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      Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants Elon Musk to be his presidential adviser

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      The Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has said that he wants Elon Musk as an adviser if he becomes president.The billionaire biotech entrepreneur was in Newton, Iowa, campaigning at a town hall on Friday when he was asked about whom he would want as advisers for his potential presidency.Ramaswamy said in response that he wanted people with a “blank fresh impression” who do not “come from within” the government.“I’ve enjoyed getting to know better, Elon Musk recently, I expect him to be an interesting adviser of mine because he laid off 75% of the employees at Twitter,” NBC reports. “And then the effectiveness actually went up.”In an earlier interview this month with Fox News, Ramaswamy said of the layoffs: “What [Musk] did at Twitter is a good example of what I want to do with the administrative state … Take out the 75% of the dead weight cost, improve the actual experience of what it’s supposed to do.”Ramaswamy’s response on Friday also doubles down on comments he made in February: “Just as @elonmusk did at Twitter, as president I will release the ‘state action files’ from the federal government – exposing every instance where the feds pressured companies to take constitutionally prohibited actions. Roll that log over & see what crawls out. Won’t be pretty.”Since Ramaswamy joined the campaign trail, he has attracted the attention and praise from Musk, who earlier this month said: “He is a very promising candidate.”In response to another tweet in which Ramaswamy repeated his campaign values including “God is real,” “There are two genders,” “Human flourishing requires fossil fuels,” and “Reverse racism is racism,” Musk wrote: “He states his beliefs clearly.”Despite Ramaswamy positioning himself as an “outsider” and accusing his opponents of being “bought and paid for” by various GOP donors, a recent Guardian investigation found that Ramaswamy has deep ties to influential figures on both ends of the political spectrum including Peter Thiel, a rightwing donor and co-founder of PayPal.Ramaswamy’s other ties include Leonard Leo, a prominent rightwing activist currently under investigation in Washington DC over his efforts to install judges on federal courts including the supreme court.Other investigations by ProPublica and Documented have reported that Ramaswamy has delivered speeches at events staged by Teneo, a group chaired by Leo that seeks to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.Earlier this week, Ramaswamy’s campaign told the Associated Press that he had raised $450,000 in the first hours following the GOP primary debate on Wednesday night. More

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      Defiant Trump seeks to gain advantage by using mugshot in fundraising push

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      Donald Trump’s campaign sought to turn his public disgrace into a political weapon on Friday by raising funds and creating merchandise with his glowering prison mugshot.The mugshot, a historic first for a former US president, was made public after a 20-minute booking at the decrepit prison in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, over charges that Trump ran a criminal racket to overturn the 2020 election in the state.The 77-year-old was fingerprinted and listed in jail records as inmate P01135809, with blue eyes and blond or strawberry hair. He gave his height as 6ft 3in (1.91m) and his weight as 215 pounds (97.5kg): some 24lb less than the White House doctor reported in 2018.On Friday, the remaining indicted co-conspirators, among them the former justice department official Jeffrey Clark, surrendered themselves at the jail. Legal wrangling over procedure to trial continued. One co-conspirator, the attorney Kenneth Chesebro, saw his request for a speedy trial granted, a date set in October. Lawyers for Trump said they did not want a quick trial.The Georgia indictment was Trump’s fourth but the first to produce a mugshot, a medium often associated with drug dealers or drunk drivers. In the picture, the one-time most powerful man in the world is seen scowling at the camera while wearing his customary blue suit, white shirt and red tie. The image flashed up on screens across the nation and ran on the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and newspapers around the world.But while millions saw a symbol of justice finally catching up with an unrepentant plotter, proof no one is above the law, millions saw a face of defiance, the indelible image a martyr targeted by his enemies.Released on $200,000 bail, Trump wasted no time in seeking advantage. On X, formerly known as Twitter, he posted the mugshot and the words “Election interference. Never surrender!” with a link to his website, which directs to a fundraising page.It was his first post since 8 January 2021, when Twitter suspended his account after the Capitol attack. His account was reinstated last November, shortly after Elon Musk bought the company, but Trump had stuck with his own Truth Social platform.The post came as Trump was flying back to New Jersey. He has 86.6 million followers on X, dwarfing his rivals in the 2024 race, and used the platform as a personal megaphone before and during his presidency. But it remained unclear whether the post was a one-off or not. Trump posted the same message on Truth Social, writing: “I love Truth Social. It is my home!!!”Trump’s 2024 campaign plastered the mugshot on flasks, mugs, T-shirts and other merchandise. An email advertised a T-shirt: “Breaking news: The mugshot is here.” It said: “This mugshot will forever go down in history as a symbol of America’s defiance of tyranny.”The mugshot appears to be a necessary cash cow, given how much money Trump’s campaign is spending on lawyers as he battles 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions. It could also be a rallying point for his effort to win back the White House, perhaps his best hope of avoiding prison.His son, Donald Trump Jr, told reporters after the first Republican debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday: “It’s going to be the most iconic photo in the history of US politics, if not perhaps the history of the United States.”Asked by the Guardian if his father was afraid of going to prison, Don Jr replied: “We’ve gotten so used to this, we don’t even think about it. We’re joking around because we understand exactly what’s going on and hopefully the American people wake up to exactly what’s going on as well.“This is the stuff that the Democrat [sic] party and many in the media actually would be outraged about and are outraged about when it’s happening in Russia. When it happens in the United States, they’re strangely quiet and that’s very telling.”Far-right Republicans joined in the incendiary rhetoric. Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee, told the rightwing Newsmax network: “Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen.”She added: “We’re not going to keep putting up with this.”There is no evidence Joe Biden or Democrats have interfered in the process that led to Trump’s indictments, which are set to collide with next year’s election.In an another head-spinning week, Trump’s arraignment came a day after he skipped the debate, choosing instead an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was posted on X.When the candidates were asked if they would support Trump even if he had a criminal conviction, four instantly raised their hands and two, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, wavered before following suit. Chris Christie made an awkward gesture and only Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down.Trump dominates polling. Charlie Sykes, editor of the Bulwark website and a former conservative radio host, said: “If you would have told someone back in 2015 that a candidate for president had been indicted for obstruction, racketeering, false witnessing, had tried to stage a coup, and yet was still actually in the race, they would have thought you were out of your mind.“Think about how the moral standards of the political party have changed. Think about what’s happened to the party of law and order that basically says, ‘Yeah, Donald Trump may be a criminal, but he’s our criminal, and we’re OK with that.’”Republicans return to Milwaukee in less than a year for a convention that will anoint their candidate to take on Biden. Sykes said: “There’s a real possibility Donald Trump will, by the time he comes back to Milwaukee, be a convicted felon, and will be wearing an ankle bracelet when he accepts the Republican nomination.” More

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      Trump’s Georgia arrest reduces Republican rivals to a sideshow

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      Less than 24 hours after the first primary debate of the 2024 election season concluded, viewers of America’s cable news programs could be forgiven if they forgot the event had occurred at all.Rather than focusing on the post-debate coverage and analysis typically seen during past election cycles, CNN and MSNBC turned their attention on Thursday evening to Donald Trump’s arrest in Fulton county, Georgia, for charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. News of Trump’s surrender and the image of the first mugshot ever taken of a former US president also dominated the homepages of the New York Times and the Washington Post.The wall-to-wall news coverage of Trump’s arrest served as yet another example of the former president’s unique ability to suck up all available media oxygen, making it nearly impossible for his opponents’ message to break through to voters. That dynamic quickly drowned out coverage of the debate and probably mitigated, if not erased, any advantage Republican candidates might have gained from their performances.Rather than participating in the debate on Wednesday, Trump instead chose to sit down for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The interview aired on X, formerly known as Twitter, and it had already garnered more than 250m views as of Friday morning.Even though Trump did not attend the debate, his absence and his looming arrest shaped much of the conversation and sparked its most illuminating moments. After candidates spent the first hour of the debate discussing issues like the climate crisis and the economy, the Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum turned their attention to Trump – or “the elephant not in the room”, as Baier put it.Noting that Trump was expected to surrender to Fulton county officials the following day, the hosts asked the eight candidates onstage who would support Trump as the nominee even if he was convicted on criminal charges. All but two candidates – former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson – unequivocally raised their hands.“Someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct,” Christie said, after his hand wavered. “Whether or not you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States.”The comment was met with boos from the debate audience, as the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy jumped in to defend Trump. Ramaswamy pledged to pardon Trump if he is elected president next year, and called on his opponents to do the same.The clash was a quintessential example of the Republican party’s ongoing Trump problem. Even when Trump himself does not make an appearance, his persona still dominates any conversation about the party’s future because of his enduring popularity with the Republican base and his ubiquitous presence in the headlines.“He is a very savvy politician in his ability to manipulate the media, garner earned media attention and suck all the oxygen out of the room,” the conservative commentator Tara Setmayer told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America podcast. “None of the other candidates running against him have that ability, which is why Trump will be the nominee.”In more normal political times, perhaps Trump’s 91 criminal charges would become a liability in his quest to return to the White House. But the former president has transformed his legal woes into an asset, casting each indictment as an attack on his supporters, and the message appears to be resonating with Republicans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to a CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday, Trump now has his largest lead in the Republican primary, garnering the support of 62% of likely voters. Among those voters, 73% said they were supporting Trump at least partly to show support for the former president during his legal challenges. Another recent poll taken in the first voting state of Iowa found that Trump was not only ahead of his opponents by a wide margin, but his lead actually increased by five points after he was indicted in Georgia.Trump keenly understands this dynamic and has capitalized on it to further cultivate his persona as a fighter willing to go to battle for his supporters, enriching his campaign in the process. Hours after his mugshot was taken in Fulton county, Trump’s campaign team had put the image on T-shirts available to supporters for $34.With Trump’s trials expected to dominate much of the news coverage in 2024, this dynamic does not appear to be shifting anytime soon. That reality has left Trump’s opponents who participated in the debate this week squabbling over second place as Republicans rush to nominate a man who could soon be convicted.“The idea that he would make this a media spectacle, that he’s wearing these indictments and these arrests like a badge of valor is the world turned upside down. There is no low any more in the Republican party,” Setmayer said. “Donald Trump is a failed reality show host, and he understands how to entertain. And unfortunately in this day and age, that resonates with a large portion of our electorate.” More

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      in Elections

      Final Trump co-defendants surrender to authorities in Georgia – live

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      From 4m agoTwo of the last co-defendants who were indicted in Georgia along with Donald Trump for attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s election win in the state three years ago surrendered to authorities today.According to Fulton county jail records, Chicago-based publicist Trevian Kutti turned herself in after being charged with threatening election worker Ruby Freeman. Also surrendering today was Stephen Lee, a longtime police chaplain in Georgia who traveled to Freeman’s home and identified himself as a pastor trying to help.Here’s a rundown of all the 19 defendants named in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’s sprawling indictment, which is centered on the Trump campaign’s attempt to prevent Biden from winning Georgia’s electoral votes weeks after the ballots had been counted:A social media post viewed nearly six million times of what appears to be Donald Trump fans wildly celebrating in a bar as the mugshot of the former president is broadcast on a large screen, appears to be a well-crafted hoax.The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by disenchanted Republicans, shared the video on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, but Newsweek claims: “the footage is actually of England soccer fans…and has been widely edited as a meme.”The Lincoln Project post doesn’t say where the video was sourced, just the words ‘TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED’. Since posting the video 12 hours ago, the Lincoln Project has defiantly reposted the footage twice more.Ahead of the surrender, Donald Trump shook up his legal team and retained the top Georgia attorney Steven Sadow, who filed a notice of appearance with the Fulton county superior court as lead counsel, replacing Drew Findling. Trump’s other lawyer in the case, Jennifer Little, is staying on.The reason for the abrupt recalibration was unclear, and Trump’s aides suggested it was unrelated to performance. Still, Trump has a record of firing lawyers who represented him during criminal investigations but were unable to stave off charges.Findling was also unable to exempt Trump from having his mugshot taken, according to people familiar with the matter – something that personally irritated Trump, even though the Fulton county sheriff’s office had always indicated they were uninterested in making such an accommodation. His mugshot was not taken in his other criminal cases.In a clear sign of her belief that her team is ready to go to trial immediately, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis on Thursday asked for the trial of all 19 defendants to start on 23 October after one of the co-defendants.Trump’s legal team filed a motion opposing such a quick trial date within hours, underscoring the former president’s overarching strategy to delay proceedings as much as possible – potentially until after the 2024 presidential election.Willis’ request to schedule the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to begin in October came after one of the co-defendants, Trump’s former lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, apparently gambled and requested a speedy trial.In a court filing, Trump attorney Steve Sadow notified a judge that Trump will soon file a motion to sever his case from Chesebro – indicating the diverging interests of the people ensnared in the indictment.Sadow also said Trump will seek to sever his case from “any other co-defendant who makes a similar request” for a quick trial. He wrote:
      President Trump further respectfully puts the Court on notice that he requests the Court set a scheduling conference at its earliest convenience so he can be heard on the State’s motions for entry of pretrial scheduling order and to specially set trial
      Among the defendants who surrendered to Georgia authorities early this morning was Jeffrey Clark, the former justice department official charged with violating the state’s Rico act and criminal attempt to commit false statements and writings.Clark, who worked as assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division from September 2020 to January 2021, was booked at the Fulton county jail on Friday morning and released on a $100,000 bond.In the indictment, prosecutors said Clark pushed to send out an official justice department letter claiming that investigators had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States.” Donald Trump supported Clark and planned to name him acting attorney general until he was threatened with mass resignations if he did so, according to the indictment.On Tuesday, Clark had asked a judge to prohibit Fulton county Fani Willis from arresting him by a Friday deadline, arguing that his case should be handled by federal courts because of his work as a federal officer.US district judge Steve Jones denied Clark’s request, as well as a similar request by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman, posted a mocked-up mugshot on X, formerly known as Twitter, in a show of solidarity with Donald Trump after his surrender to Fulton county officials.Alongside the hashtag MAGAMugshot, Greene wrote:
      I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis who is nothing more than a political hitman tasked with taking out Biden’s top political opponent.
      Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing megadonor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Read the full story here.Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur and GOP presidential hopeful, took in $450,000 in the hours after his appearance at the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday.Ramaswamy, a political newcomer whose bid for the GOP nomination has been hit by recent scandals over remarks that suggested sympathy for conspiracy theories around the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the January 6 assault on the Capitol, took in an average donation of $38, campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told AP on Thursday.Ramaswamy has largely been self-funding his campaign. On Wednesday night, he repeatedly said all the other presidential candidates onstage in Milwaukee were “bought and paid for” by donors.The Guardian’s columnist Margaret Sullivan writes how Ramaswamy is America’s demagogue-in-waiting.Mere minutes after Donald Trump’s mugshot was released, the Trump campaign had already turned the image into a merchandizing opportunity.The former president’s re-election campaign announced in an email that it would give away a “free” T-shirt with Trump’s mugshot printed on it for $47.The caption on the shirt reads “NEVER SURRENDER” – which is literally what Trump was doing when the mugshot was taken on Thursday.Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s indictments are likely to take a toll on his prospects of winning the presidential election, according to a new poll.The Politico magazine/Ipsos poll suggests Americans are taking the cases against Trump seriously and that a majority are skeptical of his attempts to portray himself as a victim of a legally baseless witch-hunt.About 51% of respondents – 14% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats – said Trump is likely guilty in the federal case in which he is charged with conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against rights. Another 52% said he is likely guilty in the federal case regarding his alleged mishandling of classified documents.Nearly 60% of respondents said they wanted the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case to take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin next year. Federal prosecutors have proposed the trial begin 2 Jan 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have pushed for a April 2026 trial start date.Nearly one-third of respondents said that a conviction in the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case would make them less likely to support Trump, including 34% of independents.And half of the country said Trump should go to prison if he is convicted in the justice department’s 2020 election case, according to the poll.CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski points out that Donald Trump is polling better than he did at any point in 2020.The former president faces 91 felony counts and has been charged with attempting to subvert democracy, risking national security secrets and falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star.Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, said a second US civil war is “going to happen” if state and federal authorities continue to prosecute Donald Trump.“Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them what the heck, do you do want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen,” Palin told Newsmax on Thursday night.
      We’re not going to keep putting up with this.
      Palin was speaking to the rightwing network as Trump surrendered at a jail in Fulton county, Georgia, and a historic mugshot was released.Academics have long warned of the potential for Trump to stoke violence worse than the attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, when supporters he told to “fight like hell” to stop certification of Biden’s victory stormed the Capitol building. Nine deaths have been linked to the riot.Barbara F Walter, author of How Civil Wars Start: And How To Stop Them and a CIA advisor, has written:
      No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.
      But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
      And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.
      Donald Trump described his experience of being booked at the Fulton county jail on Thursday as “terrible” and “very sad” after he surrendered to authorities on felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Speaking to Newsmax after flying out of Georgia, Trump said he was treated “nicely” during his booking process but said his arrest was a “very sad day for the country”. He said:
      I took a mugshot. I’d never heard the words mug shot. They didn’t teach me that at the Wharton School of Finance.
      He added:
      I went through an experience that I never thought I’d have to go through, but then I’ve gone through the same experience three other times. In my whole life, I didn’t know anything about indictments. And now I’ve been indicted, like, four times
      In a separate interview with Fox News, Trump said:
      It is not a comfortable feeling – especially when you’ve done nothing wrong.
      Trump faces 13 charges in Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering case, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents. More

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      in US Politics

      Mugshotted, Trump’s veneer of immunity cracked. Yet his wrath is bottomless | Lloyd Green

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      On Wednesday night, Donald Trump won the Republican debate without showing up. One night later, he surrendered to law enforcement at the Fulton county, Georgia, jail. In the span of 24 hours, cameras captured the essence of the current presidential contest, namely the legal status of the prior occupant of the Oval Office. Whether Trump is a free man or a convict on election day 2024 will weigh heavily upon voters and the republic.At the debate, six of the eight contenders raised their hands when asked if they would back Trump if he were convicted. With the predictable exceptions of Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the rest of the pack fell into line.Despite the fact that Trump was seemingly untroubled by January 6 rioters’ calls to hang Mike Pence from a makeshift gallows outside the US Capitol, the hapless vice-president declared his fealty. And if Pence declined to resist, then Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley could only be expected to acquiesce.Over the past eight years, the demarcation between the Republican rank and file and Trump’s core has disappeared. Each new indictment bolsters his grip on the Republican party. As a corollary, never-Trump Republicans are now independents and Democrats. Our politics convulses as the party of Lincoln vanishes.The scene outside the jail was controlled chaos. A cluster of Trump’s supporters descended upon the surrender site. His travails were theirs. By extension, they view the eventual judgments rendered in these cases as a verdict on them.Their taunt, “screw your feelings”, was always bravado. Yet the resentment is real. Perceived slights are a tremendous political motivator.Around 7.30pm, Trump entered the jail, one of the grimmest in the US, amid a phalanx of lawyers, Secret Service agents and state troopers. Within a half hour, he left the building. In between, the state of Georgia took his mugshot. For a brief moment, the system processed him as it might process a common criminal.But only for that moment and not exactly. Most criminal defendants do not fly into Atlanta via private jet or enter with the Secret Service in tow. Said differently, Trump is not the typical defendant.The cases brought by the special counsel Jack Smith; the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis; and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg are dramas in which US democracy is on trial too. How we perceive ourselves and how others view this country will never be the same.Regardless, the day’s events stripped away the veneer of untouchability that Trump had cultivated over decades. He is in legal jeopardy. With hindsight, the verdict in the first E Jean Carroll case, that Trump had sexually abused the writer and then defamed her, presaged what has since followed.By contrast, dignity as traditionally understood was never Trump’s strong suit. He was always tabloid fodder and preferred it that way. John Barron and New York Post headlines were his own inventions.For Trump and his minions, the coming election is more than a rematch between aging men. It is about revenge – against the deep state, against the justice department and the FBI, against local prosecutors, against the media. His is a bottomless pit of wrath.At the debate, Haley derided Trump as the most disliked politician in the US. She may have a point, but only barely. A recent poll pegs Trump’s unfavourability at 56%. For Joe Biden and Kamala Harris the numbers are 55% and 52%, respectively.The polls also show Trump performing better today than he did in 2020. Ron DeSantis fades. Biden’s lead is narrow and tenuous. His record is on the line. Inflation, immigration and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan are all fair game.Likewise, Hunter Biden and his woes may return to bite his father. For whatever reason, the president will not distance himself from his wayward son. Inviting Hunter to a state dinner was not a one-off. Recently, the two families vacationed together at the Lake Tahoe home of Tom Steyer, the other billionaire who challenged Biden for the Democratic nomination. Love may actually be blind.For little more than a minute, Trump stood in the front of his jet and proclaimed himself not guilty. He then lumbered up the plane’s stairs while swaths of the country and the media waited for his mugshot to drop.He faces state charges, outside the purview of the president’s pardon power. Trump has reason to worry.His inmate number is P01135809. By 5 November 2024, those figures will be etched on the national psyche and splattered on campaign merchandise.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He’s an insider’: Ramaswamy’s deep ties to rightwing kingpins revealed

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      Vivek Ramaswamy has described himself as an “outsider”, accusing rivals for the Republican presidential nomination of being “bought and paid for” by donors and special interests.But the 38-year-old Ohio-based venture capitalist, whose sharp-elbowed and angry display stood out in the first Republican debate this week, has his own close ties to influential figures from both sides of the political aisle.Prominent among such connections are Peter Thiel, the co-founder of tech giants PayPal and Palantir and a rightwing mega-donor, and Leonard Leo, the activist who has marshaled unprecedented sums in his push to stock federal courts with conservative judges.Ramaswamy is a Yale Law School friend of JD Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy who enjoyed success in finance before entering politics. At Yale, Vance and Ramaswamy attended what the New Yorker called an “intimate lunch seminar for select students” that was hosted by Thiel. Last year, backed by Thiel and espousing hard-right Trumpist views, Vance won a US Senate seat in Ohio.Thiel has since said he has stepped back from political donations. But he has backed Ramaswamy’s business career, supporting what the New Yorker called “a venture helping senior citizens access Medicare” and, last year, backing Strive Asset Management, a fund launched by Ramaswamy to attack environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies among corporate investors. Vance was also a backer.Ramaswamy’s primary vehicle to success has been Roivant, an investment company focused on the pharmaceuticals industry founded in 2014.The Roivant advisory board includes figures from both the Republican and Democratic establishments: Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary under Barack Obama; Tom Daschle of South Dakota, formerly Democratic leader in the US Senate; and Olympia Snowe, formerly a Republican senator from Maine.Ramaswamy’s links to Leo – recently the recipient of a $1.6bn donation from the industrialist Barre Seid, believed to be the biggest ever such gift, but now reportedly the subject an investigation by the attorney general of Washington DC – are many.As reported by ProPublica and Documented, Ramaswamy has spoken at retreats staged by Teneo, a group Leo chairs and which aims to connect high-powered conservatives, to “crush liberal dominance” in American life.Other Teneo speakers have reportedly included Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor polling ahead of Ramaswamy in the Republican primary, and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who trails Ramaswamy and clashed with him on stage in Milwaukee.ProPublica also linked Thiel to the genesis of the Teneo group. According to a document seen by the Guardian, Ramaswamy became a Teneo member in 2021.Elsewhere, Ramaswamy is a board member of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a group with ties to Leo, and a member of the Federalist Society, the Leo-driven group which works to stock the courts with conservatives.Ramaswamy has also spoken to and received an award from the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF), a group of Republican state treasurers.In June, in South Carolina, the Post and Courier newspaper reported that last year, before launching his presidential bid, Ramaswamy attempted “to leverage his [Republican] connections to gain access [for Strive] to lucrative contracts to manage pension funds … [with] total assets of $39.6bn”.Similar pushes were mounted in Missouri and Indiana, the paper said. Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina state treasurer, told the Post and Courier there was “nothing improper” about such approaches.Asked about Ramaswamy’s claims to be an outsider in light of his links to rightwing donors, activists and establishment figures, a campaign spokesperson told the Guardian: “Vivek has lived the American dream and has had tremendous success in business.“There’s a colossal difference between someone who has friendships and business relationships with wealthy individuals and politicians who change their policies and positions to please their Super Pac donors,” they added.In the Wisconsin debate, Ramaswamy flourished in the absence of Donald Trump, the former US president who faces 91 criminal charges but nonetheless leads Republican polling by huge margins.Amid speculation that Ramaswamy might end up Trump’s running mate, Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, called Ramaswamy “a classic 2020s America tech bro bullshit artist … Trump for the 21st century”.Ramaswamy’s claim to be an outsider, Galen said, was part of his “fundamental understanding … that Maga [the pro-Trump Republican base] wants him to show that the rest of these people [in the primary] are politicians. He’s willing to be the showman … the outsider. Anti-establishment. ‘If anything is there, I dislike it because it’s there.’ You know, ‘I’m going to have fun with this. I’m not going to take it seriously because you’re a bunch of hacks and goons.’”But in another sense, regarding Ramaswamy’s ties to the likes of Leo and Thiel, Galen said: “I think that he’s an insider.“He walks into a room with Leonard Leo and says, ‘What do you need me to do?’ … And they’re like, ‘Here’s what we want you to do. Here’s what we need you to do.’ Right?“Do I think [Ramaswamy] cares about [issues like restricting] abortion? No, not particularly. I don’t think he has a firmly held belief on it. But if he thinks that it will help him, and in exchange for that Leonard Leo will throw a little chicken feed of the $1.6bn that old man gave him, to help him? Sure, what the hell?“He didn’t ever think he’d get this far. So now he’s just gonna push it as far as he can.”Ramaswamy, Galen said, was closely tied to a world of donors and non-profits in which Leo is “certainly at the center. And this movement only moves in one direction, and it’s toward the darkness. It’s towards authoritarianism. And it’s because it finds people like Ramaswamy. And the more that all these other candidates will now attack him, they will drive him further and further into the arms of those people.” More

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      The winners and losers of the first GOP debate – podcast

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      Republican presidential candidates took to the stage this week to try to convince voters they should be the one to take on Joe Biden in 2024. There was one notable exception – but Donald Trump was still inescapable for his opponents.
      Joan E Greve speaks to the former GOP communications director Tara Setmayer about everyone’s performance on the night, and whether these debates even matter when the missing frontrunner is so far ahead in the polls

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump’s jail spectacle is historic, but it won’t harm him politically

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      One by one this week, they’ve made their way to 901 Rice Street, the address of the notorious Fulton county jail. Lawyers, government officials, a former state party chair and others have all surrendered to authorities after being charged as part of an alleged criminal effort to overturn the 2020 election.On Thursday, the head of that enterprise, Donald Trump, himself surrendered, marking another historic moment for a president who has reshaped the rules of American politics. This is the closest that Trump has been to a jail cell to date and serves as a blunt reminder that no American or former president is above the law.Like nearly everything Trump does, his surrender was orchestrated to be a spectacle. He deliberately timed his surrender, 7.30pm, to maximize cable news coverage. Reporters camped outside the jail all day on Thursday as temperatures reached mid-90s F and Trump supporters gathered for a demonstration. There was wall-to-wall news coverage of Trump’s motorcade and arrival at the jail. While politicians typically try and shift attention away from their criminal legal troubles, Trump has embraced it, feeding into the circuit by advertising his surrender time.Despite Trump’s brashness, the gravity of the moment is underscored by the venue where Trump surrendered. In his other three cases, Trump has surrendered in courthouses and then quickly appeared in a courtroom for an arraignment. On Thursday, he’ll turn himself in at a jailhouse that has been so beset by horrific conditions that it’s under investigation from the Department of Justice. For the first time, he’ll have to post a cash bond – $200,000 – to guarantee his release.In the other three instances, Trump has avoided the indignity of a mugshot. On Thursday, he got one that will be released to the public. For a man who cares deeply about perception, the image released on Thursday by the Fulton county sheriff will be inescapable, forever establishing him as the only president to ever be criminally prosecuted with a mugshot. It is also likely to be one that is forever part of America’s story – a snapshot of the president and a movement who tried to bend American institutions and tested the contours of American governance and the rule of law at every opportunity.In a sense it marks the end of a two-year chapter of investigating Trump’s efforts to lead a coup to overturn the 2020 election results. It also marks the beginning of the next chapter – the trials to convict him.Still, it would be a mistake to assume that the mugshot and the spectacle of Trump’s surrender at jail on Thursday will harm Trump politically. Instead, it is only likely to more deeply entrench support from those who back Trump and believe he is being persecuted.As both a candidate and president, Trump has made the politics of grievance, the feeling of being persecuted and wronged, central to his political identity. Trump is already using his indictments to rally his supporters. When he surrendered in New York earlier this year, officials waived a mugshot. Trump’s campaign quickly released a fake one and began fundraising with it instead.The booking, and the indictment that came before it, is also the latest step in what is likely to be a sustained and nasty battle, both in the public domain and in court, between Trump and Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Trump has already attacked Willis, a Democrat and the first Black woman to hold her office, saying – of all things – that she is racist. Willis has not responded to those attacks, and urged those in her office to ignore them, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” she wrote in an email earlier this month. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”Trump allies, both in Georgia and in Washington DC, have already begun separate efforts to make Willis’s work as difficult as possible. But Willis, who has a reputation for being an aggressive prosecutor, hasn’t blinked. So far, she’s headed off last-ditch efforts by Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, two of Trump’s co-defendants, to avoid surrendering.For all the fanfare of Trump’s surrender, the most significant developments may be what happens far away from Rice Street and the Fulton county courthouse. Trump wields a commanding lead in the polls for the Republican nomination for president.Asked during the first Republican debate on Wednesday if they would support Trump if he was the nominee, nearly all of the candidates said yes. More