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      Trump’s return to rally stage met with prayers, excitement and confusion over JD Vance

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      “He was spared by the hand of God!” a man wrapped in a flag chanted as he walked past a line of people snaking outside the 12,000-seat Van Andel Arena in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan.The display prompted a smattering of loud cries of “USA! USA!” but the general tone of the packed-in crowd who had gathered to see Donald Trump’s first rally since a would-be assassin opened fire on him at a campaign event in Pennsylvania a week ago was more laid-back.Indeed, despite the roiling impact of the shooting on US politics over the past week, it felt like back to business-as-usual for the Trump campaign road show.Joe Attard, a worker at a factory that makes sheds, made the drive from Southgate, Michigan, to Grand Rapids hoping to catch a glimpse of Trump, who was appearing in the crucial battleground state after being formally anointed as the Republican presidential candidate and hitting the campaign trail with his new running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance.“There’s a real feeling of community here, everybody in the same mind,” Attard said. “It’s a great feeling.” Other than a lone man across the barricades holding a “Deport Trump” sign, Attard seemed to be right. There were few people around without some kind of Trump-branded apparel.Perhaps in keeping with a party that has fully unified around Trump after the shocking attempt on his life, most people seemed excited to be at the rally. A man in an army baseball cap pointed people towards the ADA-accessible line. People waved and cheered for the Secret Service officers and mounted police patrolling the street.Standing in line, Isaiah White, a 25-year-old from Hudsonville, Michigan, said he was “very excited” for another chance to see Trump. The last time Trump came to Van Andel Arena, White got in line too late and had to watch on the Jumbotron outside the venue.Betsy Gatchell Goff, who came to Van Andel Arena from her hometown of Benton Harbor, Michigan, said she thought Trump was “a unifying figure for our country”. Gatchell Goff hoped that with Trump back in office, “we’ll have a president who does more than sleep all day”, a disparaging reference to Joe Biden.But there was also a strain of bitter sentiment among the crowd. “Trump won” and “Unvaxxed and Proud” were two of the most common slogans on T-shirts, hats and flags.The mood around last Saturday’s assassination attempt was surprisingly nonchalant among attendees. Indeed, as has happened with Trump’s campaign, the imagery and fact of the attack had been exploited for gain. A vendor on the corner sold shirts sporting a bloodstained Trump, fist raised, with the caption: “Missed me, motherfucker.”Attard was glad to see Trump back on the campaign trail so soon after an attempt on his life. “It shows the world that he’s strong,” Attard said.Among the elected officials present, the tone was more reverent. As the event opener, a local Michigan representative gave a prayer that thanked God for “graciously sparing President Trump”.Security, on the other hand, was fully alert. Secret Service and TSA agents, including at least one K-9 unit, motioned people through metal detectors, while legions of staffers in crisp polos emblazoned with “Team Trump” ushered people to their seats.There was serious political red meat from some speakers. Michigan Republican party chair Pete Hoekstra took the stage to open the event and called governor Gretchen Whitmer the “worst governor in the United States”. Anti-Whitmer sentiment was widespread, with people throughout the event calling her “Witless”, “Witchmer” or “Whitler”.The state of Michigan politics was a prominent theme. Bill Huizenga, the US representative for Michigan’s fourth district, said Trump was in Grand Rapids to show the world how “the blue wall” of midwestern states was “going to crumble like a cookie”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Grand Rapids rally was the first since JD Vance was announced as Trump’s running mate. The Ohio senator seemed to be a bit of an unknown quantity among rally attendees.“I’ll support him because Trump supports him,” Betsy Gatchell Goff said. Isaiah White admitted: “Honestly, I had to Wikipedia him, but he seems all right.”The tone shifted once Vance appeared. The new vice-presidential candidate opened with a joke about the Ohio-Michigan football rivalry and followed it up with challenging Vice-President Kamala Harris’s record, saying: “What the hell have you got?,” prompting the loudest cheers of the afternoon.But much of the tone was the usual politics-as-entertainment fare that is a hallmark of Trump rallies. Even in the wake of an attempted assassination, Trump’s rally struck a celebratory tone in this extraordinary American election.As the crowd filtered in, Macho Man by the Village People and Born Free by Kid Rock alternated with La Vie enRose by Édith Piaf. A sizzle reel from the Trump campaign lit up the arena, then launched straight into a dramatized victimhood narrative.“The only crime I’ve committed is to fiercely defend this country,” Trump’s voice boomed in the accompanying voiceover. At the line: “When I’m re-elected, I will obliterate the deep state!,” the crowd erupted into cheers and whistles. In a later promotional video, a union worker said: “Fuck you” to a reporter when asked about Joe Biden’s policies.At this, people throughout the crowd broke into laughter. More

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      Trump to hold first public campaign event since assassination attempt

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      Republican nominee Donald Trump will hold his first public campaign rally since a shocking assassination attempt a week ago by appearing in a crucial rust belt battleground state alongside his new running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance.The return to the campaign trail by Trump comes after the attempted killing of the former US president at a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire, injuring Trump and others and killing one rally-goer.The shooting roiled American politics, ratcheting up the tension in a race already fueled by fears over rising political violence and the prospect of civil unrest. It also dominated the past week’s Republican national convention in Milwaukee from which Trump emerged at the head of a remarkably unified and energized campaign.Tonight’s joint rally with Vance is the first for the pair since they officially became the nominees. Trump kicked off the gathering of Republicans by naming Vance as his vice-presidential pick.Michigan is one of the crucial swing states expected to determine the outcome of the presidential election. Trump narrowly won the state by just more than 10,000 votes in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden flipped it back in 2020, winning by a margin of 154,000 votes on his way to the presidency.“Welcome to Michigan, Donald Trump and JD Vance,” the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, said in an Instagram post on Saturday, and outlined “three things you should know about our great state.“Here, we protect reproductive freedom. We’re not interested in your national abortion ban. Two, we find ways to put money back in Michiganders pockets … and three, we’re a proud union state and UAW workers still remember when Donald Trump broke his promises to Michigan workers … and Michigan is going to reject your extreme Project 2025 agenda.”With Vance by his side, Trump will deliver remarks in Grand Rapids, a historically Republican stronghold that has trended increasingly blue in recent elections.Whitmer’s caustic welcome was seen as polling indicates she would beat Trump by 1% in the key swing state if she were to become the Democratic presidential nominee, but trails the former president by almost 4% nationally in a hypothetical general election matchup.Trump’s choice of Vance was seen as a move to gain support among so-called rust belt voters in places such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio who helped Trump notch his surprise 2016 victory.Vance specifically mentioned those places during his acceptance speech at the Republican national convention, stressing his roots growing up poor in small-town Ohio and pledging not to forget working-class people whose “jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocrats have dominated recent elections in Michigan, but Republicans now see an opening in the state as Democrats are increasingly divided about whether Biden should drop out of the race.Biden has insisted he is not dropping out, and has attempted to turn the focus back towards Trump, saying on Friday that Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican national convention showcased a “dark vision for the future”.In polls over the last week, Trump has often extended his narrow lead over Biden, though the race overall remains close. Trump, however, is continuing to perform strongly in the crucial battleground states that are vital for victory. His campaign also insists that the contest is broadening to bring in some states – such as Virginia – that Democrats previously considered safe.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Pity US voters their choice of leaders. Surely democracy is better than this? | Simon Tisdall

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      What a shambles! What a shame! With less than four months to go, America’s presidential race, global democracy’s showpiece event, has boiled down to a choice between a crook, a codger, a cheerleader and a charlatan. Four folks who, for varying reasons, are barely fit.Voters deserve better. Or perhaps, by applauding and rewarding bad behaviour, they really don’t. Friends and allies look on aghast. Chinese and Russian online election trolls sneer with delight. No worries, guys. The US is busy screwing itself.First, the psychopath mansplaining atop the Republican ticket. The word, by definition, denotes a personality characterised by impaired empathy and remorse, narcissism, superficial charm, manipulativeness, dishonesty and an outward appearance of normality. Sound about right? Yup. Except it’s worse than ever. At 78, his chronic condition is deteriorating rapidly.Sanctimonious, sentimental, self-pitying, vicious, ignorant – addressing the Republican convention, Donald Trump showed he hasn’t changed a bit. Yet now, unbelievably, this sleazy liar, convicted felon and wannabe dictator, this serial sexual abuser, faux-Christian and closet racist reckons he holds the moral high ground. And all because some poor fool took a shot, elevating him to martyr status.The Pennsylvania assassination attempt was the perfect advertisement for Trump’s favourite role of victim-saviour. He is persecuted. He suffers for you. Now he’s born again. Trump likened his recent New York court tribulations to Jesus in the wilderness. And he claimed God helped him dodge the killer bullet. Joe Biden’s earlier, inept appeal to place “a bull’s eye” on Trump’s back inadvertently fortified the fable.Trump’s disciples raised their arms in salute. “The devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back on his feet and he roared!” proclaimed lackey senator Tim Scott, mangling metaphors. Divine intervention had saved Trump – in order that he save America.Trump’s unprepossessing son, Donald Jr, claims the near-death experience has fundamentally altered his pa. Baloney. American lions don’t change their spots, as Scott might say.Trump, sensing electoral advantage in a new, insincere guise of national unifier, will exploit the notion ruthlessly. Yet, if re-elected, all bets are off. Revenge and score-settling will be prioritised as before, alongside the hard-right, democracy-shattering Project 2025 agenda.Trump is sick. But so too, sadly, is America’s other main presidential contender, in different ways. Biden has an illness to which those exercising great power often succumb: a delusional belief in his own indispensability. Only he can beat Trump, he insists. It’s nonsense, of course. Biden may be the only Democrat who can’t beat him. Reports suggest the old stager may be finally recognising that reality.Hubris, vanity, pride and a first lady living life vicariously: all influenced Biden’s stubborn hanging on. Now he has Covid again. Of all these ills, old age is the most unforgiving. There’s no fighting the clock. And politically, at 81, Biden’s game is up. Latest polling suggests two-thirds of Democrats think he should quit. About 70% of all voters doubt his mental capacity to lead for another four years. Time to go, Joe.Panicky squawking in the Democratic henhouse is barely contained at this point. There is no agreed party mechanism to remove an incumbent, nor for replacing one. Former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have mostly kept their heads down, muttering off-mike. They never really rated Biden. Yet he turned out a better president than either. Do they secretly hope he crashes and burns? Like age and pride, envy and legacy also poison the well.The unfitness of Trump and Biden throws a sharper spotlight on their understudies. So who’s next in line? Kamala Harris, vice-president since 2021, is on Democratic pole. But familiarity has not translated into popularity. Her favourability rating averages minus 15 points. While she notionally fares better than Biden against Trump in some swing states, her claim to the crown is unpersuasive.Harris, 59, is unfairly criticised, perhaps because she is the first female vice-president – a California liberal with black and Asian American roots. She’s led on issues such as abortion, climate, education and voting rights. But opponents dismiss her as a lightweight White House cheerleader who failed in her main task of repelling border illegals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAttacks on Harris notably increased at the Republican convention – a pre-emptive strike strategy, hedging against a Biden departure. But it’s unclear who among more than half a dozen potential Democratic candidates might get the nod. Names like California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg are tossed around like racecourse betting tickets. If the call comes, Harris will need to toughen up and wise up fast – or risk being shouldered aside.Intriguingly, the same fate could befall Trump one day, given his telling choice of the unpleasantly hard-right, white nationalist-populist senator JD Vance as running mate. Despite his privileged background and wealth, Trump portrays himself, against all evidence, as a champion of the working man. Vance, in contrast, is arguably the real thing, warts and all – a self-styled hillbilly throwback with a chip on his shoulder the size of Ohio.Vance, 39, is the least-known member of 2024’s electoral quadrumvirate. A shameless opportunist, his fiercely stated loyalty to Trump, whom he once compared to Hitler, looks confected and expedient. He’s already casting himself as the Maga heir apparent. How long before he usurps the throne? No one knows what he truly believes, except perhaps his wife, Usha, the brains behind the drone.Vance’s extremist, intolerant views on abortion, immigration, isolationism and protectionism, plus his inflammatory, divisive rhetoric, typify America’s hugely self-destructive 2024 election. The choice on offer ranges from the sick and dangerous to the crudely rabid or banal. Democracy is better than this. Four months remain to rescue America – or else it ends in tears. Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs CommentatorDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      Is there anything that JD Vance actually believes? | Moira Donegan

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      How many faces does JD Vance have? For one thing, he looks a lot different these days. Around the time the election denier first ran for Senate in Ohio, in 2022, he grew a beard, perhaps to cover up his decidedly childlike countenance. As rumors swirled this summer that Donald Trump would choose Vance as his running mate – replacing Mike Pence, who left the vice-presidency after a mob of angry Trump supporters tried to hang him – some wondered if maybe Vance would shave. Trump, it seems, doesn’t like beards, and prefers his underlings clean-shaven. And JD Vance is – has always been – willing to do just about anything to secure the approval of the powerful.According to historian Gabriel Winant, Vance has spent much of his life clinging to a series of mentors, whom he has used for professional advancement before moving on from – and, ultimately, betraying. There was his grandmother, or “Meemaw”, the hardscrabble woman who raised him in rural Ohio – but whom he depicted as ignorant and ultimately culturally pathological in his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. There was his Yale Law School mentor Amy Chua, the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and wife of Jed Rubenfeld, who was suspended from Yale Law after an investigation found that he sexually harassed his students. (Chua also mentored Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, whom she helped secure a clerkship with Brett Kavanaugh.) But Vance left this center-right Yale Law milieu for Silicon Valley, where he made his fortune as a venture capitalist under the tutelage (and with the funding) of the far-right techo-libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, who would later go on to bankroll Vance’s Senate campaign. Thiel seems to have introduced Vance to his other mentor, the reactionary “neo-monarchist” and favorite intellectual of the Silicon Valley right, Curtis Yarvin.But he pushed aside these old mentors for Donald Trump, whose endorsement he sought with near-slavish sycophancy in his 2022 race. He did this despite having once characterized Trump as “cultural heroin”, “a total fraud”, “reprehensible”, “a moral disaster” and “America’s Hitler”. Vance made those statements back when it suited his ambitions to be critical of Trump: after the release of his book, just before the election in 2016, Vance had been hailed as a “Trump whisperer”, translating the then candidate’s supporters in terms that were palatable for coastal liberal elites. But it does not suit him to be anti-Trump anymore. Now it suits him to be the running mate for “America’s Hitler”.Is there anything JD Vance really believes? He is not a consistent man, but he has embraced a virulent, creepy and inventive sexism that appears too irrepressible to be insincere. Vance is a prolific demeaner of women. He supports a national abortion ban and has opposed rape and incest exceptions, calling rape “an inconvenience” and insisting that abortions should not be allowed in such circumstances because “two wrongs don’t make a right”. In a bizarre episode, he characterized a national abortion ban as necessary to prevent “George Soros” from flying “Black women” to California for abortions.The VP pick of the twice-divorced Trump also opposes no-fault divorce, which allows women to leave unhappy marriages without having to prove abuse in court. Though to be clear, he doesn’t think women should leave abusive men, either. He characterized the ending of marriages that were “maybe even violent” as selfish frivolity: “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” Vance said. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”An adamant “pro-natalist”, Vance has an abiding and obsessive contempt for childless adults, especially women. Blaming the “childless left” for a host of political and cultural problems, Vance has proposed extending extra votes to people with children, so as to dilute the political representation of those without them. He has demeaned non-breeding women as “childless cat ladies”.For those women who do have children, Vance seems to think that they should be confined to the home: he has characterized childcare subsidies – which allow mothers of young children to earn money, obtain professional experience or education, and preserve their independence – as “class war against normal people”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNormal, I guess, is relative. Who counts? Certainly not everyone. Vance’s droolingly misogynist pro-natalism has shaded, as such positions always do, into an endorsement of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which posits that the “elites” Vance so often rails against are trying to replace white “real” Americans with a compliant underclass of immigrants. “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves,” Vance told the 2019 National Conservatism Conference. “That should bother us.” He did not define “us” or “our people”, and he did not elaborate on what he meant by “replacement”. But Vance, though he is craven and dishonest, is not a dumb guy. He did not use those words by accident.Does Vance really believe in the passionately, obsessively sexist things he says? I think he probably does. But it might not matter: what will matter – what has always mattered to Vance – is not what he believes, but what he finds expedient. Vance has already tried to distance himself from his extreme position on abortion, wiping his call to “End Abortion” from his website and delivering mealy-mouthed statements to reporters about his desire for a “national standard” – a phrase that is meant to confuse, since he doesn’t specify what he wants a national standard of. To ask what JD Vance really believes is a bit like staring into a black hole: there is an unknowable blankness behind his tiny, tight blue eyes. What it is certain that Vance has is ambition – ruthless, insatiable and unburdened by principle. Other people believe in ideals, moral principles, right and wrong. The only thing we can say for sure that JD Vance believes is that he, personally, should have as much power as possible.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      How JD Vance’s path to being Trump’s VP pick wound through Silicon Valley

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      When JD Vance was a student at Yale Law School in 2011, he attended a talk featuring Peter Thiel, the conservative tech billionaire. Although Vance didn’t know Thiel at the time, over the next decade he would become Thiel’s employee, friend and the recipient of his largesse. Thiel’s millions paved the way for Vance to become a senator.Thiel’s talk was “the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School”, Vance would write in a 2020 essay for The Lamp, a Catholic magazine. In Vance’s telling, Thiel’s talk of the failures of elite institutions and belief in Christianity made him reconsider his own faith and immediately make plans for a career outside of law – one that wound through the worlds of tech and venture capital before politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Vance is best known for the hardscrabble origin story he laid out in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, in the years following his graduation from Yale he developed extensive ties with Silicon Valley’s investors and elites. His time as a venture capitalist, coupled with his status as a rags-to-riches media fixture, helped him make connections central to his political rise, as well as garner him influential supporters that pushed Trump to make him his vice presidential pick.Following a brief period of work in corporate law after he graduated Yale, Vance moved to San Francisco and got a job at Thiel’s Mithril Capital venture firm in 2015. After Hillbilly Elegy became a bestseller in 2016 and brought him to national prominence, Vance joined the venture capital firm Revolution, founded by the former AOL CEO Steve Case.Vance remained a part of the tech VC world after returning to Ohio and leaving Revolution in early 2020. He received financial backing from Thiel to co-found the venture firm Narya Capital – which, like Thiel’s enterprises, was named after an object from The Lord of The Rings, this time a ring of power made for elves. Other prominent investors in Narya included Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO,and Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist, who announced his own support for Trump this past week. The stated goal of Vance’s firm was to invest in early-stage startups in cities that Silicon Valley tended to overlook.Narya Capital in 2021 led a group of conservative investors, including Thiel, to put money into Rumble, the video streaming platform that positions itself as a less-moderated and more rightwing friendly version of YouTube. Vance’s co-founder at Narya, Colin Greenspon, touted the investment as a challenge to big tech’s hold on online services – a frequent conservative talking point during the backlash to content moderation around the pandemic and 2020 presidential election. It was also around this time that Thiel, who heavily backed Trump financially during the 2016 campaign, brought Vance to first talk with Trump during a secretive meeting at Mar-a-Lago in February of 2021, according to the New York Times.Vance’s long association with Thiel also proved lucrative during his run for senator in 2022. Thiel put a staggering $15m into Vance’s campaign and, according to the Washington Post, helped court Trump’s endorsement, leading to Vance winning a tightly contested Republican primary race and then the senate election.Although Thiel has pledged in recent years to stay out of donations to the 2024 election, Vance has since flexed his other Silicon Valley connections to ingratiate himself to Trump. The Ohio senator introduced David Sacks, a prominent venture capitalist, to Donald Trump Jr in March, the New York Times reported, and attended Sacks’ pro-Trump fundraiser in June, co-sponsored by Chamath Palihapitiya, Sacks’ co-host on the popular podcast All In. The event, which cost as much as $300,000 to attend, was held at Sacks’s San Francisco mansion and featured the investor thanking Vance for his help making the fundraiser happen. During an informal conversation at the dinner, Sacks and Palihapitiya told Trump to nominate Vance as his VP choice.Sacks spoke at the Republican national convention Monday. In the days prior, he had also called Trump to advocate for Vance as the VP pick, as had Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, the ex-Fox News host, according to Axios. Thiel also expressed his support for Vance in private calls with Trump, the New York Times reported. When Trump confirmed Vance would be his running mate, Sacks and Musk posted fawning celebrations on Twitter – with Musk saying the ticket “resounds with victory”.Many of Vance’s wealthy tech elite and venture capitalist supporters now appear to be preparing to offer even more tangible support. Investors including Musk, Andreessen and Thiel’s co-founder in Palantir, Joe Lonsdale, are all reportedly planning to donate huge sums of money to back the Trump and Vance campaign. More

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      Digested week: the nice blond lady from England delivers | Emma Brockes

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      MondayTo the Republican national convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, where a longstanding tradition of British journalists interviewing Americans in a style euphemistically known as “irreverent” continues to deliver results.A recent hit in this particular genre: Andrew Neil interviewing Ben Shapiro, the rightwing American commentator, by repeatedly barking: “What’s your answer?”, giving him withering looks over his specs, and parrying Shapiro’s incredulous meltdown – “I frankly don’t give a damn what you think of me given I’ve never heard of you” – with the cheerful retort: “I’d never heard of you!”The latest addition to the canon comes this week from the RNC in Wisconsin courtesy of Kari Lake, a former TV anchor and Republican candidate for senator in Arizona, who sat down with Emily Maitlis with the innocence of a babysitter in the opening scenes of a horror movie. Lake, who has previously identified as a Democrat and an independent and now supports Trump, starts to twig something is wrong at around the 40-second mark, and truly, it’s a beautiful thing to see.“The tone [of political discourse] is really disturbing when the media is calling a man like Donald Trump ‘Hitler’,” says Lake, deftly deflecting a softball opener from Maitlis and seemingly unaware of the house about to fall on her head.“Like JD Vance did, you mean,” says Maitlis, leaning slightly forward and wearing her guileless-as-a-fawn face, at which British viewers jump behind the sofa and Lake looks momentarily confused. It’s all downhill from there as the slow, terrible realisation dawns on Lake that this nice blond lady from England, despite all her encouraging nods and “yeps”, is in fact her worst nightmare.By the end of the interview, Maitlis is asking: “Do Republicans need to lie … because you don’t believe you can win at the ballot box?” and Lake has been transported to a place of such incandescent rage she can only respond: “You’re just a sad case of a human being and I feel sorry for you,” and: “I actually think you need your head examined.” To which, smooth as oil and in the best Paxonian tradition, Maitlis replies: “Kari Lake: thank you very much.”View image in fullscreenTuesdayNot enough sympathy has been extended to the real victim of JD Vance’s ascent to public life, Amy Adams, whose career took a meteor-sized hit in 2020 thanks to her appearance in Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy, the movie adaptation of Vance’s bestselling memoir of 2016.As Vance’s voice rings across the US this week after becoming Trump’s pick to be vice-president, spare a thought for Adams, who can never shake off the visual memory many of us have of her as Bev, Vance’s rackety mother, chain-smoking in dungarees while Glenn Close staggers about in the background like a cross between Catherine Tate’s Nan and an Appalachian Deirdre Barlow.Hillbilly Elegy, and Vance himself, unpacking his backstory at the RNC this week, tell the heartwarming tale of a boy’s rise from poverty and despair to the world of Yale law school, a job in venture capital, and eventually the sunny uplands of radicalised ultra-right opinion, including the one Vance shared in 2021 – that staying in a violent marriage is a better option than divorce. That we must suffer Vance daily in the news is bad enough. That America’s sweetheart has somehow been dragged into all this is, on top of everything else, frankly intolerable.WednesdayA politician who puts her money where her mouth is: Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, who alongside the president of the Paris Olympic committee and several unhappy-looking political aides who’ve been vacuum-packed into wetsuits, jumped in the Seine this week to prove to dithering Olympians that it’s not full of poo.Observing the scene from the river bank, ranks of Parisiens milled about using various Gallic expressions to communicate scepticism. “I don’t like the colour of the water,” remarked one woman to the New York Times, triggering a response in the mayor’s office that can only be guessed at. Helpfully, she added: “I hope she doesn’t get spots tomorrow.”Nine days before the Olympics opens, Hidalgo’s press stunt was an effort to calm fears among international athletes that the river is too polluted for use during outdoor swimming events and, to that end, she laughed and joked, open-mouthed, in the water. Although, notably, I see she took care to get in rather carefully feet first.ThursdayBillie Eilish is rapidly losing goodwill among young fans by sticking exorbitant ticket prices on her six-night gig at the O2 in London. According to the Daily Mail this week, sales of seats starting at £250, or £145 for standing, have been so sluggish that much of the arena’s 20,000 capacity remains empty.This is, surely, the inflationary ripple effect of Taylor Swift and Madonna’s recent world tours, for which tickets exchanged hands for thousands of dollars and fans flew around the world to attend multiple dates. Earlier this year, in an apparent reference to the Swift’s Eras tour, Eilish referred to the notion of doing a three-hour show as “literally psychotic” and now faces the experience of playing to a semi-full stadium.View image in fullscreenFridayIn a straight contest between the summer heat of New York and the (usual) summer rain of the UK, there are years when I’d have taken the heat every time. This year is different. After weeks of temperatures feeling as though they are pushing up towards 100F (37.7C), a cold summer sounds like heaven. At 7.45am, I left my house to run a 10-minute errand and by the time I got back, I looked as if I’d been through a car wash. Shivering around the barbecue has never sounded so good. More

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      ‘Make Trump Human Again’ seems to emerge as Republicans’ new theme

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      Even before Donald Trump takes the stage at the Republican national convention on Thursday night, promising a speech on national unity rather than the usual partisan rancour, his team has laboured hard in the wake of the rally shooting to give the impression that he is a changed man.Gone was the Trump of “this American carnage”, the victim of witch-hunts who, if returned to the White House, would unleash a whirlwind of retribution on his enemies and be a dictator on day one. In its place was Trump the candy-peddling grandfather, the kiss-me-goodnight father, the comforting mentor and patriotic healer.It was as if the official theme of the week, Make America Great Again, had been hurriedly replaced by a new slogan: Make Trump Human Again.Kai Trump, the former US president’s 17-year-old granddaughter, helped set the tone. In a convention address on Wednesday she shared her big secret about the 78-year-old Republican nominee.“To me, he’s just a normal grandpa. He gives us candy and soda when our parents are not looking.”The theme of a “caring and loving” Trump – Kai’s words – was reminiscent of the narrative that has long been projected by Joe Biden, who presents his candidacy as a choice for dignity, respect and civility. It was as if the Trump team had adopted Biden’s playbook as empathiser-in-chief.The approach was picked up by Trump’s newly-enshrined vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance. The Ohio senator and author of Hillbilly Elegy told the convention audience that he had recently witnessed Trump tell his elder sons Don Jr and Eric that he loved them, kissing them both on the cheek as he said goodnight.His boys “squirmed the same way my four-year-old does when his daddy tries to give him a kiss on the cheek”, Vance said.Outside the immediate family, Trump’s political family passed the baton around in earlier speeches at the convention. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican governor of Arkansas, not only portrayed Trump’s close shave in Pennsylvania on Saturday as an intervention from “God Almighty”, she also portrayed him as a champion of women’s rights as though E Jean Carroll and Stormy Daniels had never existed.Sanders went on to laud Trump as an avuncular mentor, comforting her when she was his much-maligned White House press secretary. She recalled harsh criticism she had endured from members of the public and from journalists, especially at MSNBC.The then sitting president pulled her aside, she said, “looked me in the eye, and said: ‘Sarah, you’re smart, you’re beautiful, you’re tough, and they attack you because you’re good at your job’”.“That’s the Donald Trump I know,” Sanders added.Whether Trump can sustain the new soft-soap image presented of him in Milwaukee this week remains to be seen. He is certainly trying to cement the Maga makeover.According to Axios, he specifically instructed aides to direct prime-time convention speakers to avoid expressions of outrage in their response to Saturday’s shooting. Instead, national unity has been the name of the game.Numerous speakers linked Trump’s fist-raised pose having survived the gunman’s bullet to his newly cast image as a unifier. “He can stand defiant against an assassin one moment and call for national healing the next,” the vice-presidential nominee said glowingly.In the past eight years, America has become accustomed to various adjectives attached to Trump. They include “strong”, “patriotic” and “great”; and “incompetent”, “racist” and “narcissistic” – take your pick.What neither supporters nor detractors have tended up until now to connect to him is the word “moral”.And yet Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the US House, chose just that word on the convention stage to describe a convicted felon. “President Trump will bring back moral leadership to the White House,” she said.The new look Trump, and the political strategy that appears to undergird it, has required considerable sacrifice on the part of some of his peers. We will probably have to await Ron DeSantis’s memoir to know the emotional price paid by the Florida governor when he praised the man who had derided him as “Ron DeSanctimonious” and a “disloyal dog”.We can similarly only conjecture what paroxysms Nikki Haley went through to give her “strong endorsement” to the man who mocked her husband for being absent while deployed to Africa with the national guard, and who butchered her birth name Nimarata, scathingly calling her “Nimbra”. More

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      Trump’s pick of JD Vance is a clear signal: this is a fight over America’s identity | Steve Phillips

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      Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate is a clear and unmistakable message that Republicans are waging a holy war over the very identity of this nation. In choosing the Ohio senator, the former US president has selected and elevated a person who is one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders and whose primary qualification for national leadership is articulating the grievances of white people unhappy with the country’s changing racial composition.Rather than even pretend to reach out to the less rabid Republicans who backed Nikki Haley in the primaries or attempt to win greater support among Latinos by choosing Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, Trump has simply doubled down on his crusade to make America white again.Traditionally, vice-presidential selections aim to broaden the party’s appeal by signaling a commitment to a specific constituency or sector of the electorate. Barack Obama selected Joe Biden in 2008 to racially balance the ticket and reassure white voters that he’d have a veteran, moderate, white male political leader at his side. Biden, in turn, chose a younger woman of color to run with him to inspire and acknowledge the critical importance of women and people of color to the Democratic coalition.Trump had the opportunity to make a similar, more traditional, move. In many ways, Rubio would have been the smart pick; he’d have been the first person of color on a Republican ticket, and could plausibly have tried to appeal to Latinos and peel off some support from that cornerstone of the Democratic coalition. Others in the Republican party wanted Trump to calm the fears of the more moderate voters who had backed Haley over Trump’s bombast and division.But, true to form, Trump rejected all that counsel and went with the cultural warrior, Trump critic turned sycophant Vance.By any measure, Vance – who has no prior political experience and has only been a senator for 17 months – is grossly unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, but that is not surprising given that Trump himself is arguably the least qualified person to ever occupy the Oval Office. Vance’s primary qualification is his ability to articulate the anguish of white working-class Americans. Through his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy and his rhetoric as a candidate and now senator, Vance has done little else of note in his life than complain about how America is no longer a white-dominated country, a fact that has been painful and disorienting and hard to accept for a considerable number of white people.What perhaps poses one of the greatest dangers to this country is that Vance, like Trump, has already proven that he is committed to aggressively hacking away at the fraying social fabric that binds this nation together. Most alarmingly, Vance has said that if he had been vice-president on 6 January 2021, he would have done what Trump wanted and blocked electors from states that voted for Biden. Vance has raised money for insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the elected government of the United States and who sought to block the certification of an election in which all 50 governors – Republican and Democratic alike – certified results that showed Biden won the presidency.Vance’s contempt for democracy and democratic institutions was on full display as well in the immediate hours after the Trump rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, last Saturday. Before anyone even knew who the shooter was, Vance was tweeting that Biden was to blame.Electorally, the implication of Vance’s selection is that it locks into place the contours, dynamics and stakes of the election.The journalist and analyst Ron Brownstein presaged this reality 12 years ago when he described modern American politics as a battle between two constellations of people, which he called the Coalition of Restoration and the Coalition of Transformation.Democrats, he observed, “are now operating with a largely coherent Coalition of Transformation that will allow (and even pressure) them to align more unreservedly with the big cultural and demographic forces remaking America”. Conversely, Obama’s 2012 re-election “clearly stamped the Republicans as a Coalition of Restoration, overwhelmingly dependent on the votes of whites unsettled by those changes”.In my books, I describe these groupings as the New American Majority and the Modern-Day Confederates, but the concepts are the same, and the implications for contemporary elections are far-reaching and under-appreciated.In each successive presidential election since Obama was elected, all that has really mattered is which coalition of voters the nominee is championing, AKA What Side Are You On?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat dynamic will play out again this fall, as Trump has simply doubled down on trying to rally his Coalition of Restoration to turn out in large numbers. The good news for Democrats is that the Coalition of Transformation is larger than the Coalition of Restoration. Republicans know this in their bones and in their spreadsheets, and that is why they are relentlessly focused on voter suppression, introducing nearly 800 different pieces of legislation designed to make it harder to vote, according to Ari Berman’s book Give Us the Ballot and the Brennan Center’s 2021 analysis.Census data and election results over the past 40 years further affirm the fact that the Coalition of Transformation is larger. With the sole exception of 2004, the Democratic nominee for president has won the popular vote in every single presidential election since 1992. The logical result of one party rooting its politics in appeals to white racial fears and resentment is that the other party gets the majority of support from people of color.In a country where nearly half of the residents are people of color (41%) the Republican party remains overwhelmingly monochromatic; according to a Pew Research analysis, 83% of Republican voters are white. Conversely, 72% of people of color supported Biden in 2020, and no Democratic nominee has ever received less than 83% of the African American vote since the advent of exit polling in 1976.By picking Vance, the Republicans show they are not going to try to broaden their coalition: they’re just going to go harder with their shrinking coalition and focus on getting their supporters to the polls. Democrats need to have similar clarity and focus, and devote their resources and energy to maximizing voter turnout from now until election day. If they can do that, they will win – and JD Vance’s voice, and Trump’s, will remain far from the White House.

      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More