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      Mitch McConnell Is So Over Trump That He Voted to Absolve Him

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe conversationMitch McConnell Is So Over Trump That He Voted to Absolve HimOn the impeachment front, it was an exciting — if sometimes perplexing — weekend.Gail Collins and Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.Feb. 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Alexander Drago/ReutersBret Stephens: What a wild week, Gail. Should we feel pleased that seven Republican Senators voted to convict Donald Trump of incitement — six more than in the last impeachment — or appalled that the other 43 didn’t?Another way of putting the question is whether the G.O.P.’s cup is 14 percent full or 86 percent empty.Gail Collins: It was certainly an interesting show. It’ll be a long time before I forget Mitch McConnell’s speech about the “outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”It was, by McConnell standards, very passionate. Of course it’d have been a heck of a lot more moving if he hadn’t just voted against any punishment.Bret: The other day I listened to a Malcolm Gladwell podcast on the Yiddish word “chutzpah.” The word has two distinct connotations. In its American usage, it suggests audacity, as in, “It took a lot of chutzpah for her to walk into her boss’s office back in 1962 and demand a raise, but — guess what? — she got it!” In the Israeli sense, it usually means gall and shamelessness, as in, “First the boy murders his parents. Then he pleads for mercy in court because he’s an orphan.”Anyway, McConnell’s speech was chutzpah in the Israeli sense. He wanted to have his outrage and eat it, too. He wanted to ease whatever conscience he has left by denouncing Trump in a way that had no consequences, while using a legal dodge to advance his political interests in the way that really matters. Just pathetic.Gail: Maybe we can call it the McConnell Two-Step.Bret: Or maybe the “Mitch Macarena.” Where is Ted Sorensen when you need him to ghostwrite “Profiles of Invertebrates?” It’s the story of today’s Republican Party and conservative establishment, minus Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Lisa Murkowski and the other brave ones.Gail: But about the G.O.P’s cup — I ought to ask you. Where do you see your party going from here? Engineering a post-Trump turnaround or just sticking to the same brain-dead script that’ll probably force you to vote Democratic again in 2024?Bret: Gail, it isn’t my party any longer, and you’re obviously delighting in the thought of my being forced to vote for Democratic presidential candidates for three election cycles in a row. It might suggest a pattern.Right now I’m working on a longish piece making the case that America needs a Liberal Party, albeit in the European sense of the term. I mean parties that are for free markets, civil liberties and small government, without being hostile to immigration and cultural change.Gail: If that means a three-party system, we’re going to have a lot to fight about.Bret: We should fight more. As for the G.O.P., it’s probably a lost cause. My guess is that Trump’s luster will fade in the party because a lot of Republicans know he’s crazy and are ashamed of what happened on Jan. 6. But Trumpism as the politics of nativism, rage and conspiracy theory is going to be a dominant strain in the G.O.P., especially if Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton or one of the Trump kids is the next nominee.Gail: Eric for president!Credit…Jessica Mcgowan/Getty ImagesBret: To return to Yiddish: Oy vey. Of course there’s Nikki Haley. But after reading Tim Alberta’s long profile of her in Politico, I can’t decide whether she’s crazy like a fox or too clever by half.Gail: What do you think her slogan would be: Served the Trump administration loyally except secretly she always hated him?Bret: From a political standpoint, she’s played her cards pretty astutely. She might be the only potential G.O.P. candidate who can unite the party. She’s smart, charismatic, has a great personal story, did the right thing as governor of South Carolina by getting rid of the Confederate flag from the State House soon after the Charleston church slaughter, and was effective as U.N. ambassador. If she wins the nomination she’d be a formidable challenger to the Democratic nominee, whoever that winds up being.Gail: Wow, Kamala vs. Nikki.Bret: Interesting that Kamala ’24 already seems like a foregone conclusion. Shades of Hillary ’08?Back to Haley. Her dodges and maneuvers are a bit too transparent. And her brand of mainstream Republican conservatism is just out of step for a party that is increasingly out of its mind.Gail: Still, you’ve got me obsessing about an all-female presidential race.Bret: About time.Gail: But back for a minute to the Senate. Do you think they should have called witnesses so the country could have listened to a description of Trump ignoring the real physical danger to Mike Pence and other top Republicans, and defending the rioters when he was begged to call them off?Bret: Not really, no. What more does the country need to know than the evidence the House managers presented? Calling witnesses would have dragged out the trial for weeks on end, forcing us all to watch those despicable Trump lawyers. And we both know it wouldn’t have changed the result.Gail: Yeah, and we really need to get on to Biden’s agenda. There’s a rumor about some kind of pandemic …Bret: Also, the trial introduced the country to some new Democratic stars. Stacey Plaskett deserves an immediate promotion to a big administration job. And Jamie Raskin should be a future contender for attorney general. That he was able to perform with so much grace under pressure, after a terrible family tragedy, made him that much more admirable.Gail: Agreed.Bret: So it’s time for the country to move on. Since I’m grooving on Jewish tropes today, let’s just say, “Trump Came, He Tried to Destroy Us, We Won, Let’s Eat.”Let me switch subjects on you this time. Should Andrew Cuomo be impeached for being, er, highly parsimonious with the truth about the nursing home Covid deaths?Gail: This is Andrew Cuomo. Punishment would be not letting him run for a fourth term in 2022. But New York definitely needs a new crop of executives. Try mentioning Bill de Blasio to a socially distanced friend and watch eyes glaze over from six feet away.Bret: Or, in my case, head exploding. De Blasio is to managerial competence what Yogi Berra was to the syllogism. He’s the guy who redeems the memory of Abe Beame. He makes Trump’s handling of the coronavirus situation seem relatively competent. He’s the nation’s unintentional uniter, bringing everyone from Cuomo to Ted Cruz together into shared contempt.Gail: I thought I was good at complaining about de Blasio, but you win the medal.Bret: I’m keeping fingers crossed that Andrew Yang or some other reasonably competent character can bring the city back from moving further toward 1970s-style insolvency, disorder, crime and decay.Gail: Here’s my last question, Bret. In a couple of weeks it’ll be March. Which won’t change much, pandemic-wise. But as it starts to get warmer, do you think we’ll all start to feel more optimistic? Walking through parks, picnics on the terrace? Our last Trumpian chapter over?Bret: I’m enjoying this continual blanket of snow and wouldn’t mind if it stretched into April. Maybe it will help everyone chill out and calm down. And it’s an excellent excuse for doing as little exercise as possible and binge-watching this French spy thriller, “The Bureau,” that an old friend of mine just got me into.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Nikki Haley Slams Trump’s Election Claims

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Capitol Riot FalloutTracking the ArrestsVisual TimelineInside the SiegeMurder Charges?The Oath KeepersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNikki Haley Slams Trump’s Election Claims: ‘We Shouldn’t Have Followed Him’Although the former United Nations ambassador calibrated her comments, her sharp criticism represented a departure from other Republicans who are believed to be considering running for president in 2024.Nikki R. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, resigned as Donald J. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations at the end of 2018.Credit…Samuel Corum for The New York TimesFeb. 12, 2021Updated 4:36 p.m. ETNikki R. Haley, a former United Nations ambassador under President Donald J. Trump who left the administration without the drama or ill will that marred most of its high-level departures, sharply criticized her former boss in an interview published on Friday, saying that she was “disgusted” by his conduct on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol riot.Ms. Haley, 49, who is widely believed to be considering a run for president in 2024, told Politico she did not believe that the former president would remain a dominant force within the Republican Party or that he would seek office again, arguing that he had “lost any sort of political viability.”“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” Ms. Haley said. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”Ms. Haley’s comments predictably prompted a backlash from Mr. Trump’s loyal base of support, a constituency that most Republican office holders continue to try to appease — and one that she had assiduously tried to avoid offending since leaving his administration at the end of 2018.Before her latest comments became public, Ms. Haley seemed to realize that they would go too far for many Republicans. And it was not long before she bowed to the reality of Mr. Trump’s enduring power within the party. In an interview with Laura Ingraham of Fox News that was broadcast late last month — after Ms. Haley had spoken to Politico but before the article was published — Ms. Haley muted her criticism of the former president considerably.“At some point, I mean, give the man a break,” she said, condemning Democrats for pursuing a second impeachment against him for instigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. “I mean, move on.” She added: “Does he deserve to be impeached? Absolutely not.”But the storming of the Capitol last month, and Mr. Trump’s role in inciting it with repeated, false claims of ballot-rigging in the November election, caused Ms. Haley to reassess her relationship with the former president. Her tone changed markedly between interviews with Politico in December and January. At first, she refused to acknowledge that Mr. Trump was doing anything reckless by refusing to concede. She said that he genuinely believed he had not lost, and she would not acknowledge that his actions since the November election were irresponsible.And she wrongly predicted that Mr. Trump would “go on his way” once he had exhausted his legal options.But after Jan. 6, Ms. Haley told the publication that she had previously urged Mr. Trump to be more “careful” with his words, to no avail.“He went down a path he shouldn’t have,” she said, referring to his deception about the election. “And we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”In that moment, Ms. Haley’s remarks showed that she was willing to entertain a political proposition that most other Republicans with eyes on the White House had not dared to utter publicly: that Mr. Trump’s hold over the G.O.P. base will loosen, and that he will not be the kingmaker many have predicted.However calibrated or qualified, Ms. Haley’s approach is a departure from that of other conservatives who are believed to harbor ambitions for higher office. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who lent credibility to Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims, has refused to acknowledge that his own actions played any role in inciting violence on Jan. 6. And former Vice President Mike Pence has said nothing publicly since being forced to flee the Senate chamber under armed guard as rioters stormed the Capitol, encouraged in part by Mr. Trump’s attacks against the vice president on Twitter for not interfering with the certification of the election.Ms. Haley was especially pointed about Mr. Trump’s treatment of Mr. Pence, sounding almost dismissive of the former president as she expressed her dismay. “Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man,” she said.Some Republicans said that Ms. Haley’s comments were simply acknowledging reality. As a politician who is more comfortable with the establishment wing of the G.O.P., she has not always had the trust of Mr. Trump’s base. And in a crowded 2024 presidential primary, she would face stiff competition for those votes..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1amoy78{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1amoy78{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1amoy78:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1amoy78[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Capitol Riot FalloutFrom Riot to ImpeachmentThe riot inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, followed a rally at which President Trump made an inflammatory speech to his supporters, questioning the results of the election. Here’s a look at what happened and the ongoing fallout:As this video shows, poor planning and a restive crowd encouraged by President Trump set the stage for the riot.A two hour period was crucial to turning the rally into the riot.Several Trump administration officials, including cabinet members Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao, announced that they were stepping down as a result of the riot.Federal prosecutors have charged more than 70 people, including some who appeared in viral photos and videos of the riot. Officials expect to eventually charge hundreds of others.The House voted to impeach the president on charges of “inciting an insurrection” that led to the rampage by his supporters.“You didn’t have to be clairvoyant to see which way Nikki Haley would go once Donald Trump lost,” said Sam Nunberg, a consultant who worked for Mr. Trump. “She was never going to be able to take the Trump mantle.”To other Republicans, her words of regret were too little, too late given her earlier deference toward Mr. Trump. Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has become one of the most outspoken critics of his party since the Capitol attack, accused Ms. Haley of playing “both sides.” On Twitter, he urged her to “Pick Country First or Trump First.”This is not Ms. Haley’s first reversal on Mr. Trump. Like many leaders of her party, she initially opposed him when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2016. At the time, she was the governor of South Carolina, and she endorsed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida ahead of her state’s pivotal primary. Mr. Trump still won, finishing ahead of Mr. Rubio by 10 percentage points.But she redeemed herself in the eyes of many Republican voters by signing on to work in the Trump administration, showing how quickly old slights can be forgiven by the former president and his supporters.Voters may indeed forgive and forget altogether — which is something that critics of Mr. Trump warned would allow Republicans to go unpunished for encouraging him as he undermined faith in American democracy.“When I got into politics, I was told you could get away with a lot because voters have short-term memories,” said Denver Riggleman, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who has been highly critical of his party’s silence as Mr. Trump spread disinformation about the election.“What the Nikki Haleys, Ted Cruzes, Josh Hawleys of the world are relying on,” he added, “is the short-term memory of voters.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Next Trump

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Next TrumpThere is no one quite like him in the Republican Party. So where should we look for the president’s inheritors?Opinion ColumnistJan. 19, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETCredit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesMost Americans want Donald Trump out of sight and out of mind after he leaves office on Wednesday. Most Americans except Republicans, that is.In every recent poll on Trump, Republicans stand apart. Ask whether Trump should remain a “major national figure for years to come,” as the Pew Research Center did in a survey taken just after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and 68 percent of Americans say no, whereas 57 percent of Republicans say yes.Or ask whether Trump should be disqualified from future office. A majority of adults — 56 percent, according to a recent poll conducted for ABC News and The Washington Post — also say yes, whereas 85 percent of Republicans say no.Of course, the reason the Republican rank and file doesn’t think Trump should slink away is because they think he won the election. Among his voters, 75 percent say he received enough votes in enough states to claim victory. For them, there’s no reason Trump should leave the field as a pariah or relinquish his claim on the party itself. It’s no surprise, then, that most Republican officeholders are sticking with the president and that the most loyal among them hope to harness the pro-Trump energy of the base for their own personal ambitions.This dynamic is part of what spurred Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley to amplify the lie that the election was tainted. It’s what kept Mike Pence from turning on the president that made him the target of a deadly mob, and it’s what led Mike Pompeo to turn on his former administration colleague Nikki Haley, for criticizing Trump’s rhetoric since the election.Each of them (to say nothing of the party’s other presidential contenders) all hope to be, in one way or another, the next Trump. The problem for each of them is that this may be impossible.In 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump wasn’t just an unconventional politician with a direct appeal to the prejudiced attitudes of the Republican base, and he wasn’t just a fixture of conservative media and entertainment. He was a bona fide celebrity and household name, with 30 years on the public stage as the embodiment of wealth and luxury. And for more than 10 of those years, he was star of “The Apprentice,” a popular reality television series in which he played the most successful businessman in America, whose approval could turn an ordinary nobody into an extraordinary somebody. His was a persona that rested on the valorization of entrepreneurship and the worship of success.This wasn’t a dour or self-serious performance. Trump wasn’t Ebenezer Scrooge. He was a winking, cheerful vulgarian who knew the show was an act and played along with the viewers. From his cameos on the big screen in films like “Home Alone 2” to his parodic appearances in professional wrestling, he was affable, even charming.It’s hard to overstate how important this was for Trump’s first campaign. If modern American politics is entertainment as much as civics, then Trump was its star performer. And his audience, his supporters, could join in the performance. This is crucial. Trump could say whatever they wanted to hear, and they could take it in as part of the act, something — as one sympathetic observer wrote — to be taken seriously, not literally. Words that might have doomed any other Republican candidate, and which have in the past, meant nothing to the strength of Trump’s campaign.When he finally ran against Hillary Clinton, celebrity helped him appeal to those voters who hated politicians — who sat at the margins of politics, if they participated at all — but could get behind an irreverent figure like Trump. Did he lie? Sure. But the shamelessness of his lies, and his indifference to decorum, was its own kind of truth. Celebrity was his shield and his sword, and his life as a reality television star primed his supporters to see his presidency as a show that would never end.Since the 1990s, the Republican Party has struggled to win a majority of voters nationwide in a presidential election. They’ve done it exactly once, in 2004, with the re-election of George W. Bush. Trump’s path to victory — a minority-vote Electoral College win with high turnout in rural and exurban areas — may be the only one the party has left. As one group of House Republicans said ahead (and in support) of the vote to confirm the results of the 2020 election,If we perpetuate the notion that Congress may disregard certified electoral votes — based solely on its own assessment that one or more states mishandled the presidential election — we will be delegitimizing the very system that led Donald Trump to victory in 2016, and that could provide the only path to victory in 2024.The big question is whether it took a Trump to make 2016 happen in the first place. Given the Republican Party’s struggle to build a national majority, was he the only candidate that could pull off a win? And if so, was his celebrity the X factor that made it possible? The fact that Republicans lost when Trump was not on the ballot is evidence in favor of the case.If celebrity is what it takes, then there’s no Republican politician who can carry Trump’s mantle. No one with his or her hat obviously in the ring — neither Cruz nor Hawley, neither Tom Cotton nor Haley — has the juice. There are the Trump children, of course. But the Trump name doesn’t actually stand for success, and there’s no evidence yet that any of them can make the leap to winning votes for themselves.Perhaps the next Trump, if there is one, will be another celebrity. Someone with a powerful and compelling persona, who traffics in fear and anger and hate. Someone who “triggers the libs” and puts on a show. Someone who already has an audience, who speaks for the Republican base as much as he speaks to them. Republican voters have already put a Fox News viewer into the White House. From there it’s just a short step to electing an actual Fox News personality.What are your hopes for the next four years?It could be a better economy, a personal milestone or an ambitious policy. Tell us what you’re hoping will happen during the Biden administration. We may include your responses in a special feature publishing on Inauguration Day.

      The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More