references to present-day politics as reassurance that, at heart, it’s essentially make-believe. But that denialist view is itself a type of escapism or wishful thinking. It won’t silence the guns.In one untypical, symbolic scene, the war-weary photojournalist played by Kirsten Dunst, all body armour and pursed lips, tries on a pretty dress in a downtown store insulated from the fighting. It is as if she, like America, is trying, fleetingly, to recover her humanity.It’s unclear whether she succeeds. More hopeful moments like that, and a good deal less trumpery, are badly needed now. Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs Commentator
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      ‘Demolishing democracy’: how much danger does Christian nationalism pose?

      by

      Bad Faith, a new documentary on the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States, opens with an obvious, ominous scene – the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021 – though trained on details drowned out by the deluge of horror and easily recognizable images of chaos. That Paula White, Donald Trump’s faith adviser, led the Save America rally in a prayer to overturn the results for “a free and fair election”. That mixed among Trump flags, American flags and militia symbols were numerous banners with Christian crosses; on the steps of the Capitol, a “JESUS SAVES” sign blares mere feet from “Lock Them UP!”The movement to overturn the 2020 election for Donald Trump was, as the documentary underscores, inextricable from a certain strain of belief in America as a fundamentally Christian nation, separation of church and state be damned. In fact, as Bad Faith argues, Christian nationalism – a political movement to shape the United States according a certain interpretation of evangelical Christianity, by vote or, more recently, by coercion – was the “galvanizing force” behind the attempted hijacking of the democratic process three years ago.Bad Faith traces the origins of the movement as a savvy, disproportionately powerful political force, from churches to Republican political operatives to donors, either from conviction or convenience. “I think a lot of Americans have a very difficult time accepting and understanding the fact that such treason, such anti-democratic activity, could be carried out by people who basically look like Sunday school teachers,” Stephen Ujlaki, the film’s director, told the Guardian. By looking back on the half-century of Christian nationalist belief, organizing and action, the events of January 6 no longer seemed shocking, but the logical endpoint of anti-democratic ideals. “It was unmistakable, once you looked in the right place and you listened to what people were saying, and you understood how to decode what they were saying,” said Ujlaki. “Little would you know that when they talk about recreating the kingdom of God on earth, they weren’t talking about something spiritual. They were talking about demolishing democracy so that God, ie themselves, could rule. And for that reason, I call it a conspiracy carried out in broad daylight.”Though Christian nationalists are quick to invoke the founding fathers, whom they claim were directed by a Christian God, the conspiracy has its modern origins in the 1970s, when the Republican political organizer Paul Weyrich began uniting evangelical parishioners and televangelist preachers like Jerry Falwell with Republican party politics opposing desegregation, via a political action group called the Moral Majority. It’s not that evangelical Christians weren’t political – as the film, narrated by Peter Coyote, points out, the idea of America as a white Christian nation undergirded the Ku Klux Klan, which at its peak in 1924 claimed 8 million members, the vast majority of whom were white evangelicals, including 40,000 ministers.Accordingly, the crucial tie between white evangelicals and the Republican party came not from the 1972 ruling in Roe v Wade, as is often misattributed, but from opposition to a different ruling preventing racially segregated institutions – including schools and churches – from claiming charitable, tax-exempt status. The ruling brought segregated church leaders such as Falwell in alignment with Republican operatives like Weyrich, who cannily realized that emotional arguments against abortion would drive more grassroots support than openly racist talk against desegregation.Bad Faith highlights Christian nationalism’s “origins in the racism, and the segregation mentality, and you can draw a straight line from that to gerrymandering and voter suppression,” said Anne Nelson, a film participant and author of Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. Christian nationalist supporters, she added, were “very skillful at … framing and branding and messaging, that makes something like voter suppression look like electoral integrity. And they do this time after time, on every front”.The film juxtaposes the decades-long roots of the movement with its evolving principles: that America was founded as a Christian nation, for and by Christians; that maintaining such a state is a divinely sanctioned, righteous fight; that anti-democratic or violent tactics should be employed in the name of God. And in recent years, that Donald Trump – a thrice-married, profligate cheater with too many character scandals to name – is, if not a true “Christian”, a divinely sanctioned “King Cyrus” figure sent to disrupt the secular order. “The divisiveness and the distrust of institutions that we’re seeing today was part of a plan,” said Ujlaki. “It was a result of an actual plan, successfully executed to get to this point. And once the institutions are weakened and people have lost faith in elections, there’s room for the strongman to come in.”View image in fullscreenIn addition to political experts contextualizing the growth and funding of Christian nationalism, Ujlaki also enlisted several prominent, faithful Christians to dispute another of the movement’s prominent myths: that it’s a true distillation of Christian teachings. “It is absolutely not Christian. It is anti-Christian,” said Ujlaki. He quoted the theologian Russell Moore, who calls the movement “heresy” in the film, as well as the Rev William Barber II, whose faith leads him to advocate for wealth redistribution, racial equality and social justice: “They may have their Trump, but they don’t have their Jesus.”“They don’t care about the actual Jesus,” said Ujlaki. That’s underscored by the money trail, followed by Nelson and others, which leads to several non-evangelical donors – the Koch brothers and more – who nevertheless benefit from the movement’s weakening of institutions and drive to the far right, as with the Tea Party movement in 2010. “They’re in bed together, based on economic principles, not theology,” said Nelson.And yet theology continues to drive an anti-democratic movement, for which January 6 was not a disaster but a starting point. Bad Faith ends with a note about Project 2025, announced in December 2023 by the Heritage Foundation. The 900-page document builds on Weyrich’s Conservative Manifesto and recommends, among other things: placing all independent government agencies, including the FBI and Department of Justice, under direct presidential control; purging government employees considered “disloyal” to the president; and deploying the military against American citizens under the Insurrection Act.Some of the recommendations sound far-fetched and extreme, but if Bad Faith has one point, it is to take Christian nationalism as a serious threat to democracy. “These people are not stupid,” said Nelson. “They’re incredibly strategic. They’re extremely good at organization, and they have a very, very long attention span. If they set out an objective, they will give it 40 years to play out, they will build organizations, they will go into electoral districts not a month before the election, but two years before the election, organizing voters.”In Nelson’s view, major media organizations misunderstood this in the run-up to January 6. “They look at these events as independent grassroots eruptions, like the Tea Party,” she said. “And they’re actually fully integrated as a strategy with massive coordinated funding and implementation. If you don’t see that, you miss the story.”
      Bad Faith is now available to rent digitally in the US with a UK date to be announced More