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      Congressional Republicans are trapped in a dangerous absurdity of their own making | Sidney Blumenthal

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      The House Republicans have triggered a Chernobyl of their own, a chain reaction that will inexorably lead to a meltdown to their core surrounded by a radioactive forbidden zone. Saboteurs rush in unobstructed, setting blazes and planting explosives. The nominal fire chief stands dumbfounded, an observer transfixed at the raging conflagration, anxious about his escape route. “This is a whole new concept of individuals that just want to burn the whole place down,” the fire chief fumes. Then, smoke billowing behind him, he flees the scene and tells everyone to go home for a week.The speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, is the speaker in name. He has the part. He will do anything to retain the honorific. Gesture by gesture he dispenses with the powers of his office for the sake of wearing its polished badge. If nature abhors a vacuum, his unnatural enemies thrive in it. He agreed to their demand that instead of proposing a continuing resolution for 30 days to continue negotiations on the budget he would divide appropriations into 14 separate bills, each requiring a procedural vote to be able to consider them. Twice he dutifully brought to the floor the procedural votes for the defense appropriations bill, and twice they were contemptuously rejected. His heedless appeasement was a defeat foretold. The federal government shutdown looms.McCarthy could have ignored his hostage takers. He could have made an agreement with the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on the basis of the already negotiated bipartisan budget deal with the Senate Republicans. McCarthy could have brought along some of his caucus and that with the Democrats would be a comfortable majority. And he could still attempt to make a deal. If the far right initiates a motion to vacate, to try to remove him, the Democrats could join with a portion of the Republicans to maintain him.But the consequences of demonstrating that he has a backbone would almost certainly spark the motion. To survive, he would have to confront his tormentors; to vanquish them, he would have to discredit them. To discredit them, he would have to contend with the greater power behind their cabal whom they imitate and serve, Donald Trump, who presses for the catastrophic outcome because he prospers on disorder.In the meantime, the sidelined Democrats watch and wait. If the Republican illogic reaches its logically absurd conclusion in a shutdown, would McCarthy, if he resisted, be removed? And, after numerous inconclusive ballots to elect a speaker, would five Republicans agree to vote for Jeffries as speaker, who would give them committee chairmanships, so that the House would be a functioning body? Perhaps, in the speculative possibility, there would be no speaker, without which there would be no functioning House, therefore no functioning Senate, and therefore no functioning government. It would be Trump’s dream come true. Would President Biden have to step in to authorize emergency funding until there is a Democratic House?McCarthy would seem to prefer to die the coward’s death of a thousand cuts. In the midst of the meltdown, McCarthy chose to appear on Fox News to state that Trump is the certain Republican nominee, “stronger than he has ever been”, and that his rival Ron DeSantis is “not at the same level”. The fire chief is the pyromaniac enabler in chief. Yet he still complains about the arsonists.None of his Trump worship helps McCarthy quell the Trump miscreants, or calms anybody else in the House Republican Conference, for that matter. McCarthy is perceived as having the vision of a mole, the courage of a squirrel and the dignity of a dunk-tank clown. But that’s only what Republicans think of him. The feeling is not reserved to those who wish to destroy him, but held by those sustaining him.From the more regular Republicans the nicest thing said about him is that he’s “weak”, as Representative Victoria Spartz, Republican from Indiana, recently put it. “It’s Kevin McCarthy who failed us,” she said, invoking the founding fathers “rolling over in their graves”. She is so disgusted she is not running for re-election. Representative Mike Garcia, Republican from California, accused his party’s irreconcilables of being Manchurian candidates. “This city,” he said, “Washington DC, is riddled with Chinese sympathizers.” Representative Don Bacon, Republican from Nebraska, went biblical: “Some of these folks would vote against the Bible because there’s not enough Jesus in it.” Representative Mike Lawler, Republican from New York, declared: “This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity … It’s a clown show.”Matt Gaetz, the towel-snapping bullyboy, is the ringleader of the rump caucus desperately seeking to bring the House to a halt. Preening as a lady-killer, he has notoriously remarked of women’s rights activists: “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.” The congressman from Florida was not charged earlier this year in a justice department investigation into his alleged involvement with the sex trafficking of a minor in which a close associate of his pleaded guilty. But the House ethics committee began questioning witnesses in July in an investigation of Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. The kindest things he has said about McCarthy are that he is “unhinged” and “lying like a dead dog”.Gaetz has furiously been trying to force McCarthy out and to close the ethics committee investigation. “Matt is upset about an ethics complaint,” McCarthy explained. In response, Gaetz called him “a sad and pathetic man who lies to hold on to power”. Gaetz has drafted a resolution of a single sentence to remove McCarthy: “That the office of speaker of the House is hereby declared to be vacant.” The date was left empty on the document, a copy of which was discovered on a baby-changing table in a bathroom near the House chambers.The proximate source of McCarthy’s quandary lies in his devil’s pact to gain the office he has long coveted, since he failed in his bid in 2015 to succeed the retiring speaker, John Boehner. He finally secured the post after 15 ballots in which he was dragged around for four days by Gaetz & Company. His Faustian bargain was to promise all things to all fringes. The premise of his getting power was to relinquish it.McCarthy “has made promises on each of those issues to different groups. And now it is all coming due at the same time,” said the rightwing representative Ken Buck. One of Gaetz’s allies, Representative Tim Burchett, Republican from Tennessee, compared McCarthy unfavorably to the former Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi (“Well, he’s not as mean as she is”), and added, “We are very dysfunctional right now.”Representative Chip Roy, Republican from Texas – who inhabits an outer reach of the right and who, as Senator Ted Cruz’s chief of staff, was instrumental in precipitating a federal government shutdown in 2013 in a vain attempt to overturn the Affordable Care Act – declared: “I honestly don’t know what to say to my fellow Republicans other than you’re going to eat a shit sandwich and you probably deserve to eat it.”The origins of the self-destructiveness of the House Republicans always run to the rise of Newt Gingrich. When he was a backbencher, the leadership thought it could unleash him to damage only the Democrats, a gambit from which the party regulars would reap the ultimate benefit. But Gingrich quickly became uncontrollable, torpedoing President George HW Bush when he made a deal with the Democratic Congress to raise taxes. When Gingrich rocketed into the speakership, fueled with grandiosity, he staged two federal government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996, but was stood down by President Bill Clinton, which laid the pathway to his re-election.Among Gingrich’s insidious techniques was the introduction of an unstated rule that a bill could be brought up for a vote only on the basis of approval of a majority of the majority, which was in fact a minority of the overall body. This tilt empowered the right within the House Republican Conference and isolated moderates. Under Gingrich, the rule was not actually often applied. But under the speakership of Dennis Hastert, who replaced him, it became known as the Hastert rule, canonizing the rule of the minority.From the Hastert rule onward, the tyranny of the minority in the House became an operative principle. Whether it was applied or not, the right could exercise its power through its sabotaging veto, leading to a spiraling descent. Ever smaller minorities wielded threats; ever more facsimiles of Gingrich spontaneously generated. (Hastert himself was convicted in 2016 of sexually molesting four boys as a high school wrestling coach and imprisoned.)In 2015, a gaggle of House rightwingers led by Jim Jordan formed the Freedom Caucus, which in a relatively short time systematically wrecked the Republican speakerships of John Boehner and Paul Ryan – and, by the way, kept Kevin McCarthy out of the office.But after the Republicans lost the House majority in 2018, McCarthy had enough juice to beat Jordan in the contest to become minority leader. A careening Trump became so dependent on the Freedom Caucus as his defender that he made its chair, Mark Meadows – a congressman from North Carolina, and a Jim Jordan finger puppet – his chief of staff, where he ultimately became a central figure in the management of the January 6 attempted coup.McCarthy, Trump’s redoubtable “My Kevin”, was shocked by the assault on the Capitol, but swiveled to defend Trump from impeachment and removal. Just one week after Trump went into exile at Mar-a-Lago, on 27 January 2021, McCarthy traveled as a supplicant to bend his knee. There he issued a statement denouncing the impeachment for the January 6 insurrection, and, without missing a beat in the same sentence, condemned the incoming Biden administration’s efforts to deal with climate change, “destroying blue-collar jobs” as the “radical Democratic agenda” – twin olive branches, one to the disgraced Trump and the other to the fossil fuel industry that is a pipeline of dark money into Republican campaign coffers. By his abasement to Trump, McCarthy made himself a hostage to fortune. The rest is the corrupt bargain.If the Republicans were to lose the House in 2024, they would do so by forfeiting many if not most of the 18 swing districts that Biden won in 2020, currently held by more moderate or old-style conservative types, hanging by a thread that may be cut by a shutdown. Redistricting may also yield the Democrats at least six to 10 seats, perhaps seven in New York, enough by themselves to shift the balance of power, despite the possible gerrymandering of North Carolina districts by a Republican-dominated state supreme court. The aftermath of a purged and reduced Republican conference would leave a more purified, embittered and vengeful far right in an even more ideologically homogeneous and compact minority.House Republicans’ fear of losing their majority is an unstated motive driving the accelerated radicalization of the rump caucus forcing a shutdown, demanding their wishlist of maximum reactionary policies, to which McCarthy has caved, and if necessary overthrowing McCarthy.The folly would not end either with a shutdown or its avoidance by means that may or may not ignite the motion to vacate, while the Senate and the White House would reject the House budget, if there ever is one, and it all starts over. Scene by scene, the absurdist play unravels until it begins again. It is a jumble of Eugène Ionesco plays.Is it The Chairs? Chairs are arranged for invisible people. An old couple welcome the king, who is also invisible. An orator who cannot hear or speak promises to deliver a message to save humanity. The old couple jump out the window. The orator scrawls incoherent words on a blackboard. The empty chairs remain. Or is it The Bald Soprano, with a fleeting glance at Lauren Boebert before the blackout to signal that the play starts from the beginning in an endless feedback loop?A character without character is the main character. Delinquent members of the chorus rip apart his script and order him to dance to their discordant music. He taps awkwardly along for a while, shouts incoherently into the wings, shakes his fist, lowers his head and walks in circles. His haphazard fecklessness, learned helplessness and empty commands move the play rapidly to the blackout.But the incredible lightness of Kevin McCarthy is actually a scene in a heavier drama. Behind the facade of the theater of the absurd a more menacing play is being rehearsed. “Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government,” Trump wrote recently on Truth Social. “This is also the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots. They failed on the debt limit, but they must not fail now. Use the power of the purse and defend the Country!” Or as he put it in another post: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING, SHUT IT DOWN!”Trump stokes a shutdown to bring it all down. The deadlock that can produce a temporary crisis is a continuation of his rolling coup to delegitimize the government and seize maximum power. He will bring the Capitol to a stop without the mob at the doors, but instead inside the chamber. The greater the chaos, the greater the demand for the dictator; the worse, the better. After the bleak comedy, the joke is on us. After McCarthy, Trump.When the Ionescu comedy dissolves, what is revealed is Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Written in 1941, the play is a parable of a Chicago gangster ruthlessly eliminating anyone in his way to absolute power: “Now you stand defenseless in a cold world where, sad to say, the weak are always trampled. You’ve got only one protector left. That’s me, Arturo Ui.”
      Sidney Blumenthal is the author of The Permanent Campaign, published in 1980, and All the Power of the Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1856-1860, the third of a projected five volumes. He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton More

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      Bob Menendez says money found in police search was for personal use – as it happened

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      From 5h agoOne of the most striking aspects of Robert Menendez’s indictment was photos showing bundles of cash that investigators found in his home during a search last year.Prosecutors say the senator and his wife accepted bribes from agents of the Egyptian government, and investigators found a total of $480,000 stuffed in a safe, clothing and closets throughout his home.In his press conference, the senator addressed the money. “For 30 years, I have withdrawn 1000s of dollars in cash from my personal savings accounts, which I have kept for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” said Menendez, whose parents are from the island.“Now this may seem old fashioned, but these were monies drawn from my personal savings accounts based on the income that I have lawfully derived over those 30 years. I look forward to addressing other issues in trial.”In a defiant speech to reporters, New Jersey’s Democratic senator Robert Menendez rejected charges brought against him by federal prosecutors, who claimed he illegally used his position to help the Egyptian government in exchange for bribes. Menendez made clear he would not step down, but remained vague about whether he’d run for re-election, while saying the cash investigators turned up at his house was merely for emergencies. Joe Biden’s spokeswoman, meanwhile, declined to say if the president believes the senator should resign, but an increasing number of Democratic lawmakers think he should.Here’s what else happened today:
      Donald Trump teased buying a Glock pistol while campaigning in South Carolina, which may have violated federal law. He ultimately did not go through with the purchase.
      The president welcomed the leaders of Pacific island nations to the White House, in a bid to build alliances against China’s influence.
      John Fetterman, the first senator to call for Menendez to resign, gave back money the New Jersey lawmaker donated to his campaign.
      Biden cheered a tentative agreement to end the Hollywood writers’ strike, ahead of his visit planned for tomorrow to a United Auto Workers picket line in Michigan.
      Trump will skip Wednesday’s debate of Republican presidential candidates to make his own visit to striking autoworkers in Michigan.
      During a campaign speech in South Carolina, Donald Trump attempted to shout out the state’s Republican senator Lindsey Graham, only to find his name attracted boos:It’s unclear what the boos were about. Graham is one of the more well-known conservatives in the Senate, though he has broken with some in the Trump wing of the party with his steadfast support for continued American aide to Ukraine.Punchbowl News reports that a Republican-controlled House panel plans to vote on Wednesday on releasing new whistleblower documents concerning Hunter Biden:The House will hold their first hearing of their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden that day, which centers on unverified allegations of corruption against the president. His son’s business activities have been at the heart of those claims, but despite months of investigation, the GOP has yet to turn up proof that the elder Biden was involved in or benefited from his son’s overseas business dealings.In July, two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers told the House oversight committee the Biden administration meddled in a Donald Trump-appointed US attorney’s investigation of Hunter Biden, however CNN reports that other IRS and FBI officials who spoke to investigators have disputed those claims.A Charleston Post and Courier reporter who attended Donald Trump’s campaign event today reports the former president did not go through with his purchase of a Glock pistol:Thus sidestepping the potential violation of federal law – or perhaps, newly permissible activity made possible by the supreme court’s conservative majority and its friendliness to public gun carrying – that would have followed.Donald Trump, campaigning in South Carolina, appears to have bought a Glock pistol – which may or may not be illegal under federal law.The former president and current frontrunner in the race for the GOP’s presidential nomination is on a successful swing through the Palmetto state, where he today announced he had received the endorsements from several of its top Republicans, including attorney general Alan Wilson, state House majority leader Davey Hiott and secretary of state Mark Hammond. The state’s governor Henry McMaster and its lieutenant governor have already endorsed him, in something of a blow to two other South Carolinians in the presidential race, senator Tim Scott and former governor Nikki Haley.In a now-deleted post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung posted a video where the former president poses with the pistol and says he wants to buy one.As NBC News reports, if he went through with the purchase, that would seem to break a federal law banning people who are under indictment – like Trump – from buying a weapon. But because of a supreme court decision last year expanding the ability of people to carry concealed weapons, judges have lately said that law is no longer valid:Joe Biden today welcomed the leaders of Pacific island nations to the White House in a bid to counter China’s courtship of the strategically important region. Here’s more on the visit’s significance, from the Guardian’s Siosifa Pomana and Julian Borger:Joe Biden has offered $40bn in economic aid to Pacific islands at a White House meeting with leaders from the region aimed at bolstering US engagement in the face of growing a growing Chinese presence.The president also announced formal US recognition of two new island nations, the Cook Islands and Niue, at the start of the Pacific Islands Forum, two days of Washington meetings with leaders from the group’s 18 members.“The United States committed to ensuring an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, prosperous and secure. We’re committed to working with all the nations around this table to achieve that goal,” Biden said at the forum’s welcoming ceremony.The visiting leaders having been feted by the administration, brought down from New York where most attended the UN general assembly, on a special train to Baltimore where they were take to an American football game at the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium. There they were brought out on field and celebrated for “for their roles as American friends in the Indo-Pacific”.The Pacific leaders were also taken onboard a US Coast Guard cutter in Baltimore Harbor and they were briefed by the Coast Guard commandant, Adm Linda Fagan, on operations to combat illegal fishing and manage maritime domains. Over the next two days they will meet top members of the administration. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield will host a dinner for the visitors on Monday night, and on the second night, the Australian embassy will host a barbecue.“I think what the Biden administration has been able to do is to step up our game considerably in a short period of time in the Indo-Pacific,” a senior administration official said. “We have deep moral, strategic and historic interests here. And I think we’re reaffirming that promise.”White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged the question when asked whether Joe Biden believes Bob Menendez should resign his Senate seat.From her press conference today:Far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn ridicule for using an image of a Hanukah menorah in an attempt to commemorate the unrelated Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.Green on Sunday posted a message on X – previously known as Twitter – on Sunday wishing observers a meaningful fast for Monday’s observation of Yom Kippur. She tried to add a traditional Yom Kippur greeting but misspelled it: “Gamar Chasima Tova!”The backlash soon ensued.Critics noted that Greene’s use of a menorah in her message recognized a completely unrelated Jewish holiday observed in December. Past comments of hers which alluded to antisemitic tropes also undermined her message to Jewish observers.Greene subsequently deleted the original post without an apology and reposted the original text without the menorah image.John Fetterman,the first senator to call for Robert Menendez to resign, said he plans to give back the $5,000 that he received from the New Jersey senator towards his 2022 campaign.The Pennsylvania senator wants to return the donation in envelopes full of hundred-dollar bills, the Messenger reported. “We are in process of returning the money,” said a spokesperson for Fetterman, “in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills.”Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Democratic California governor Gavin Newsom will take part in a televised debate on 30 November.The 90-minute debate will be moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity and air on Hannity’s 9pm prime-time program.In a statement issued through the network, Hannity said he is “looking forward to providing viewers with an informative debate about the everyday issues and governing philosophies that impact the lives of every American.”DeSantis is also scheduled to also participate in the second GOP primary debate on Wednesday. Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner in the Republican race, will not attend.Observers reacted toDonald Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.In a statement, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said:
      To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.
      Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant”. More

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      Top Trump aide burned so many papers wife noticed ‘bonfire’ smell, book says

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      Mark Meadows burned so many papers in his office fireplace as Donald Trump’s presidency came to its chaotic end that the then White House chief of staff’s wife complained about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the “bonfire” smell, Cassidy Hutchinson writes in her eagerly awaited memoir.The New York Times reported the passage about Meadows burning documents, before MSNBC confirmed it.Hutchinson, a senior aide to Meadows, emerged as a key witness before the House January 6 committee, which investigated the deadly attack on Congress Trump incited in an attempt to stay in power.Hutchinson’s book, Enough, will be published on Tuesday. Last week, the Guardian first reported Hutchinson’s description of being groped by Rudy Giuliani backstage on January 6. Giuliani denied it.For the Times, Robert Draper wrote: “It was, by [Hutchinson’s] telling, an administration awash in paranoia, with Mr Meadows and others refusing to dispose of daily litter in ‘burn bags’ for fear that someone from the ‘deep state’ might intercept the contents.“Instead, she writes, Mr Meadows burned so many documents in his fireplace in the final days of the Trump presidency that his wife complained to Ms Hutchinson about how expensive it had become to dry-clean the ‘bonfire’ aroma from his suits.”Meadows’ habit of burning documents was previously known. In May last year, the New York Times and Politico reported that Hutchinson had in testimony described Meadows burning papers. Politico said he did so after meeting Scott Perry, a hard-right Pennsylvania Republican congressman involved in attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Later, transcripts released by the committee showed Hutchinson saying she saw Meadows burn documents around a dozen times between December 2020 and January 2021.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs MSNBC pointed out, ahead of its own interview with Hutchinson on Monday night, Trump himself has without evidence accused the January 6 committee of “destroy[ing] all ‘evidence’ and records”.Last week, the former US president claimed to NBC the committee “burned all the evidence, OK? They burned all the evidence.” More

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      ‘Full fascist’ Trump condemned after ‘treason’ rant against NBC and MSNBC

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      Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year.In response, one progressive group said the former US president and current overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential nomination race had “gone full fascist”.The Biden White House said Trump threatened “an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law”.The US media was “almost all dishonest and corrupt”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, “but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular MSNBC … should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’.”Listing familiar complaints about coverage of his presidency – during which he regularly threatened NBC, MSNBC and Comcast – Trump added: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”Trump also used familiar terms of abuse for the press: “the enemy of the people” and “the fake news media”.Observers reacted to Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.In a statement, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said: “President Biden swore an oath to uphold our constitution and protect American democracy. Freedom of the press is a fundamental constitutional right.“To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.”Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.“Female political or media antagonists really cause blood to come pouring out of Trump’s eyes,” wrote Howard Fineman, a columnist and commentator.Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“There you have it, folks,” it said. “While Trump and his Republican enablers love to falsely accuse Democrats of ‘weaponizing’ the government against Trump, Trump himself is now openly threaten[ing] to weaponize the presidency to completely remove entire news channels from the airwaves simply because they expose his rampant criminality.”Juliette Kayyem, a Kennedy School professor and CNN national security analyst, pointed to a previous warning: “To view each of Trump’s calls to violence in isolation – ‘he attacked Milley’ or ‘he attacked NBC’ or ‘he attacked the jury, the prosecutor, the judge’ – is to miss his overall plan to ‘introduce violence as a natural extension of our democratic disagreement’.”Trump’s rantings were also coupled with threats to Gen Mark Milley, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff whose attempts to cope with Trump were detailed in an Atlantic profile last week.They come after a Washington Post poll gave Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020, in a notional 2024 general election matchup.The Post said the poll was an “outlier” but Trump dominates the Republican nomination race and generally polls close to Biden despite facing 91 criminal charges – for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments – and civil threats including a defamation trial arising from an allegation of rape a judge said was “substantially true”.Another new poll, from NBC, showed Trump and Biden tied at 46% but Trump up 39%-36% if a third-party candidate was added. A “person familiar with White House discussions” about the prospect of a candidacy from No Labels, a centrist group, said it was “concerning”, NBC said. Biden, the report added, was “worried”. More

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      Far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed for Yom Kippur error

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      Far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn ridicule for using an image of a Hanukah menorah in an attempt to commemorate the unrelated Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.The derision the Georgia representative brought upon herself comes after she was previously criticized for perpetuating antisemitic conspiracy theories.Green on Sunday posted a message on X – previously known as Twitter – on Sunday wishing observers a meaningful fast for Monday’s observation of Yom Kippur. She tried to add a traditional Yom Kippur greeting but misspelled it: “Gamar Chasima Tova!”The backlash soon ensued.Critics noted that Greene’s use of a menorah in her message recognized a completely unrelated Jewish holiday observed in December. Past comments of hers which alluded to antisemitic tropes also undermined her message to Jewish observers.Florida congressman Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat, corrected his Republican counterpart by noting that the solemn Yom Kippur and celebratory Hanukah were completely different occasions.Mentioning that Yom Kippur focused on the atonement of sins, Moskowitz added: “Lord knows you will be very busy.”Greene subsequently deleted the original post without an apology and reposted the original text without the menorah image.MeidasTouch, a liberal political action committee, criticized Greene for the “wildly offensive” gaffe.The group also called her “Ms Jewish Space Lasers” – a reference to her false conspiracy claim that California’s devastating wildfires in 2018 were started for profit by a space laser funded by corporate interests, including the Rothschild banking firm.State investigations concluded that the 2018 wildfires were “caused by electrical transmission lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electricity”, the state’s largest utility.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a separate tweet, MeidasTouch’s co-founder Brett Meiselas added: “Frankly, Jews don’t need an antisemitic maniac who gives speeches at Nazi events sending out holiday messages in the first place.”Greene had previously downplayed speaking at the America First Political Action Conference, which was founded by the white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2020.Even as she deleted the menorah image, Bill Prady – the co-creator of the TV series The Big Bang Theory – knocked Greene for preserving the “bad Hebrew” in the post.MeidasTouch pointed out on its website that the accepted Yom Kippur greeting is “g’mar chatima tovah”, which translates to “a good final sealing”.The greeting refers to the belief that one’s fate is written on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah and then sealed on Yom Kippur. More

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      ‘It’s a liability’: New York Republicans face pressure – but will they lose 2024?

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      In Anthony D’Esposito’s New York congressional district, Democrats are licking their lips.The Republican won an unexpected election to the House of Representatives in 2022, styling himself as a moderate in a historically Democratic district that Joe Biden had easily won by 14 points two years earlier.But last week D’Esposito, along with other self-styled moderates, gave his tacit approval to the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, an inquiry championed by the far-right members of the Republican party.The inquiry, into Hunter Biden’s business affairs and unsubstantiated accusations of corruption by the president, has become a symbol of the vengeful, extremist politics of far-right Republican figures like Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Sensing a chance, Democrats in D’Esposito’s Long Island district, just east of New York City, are now planning to tie him to his more rabid colleagues and win back the seat.“We’re certainly going to make it an issue and it’s a liability for him here,” said Jay Jacobs, the chair of the local Democratic party in Nassau county, which makes up much of the fourth congressional district, which D’Esposito represents.“Most informed, thinking people don’t believe that Joe Biden is some kind of criminal or has done anything that would warrant an impeachment inquiry, so when someone does this, and is in favor of it, they put themselves on the line with voters.“We saw this after Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial: the Republicans took a big hit. And we think the same will happen this time. People send their representatives to Washington to do a job and to run the country in a responsible way, and this is clearly irresponsible. So [D’Esposito] will suffer for it.”In the 2022 midterm elections 18 Republicans, including D’Esposito, won in congressional districts that had voted for Biden, as the Republican party secured a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.In Long Island, which experienced a curious swing to the Republicans in 2022, D’Esposito isn’t the only newly elected Republican at risk. Before those midterm elections three of the island’s four congressional districts were represented by Democrats. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden won convincingly in the same three districts.But in 2022, even as Democrats outperformed expectations around the country, this south-eastern part of New York state plumped for Republican candidates – including George Santos, who has since admitted inventing parts of his résumé and has been charged with fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.Democrats attributed the swing, in part, to a popular Republican candidate for that year’s governor’s race, and the test in next year’s elections will be whether Republicans can hold on to those seats.Even before the launch of the impeachment inquiry, the 18 Republicans in Biden-won districts were already under pressure from an “Unrepresentatives” campaign launched by the progressive movement Indivisible. That campaign has seen Indivisible highlight how the supposed moderates have voted in line with the hard-right wing of the party.The new inquiry – which comes after eight months of Republican investigation into the president has failed to yield any evidence of wrongdoing – could add to that backlash. But Michael Dawidziak, a Republican political consultant based in Long Island, said Democrats might be putting too much hope in an impeachment-related backlash.“[Voters] are not going to be that upset about a Biden impeachment as opposed to, you know, crime and economy and the things that affect your quality of life,” Dawidziak said.The self-proclaimed more moderate members of the Republican party have largely sought to justify their support for the impeachment inquiry by characterizing it as an example of Congress applying checks and balances on the president.Mike Garcia, a California representative who like D’Esposito and Santos won in 2022 a previously Biden-supporting district, told the Hill he wanted to “seek clarity”, while Congressman Marc Molinaro, a New Yorker, said: “We want to be sure that we’re getting answers.”D’Esposito has offered similarly considered support.“I’ve spent my career as an NYPD detective and know the value of seeking the truth through finding the facts, and I am eager to find out exactly what the truth is behind the allegations surrounding President Biden and his family,” he said in a statement.But in Long Island, some Democratic voters fear that the Republican tightrope-walking might be successful. Casey Shields, who lives in Lynbrook, said that despite Biden carrying the district convincingly in 2020, it leans to the right.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Nassau county is a secret Republican stronghold, hence [D’Esposito’s] and Santos’ magic rise to power,” Shields, an accountant, said. “I can’t imagine many people who voted him in will be turned off by his desire to impeach Biden. His district is begging to be a red state.”Mary Russell, 67, said people who decide to vote for any Republican know what they are getting from the Donald Trump-dominated party.“I am not sure there is such a thing as a ‘moderate’ Republican,” Russell, who voted for D’Esposito’s opponent in 2022, said.“[D’Esposito] supporting the retaliatory impeachment inquiry to appease the hard-right members, confirms his inability or desire to stand for the majority of Long Islanders who know the inquiry to be a waste of time and money.”Despite that, Russell said she doubted that D’Esposito’s support for the impeachment inquiry would be a defining issue.“I wish it would have an impact, but I fear it will not, based on where the district leans. It’d also depend on who his challenger is.”In Garden City, in the north of D’Esposito’s district, Republican voters were adamant that the impeachment inquiry was justified.“Biden should be in prison. They should put him in jail, and his son, the whole administration,” said Anthony DeAngelis, an equities trader.Maria Bicocchio, 71, who voted for Trump and D’Esposito in 2020, was slightly more nuanced on whether the impeachment inquiry could prove to be a problem among people who voted for Biden in 2022 before switching to the Republican party in 2022.“It could be but then again, maybe they have woken up and decided they’re not so sure about Biden,” she said.There are indications that impeachment might not be a huge vote loser for Republicans. A Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday found that 48% of voters support the impeachment inquiry, with 42% opposed. Among independent voters, 47% said they were in favor of the inquiry, with 36% opposed. (A further 17% had no opinion.)Still, Democrats will hope that the inquiry can at least tarnish enough Republicans to help them win back the House next year.“Campaigns are all about informing the voters about how their incumbent elected representatives have been performing,” said Jacobs, the Nassau county Democrats chair.“D’Esposito wants to come across as a moderate because he knows this is a moderate district. But when it comes right down to it on issues like this, he’s a Maga Republican, he’s exactly what Donald Trump wants to have in the Congress. I think voters need to know that.” More

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      Home discomfort for Ron DeSantis as Florida Republicans edge away

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      There haven’t been many good days for Ron DeSantis’s flailing presidential campaign lately, and news that the Florida governor has slumped to fifth place in a poll for the New Hampshire primary will hardly have lifted his spirits.Yet the biggest blow of the past week came from Florida’s once fiercely loyal Republican party, which appears to be souring on the idea of their man in the White House.The state party’s scrapping last weekend of a loyalty oath for candidates in its presidential primary next year was, on its face, an innocent move, declared by its sponsors to merely ensure voters could choose from all Republicans competing for the White House. Removing Donald Trump from Florida’s ballot because he would not pledge support for the eventual nominee would be undemocratic, they said.But there appears to be more behind the defiance than just giving the former president a leg up in a race he already leads by a substantial margin. The action, which the Republican Florida governor lobbied hard against, sends a clear signal to DeSantis that he no longer enjoys the unquestioned allegiance of the party in his own state, a potentially fatal position for a candidate seeking to convince the rest of the country he is best qualified for the presidency.“People are paying attention, and they notice when a candidate’s home state is balking,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.“One thing that DeSantis was correctly noted for was his iron grip on the Florida Republican party. They didn’t question his directives, the legislature passed bills they didn’t even have extensive hearings on because DeSantis submitted them, and he kept his people in line.“He had an iron grip, but the iron has rusted. This suggests, yet again, that DeSantis has lost not only prestige, but influence, which is what really matters in the pre-nomination battle.”Rumblings have circulated for months that some Florida Republicans have become “fatigued” with their second-term governor and his extremist agenda. Several voted in the most recent legislative session against a six-week abortion ban that passed anyway, while others have criticized his feud with Disney over transgender rights.The reversal of the loyalty oath requirement approved in May for the 19 March primary heralds a significant crystallization of that opposition.Before the vote, behind closed doors at the Florida Republican party’s statesman’s dinner at an Orlando hotel, one senior operative told NBC News it “would be viewed as a ‘fuck you’ to DeSantis” if it passed.After it did, another Republican source told the outlet: “DeSantis just got steamrollered in his own home.”It came at a critical stage for his presidential run, with DeSantis’s poll numbers continuing to collapse (he trails Trump for the Republican nomination by 50 points in a Quinnipiac survey, and has slipped to third place behind Trump and Nikki Haley in New York); and while his latest campaign reset, following the dismissal of more than a third of his staff and appointment of a new manager, struggles to gain a footing.“This is going to be a case study going forward for many years, just because you won an election in your state by a landslide, that does not mean that you are unstoppable at the national level,” Sabato said.“In fact, it may mean relatively little, even when it’s a mega-state like Florida. Was Ron DeSantis the candidate who won in a landslide in 2022, or is he the presidential candidate who’s slipping below the radar today? Well, he’s both of those things. And they aren’t contradictory.“Can he reverse it? Anybody can reverse anything given the right time and circumstances, but it sure doesn’t look that way. In all the polls I’ve seen he just keeps dropping, and pretty soon one of those other candidates, maybe it’s Nikki Haley, maybe somebody else, will end up going above him in the polls. Maybe it’s only a few points, but that’s all that’s needed to change the narrative.”Notably, the measure to reverse the loyalty oath was brought by the Republican state senator Joe Gruters, the former chair of the state party who has clashed with DeSantis over the Disney wrangle. In June, Gruters accused DeSantis of vetoing spending in his district as retribution for not supporting him.“The governor is clearly upset I endorsed Donald Trump for president, so he took it out on the people of Sarasota county,” he said in a statement at the time. “Simply because I support his political opponent, the governor chose to punish ordinary Floridians.”Gruters did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian, but told reporters after the Orlando vote that it was about fairness.“It’s not about the pledge. It’s about creating unnecessary roadblocks late in the game that makes it perceived that it’s anti-Trump,” he said, according to Politico.DeSantis, who skipped the Orlando humiliation for fundraising events in New York, will have the chance to try to win back the support of state Republicans at the party’s Florida Freedom Summit in Kissimmee on 4 November.“The Florida GOP will remain neutral, but we will work to support the entire Republican team by helping give all the presidential candidates as many opportunities as possible to connect with Florida voters,” spokesperson Nathalie Medina told reporters.Before that, however, DeSantis must plot his strategy for the next Republican primary debate on 27 September in California, seen by many as another possible make-or-break moment for his campaign.“He’s had a lot of turnover in his management team, his campaign team, so we’ll see. A lot of us are watching whether that’s going to make a difference, particularly looking ahead to the next debate,” said Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida.“Will he continue to focus on policy, which is what a lot of people would prefer, or is he going to have to get into the bashing of Trump and his colleagues on the stage? I don’t think the payoff for him is good in bashing, it’s in identifying problems facing the country and talking about how he will deal with them.” More

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      ‘I like him even better now’: Trump’s true believers keep the faith

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      Wearing a shirt festooned with countless images of Donald Trump, Leverne Martin was looking cheerful for a man who had set off from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at 9pm and driven through the night, arriving in Dubuque, Iowa, at 5.30am. When did he intend to sleep?“As soon as President Trump is back in the White House,” the 55-year-old handyman replied without missing a beat. “If we don’t get him back in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where he belongs, we’re in a mess, man. That’s why I’m voting for President Trump. That’s why I drove nine hours.”On a grey, rainy day, Martin was near the head of a long and winding queue outside a cavernous conference centre overlooking the Mississippi River. Like so many fans in so many towns and cities over nearly a decade, an overwhelmingly white crowd had come to cheer on Trump, elected US president in 2016, beaten by Joe Biden in 2020 and clear frontrunnerfor the Republican nomination in 2024.What is striking about the traveling circus is not what has changed over that time but what has stayed the same. Hawkers still move up and down the line selling Trump calendars, keychains and other regalia with captions such as “Gun rights matter”, “Fight for Trump”, “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president”, “No more bullshit”, “Trumpinator: I’ll be back” and “Fuck Biden and fuck you for voting for him”.Trump, 77, still puts on a show unlike anyone else in politics. Twentieth-century music from Abba, Celine Dion, Elvis Presley and Whitney Houston booms from loudspeakers. Video clips of allies such as the broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán receive cheers and those of foes such as Biden and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, elicit boos and jeers.The former reality TV star still enters to thunderous cheers and chants of “USA! USA!” People wave signs bearing his name and snap photos on their phones; one stood on a chair wearing an “I love Trump” T-shirt. Trump still plays the parts of demagogue, divider and standup comic, serving red meat to supporters who revel in shared grievance and the thrill of transgression.The slogan then is the slogan now: “Make America great again” (Maga), emblazoned on a blue backdrop to the stage where Trump spoke for 80 minutes. But for his supporters that phrase has taken on added meaning: Maga is now imbued with nostalgia for the Trump presidency when, as they perceive it, borders were strong and fuel prices were low.Mathew Willis, 41, wearing a “Let’s go Brandon” T-shirt alluding to an anti-Biden meme, said: “He showed what he can do for this country. The economy seemed the best that it had been, in my lifetime at least.“I just feel like he did a good job when he was in office. I want to see him do it again, especially after the last two and a half years of BS we’ve had. The economy’s in the toilet. Gas prices are up. We’re sending billions to other countries. We can’t even fix our own back yard. It’s sad.”The sentiment was echoed by Greg Erickson, 63, a retired insurance agent who blames the media for not giving the ex-president the credit he deserves. “I know to the deepest depths of my heart that Trump loves this country,” the army veteran said. “When he served four years as president, he was competent. Trump had inflation very low.“He had gas prices low and the highest employment rate for all minorities, for Blacks and women, which he doesn’t get credit for. He got rid of the bad guys; he killed two terrorists. He honored our military, which is very near and dear to me. He did a lot of great things for the country and that’s why I’m here.”When he rode down a New York escalator in June 2015, Trump demonised immigrants as criminals, drug dealers and rapists and made the building of a wall on the US-Mexico border his signature issue. Eight years later, the essential point remains the same and the incendiary rhetoric has only intensified.In Dubuque, many Trump supporters interviewed by the Guardian identified the border, which receives hours of coverage on Fox News, as their top priority – one that Democrats ignore at their peril. The candidate duly devoted the first half-hour of his speech to it, repeatedly drawing a contrast between his own presidency and that of Biden’s.“Under my leadership we had the most secure border in US history, acknowledged by everybody; now we have the worst border probably in the history of the world,” he said. “Just think of what we achieved under the Trump administration: I ended the human, economic and national security calamity known as catch-and-release.”Trump made the wildly exaggerated claim that mobs of unscreened, unvetted illegal alien migrants were “stampeding” across the southern border “by the millions and millions”. He continued: “This is an invasion and I’m the one candidate who from day one knows exactly how to stop it.”As in 2016, he recited The Snake, based on a song in which a “tenderhearted woman” finds a half-frozen snake on a path and rescues it, only to be bitten – supposedly a parable about the dangers of being soft on immigration. As in 2016, he mocked the “fake news” media and hurled nicknames at his political rivals, even repurposing “Crooked” Hillary Clinton as “Crooked” Joe Biden.But if there is a difference, a second Trump term is set to be even harsher and more extreme than the first. He vowed to move thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to the border and deploy the navy to impose a “fentanyl blockade”, arguing: “Before we defend the borders of foreign countries, we must secure the border of our country.”The former president went on: “We’ll carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. I’ll also invoke immediately the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members.” He also promised to expand on a travel ban that barred people from several countries with majority-Muslim populations during his presidency.Trump is also known to be planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power at the expense of the administrative state if he wins re-election next year. Referring to it as “our second term”, he said: “It is the greatest movement in the history of our country and probably any country and, if we do this, it will be written about for hundreds of years. We have to do it much bigger.”The rally came amid fresh criticism from conservatives of Trump over his refusal to commit to a national restriction on abortion and description of DeSantis’s signing of a six-week ban as a “terrible mistake”. Trump told the crowd in Dubuque that they needed to “follow their heart” but warned that Republicans needed to “learn how to talk” about legislation in a way that does not turn off voters.Carving out exceptions in any ban for instances of rape, incest and risk to the mother’s life was vital, he said. “Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win elections. We would probably lose the majorities in 2024 without the exceptions and perhaps the presidency itself.”Iowa’s popular governor, Kim Reynolds, has condemned Trump’s position but his followers here seemed at peace with it. Only one told the Guardian that he was “slightly” troubled by the comments. Many have been on the eight-year journey and are sticking with him through thick and thin.Indeed, whereas for millions of Democratic and independent voters Trump’s first term and its fiery denouement are his biggest liability, an essay in American carnage, for the true believers of the Maga movement they are his biggest asset.Dawn Ruff, 55, who went to a Trump rally in Dubuque when he first ran for president, said: “I want the economy back to the way it was. I thought he did a good job when he was in there.”The White House quotes figures showing that inflation is in decline and unemployment at a 50-year low. But Ruff responded: “Yeah, that’s their opinion. They’re not the ones that have to worry about going to the gas pump and pumping gas that’s almost five bucks a gallon. When Trump was in there it was a dollar something.”Laci Doyle, 19, a student nurse who will vote for the first time next year, agreed that things were better under Trump. “Our country was at its highest point when he was president. We need to get back to what it used to be, because I think our country was a lot happier and less divided when he was president.”Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his four-year presidency, according to a Washington Post count. But Doyle added: “Yeah, he says some stupid stuff – the tweets and everything – but that doesn’t bother me because ultimately he’s an honest, truthful person. I like his personality. I like that he’s a businessman.”Trump is facing 91 criminal counts in four jurisdictions, but Susan Tayloe, 59, who works for a bank, said: “He obviously has a great respect for the rule of law and also just he’s shown when he was in office before that he got a lot of things accomplished for a lot of people and did a lot of good things. He got persecuted and I like him even better now because of that.”Asked what she would like to see Trump do in a second term, Tayloe replied: “I would like to see the border closed. I would like to see drilling: drill, baby, drill. We have tons of oil here. Why are we shutting down Alaska reserves? We bought Alaska for the oil. Let’s use it. More energy independence. I’d like to see less of this Green New Deal bullshit.” More