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      The Republicans' racial culture war is reaching new heights in Virginia | Sidney Blumenthal

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      OpinionUS politicsThe Republicans’ racial culture war is reaching new heights in VirginiaSidney BlumenthalWhy is the Republican running for governor of Virginia going after Toni Morrison’s award-winning novel Beloved? Sat 30 Oct 2021 06.22 EDTLast modified on Sat 30 Oct 2021 13.29 EDTRunning for governor of Virginia as the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin appears to have a split personality – sometimes the generic former corporate executive in a fleece vest, the suburban dad surrounded by his sun-lit children and tail-wagging dogs, and sometimes the fierce kulturkampf warrior and racial dog-whistler. His seemingly dual personality has been filtered through a cascade of Republican consultants’ campaign images. His latest TV commercial attempts to resolve the tension by showing him as a concerned father who shares the worries of the ordinary Trumpster. In the closing hours of the campaign, he has exposed that his political identity can’t be separated from Republican identity politics in the decadent stage of Trumpism.The Republican party has long specialized in fabricating esoteric threats, from the basements of Pizzagate to the stratosphere of “Jewish space lasers”. Youngkin’s campaign, though, has contrived a brand-new enemy within, a specter of doom to stir voters’ anxieties that only he can dispel: the Black Nobel prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison and her novel Beloved.His turn to a literary reference might seem an obscure if not a bizarre non sequitur, at odds with his pacifying image, but the ploy to suppress the greatest work by the most acclaimed Black writer has an organic past in rightwing local politics and an even deeper resonance in Virginia history.In his first TV ad, introducing himself as a newcomer who had never before run for political office, Youngkin warned voters not to misperceive him as yet another nasty Republican and to dismiss not-yet-stated “lies about me”. They should ignore whatever negative material they might hear about how he “left dirty dishes in the sink”. “What’s next, that I hate dogs?” Big smile. Cue: cute kids and puppies. Soundtrack: bark, bark.For a while the nice guy Youngkin tried to walk his thin line, lest he lose the party’s angry base voters. He attempted to use the soft image to cover the hard line. He is vaccinated, but against vaccine mandates. He is inspired by Donald Trump, has proclaimed his belief in the need for audits and “election integrity”; opposed to abortion, but was careful not to appear with Trump at his “Take Back Virginia” rally. He appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News in a ritual cleansing to profess that his motive is pure.“You know, Tucker, this is why I quit my job last summer,” Youngkin said. “I actually could not recognize my home state of Virginia.” He had, he explained, left the corporate world to take up the sword for the Republican culture war.Actually, according to Bloomberg News, he “flamed out” as co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, with a “checkered record”, losing billions on “bad bets”, and “retired after a power struggle”. In May, just before leaving the firm and speaking to Carlson, after the murder of George Floyd, Youngkin signed a statement affirming that contributions to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund would receive matching grants from Carlyle. When asked about this later, however, a campaign spokesperson fired back, “Glenn has never donated to the SPLC and does not agree with them. He is a Christian and a conservative who is pro-life and served in his church for years.”Youngkin’s seeming confusion around controversial racial issues highlighted his conflicting roles. In Washington, while at Carlyle, he was the responsible corporate citizen practicing worthy philanthropy. In the Republican party, where that sort of non-partisan moderation is not only suspect but mocked as a source of evil, he has had to demonstrate that he is not tainted.Soon enough, Youngkin waded into the murky waters of racial politics. He offered himself as the defender of schoolchildren from the menace of critical race theory, even though the abstruse legal doctrine is not taught in any Virginia public school. Yet he suggested that his opponent, former governor Terry McAuliffe, would impose its creed on innocent minds, depriving parents of control. “On day one, I will ban critical race theory in our schools,” Youngkin has pledged.But his brandishing of critical race theory, nonexistent in the schools’ curriculum, has been apparently insufficiently frightening to finish the job. Perhaps not enough people know what the theory is at all. He needed one more push, searched for one more issue and produced one more ad.So, Youngkin seized upon a novel racial symbol, in fact a novel. The danger, he claimed, comes from Beloved by Toni Morrison – the Pulitzer prize-winning novel by the Nobel prize-winning author, about the psychological toll and loss of slavery, especially its sexual abuse, and considered one of the most important American literary works.While no other Republican has ever before run against Beloved as a big closing statement, there is a history to the issue in Virginia.“When my son showed me his reading material, my heart sunk,” Laura Murphy, identified as “Fairfax County Mother”, said in the Youngkin ad. “It was some of the most explicit reading material you can imagine.” She claimed that her son had nightmares from reading the assignment in his advanced placement literature class. “It was disgusting and gross,” her son, Blake, said. “It was hard for me to handle. I gave up on it.” As it happens, in 2016 Murphy had lobbied a Republican-majority general assembly to pass a bill enabling students to exempt themselves from class if they felt the material was sexually explicit. Governor McAuliffe vetoed what became known as “the Beloved bill”.“This Mom knows – she lived through it. It’s a powerful story,” tweeted Youngkin. Ms Murphy, the “Mom”, is in fact a longtime rightwing Republican activist. Her husband, Daniel Murphy, is a lawyer-lobbyist in Washington and a large contributor to Republican candidates and organizations. Their delicate son, Blake Murphy, who complained of “night terrors”, was a Trump White House aide and is now associate general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which sends out fundraising emails reading: “Alert. You’re a traitor. You abandoned Trump …”The offending novel is a fictional treatment of a true story with a Virginia background, a history that ought to be taught in Virginia schools along with the reading of Beloved. In 1850, Senator James M Mason, of Virginia, sponsored the Fugitive Slave Act. “The safety and integrity of the Southern States (to say nothing of their dignity and honor) are indissolubly bound up with domestic slavery,” he wrote. In 1856, Margaret Garner escaped from her Kentucky plantation into the free state of Ohio. She was the daughter of her owner and had been repeatedly raped by his brother, her uncle, and gave birth to four children. When she was cornered by slave hunters operating under the Fugitive Slave Act, she killed her two-year-old and attempted to kill her other children to spare them their fate. Garner was returned to slavery, where she died from typhus.In the aftermath of her capture, Senator Charles Sumner, the abolitionist from Massachusetts, denounced Mason on the floor of the Senate for his authorship of the bill, “a special act of inhumanity and tyranny”. He also cited the case of a “pious matron who teaches little children to relieve their bondage”, sentenced to “a dungeon”. He was referring to Margaret Douglass, a southern white woman who established a school for Black children in Norfolk, Virginia. She was arrested and sent to prison for a month “as an example”, according to the judge. When she was released, she wrote a book on the cause of Black education and the culture of southern rape. “How important, then,” she wrote, “for these Southern sultans, that the objects of their criminal passions should be kept in utter ignorance and degradation.”Virginia’s racial caste system existed for a century after the civil war. In 1956, after the supreme court’s decision in Brown v Brown of Education ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional, Virginia’s general assembly, with Confederate flags flying in the gallery, declared a policy of massive resistance that shut down all public schools for two years. The growth of all-white Christian academies and new patterns of segregation date from that period. Only in 1971 did Virginia revise its state constitution to include a strong provision for public education.Youngkin’s demonizing of Toni Morrison’s Beloved may seem unusual and even abstract, but it is the oldest tactic in the playbook. It was old when Lee Atwater, a political operative for Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, explained, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ – that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.”Youngkin well understands the inflammatory atmosphere in Virginia in which he is dousing gasoline and lighting matches. The violence and murder at Charlottesville are still a burning issue. The trials of racist neo-Nazis have just begun there. Prominent Lost Cause statues of Robert E Lee have been removed within the past few months. Branding Beloved as sexually obscene was always an abstracted effort to avoid coming to terms with slavery, especially its sexual coercion. Parental control is Youngkin’s abstract slogan for his racial divisiveness. Beloved is his signifier to the Trump base that he is a safe member of the cult, no longer an untrustworthy corporate type.Youngkin’s reflexive dependence on the strategy reveals more than the harsh imperatives of being a candidate in the current Republican party. It places him, whether he knows or not, cares or not, objects or not, in a long tradition in the history of Virginia that the Commonwealth has spent decades seeking to overcome.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
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      Tucker Carlson condemned over ‘false flag’ claim about deadly Capitol attack

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      Fox NewsTucker Carlson condemned over ‘false flag’ claim about deadly Capitol attackCongresswoman Liz Cheney and Anti-Defamation League president denounce Fox News host’s ‘lies’ as he plugs new series

      ‘Roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump plot to steal the presidency
      Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySat 30 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 30 Oct 2021 10.55 EDTThe conservative Republican Liz Cheney and the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League led condemnation of Fox News and Tucker Carlson, after the primetime host announced a series about the supposed “true story” of the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January. Trump seeking to block call logs and notes from Capitol attack panelRead moreThey denounced Carlson for spreading dangerous conspiracy theories in the latest scandal to engulf a man whose popularity belies his record of racist and untrue statements on issues from immigration to racial justice.“Fox News is giving Tucker Carlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on 6 January,” tweeted Cheney, a Wyoming representative on the dwindling anti-Trump wing of the Republican party.Jonathan Greenblatt, of the ADL, wrote to Lachlan Murdoch, chief executive of Fox Corporation, to demand the series be shelved.“Clearly Carlson has the right to make outrageous claims,” Greenblatt wrote. “But freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. You have no obligation to validate his views with airtime on your platform and, I would argue, a moral responsibility not to do so.”Greenblatt has previously called for Carlson to be fired over his advocacy of the racist replacement theory, which says Democrats encourage immigration to keep Republicans out of power. Lachlan Murdoch rejected that request.In the trailer for Carlson’s series, Patriot Purge, a pundit says: “False flags have happened in this country, one of which may have been 6 January.”Among conspiracy theorists, “false flag” events are said to be staged by the government to pursue nefarious ends. Some claim the 9/11 terrorist attacks were false flags. The InfoWars host Alex Jones, a Trump ally and supporter, has landed in legal and financial jeopardy after claiming the Sandy Hook school shooting of 2012, in which 20 young children and six adults were killed, was a false flag attack.Carlson has called the 6 January riot “a political protest that got out of hand”. He has also claimed it was organised by the FBI.Cheney said: “As Fox News knows, the election wasn’t stolen and 6 January was not a ‘false flag’ operation.”Five people including a Trump supporter shot by law enforcement and a police officer died around the Capitol attack. The riot followed a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House at which Trump told supporters to march on Congress and “fight like hell” to overturn the election.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Cheney was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to send him to the Senate for trial but only seven Republican senators joined Democrats in finding Trump guilty and he was not convicted. He is free to run for office again, fundraising strongly and dominating polls regarding possible candidates for 2024.Trump has stuck to his lie that the election was stolen, a claim rejected by his own attorney general, Republican officials in key states and a succession of judges. The Republican party has swung behind Trump, also seeking to play down the events of 6 January, a day which has led to more than 600 arrests.Another outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, was condemned this week for printing a letter in which Trump repeated his election lies.In another tweet, Cheney asked Carlson: “Are you still falsely contending the voting machines were corrupted and the election was stolen?” She included the Twitter handles of Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, its president and executive editor, Jay Wallace, and the former House speaker Paul Ryan, now a member of the Fox board. None commented.Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.On Thursday another Fox News personality, Geraldo Rivera, told the New York Times Carlson was “wonderful” and “provocative” but said things that were “inflammatory and outrageous and uncorroborated”. On Twitter, Rivera called the “false flag” claim in Carlson’s trailer “bullshit”.Carlson’s series will premiere on the Fox Nation streaming service on Monday. Scored to martial drums, its trailer says it will tell the “the true story behind 1/6 … the war on terror 2.0 and the plot against the people”.“The domestic war on terror is here and it’s coming after half of the country,” a pundit says, over shots of helicopters near the Capitol and the title, Patriot Purge.Fox News host Tucker Carlson tells interviewer: ‘I lie’Read moreCarlson says: “The helicopters have left Afghanistan and now they’ve landed here at home.”On Thursday, Carlson claimed: “What we found … bore no resemblance whatsoever to the story that you have heard repeatedly from Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi, as well as their many obedient mouthpieces in the media. They were lying.”In his trailer, another pundit says: “The left is hunting the right, sticking them in Guantánamo Bay for American citizens, leaving them to rot.”The trailer also splices footage of Trump speaking with a shot of Osama bin Laden, while scenes outside the Capitol on 6 January are scored to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. The trailer culminates with the refrain of that civil war song: “The truth is marching on.”In his letter to Rupert Murdoch, Greenblatt of the ADL wrote: “Let’s call this what it is: an abject, indisputable lie and a blatant attempt to rewrite history.”TopicsFox NewsUS Capitol attackRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden’s agenda remains unrealized as Democrats fail to close deal again

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      US politicsBiden’s agenda remains unrealized as Democrats fail to close deal againPelosi forced to postpone infrastructure vote on Thursday ahead of Biden’s meeting with world leaders in Rome Lauren Gambino in Washington@laurenegambinoFri 29 Oct 2021 13.53 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 14.31 EDTJoe Biden’s nearly $3tn domestic agenda remains unrealized after an 11th-hour push to rally Democrats around a pared-down package that he framed as historic, failed to close the deal in time for his meeting with world leaders in Rome at the G20 summit.Capitol attack panel faces pivotal moment as Trump allies stonewallRead moreBut after a dramatic Thursday of bold promises and dashed hopes, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was forced to postpone a vote on a $1tn infrastructure bill for a second time in a month, as progressives demanded more assurances that a compromise $1.75tn social policy plan would also pass.It was a setback – though perhaps only a temporary one – for Democratic leaders, who had hoped to hand the president a legislative victory that he could tout during his six-day trip to Europe for a pair of international economic and climate summits.The delay underscored the depth of mistrust among Democrats – between the House and Senate, progressives and centrists, leadership and members – after a lengthy negotiating process yielded a plan that was about half the size of Biden’s initial vision.Biden’s proposal includes substantial investments in childcare, education and health care as well as major initiatives to address climate change that, if enacted, would be the largest action ever taken by the US Congress. Revenue would come from tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy.But in concessions to centrists like the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, paid family leave, free college tuition and efforts to lower prescription drug prices were stripped from the latest iteration of the plan. Progressives were left disappointed by the cuts but their desire to pass the legislation ultimately held little leverage to force major changes.In a speech before departing for Europe, Biden acknowledged the bill fell short of his legislative ambitions, but reflected the limits of what was politically possible given Democrats’ narrow governing majorities and unified Republican opposition.“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” he said. “But that’s what compromise is.”As lawmakers and activists digested the newly released details of the plan, there seems to be a growing consensus among progressives that, while insufficient, the plan makes critical investments in many of their top priorities, especially in the field of tackling the climate crisis.“The newly announced Build Back Better Act can be a turning point in America’s fight against the climate crisis – but only if we pass it,” leaders of the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action wrote in a memo on Friday.Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University, said unified control of the White House and Congress can, perhaps paradoxically, make governing harder. Because these moments are rare and often fleeting, there is a rush by the president and his party to pursue an ambitious, legacy-defining agenda, he said.“But the challenges of legislating don’t go away,” Zelizer said. “And in some ways, the tensions within the party are exacerbated by the stakes being so high.”Some have argued that scaling back key programs could make it harder for Americans to feel the impact of the new benefits, despite the substantial size of the legislation. That could make it difficult for Biden, whose approval ratings have slid in recent weeks, to sell the plan he told House Democrats would determine the fate of his presidency and their political futures.TopicsUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateNancy PelosiRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      These Trump fans were at the Capitol on 6 January. Now they’re running for office

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      RepublicansThese Trump fans were at the Capitol on 6 January. Now they’re running for officeFrom Wisconsin to New Hampshire participants in a day that became a deadly assault on Congress are seeking election to it Adam Gabbatt@adamgabbattWed 27 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 27 Oct 2021 02.01 EDTOne of the candidates filmed himself on the Capitol steps. Another clambered over scaffolding and waved others forward towards the building. Still more were outside, milling around and protesting against the lawful election of Joe Biden.Of the thousands of diehard Trump supporters who gathered in Washington on 6 January, some are now beginning to emerge as Republican candidates for national and local office.The electoral chances of each person vary, but they add to the extremist political landscape, ahead of midterm elections in 2022 that could potentially see Democrats lose the House of Representatives.Teddy Daniels is running for Congress in Pennsylvania, where he aims to oust Representative Matt Cartwright. On 6 January he was at the US Capitol, where he posted a video as people surged into the building.“I Am Here. God Bless Our Patriots,” Daniels wrote. The video was posted about an hour and a half after Trump supporters breached the Capitol.​Daniels did not respond to a request for comment. Daniels isn’t just a fringe no-hoper. Vice News reported that he has been endorsed by Michael Flynn, and spent time with Donald Trump at the former president’s New Jersey golf course this summer.The congressional hopeful has also been a frequent guest on Fox News. If he wins the Republican primary – he came second, by fewer than 3,000 votes, in 2020 – then Daniels will run against the Democratic incumbent Matt Cartwright, who Daniels has described as a “candyass”, next year.Asked if he entered the Capitol on 6 January, Daniels replied: “January 6 was a coverup of the November 3rd liberal coup to overthrow the government and steal the election from President Trump.”He did not respond to further questions.In New York, the Trump enthusiast and social media person Tina Forte is running an extremely long-shot bid to unseat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the star of the Democratic left. A lengthy Snopes investigation found that Forte attended the Capitol riot, where she livestreamed videos from outside the building.According to Snopes, Forte also “entered a restricted area after the crowd knocked down barriers that law enforcement installed”. In a photo posted on the day of the riot, Forte was wearing what appeared to be black body armor. The picture was captioned “1776”.Forte, whose manifesto includes opposing mask-wearing, strengthening border security, and a vague promise to create jobs, did not respond to a request for comment.Derrick Van Orden, from Wisconsin, has been endorsed by Trump and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, in his bid to win the state’s third congressional district. Van Orden is running for an open seat, one which Republicans have hope of claiming in 2022. He was also at the Capitol on 6 January, and has been dubbed an “insurrectionist” by the Democratic congressional campaign committee.The Daily Beast, after analysing social media posts, reported that Van Orden entered a restricted area during the riot, contradicting an op-ed Van Orden wrote for the La Crosse Tribune newspaper in mid-January.“When it became clear that a protest had become a mob, I left the area as to remain there could be construed as tacitly approving this unlawful conduct. At no time did I enter the grounds, let alone the building,” Van Orden wrote.Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment.Further down the political foodchain, 6 January attendees are running for state office in areas around the country. Bridge Michigan reported that five people who were at the insurrection are now running for various positions in the state, including Jason Howland, who photos show entered the Capitol.In New Hampshire, Jason Riddle is running for the state’s second congressional district, despite pleading guilty in September to five charges arising from him entering the Capitol during the January riot. Once in the Capitol Riddle took, and drank from, a bottle of wine he found in a lawmaker’s office.Riddle’s campaign announcement was the subject of some mockery in the summer, after he announced he was running against Ann Kuster, a Democratic US congresswoman, in the 2022 midterm elections.In an interview with NBC10 Boston, however, Riddle appeared not to know which office Kuster held.TopicsRepublicansUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Marjorie Taylor Greene fined third time for refusing to wear mask on House floor

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      RepublicansMarjorie Taylor Greene fined third time for refusing to wear mask on House floorAndrew Clyde, who claimed Capitol rioters behaved like ‘normal tourists’, also fined by House committee for failure to wear a mask Martin Pengelly@MartinPengellyTue 26 Oct 2021 08.58 EDTLast modified on Tue 26 Oct 2021 10.10 EDTA Georgia Republican who compared rules on mask-wearing against Covid-19 to the Holocaust and another who said Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol on 6 January behaved like “normal tourists” have been fined for failing to wear masks on the floor of the House.Fossil fuel messaging has won over Republican voters, poll revealsRead moreMarjorie Taylor Greene, who apologised for the Holocaust comparison in June, and Andrew Clyde, who made his claim about the rioters in May, were fined by the House ethics committee on Monday.The House mask mandate was introduced last year, lifted in June then re-applied in July, to Republican protests.First offences merit a warning, second offences attract a $500 fine and subsequent offences are fined $2,500.Greene had already been fined twice for failing to wear a mask. On Monday, she said: “I’m taking a stand on the House floor because I don’t want the people to stand alone.”The committed conspiracy theorist and partisan bomb thrower has relentlessly courted controversy since her election last year. In February, she was stripped of committee assignments.She compared House Covid-19 rules to “a time and history where people were told to wear a gold star … put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany”.Apologising, she said she was “truly sorry for offending people with remarks about the Holocaust” and had visited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.“There’s no comparison and there never ever will be,” she said.Clyde did not immediately comment about his mask fine. It was reported in July that the navy veteran and gun store owner had changed the structure of his congressional pay, as a way to avoid fines over masks and bypassing metal detectors during security checks.Clyde made his infamous comment about the 6 January Capitol attack, around which five people died as supporters of Donald Trump attempted to overturn the election, in May.Though he said “an undisciplined mob” had been at the Capitol, and “there were some rioters and some who committed acts of vandalism”, Clyde downplayed the events of the day.“Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures,” Clyde said.“You know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from 6 January, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”Some rioters looked for lawmakers, including the then vice-president, Mike Pence, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to kidnap and possibly kill. As the Washington Post reported, pictures from 6 January show Clyde among representatives rushing to barricade a door to the chamber, lest rioters break in.Michael Fanone, a police officer injured in the riot, later said Clyde “ran as quickly as he could, like a coward” when approached for comment on Capitol Hill.TopicsRepublicansCoronavirusHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024

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      BooksIn Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024 Mike Pence and Marco Rubio are among presidential alternatives examined by a writer with knowledge and accessLloyd GreenSun 24 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 24 Oct 2021 02.01 EDTDonald Trump is a defeated one-term president who cost the Republican party both houses of Congress. Yet three-quarters of Republicans want him to again run in 2024, polling that has other aspirants keeping their heads well down.‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreJoe Biden is politically vulnerable, his job approval underwater, his coalition fraying. He could meet the same fate as Trump – sans residual enthusiasm.The next Republican nominee could easily be the next president. Against this backdrop, David Drucker’s Baedeker to the current crop of wannabes is a perfectly timed and well-informed contribution.As senior political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, a conservative paper, he knows of whom and what he writes. Better yet, he has access. In Trump’s Shadow is chock-full of tidbits and trivia, the stuff on which political junkies and journalists thrive.Drucker names an array of Republican presidential hopefuls, among them long-shots such as the Texas governor, Greg Abbott; the Nebraska senator Ben Sasse; and Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien.Drucker delivers deeper dives on former vice-president Mike Pence; the Florida senator Marco Rubio and governor, Ron DeSantis; Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations; the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton; and the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan. In doing so, he covers the Republican ideological spectrum.Drucker also reports on an interview with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort and retreat. Not surprisingly, Trump has kind words for Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state; contempt for Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader; and disdain for Liz Cheney, the congresswoman from Wyoming and daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney who turned against Trump over the Capitol riot.“She’s a psycho,” says the very stable genius.Trump has, however, had time to grow appreciative of “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, the Texas senator whose father and wife Trump attacked viciously during the primaries in 2016.Amid such Trumpian cacophony, Drucker reminds us of just who within the GOP is laying groundwork for runs for the White House, and how realistic their hopes might be. It is a tricky and contorting dance. But though Trump can dominate coverage, he cannot completely extinguish ambitions. Drucker pulls back the curtain on other figures’ schemes, dreams – and hard political infrastructure.Take Pence. Once a congressman from Indiana, then its governor, he began preparing for the top step on the ladder the moment he was elected Trump’s VP. Pence established a separate political operation within the White House and a fundraising Pac of his own, the Great America Committee. He used it to pay expenses while stumping for Republicans around and across the country.Trump was fine with that. It meant Pence would not look to his boss to pay his travel bills. The veep had a stash of his own.Since leaving office, Pence has also launched Advancing American Freedom, a political non-profit which touts “conservative values and policy proposals”. More importantly, it is stocked with Trump loyalists. Kellyanne Conway, the mother of “alternative facts”. Larry Kudlow, chief White House economic adviser. Newt Gingrich, once speaker of the House, a colleague on the right. All are there.Drucker also sheds light on Pence’s defiance of Trump and service to the republic, in the aftermath of a defeat by Biden which Trump sought to overturn with lies about electoral fraud. As a traditional conservative, Drucker writes, Pence was skeptical of the power of the vice-president to unilaterally steal an election. Before he certified results, he sought a legal opinion, which debunked Trump’s false claim that he could.When Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, on 6 January, some chanted “Hang Mike Pence”. Others erected a makeshift gallows. Pence was forced to hide, but he refused to leave.Ten months on, Team Pence seems not to know what to think or say. It was “a dark day in the history of the US Capitol”, Drucker records Pence telling one crowd. But Pence later told Fox News “the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January”.The political momentum is clear. Pence’s own brother, a congressman from Indiana, voted against certifying the election. This week, Greg Pence was the only no-show in the House on the vote to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for defying the 6 January committee. Two-thirds of Republicans deny that the Capitol riot was an attack on the government. The right has a new Lost Cause.Drucker also does justice to Rubio, capturing the senator’s tendency to “chase the latest shiny object”, be it immigration reform in 2013 or police reform after the murder of George Floyd. He’s “the butterfly”, according to one Republican strategist.“Marco goes to every brightly colored flower and sticks his nose right in the middle of it, [then] takes a little bit of honey and stands in front of it to see if anyone’s looking at the flower.”Rigged review: shameless – and dangerous – catnip for Trump’s baseRead moreIn 2016, Rubio won three Republican nominating contests but was battered by Trump in his home state, losing the Florida primary by nearly 20 points. Before 2024, he will face a stern Senate challenge from Val Demings, an African American ex-cop and impeachment floor manager.Demings has out-raised Rubio recently but Rubio has $3m more in the bank. This, remember, is a politician who once purportedly told a friend: “I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning, and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.”He also has a history of credit card problems. Imagine what a President Rubio might do with the national debt.If nothing else, Drucker reminds us that though Trump rules Red America, like rust, ambition never sleeps. The starter’s flag on the race for the Republican nomination has yet to fall. In Trump’s Shadow is fine preparatory reading.
      In Trump’s Shadow is published in the US by Twelve
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      The Observer view on Donald Trump’s Truth Social | Observer editorial

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      OpinionDonald TrumpThe Observer view on Donald Trump’s Truth SocialObserver editorialAided by his app, the great liar could yet return as the Republicans’ next presidential nominee Sun 24 Oct 2021 01.30 EDTIn the life story of Donald Trump, to his mind an epic saga of unrivalled achievement, these are the wilderness years. After the US electoral college confirmed his 2020 defeat, an outcome he still mendaciously disputes, Trump plunged into despair. He sulked, he raged, he conspired. Yet the 6 January coup plot was an egregious step too far. He was cast into outer darkness.Trump lost the White House bully pulpit and a US president’s ability to command instant global attention. Personally wounding was the ban imposed by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, which belatedly agreed he posed a threat to democracy. Trump was cut off from social media and his supporter base. He was all but silenced.What worse fate could there be for a narcissist who craves constant attention and approval? Exiled to his luxury Florida estate, the Elba of the Everglades, Trump has struggled since to regain his voice. Last week, he made his move. The result: the so-called Truth Social media app, launching next year.The newly formed company behind the app, Trump Media and Technology Group, plans to disseminate what it calls “anti-woke” news, debate and entertainment to Americans deprived of honest, impartial media outlets. This is total drivel, of course, coming from the mouth of the most shameless liar in modern US history.Abusing truth as only Trump can, Truth Social will more likely prove both false and antisocial. It’s his way of regaining lost ground, prior to a wished-for presidential comeback in 2024. It’s a political propaganda platform intended to magnify and exploit the hate, ignorance and prejudice on which he feeds. MPs please note: Trump is the ultimate definition of “online harms”.This self-serving bid to defeat “the tyranny of big tech” is a commercial long shot. The new app looks remarkably similar to Twitter, which has more than 200m users. Previous US attempts to grow alternative “conservative social space” have failed. Although shares in the new company initially soared, its USP is overly dependent on Trump’s continuing appeal.That appeal looks increasingly fractured. Trump is under fire from Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and other Republicans who fear his obsession with overturning the 2020 result is deflecting attention from Joe Biden’s mistakes ahead of next year’s midterm congressional elections.An early test will come on 2 November when Democrat-leaning Virginia elects a governor. Polls there currently suggest a dead heat. Trump, meanwhile, is taking legal heat, too. His family business faces a fraud investigation. He was recently questioned under oath for more than four hours in a civil lawsuit in New York.Steve Bannon, one of his best-known former aides, has been found in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify to the 6 January inquiry and faces possible criminal prosecution. Since Trump ordered all his minions to act similarly, the legal bull’s-eye pinned to his back grows ever more unmissable.Yet for all that, Trump remains first choice among Republican voters for the party’s presidential nomination. His average “favourable/unfavourable” rating is almost identical to Biden’s among the electorate as a whole. And he has shown how dangerous he can be when he reaches a wide audience, which is why Truth Social is worrying.Will Trump rise again from the depths, like the “shapeless monsters” imagined by the great 19th-century Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev? Life is akin to an unsuspecting man sitting in a small boat on a calm, limitless ocean, he wrote. “Then one of the monsters begins to emerge from the murk, rising higher and higher, becoming ever more repellently, clearly discernible… Another minute and its impact will overturn the boat.”For now, Trump’s monstrous outline is blurred, his voice muted. He awaits Turgenev’s “destined day”, when he plans, once again, to capsize the ship of state. To which we say: all hands on deck!TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionRepublicansSocial mediaUS politicseditorialsReuse this content More