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    Chain, chain, chain: political theatre confirms Elon Musk’s Maga hero status at jubilant CPAC

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    What do you give the man who has everything? A ballroom full of cheering conservative activists found out this week when Elon Musk was presented with a chainsaw by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has used the power tool as a symbol of his push to impose fiscal discipline.Wearing sunglasses, a black Maga baseball cap and a gold necklace, Musk giddily wielded the chainsaw up and down the stage. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he declared. Members of the audience shouted: “We love you!” Musk replied: “I love you guys, too!” And he quipped: “I am become meme.”It was a wild political theatre that confirmed Musk’s status as a new hero of the Maga movement. The head of Tesla and SpaceX had been fully embraced by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), long a window on the soul of the Republican party and, in recent years, a purity test among Donald Trump’s support base.This year’s conference at National Harbor in Maryland was a four-day celebration not only of Trump’s return to the White House but the rise of global rightwing populism. Emboldened, exultant and convinced that their momentum is unstoppable, speakers put less emphasis than usual on baiting liberals and more on spreading the Maga gospel around the world.Attendees were united in praise for the shock-and-awe approach of Trump’s first month in office, which JD Vance described as “a hell of a lot of fun”. Brett Hawkes, 69, from Rockville, Maryland, hailed the “blitzkrieg”; Christopher Cultraro, 19, from Easton, Pennsylvania, called it “phenomenal”; Adelbert Walker, 72, from Petersburg, Virginia, said: “He’s keeping his promises. He’s going about his agenda at warp speed.”View image in fullscreenThe enthusiasm extended to Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, which has slashed the federal government and fired thousands of workers in ways that have been challenged in the courts.Musk, the world’s richest man, who has blocked food and medicine for the world’s poorest people by gutting the agency responsible for delivering US aid, told CPAC: “We’re trying to get good things done, but also, like, you know, have a good time doing it and, you know, and have, like, a sense of humour.”Republicans including Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary; Pam Bondi, the attorney general; Mike Johnson, the House of Representatives speaker; Rick Scott, the Florida senator; and Eric Schmitt, the Missouri senator all took the stage to heap praise on Musk and Doge.Rightwing figures from overseas got in on the act. Britain’s Nigel Farage called Musk a “hero of free speech” and lauded the “amazing Doge project” a month after the tech billionaire suggested that Farage should stand down as leader of the Reform UK party.Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, indicated that Musk is now part of the Maga brand when she declared: “We want a Trump revolution in Britain. We want to flood the zone. We want Elon and his nerd-army of Musk rats examining the British deep state.”View image in fullscreenBut across America, there are already stirrings of a backlash against Musk’s “nerd army” of mostly young male engineers with no government experience. Members of Congress were this week confronted by raucous town halls in which citizens complained about Doge’s chaotic, indiscriminate and illegal tactics.Some 71% of people agree that the very wealthy have too much influence on the White House, according to a Reuters/ Ipsos survey, while 58% are concerned that programmes such as social security retirement payments and student aid could be delayed by Musk’s campaign.CPAC attendee Ashlie Hightower, who lives in northern Virginia, acknowledged that workers there are suffering the consequences of Musk’s cuts. She said: “Many people have been affected because it’s a huge area that mostly works for government or has some connection to government. I understand that and it might be painful at first.”Even so, Hightower approves of Doge’s actions, saying: “What they have discovered is that we can actually get out of debt if we rein in some of this nonsense spending. Right now they’ve found it’s equal to about 20 or 30% of our GDP. It incredible. I feel rejuvenated.”Others joined in the plaudits for Musk. Matthew Kochman, 76, a property broker from New York, said: “He’s a genius. What’s wrong with that? He could put people on Mars and the federal government is so effed up it’s not funny. He can do nothing but help. If you find $1 of waste, you’re doing a good thing. If you find $500bn, how can anybody possibly find fault with that unless you’re a moron?”Kochman, who drives a vehicle that he calls a “Trumpmobile”, is equally impressed by the president, saying: “He’s going Trump speed, as they say, and he’s not going to waste any time. He’s doing everything that he promised to do and he’s following the agenda to try and bring the country back from chaos and failure.”One big beast of CPAC is more ambivalent about South African-born Musk, however. Steve Bannon, a rightwing populist and former Trump adviser, regards Musk’s oligarch status and pro-immigration views with deep suspicion. He told the conservative website UnHerd: “Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiment and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, tradition or values.”But in his CPAC speech, Bannon welcomed Doge’s assault on the administrative state and even dubbed Musk “Superman”. And on Friday, a long queue of people waiting to take selfies with Bannon included plenty of Musk admirers content to square that circle.Michael Stearns, 30, who works at a golf course near Nashville, Tennessee, was wearing a Nasa sweater and said: “I’m a big Steve Bannon fan. I love that guy. One of my heroes. I support Elon Musk and I Iove Doge. He’s doing the right thing cutting out all the waste and abuse. I support both guys.”Bannon, meanwhile, became embroiled in controversy of his own. As he called on the audience to “fight, fight, fight”, he briefly held out a stiff arm in what appeared to be a fascist salute reminiscent of one made by Musk on inauguration day. In response, France’s far-right leader, Jordan Bardella, cancelled his CPAC appearance because “one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology”.View image in fullscreenBannon also used his typically fiery speech to float the idea of a constitutional change that would allow Trump to run for a third term as president, saying: “We want Trump in 28.”The case was also put at CPAC by Third Term Project, a thinktank exploring the case for reconsidering presidential term limits. Wearing a “Trump 2028” sticker, Amber Harris of Third Term Project said: “You need more than four years to enact some of the things he wants to do.”However, most CPAC attendees interviewed by the Guardian opposed the idea. Nina Golden, 47, from Raleigh, North Carolina, believes Trump is exceeding her expectations and is “100%” supportive of Musk but said: “I believe in the constitution as it is and it should stay that way.”Bannon, who served four months in prison last year for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the January 6 insurrection, hosted his influential War Room podcast from CPAC. He interviewed a group who had been imprisoned for attacking the US Capitol only to be pardoned by Trump on his first day in office.The “J6ers” received a heroes’ welcome at CPAC. Richard Barnett, who had put his feet on the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk and was sentenced to more than four years in prison, revelled in his newfound celebrity by showing off his “certificate of pardon” from Trump.The 64-year-old retired firefighter, wearing a sweater emblazoned with “J6” and “political prisoner”, said of the president’s first month in office: “Awesome, baby. Keep it coming.”Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the far-right Oath Keepers, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy but had his 18-year sentence commuted, denied that his group had acted violently on behalf of Trump.Sporting a Trump tattoo on his arm, Rhodes, 59, from Granbury, Texas, said he was “very happy” with Trump, adding: “I got no complaints. His cabinet is fantastic from what I’ve seen so far. I love Doge. Let the sunlight come in and show all the corruption.”View image in fullscreenIn past years, CPAC has thrived on opposition to the status quo and targeted Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden with crude insults. But with Trump installed in the White House, and Democrats weak and leaderless, targets were less obvious or conspicuous.Kari Lake, Trump’s nominee to be director of the Voice of America media outlet, observed: “For the past four years, we have been in a fight-fight-fight mode and now we are in a win-win-win mode.” Sebastian Gorka, a White House adviser, said he had expected anti-Trump protests and “pink pussy hat insanity” but “where are they? We crushed them.”Instead, energy was channeled into Trump worship. People sported Maga caps and other regalia; some even wore giant Trump face masks. Sparkly jackets were on sale with slogans such as “Make fries great again” and “Gulf of America”.The swagger also fuelled CPAC’s expansionist ambitions. The conference was addressed by far-right figures from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Japan, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia and South Korea. Many saw Trump as a blueprint for nationalist populism in their own countries; some adopted the slogan “Make Europe great again”.Vance criticised Germany’s free-speech laws, accused European leaders of failing to control immigration and defended Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.As for Musk, he waved around the chainsaw – which had the words “Long live freedom, damn it” written along its blade – after an interview in which he pushed falsehoods about Europe jailing people for memes, astronauts being left in space for political reasons and Democrats having an electoral incentive “to maximise the number of illegals in the country”.Finally, he was asked to paint a picture of the inside of the mind a genius. “My mind is a storm,” Musk replied. “It’s a storm.” More

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      Party of one: Donald Trump’s 75 minutes at CPAC talking about himself

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      God save the king. Drunk on power, Donald Trump spent Saturday afternoon before adoring fans, boasting of his victories, taunting his enemies and casting himself as America’s absolute monarch, supreme leader and divine emperor rolled into one.Trump’s appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the National Harbor in Maryland began with country singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA and raucous cheers in a crowded ballroom that included January 6 insurrectionists.Seventy-five minutes later, it concluded with the US president standing between two stars-and-stripes flags, pumping his fists and swaying to the Village People’s anthem YMCA.What emerged in between was a man who has never felt so sure of himself, so contemptuous of his foes and so convinced of his righteous mission to make America great again, even if it means breaking china, cracking skulls and leaving global destruction in his wake.As the title of Michael Wolff’s new book puts it, last November’s election was All or Nothing. Defeat meant ruin, disgrace and prison. Victory meant what Trump’s cheerleaders like to call the greatest comeback in political history. It also meant vengeance against his perceived tormentors in the justice department, Democratic party and media. As the martyr of Mar-a-Lago put it at CPAC two years ago: “I am your retribution.”The message he took from that win over Kamala Harris was that he had broken his opponents, broken the checks and balances and broken reality itself. He was invincible.“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world/Like a Colossus,” Cassius tells Brutus in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, “and we petty men/Walk under his huge legs and peep about/To find ourselves dishonorable graves.”This was the 15th time Trump has addressed CPAC, the biggest annual gathering of conservative activists. When he was out of power, his freewheeling speeches could be dismissed as the ravings – or “weavings” – of a madman. Even during his first term, his extremist rhetoric came with some expectation that the democratic guardrails would hold.But as America and the world have discovered during his first month back in the White House, Trump is unbound, unhinged and looking for blood. He took the stage at CPAC brimming with confidence and basking in chants of: “USA! USA!”The 78-year-old Florida resident describes his presidency as a game of golf in which he can match Arnold Palmer all the way: “If you golf, when you sink that first four-footer at the first hole, it gives you confidence, and then the next hole you sink another and now you go on to that third hole and by the time you get to the fifth hole you feel you can’t miss.”To be here was to live in a world turned upside down. Trump said: “For years, Washington was controlled by a sinister group of radical-left Marxists, war-mongers and corrupt special interests,” which would have been news to Karl Marx.But then, on 5 November, “we stood up to all the corrupt forces that were destroying America. We took away their power. We took away their confidence … and we took back our country.”Trump should in fact have won by a bigger margin, he claimed without evidence, but Democrats “cheated like hell” only to find his victory was “too big to rig”. Later, he revisited his 2020 loss, too, assuring conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell that “now it’s OK” to say the election was “rigged”.The president bragged about pardoning hundreds convicted of crimes in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, describing them as “political prisoners” and “J6 hostages”. Some of them were in the room, chanting “J6! J6!” and shouting “Thank you!”. They have gone from prison cells to being CPAC’s newest celebrities.Trump also boasted about killing diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, denying the identity of transgender people, yanking the US out of the Paris climate agreement and sending undocumented immigrants (“monsters”) to Guantánamo Bay. He hailed Elon Musk’s evisceration of the federal government, including the international aid agency USAid.Each time, the crowd cheered.Up until then, CPAC had felt toned down this year, with few if any chants of “Lock her up!” or T-shirts portraying Joe Biden as Satan. After all, Republicans won and there is no obvious Democratic leader to target. Still, that did not prevent Trump unleashing the usual insults and lies at his opponents.View image in fullscreenView image in fullscreen“Kamala,” he said, eliciting boos. “I haven’t heard that name in a while. Nobody ever knows her last name … But think of it, I was beating Joe badly and they changed him. Think of it, I’m the only one who had to beat two people.”The Biden presidency already feels like a millennium ago but Trump did not want his audience to forget, asking whether they preferred the nickname “Crooked Joe” or “Sleepy Joe”. For the record, “Crooked Joe” won.Trump mocked Biden’s golf handicap and bathing suit and offered a baseless opinion: “He was a sleepy, crooked guy. Terrible, terrible president. He was the worst president in the history of our country … Every single thing he touched turned to shit.”Such magnanimity!He took aim at the Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren over her past claims of Native American ancestry, recycling the “Pocahontas” nickname he once gave her and jibing: “She does not like me. She’s a very angry person. You notice the way she is? She’s always screaming. She’s crazy.”And don’t get Trump started on liberal TV host Rachel Maddow: “I watch this MSNBC – which is a threat to democracy,actually – they’re stone-cold mean. But they’re stuttering. They’re all screwed up. They’re all mentally screwed up. They don’t know what – their ratings have gone down the tubes. I don’t even talk about CNN, CNN’s sort of like, I don’t know, they’re pathetic, actually.“This Rachel Maddow, what does she have? She’s got nothing. Nothing. She took a sabbatical where she worked one day a week. They paid her a lot of money. She gets no ratings. I should go against her in the ratings because, I’ll tell you, she gets no ratings. All she does is talk about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. All different subjects: Trump this, Trump, that. But these people are really, I mean, they lie. They shouldn’t be allowed to lie every night. They are really a vehicle of the Democrat party.”Trump loves the rightwing media that populates CPAC, however. He smugly quoted conservative host Bill O’Reilly as saying that after four weeks Trump had become “the greatest president ever in the history of our country”, beating George Washington.O’Reilly was hardly alone this week in building an image of Trump as a superman who thinks sleep is for wimps. How do they love him? Let us count the ways.Dan Scavino, a Trump golf caddie turned White House deputy chief of staff, described his boss as “the greatest host in America”. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former White House press secretary, said Trump is “maybe the most popular human on the face of the planet right now”, adding: “He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t expect anyone to sleep either. He’s twice my age and has twice my energy.”Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, confirmed that Trump works 21 or 22 hours a day and, along with the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, confidently forecast that Trump would receive the Nobel peace prize for his capitulation to Vladimir Putin masterful negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.Border tsar Tom Homan called Trump “the greatest president of my lifetime”. Elise Stefanik, the US ambassador-designate to the United Nations, went one better by calling him “the greatest president in the history of our country”.And the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, whose home state of South Dakota includes the ripe-for-addition Mount Rushmore, topped them all by just coming out with it: “Our president wakes up every day knowing he’s the greatest president of all time.”When someone wakes up knowing that, when their self-aggrandisement is so monumental, they are like a golfer who believes they will never miss. But as Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine put it, Trump is living inside a disinformation bubble. The iron law of politics is that all bubbles burst. More

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      Tracking Trump cabinet confirmations – so far

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      Senate confirmation hearings are under way for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations.All cabinet-level positions require a majority vote of senators to be approved. With a current 53-seat Republican majority, Trump’s more fraught nominees can only afford to lose three Republican senators, assuming Democrats are uniformly opposed.Marco Rubio was the first cabinet appointee to win confirmation in a unanimous vote in his favor. Controversial picks including Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr have also secured confirmation for key roles in the cabinet.ConfirmedKash PatelRole offered: FBI directorConfirmed by the Senate on 20 FebruaryView image in fullscreenAfter being nominated by Trump, the “deep state” critic Kash Patel was confirmed as FBI director, a role that handles oversight of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. He has declined to explicitly say whether he would use his position to pursue the US president’s political opponents.Patel was confirmed in a 51-49 vote, a reflection of the polarizing nature of his nomination.Kelly LoefflerRole offered: administrator of the Small Business AdministrationConfirmed by the Senate on 19 FebruaryView image in fullscreenTrump named former senator Kelly Loeffler to head the Small Business Administration. He said she will use her business experience to “reduce red tape” and “unleash opportunity” for small businesses.Loeffler was confirmed in a 52-46 vote.Robert F Kennedy JrRole offered: Secretary of health and human servicesConfirmed by the Senate on 13 FebruaryView image in fullscreenRobert F Kennedy Jr was Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, a choice that sparked outrage and concern over RFK Jr’s vaccine skepticism.RFK Jr was confirmed in a 52-48 vote in the Senate, with all Republicans other than the Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell voting in support. He will now oversee the country’s vast federal health infrastructure, giving him oversight of the very agencies he has spent years battling through lawsuits and public campaigns.Brooke RollinsRole offered: Agriculture secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 13 FebruaryView image in fullscreenAs agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins will lead a 100,000-person agency that would carry out an agenda with implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural.Rollins was president of America First Policy Institute, a group helping lay the groundwork for Trump’s second administration.The Senate confirmed Rollins in a 72-2 vote.Tulsi GabbardRole offered: National intelligence directorConfirmed by the Senate on 12 FebruaryView image in fullscreenTulsi Gabbard is a former Democratic member of Congress and was Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence.Gabbard, who has been publicly questioned over her affinity for foreign dictators and promoting conspiracy theories, was confirmed by the Senate in a 52-48 vote.Russell VoughtRole offered: Office of management and budget chiefConfirmed by the Senate on 6 FebruaryView image in fullscreenRussell Vought, the OMB chief during Trump’s first term in office, has been deeply involved in Project 2025.During a 15 January hearing, Vought declined to fully commit to distributing congressionally approved funds, specifically US military aid to Ukraine.Vought was confirmed in a 53-47 vote on 6 February.Scott TurnerRole offered: Department of Housing and Urban Development secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 5 FebruaryView image in fullscreenScott Turner is a former NFL player and White House aide. He ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term.Turner was confirmed in a 55-44 vote.Pam BondiRole offered: Attorney generalConfirmed by the Senate on 5 FebruaryView image in fullscreenPam Bondi, the first female attorney general of Florida and a lawyer for Trump during his first impeachment trial, replaced the president’s first pick, Matt Gaetz, to head the justice department.At her 15 January hearing, Bondi, 59, insisted she would ensure the justice department would remain independent. At the same time, she failed to say that Trump lost the 2020 election.Bondi was confirmed by the Senate in a 54-46 vote.Doug CollinsRole offered: Veterans affairs secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 4 FebruaryView image in fullscreenDoug Collins, the former Georgia representative who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was nominated by Trump to be secretary of veterans affairs.During his 22 January hearing, Collins pledged to “take care of the veterans” should he succeed in the confirmation process.Collins was confirmed on 4 February in a 77-23 vote.Doug BurgumRole offered: Interior secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 30 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, as his pick for secretary of the interior. His directive from Trump is to make it even easier for energy companies to tap fossil fuel resources, including from public lands, which has alarmed environmentalists.Burgum was confirmed in a 79-18 vote with more than half of Senate Democrats joining Republicans.Lee ZeldinRole offered: Environmental Protection Agency administratorConfirmed by the Senate on 29 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named the former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin said he would work to “restore American energy dominance”.Zeldin was confirmed on 29 January in a 56-42 vote.Sean DuffyRole offered: Secretary of transportationConfirmed by the Senate on 28 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Sean Duffy, a former Republican congressman and co-host on Fox Business, to serve as the secretary of transportation. Duffy will oversee billions of dollars in unspent infrastructure funds and has promised safer Boeing planes, less regulation and help for companies developing self-driving cars.Duffy was confirmed in a 77-22 vote.Scott BessentRole offered: Treasury secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 27 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Scott Bessent, a prominent Wall Street investor and Trump fundraiser, to be his nominee for treasury secretary. He has praised Trump for using tariffs as a negotiating tool.The Senate voted 68-29 to confirm Bessent as treasury secretary on 27 January.Kristi Noem Role offered: Homeland security secretaryConfirmed by the Senate on 25 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump selected South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem – a staunch ally who has little experience on the national security stage – to serve as the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. She will oversee everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service.Noem was confirmed on 25 January.Pete HegsethRole offered: Secretary of defenseConfirmed by the Senate on 24 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump nominated the former Fox News host and army veteran Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary, a surprise decision that stunned the Pentagon.During his hearing, Democrats asked Hegseth pointed questions about allegations of sexual misconduct and claims that he was frequently intoxicated in the workplace when he led two different non-profit organizations. Democratic senators and several Republicans expressed concerns that he was not qualified to lead the country’s largest government agency.He was confirmed in a late-night vote on 24 January, with a tie-breaking vote from JD Vance.John RatcliffeRole: CIA directorConfirmed by the Senate on 23 JanuaryView image in fullscreenTrump loyalist John Ratcliffe previously served as director of national intelligence during the final months of the president’s first term.Ratcliffe was confirmed by the Senate on 23 January in a 74-25 vote, with 20 Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in backing the nomination.Marco RubioRole: Secretary of stateConfirmed by the Senate on 20 JanuaryView image in fullscreenSenator Marco Rubio, 53, was confirmed as the first Latino to serve as secretary of state on 20 January. It was widely expected Rubio would secure confirmation, as senators largely viewed him as one of the least controversial of Trump’s cabinet picks.Rubio received 99 votes, becoming the first member of Trump’s cabinet to win Senate approval.Not yet confirmedElise StefanikRole offered: UN ambassadorView image in fullscreenThe New York representative Elise Stefanik was selected by Trump to be the ambassador to the UN. Floated as a possible Trump running mate, Stefanik is the highest-ranking woman in the Republican conference in the House of Representatives.During her confirmation hearing, Stefanik endorsed Israeli claims of biblical rights to the entire West Bank, aligning herself with positions that could complicate diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.Chris WrightRole offered: Energy secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Chris Wright, an oil and gas industry executive with no political experience, to lead the US Department of Energy.During a 15 January confirmation hearing, Wright faced criticism for disputing the ties between climate change and more frequent or severe wildfires, and for calling wildfire concerns “hype” and dismissing their connection to climate policies.Howard LutnickRole offered: Commerce secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump nominated Howard Lutnick, co-chair of his transition team, to be his commerce secretary. Lutnick has uniformly praised the president-elect’s economic policies, including his use of tariffs.Lori Chavez-DeRemerRole offered: Labor secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump tapped the Oregon Republican for labor secretary, a position that would oversee the department’s workforce and its budget, and would put forth priorities that affect workers’ wages, health and safety, the ability to unionize and employers’ rights to fire workers, among other responsibilities.Linda McMahonRole offered: Education secretaryView image in fullscreenTrump named Linda McMahon, co-chair of his transition team, his pick for education secretary. Trump, who previously promised to dismantle the Department of Education, said McMahon would work to “expand ‘choice’” across the US and send education “back to the states”.Jamieson GreerRole offered: US trade representativeView image in fullscreenTrump lauded Jamieson Greer for his role enacting the USMCA, a revamped trade pact between the US, Mexico and Canada, and imposing tariffs on China. If confirmed, Greer will be tasked with reining in the trade deficit and opening up “export markets everywhere”.Mehmet OzRole offered: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administratorView image in fullscreenTrump tapped Dr Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, adding that he would work closely with Robert F Kennedy Jr.Brendan CarrRole offered: Chair of the Federal Communications CommissionView image in fullscreenTrump tapped Brendan Carr to be the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the independent agency that regulates telecommunications.In a statement, Trump said Carr “is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy”. More

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      Line up to kiss the ring! How to join the brownnosers sucking up to Trump | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Let the humiliation Olympics begin. As Donald Trump readies himself for his revenge tour, world leaders and business moguls are falling over themselves to show the incoming president how much they admire him. Even if it means making an embarrassment of themselves in the process.While it’s only natural for the rich and powerful to try to ingratiate themselves with the incoming president of the United States, the extent to which people are lining up to kiss the ring is remarkable. This isn’t just diplomacy as usual: it speaks to Trump’s unapologetically transactional politics. He has made it very clear that loyalty will be richly rewarded and promised to ruthlessly pursue his enemies. As a result, we appear to have entered into a golden age of brown-nosing.Step one in transforming yourself into Trump’s lapdog: delete any previous criticism of the former president that you may have ill-advisedly put out back when you still had a spine. See, for example, Australia’s ambassador to the US, the former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who appears to have stayed up all night recently hitting the delete button on Twitter.“[Trump is] the most destructive president in history,” Rudd declared on Twitter, now X, in 2020, for example. “He drags America and democracy through the mud.”That tweet, along with others critical of the former president, has now been wiped clean. In a statement posted on his personal website last week, Rudd explained he had made those remarks back when he was a political commentator and deleted them to “eliminate the possibility of such comments being misconstrued as reflecting his positions as Ambassador”.A more honest explanation might be that Rudd is terrified Trump will come up with a nasty nickname for him (Rudd the dud?) and impose enormous tariffs on Australia as payback.You can press the delete button as much as you like, but the internet has a very long memory. So, if you can’t completely delete your way into Trump’s good books the next step is to deny and defuse. Technically, you may have made some nasty comments about Trump in the past but you didn’t mean them and, anyway, you’ve seen the light now.This appears to be how the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, is dealing with the fact that, during his days as a backbench MP, he described Trump as a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. Lammy has also called Trump “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic” and “no friend of Britain”.Seems pretty unambiguous. According to Lammy, we should forget all that because it is “old news”. In an interview with the BBC, Lammy added that he’d made those comments when he was a silly backbencher and he knows better now. “[W]hat you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things,” Lammy explained. “And I am foreign secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.”What exactly does the older and wiser Lammy now know? Perhaps that he really likes having power and doesn’t want anything as silly as having consistent morals to jeopardize it?To be fair, it seems that a lot of people are now finding out a lot of important facts about Trump that they didn’t know before because JD Vance has also made good use of Lammy’s “older and wiser” defence. In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Vance called Trump an “idiot” who was “unfit for our nation’s highest office”. He also characterized the man who would become his boss as “America’s Hitler”. The incoming vice-president has of course, now realised that he was “wrong about Donald Trump”.And he is in powerful company: you would struggle to find a titan of industry who hasn’t criticized Trump in the past and who isn’t rapidly backtracking now. The Apple CEO, Tim Cook; the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai; the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella; and the former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos are among the high-profile business figures who have radically changed their tune when it comes to Trump.The Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has also undergone a Trumpian metamorphosis. He once accused Trump of inciting violence and undermining the law; now he is lining up with the rest of the tech bros to gush about how excited he is to work with the Trump administration. Does Zuck always fawn over incoming presidents? No, he doesn’t. As Popular Information has noted: “Zuckerberg offered no congratulatory message at all to Biden after his 2020 victory.”More broadly, Zuckerberg, who has been busy drastically revamping his wardrobe and public image, seems to have decided that Trump is a figure to admire and emulate. He called Trump a “badass” in July, after the former president survived an assassination attempt. Then, during a recent conference, Zuckerberg said the biggest mistake of his career was apologizing too much. Trump, after all, has proved you can get away with anything; that power puts you above the law.Weaseling your way into Trump’s good books may be humiliating but it comes with a big payday: the president-elect is already busy doling out favours to friends. Elon Musk, for example, who spent over $100m getting Trump elected has been tapped to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. This allows Musk, whose companies have received more than $15.4bn in government contracts, to be a lot more efficient about rerouting public funds into his private purse.Meanwhile Trump is assembling his cabinet, and it is has become apparent that the most important qualification for office is a history of saying nice things about the president-elect. Pete Hegseth, for example, a Fox News personality and military veteran with no meaningful foreign policy experience has been picked to be secretary of defense. The New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who stood by Trump when he faced impeachment and became one of his staunchest cheerleaders, is being rewarded for her sycophancy with a gig as ambassador to the United Nations. Like Hegseth, she also has no meaningful foreign policy experience but she will support Israel and Trump no matter what they do, which is all that matters.The South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, will reportedly lead the Department of Homeland Security. She doesn’t have a huge amount of experience in this area, nor does she represent a border state, but she does have a lot of experience in trying to curry favour with Trump. Noem, who is famous for once shooting her family dog, has echoed Trump’s hardline immigration rhetoric and plied the president with gifts. In 2020, the New York Times reported that Noem welcomed Trump to her corner of the country with a “a four-foot replica of Mount Rushmore” that included his face on it. Noem also moderated the famous campaign town hall in Pennsylvania where Trump stopped taking questions and, instead, danced (along with Noem) to his favourite songs.Then there’s “Little Marco”. Trump levelled some very personal attacks against Marco Rubio and the senator responded in kind back in 2016. Since then, however, Rubio has fallen into line and groveled at Trump’s feet enough that it seems he’s being forgiven for mocking the size of Trump’s hands and saying “he’s gonna make America orange”. Rubio is reportedly being considered for secretary of state.So there you go: we are officially a quid pro quo economy now. It’s no wonder that Trump’s former critics are all suddenly reinventing themselves and tech bros are lining up to say how “excited’ they are to work with the Trump administration. What’s a little bit of brown-nosing, when you’re rewarded with a giant pot of gold? More

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      Trump’s early second-term choices fuel fears of extremist agenda

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      Donald Trump may have won a second term in the White House just last week, but his recent administration appointments have already heightened fears among some who believe his return to the White House will lead to an extremist agenda.On immigration, Trump has chosen loyalists and hardliners: Stephen Miller will serve as deputy chief of staff for policy and Department of Homeland Security adviser; Tom Homan as “border czar”, and Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor, will lead the Department of Homeland Security.Miller, previously a Trump adviser, played a significant role in crafting Trump’s immigration policies in his first administration, including the Muslim ban. Homan was the former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump’s first administration and a supporter of the family separation policy. Noem has been a vocal and strong Trump ally for the better part of a decade.This trio is likely to help bring to fruition Trump’s campaign promise of the mass deportation of millions of undocumented migrants living in the US.On Wednesday, Trump stunned many by announcing that he would be nominatingRepublican congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of his most prominent defenders, to serve as attorney general. Gaetz represents a conservative district in the Florida Panhandle, and became known nationally last year when he was a key player in the putsch that ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.Gaetz was also the subject of a federal sex-trafficking investigation that ended in 2023 when the Biden justice department declined to bring charges. Gaetz had insisted throughout he was innocent of any wrongdoing.Trump also nominated former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence.Gabbard, who served in the US military in Iraq, spent four terms as a Democratic congresswoman representing Hawaii, and ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020, before quitting the party in 2022, and becoming a supporter of Trump.On Tuesday, Trump shocked the Pentagon and the wider defense world by appointing the army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth as the new defense secretary.A staunch conservative, Hegseth opposes what he calls “woke” military programs aimed at promoting equity and inclusion and has questioned the role of women in combat. He has also advocated for pardoning service members accused of war crimes.He reportedly formed a friendship with Trump during his appearances on Fox & Friends.Speaking with Politico, Eric Edelman, who served as the Pentagon’s top policy official during the Bush administration, said that Trump’s choices so far revealed that he “puts his highest value on loyalty” adding that one of the main criteria appeared to be “how well do people defend Donald Trump on television?”Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Independent Veterans of America, criticized Hegseth’s appointment on X, describing the Fox News host as “undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for SecDef in American history” and “the most overtly political”.“Brace yourself, America,” he added.Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who previously claimed “there is no such thing as a West Bank”, was chosen as the next US ambassador to Israel, indicating a return to an explicitly pro-Israel administration reminiscent of Trump’s first.The Jewish Democratic Council of America criticized Huckabee’s nomination, stating that his “extremist views” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not advance US national security or prospects for peace.Signaling a more combative US position toward the United Nations, the New York representative Elise Stefanik has been chosen to be the next ambassador. Stefanik has called to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.Stefanik gained attention last year after her aggressive questioning of three university presidents over antisemitism on campuses.Gerry Connolly, a Democratic representative, criticized the appointment of Stefanik, telling the Hill it was a “gift to Vladimir Putin” and adding that “she abandoned Ukrainians in April” and “this further signals Donald Trump and Maga’s retreat from the global stage”.On Saturday, Trump announced that Michael Pompeo, the former secretary of state who has criticized the former president and his policies over the years, and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who challenged Trump in the Republican primary, would not be part of his second administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe rejection of Haley and Pompeo may also be viewed as the rejection of two individuals who have backed US support for Ukraine.John Ratcliffe, a close ally of Trump and former director of national intelligence, has been appointed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.Ratcliffe served as director of national intelligence at the end of Trump’s first term, during which he faced accusations from Democrats and former officials of declassifying intelligence to aid Trump and attack political opponents such as Joe Biden, a claim his office has denied.Lee Zeldin, the former New York congressman, has been chosen to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, leading to criticism from environmental groups.As a representative, Zeldin voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, which directed billions of dollars to expand clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and also opposed climate-related legislation, according to the environmental advocacy group League of Conservation Voters.Ben Jealous, Sierra Club’s executive director, called Zeldin an “unqualified, anti-American worker who opposes efforts to safeguard our clean air and water”, adding that his appointment “lays bare Donald Trump’s intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters”.Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, Trump said, which aims to cut federal bureaucracy by roughly a third.Although not a government agency, it will operate externally to drive significant reforms and introduce an entrepreneurial approach to government.Musk’s appointment drew criticism from Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights non-profit.“Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.Marco Rubio, the Florida senator known for his hardline policies on China, Iran and Venezuela, is expected to be appointed as Trump’s secretary of state, and Trump has asked Mike Waltz, a congressman, retired Green Beret and a longtime ally known for his tough stance on China, to become his national security adviser.Notably, Rubio has received support from John Fetterman, the Democratic senator who stated on Tuesday that despite their political differences, he believes Rubio is a strong choice and looks forward to voting for his confirmation.Other appointments have included Susie Wiles, Trump’s 2024 campaign manager, as chief of staff; the real estate investor and longtime friend and Trump donor Steve Witkoff to be his special envoy to the Middle East; and William Joseph McGinley, who served as cabinet secretary in the first term, as White House counsel, among others.In his announcement, Trump said McGinley would help him “advance our America First agenda” while “fighting for election integrity and against the weaponization of law enforcement”. More

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      Trump reportedly picks Kristi Noem to run homeland security department

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      Donald Trump has picked the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, to serve as the next secretary of the homeland security department, US media reported on Tuesday, in a further sign of his determination to launch a no-holds-barred crackdown on immigration.Noem’s pending nomination was reported by CNN and NBC, which said it had confirmed it with four sources.She is the third anti-immigration hardliner in two days to be chosen to be part of the president-elect’s administration after he clinched a return to the White House in the 5 November election.Tom Holman, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been selected to fill the role of border czar. And Stephen Miller, an adviser and speech writer in Trump’s first presidency, is expected to become deputy chief of staff, responsible for policy.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service.Noem’s selection is an apparent reward for being one of the most vocal communicators of Trump’s immigration policy during the election campaign, often voicing uncompromising rhetoric that echoed his.It is also a statement of confidence in her being stern enough to help oversee Trump’s planned mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants, a priority he has vowed to address as soon as he takes office.Last January, in a speech to a joint sitting of South Dakota’s legislature that she requested following a visit to the southern border, she said the US was “in a time of invasion”.“The invasion is coming over our southern border,” she said. “The 50 states have a common enemy, and that enemy is the Mexican drug cartels. They are waging war against our nation, and these cartels are perpetuating violence in each of our states, even right here in South Dakota.”She offered to send razor wire and agents to help shore up the border.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHer posture ingratiated her with Trump even while he removed her from the running as a possible vice-presidential candidate after an outcry over her admission in a book she published last May that she once shot a pet dog, as well as a family goat.In the book, titled No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem recounted shooting the dog, Cricket, after it attacked chickens belonging to a family she stopped to talk to.She wrote that she included the story to show that she was prepared to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly”, in politics and in life, if necessary. She said she “hated” the dog.Yet the tale provoked an angry backlash that seemed to have damaged Noem’s political prospects but for Trump’s victory.She also aroused the anger of Indigenous tribes in her own state after suggesting that tribal leaders benefited from Latin American drug cartels. She was banned from seven of nine tribal reservations – amounting to one-fifth of South Dakota’s territory – over the remarks.But while her vice-presidential hopes took a nose dive, Trump apparently kept faith with Noem, who occasionally accompanied him on the campaign trail.She shared the stage with him and acted as a moderator in October at one of his most unusual campaign events, a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania at which he stopped taking questions after two attenders fainted and ordered some of his favourite songs to be played, while he – and Noem – swayed along.Both Trump’s campaign and Noem’s office did not respond to requests for comments outside regular business hours.

      Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Official Kristi Noem social media accounts appear to have been deleted

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      Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota who has been dogged by controversy since recounting how she chose to shoot dead a puppy and a goat, attracted new questions when it was noted that some of her official social media accounts appeared to have been deleted.On Monday, a link from Noem’s official website led to an error message on Facebook, which said: “This content isn’t available right now. When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.”On Twitter/X, the governor’s site linked to Noem’s personal page. The official @GovKristiNoem page displayed the message “This account doesn’t exist”.A new X account, @GovNoemOffice, created this month, had 309 followers, far fewer than the roughly half-million of Noem’s old account.The new official account featured links to press releases.A small selection of followed accounts included Noem’s personal page, state government departments and Noem staffers including Mackenzie Decker, the director of policy who describes herself as “Living free in South Dakota with my husband and little girls. Fueled by Americanos, Cheezits and LaCroix Water. Mostly tweets about motherhood and the Jackrabbits”, the sports teams of South Dakota State University.Noem’s YouTube page was still active.Asked for comment, Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, told the Guardian the new X page was the source for official updates. He did not say what happened to the old account or why it was deleted.Noem’s spokesperson, Ian Fury, told news outlets the new X page was the source for official updates but did not say what happened to the old account or why it was deleted. The Guardian contacted Fury for comment.Earlier this year, Noem was widely seen as a potential presidential running mate for Donald Trump.Such attention shone a spotlight on controversies including Noem using her personal X account to advertise a Texas cosmetic dentist and being banned from Native American reservations, over comments about tribal leaders and drug cartels.But then, in April, the Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s book, No Going Back.The ensuing story revealed the governor’s startling account of the day she shot dead Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she deemed untrainable and dangerous, and an unnamed, uncastrated goat she said threatened her children.Asked why the book also included an apparent threat to kill one of Joe Biden’s dogs, Noem told CBS the animal, Commander, had “attacked 24 Secret Service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog?”The book produced more damaging headlines when it was revealed that Noem claimed to have “stared down” the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, but no such meeting could be shown to have happened. More

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      Kristi Noem pushes pardoning US Capitol attackers so ‘we don’t see another January 6’

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      Kristi Noem, once a contender to be the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, has argued that people facing charges over the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol should be individually evaluated for pardons – so as to minimize the chances of a repeat.“Each of those situations needs to be looked at separately,” Noem said on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “What I have been very clear about is that we don’t want to see another January 6 again.“Nobody in this country wants to see another day like that again.”The South Dakota governor also offered Donald Trump her support on his promise to grant presidential pardons to those charged or convicted in the Capitol attack that was mounted by his supporters after his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.The former Republican president has said he is considering pardons for approximately 1,186 defendants if he wins a second term in November’s expected rematch with his Democratic rival Biden. He has said one of his first actions in office would be to free jailed or imprisoned January 6 participants, whom he has described as “hostages”.Noem said pardons should be “based on his prerogative and his decision when he looks at those cases”.“Each of those individuals needs to be looked at separately, as far as what their role was and what was happening in that situation,” Noem said.Some political pundits were unimpressed with the argument laid out by the winner of the 1990 South Dakota Snow Queen Festival pageant, including Public Notice’s Aaron Rupar, who wrote on X: “completely incoherent stuff from Kristi Noem on Meet the Press”.Noem has seen her favorability polling fall since she included a passage in her book No Going Back describing her decision to fatally shoot a hunting dog that she insisted did not hunt and was a danger to her family.The unpopularity of that admission virtually ruled her out as Trump’s vice-presidential pick, who he has claimed will be in attendance for his televised debate with Biden in Atlanta on Thursday.Trump’s promises to reveal his running mate for November’s election came despite the fact that the network CNN has agreed with both campaigns that there will be no studio audience.Noem said she had not received any paperwork from the Trump campaign that could indicate she is in contention for the job. But she said she had “conversations with the president, and I know that he is the only one who will be making the decisions on who will be his vice-president”, a role Mike Pence held when Trump was in the Oval Office from 2017 to early 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked if it would be a mistake to not pick a woman, Noem added: “He needs to pick the best person for the job. He needs to pick someone that will help him win.”Noem also maintained that Trump would make an effective president despite his conviction in the criminal prosecution involving hush money paid to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels – and despite the fact that he has pending criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Biden.“I believe that Donald Trump, when he comes back to the White House and is in charge of this country, we’re going to have incredible opportunities to show that people in this country will be safer, that we’ll have law and order back in our streets,” Noem said.A slew of statistics have pointed to a significant decline in violent crime over the past year of Biden’s administration. More

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      Trump freewheels towards debate as Biden rehearses at Camp David

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      Presidential political surrogates fanned out across the Sunday talkshows to prepare the ground for next week’s televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which could help the Democratic incumbent and his Republican predecessor focus the minds of undecided or unengaged voters on November’s election.But the candidates themselves are taking strikingly different approaches. Biden is hunkered down at Camp David in debate preparation, reportedly with his personal attorney Bob Bauer standing in for Trump in mock exchanges.Bauer told Politico last week that his job was “to approximate as closely as you possibly can how it is that that individual, the opponent, is going to debate”.Trump, however, is not known to have a debate surrogate – or been in any debate practice. Instead, he has been out on the campaign trail. In Philadelphia on Saturday, he continued his rhetoric on immigration, at one point saying he would suggest to Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, that the organization pit a league of fighters who are immigrants against the “regular” league fighters with the champion of each then squaring off.That left the talkshows to mull the impending clash with campaign surrogates talking up – or talking down – mounting expectations for a decisive exchange. However, there are also concerns that without a live TV audience to provide voter interaction, it could also fall flat.“I expect President Biden to do an excellent job just like he did the last few debates,” Biden’s campaign co-chairperson Mitch Landrieu told NBC’s Meet the Press.Referring in part to Trump’s conviction in the criminal prosecution involving hush-money paid to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, Landrieu said: “It really doesn’t matter how Donald Trump shows up, if he comes in unhinged, like he has most of the time, or he sits there and is quiet, people are going to know that he’s a twice-impeached convicted felon who has been found to have defamed somebody, sexually abused somebody and going bankrupt six times.”Landrieu said that Biden was “really anxious to tell his story to the American people”, adding: “This race is going to be tight. Everybody knows that.”Trump, Landrieu said, “wakes up every day pretty much thinking about himself, thinking about his rich friends … really thinking about ways to hurt people with the power that he would have if he were the president of the United States again”.Biden, Landrieu added, “wants to be really clear about the difference between those two that everybody will see again on Thursday”.Also for the Democrats was the US senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a member of the national advisory board for Biden’s re-election campaign. With the second anniversary of the elimination of federal abortion rights previously granted by Roe v Wade falling on Monday, Warren sought to bring reproductive rights to the forefront of the looming presidential race, a posture that let Democrats retain control of the Senate and blunted the Republican House majority in 2022.Warren said that if Biden is re-elected and Democrats are given a majority in Congress, her party would be able to defend and restore access to abortion, contraception and in vitro fertilization.“We’re going to make Roe v Wade [the] law of the land again,” Warren said. “Understand this. I want to say this as clearly as I can. If Donald Trump is elected to the presidency, he and the extremist Republicans are coming after abortion, contraception, and IVF in every single state in this country. Not just the [conservative] states.”Trump has said his VP pick will be in the audience in Atlanta on Thursday – a contest that is reported to have narrowed to the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and Ohio senator JD Vance.Trump told reporters on Saturday he had made a determination but has not let them know. “In my mind, yeah”, Trump told reporters at a cheesesteak restaurant in Philadelphia.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who was once considered a strong contender to be Trump’s running mate, on Sunday continued trying to bounce back from a disastrous passage in her recently published book in which she recounted shooting a dog to death that she claimed had become dangerous to her family.Noem’s admission came after Biden’s German shepherd, Commander, was merely banished from the White House after biting three dozen Secret Service agents during an 18-month reign of terror.Noem said she thought Thursday’s clash would be “an important debate” and “a great opportunity for President Trump to talk about his policies and how his policies when he served as president of this country were good”.Nonetheless, Noem confirmed that she had not received paperwork from Trump relating to his vice-president pick that others reportedly had. “I’ve had conversations with the president, and I know that he is the only one who will be making the decisions on who will be his vice-president,” she said diplomatically.A strong contender for the role, Burgum told CNN’s State of the Union that Biden’s team had made a real effort to lower expectations. He challenged the network, which is the debate host, to ask tough questions, including over Biden’s assertion when he last debated Trump in 2020 that the furore around Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”.Though many claims about its contents have not been confirmed, the laptop was admitted as evidence in the recent trial which led to Hunter Biden’s conviction on three federal gun charges.“If he’s that good at lying about that four years ago, the question is what might he do this time,” Burgum added. More