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      Donald Trump’s prosecution is a triumph | Osita Nwanevu

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      Trump’s prosecution is a triumph. Not a shame. Not a tragedy. A triumph ⁠— one of the great events in American presidential history. The public and the pundits might disagree by the end of Trump’s trial in Manhattan ⁠— perhaps the first of a few ⁠— but the significance of what district attorney Alvin Bragg has managed to do will be wholly unsullied, in substance, by the outcome of his case.One of the major questions in American political and legal thought has been whether presidents may be allowed to commit crimes. As it stands, the position of the Justice Department is that they may ⁠— for half a century, it has held that a president cannot face criminal prosecution while in office. And while there’s not even a theoretical bar to prosecuting a president once they leave office, no one had ever tried it, leaving the question of whether criminal laws functionally apply to presidents at all, as a practical matter, a matter of speculation.Here Alvin Bragg has bravely taken a stand: a person may, in fact, be indicted for a crime even if they were once president— just as though they were an ordinary person to whom laws applied. This is tremendous news. No rifts have opened in the time-space continuum. Frogs, locusts, and lice have yet to descend upon Manhattan. For the time being, it appears that a prosecutor really may attempt to hold a president ⁠— or at least a former president ⁠— accountable for a suspected crime without reality collapsing in on itself. What’s more, Bragg’s indictment amounts to an insistence that a former president may be indicted even for a relatively low-level crime like falsifying documents ⁠— just like any other white collar criminal.To be sure, as many observers have already written, Bragg may have his work cut out for him. His case against Trump is a multi-part argument ⁠that hinges on the idea that Trump concealed hush money payments to abet violations of election law. It has troubled many that Bragg may lose this case. And this is true. Sometimes prosecutors lose cases.But it would be wrong to suppose on that basis, as some have, that prosecutors who believe presidents have committed crimes have a responsibility to behave like political strategists: to bear public opinion and the expectations of the press in mind by only bringing forth the simplest, most straightforward cases and pursuing only the largest, most eye-popping crimes while letting other offenses slide.They’ve no obligation to calibrate the content and timing of their cases to maximize the possibility of success in other wholly unrelated cases in other jurisdictions; the feelings of a defendant’s fans and supporters should be of no account whatsoever. This is what it means, to use a phrase Trump himself has long been fond of, to be a nation of laws. It is especially ridiculous, on the latter point, to suppose that there’s a prosecutorial approach Bragg or anyone else might have taken that would have quelled the rage of a political constituency that is now fully beyond reason and respect for the law. Predictably, Bragg has drawn both explicit threats and implicit comparisons to Pontius Pilate this holy week; Trump, per Marjorie Taylor Greene, now sits next to Christ himself among historical figures “persecuted by radical, corrupt governments.”On Thursday, Trump’s chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida governor Ron DeSantis ⁠— St Peter? ⁠— reiterated that he would refuse to cooperate with an extradition request from New York in the event that Trump refused to surrender on his own. Things didn’t come to that, but the pundits aren’t wrong to predict that a lot of chaos and drama will come our way in the coming months. And that’s especially frightful to all those who’ve come to believe political polarization and the heightening of partisan tensions are the central problems of our time ⁠— a notion that’s spurred commentary suggesting America might be too divided to bear Trump’s prosecution. To wit, a report from The New York Times Thursday speculated that this and Trump’s other potential indictments might “shake the timbers of the republic” or “tear the country apart.”But what would it mean, actually, to “tear the country apart?” We’ve seen and survived civil war. We’ve seen cities razed and presidents killed. Social unrest, economic collapse ⁠— these are cornerstones of the American experience. A public health crisis has taken the lives of more than one million people in this country over the last three years. The reactions to Trump’s prosecution will remain loud and ludicrous. They may well turn violent ⁠— we can put nothing safely beyond a party that rallies easily to the defense of a man who attempted a coup and roused a mob into an attack on the Capitol.But there is something rather pathetic about the idea that a president’s trial might be among the greatest trials our nation has faced. Nothing that’s coming will break us. Our republic, for all its many faults, is made of stronger stuff than that. We will be tested, yes. But let’s take a moment, too, to recognize that Bragg has already passed a critical test on our behalf.
      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Democrats bid to use censorship law against DeSantis and ban his book

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      Democrats in Florida are attempting to use a state law that censors books in public schools against the governor who signed it, Ron DeSantis, by asking schools to review or ban the Republican governor’s own book, The Courage to be Free.“The very trap he set for others is the one that he set for himself,” Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic minority leader in the Florida state house, told the Daily Beast.DeSantis published The Courage to be Free in February, in what was widely seen as an opening shot in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. He has said he wrote the book himself.Seeking to compete with Donald Trump – who enjoys convincing leads in polling – DeSantis has established himself as a ruthless culture warrior, willing to use government power against opposing interests and viewpoints.He signed the law regarding books in schools last year. It includes guidelines for content deemed inappropriate on grounds of race, sexuality, gender and depictions of violence.But the law has run into problems over interpretations of its language, not least when a children’s book about Roberto Clemente, a baseball legend who faced racial discrimination, landed at the centre of national controversy.Seeking to take advantage of such uncertainties, Florida Democrats are highlighting instances of language in DeSantis’s book which they contend could violate his own guidelines.As reported by the Beast, in The Courage to be Free, DeSantis “use[s] the terms ‘woke’ and ‘gender ideology’ 46 times and 10 times respectively, both of which could constitute ‘divisive concepts’ the governor has argued should stay out of curricula up to the college level”.DeSantis also claims students have been forced to “chant to the Aztec god of human sacrifice” and, as well as describing violence at Black Lives Matter protests, cites a video showing “dead black children, dramatically warning … about ‘racist police and state-sanctioned violence’”.DeSantis also describes the 2017 mass shooting at congressional baseball practice in which Steve Scalise, a senior Republican, was seriously wounded.Such passages, Democrats contend (in what the Florida publisher Peter Schorsch called a “clever bit of trolling”), could fall foul of the governor’s own rules.According to the Beast, only one school district initially responded to Democrats’ complaints. Marion county, near Orlando, said no public school there possessed the governor’s book.Driskell told the Beast: “We’re leaning into one of [DeSantis’s] weaknesses.“… If America doesn’t want Florida’s present reality to become America’s future reality, people need to know what it’s like here. This is our way of fighting back, but also highlighting how ridiculous some of this becomes, right?” More

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      Every indictment will make Trump stronger – and Republicans wilder | Sidney Blumenthal

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      The indictment of Donald J Trump has not driven a wooden stake through his heart. He has risen, omnipresent and ominous again, overwhelming his rivals, their voices joined into his choir, like the singing January 6 prisoners, proclaiming the wickedness of his prosecution. As he enters the criminal courthouse to pose for his mugshot and to give his fingerprints, evangelicals venerate him as the adulterous King David or the martyred Christ.Trump does not have to raise his hand to signal to the House Republicans to echo his cry of “WITCH-HUNT”. He owns the House like he owns a hotel.“I keep him up on everything that we’re doing,” says Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who serves as one of his agents over the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Nine of the 25 Republicans on the House judiciary committee and 11 of the 26 on oversight have endorsed him. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, has pledged her allegiance. Jim Jordan, who refused to honor a subpoena from the January 6 committee, now issues flurries of subpoenas as chair of the Orwellian-named subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, to obstruct investigations of Trump, and not incidentally into Jordan’s and other House Republicans’ roles in the insurrection. But not even a subpoena to the New York district attorney, Alvin Bragg, or any other prosecutor, could command the tide of indictments.Between the motion of Trump’s first indictment and the act of the last Republican primary, more than a year from now, on 4 June 2024, the shadow will fall on the only party with an actual nomination contest. Trump’s pandemonium will only have an electoral valence for the foreseeable future in its precincts. His damage to the constitution, the national security of the United States and the rule of law will be extensive, but his most intense and focused political destruction will be circumscribed within the Republican party.From the report of every new indictment to its reality, Republican radicalization will accelerate. Every concrete count will confirm every conspiracy theory. Every prosecution and trial, staggered over months and into the election year, from New York to Georgia to Washington, will be a shock driving Republicans further to Trump. Every Republican candidate running for every office will be compelled to declare as a matter of faith that Trump is being unjustly persecuted or be themselves branded traitors.Profession of the holy creed of election denial has already been broadened to demand profession of the doctrine of Trump’s impunity. Every Republican attempting to run on law and order will be required to disavow law and order in every case in which Trump is the defendant. Trump’s incitement to violence will not have an exception of immunity for the Republican party. Beginning in the Iowa caucuses, the confrontations may not resemble New England town meetings. If Trump were to lose in the first tumultuous caucuses, can anyone doubt he will claim it was rigged? Was January 6 a preliminary for the Republican primaries of 2024?The death watch of Trump is a cyclical phenomenon. After each of his storms, the pundits, talking heads and party strategists on all sides emerge from their cellars, survey the latest wreckage and check the scientific measurements of the polls to give the “all clear” sign that the cyclone had passed. When Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, thoughtful analysts assured that Trump’s time was gone, he would fade away and his comeback in 2024 was an impossibility, just “not going to happen”. Everyone should “relax”. Then came January 6. When Trump’s endorsed candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, a gaggle of election deniers and conspiracy mongers, were ignominiously rejected, last rites were pronounced. Trump was dead again.“We want to make Trump a non-person,” Rupert Murdoch said after the January 6 insurrection. Trump’s image was virtually banished from his bandbox of Fox News. He would be airbrushed out of the next episode of history.“The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter,” wrote Emily Seidel, chief executive of the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity, in a memo.On 5 February, the Koch dark money syndicate held a conference of its billionaire donors and key activists at Palm Springs, California, to lay the groundwork for the dawning of the post-Trump age. There it was decided to swing its enormous resources behind the candidacy of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who they had originally cultivated as one of their Tea Party hothouse congressmen.The wishful thinking that Trump would magically disappear, however, ignored the omens of Liz Cheney’s purging, the victories of his candidates in the midterm Republican primaries over blanched “normies”, and the corrupt bargain that McCarthy was forced to make to secure his speakership. The implacability of Trump’s political base’s attachment was discounted.Murdoch, Koch et al should have grasped the dangerous fluidity of the extremism they stoked, financed and organized for decades, which metastasized into Trump. Their approach to Trump was not dissimilar to that of Vladimir Putin, treating him as their useful idiot. Putin’s purpose was and is to use Trump to destroy Nato and the western alliance, and as an agent of chaos within the US of a magnitude that no KGB agent could have recruited during the cold war.The Koch network contentedly used Trump to pack the courts with Federalist Society stamped judges, deregulate business and thwart policy on climate change. But despite delivering those goods, Trump was ultimately uncontrollable. The problem with Trump was not his wildness and lawlessness. They were willing to tolerate him so long as his administration produced for them. Trump’s foibles were the cost of business. His liability was that he was not their kind of Republican, at heart a laissez-faire free market libertarian. Trump hated international trade and opposed slashing entitlements, particularly social security and Medicare, which they have long tried to hobble and privatize. In 2018, he tweeted his contempt for the “Globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles … I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas. They love my Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judicial picks & more. I made them rich.” But his worst debit for them was that he lost. With DeSantis, they thought they could finally move on. Without Trump, they could wipe the slate clean, restore the past and return to the glory days when the Tea Party militants besieged town hall meetings to shriek against Obamacare. The undercurrent of the oligarchs’ romance with DeSantis is a strange nostalgia.Trump’s announcement on 18 March that he would be arrested and charged in New York three days later, born of a combination of panic and seizing an opportunity for grift, was not a deliberate strategic masterstroke, though it had that effect. In February, DeSantis led Trump by 45% to 41% in the Yahoo/YouGov poll. In the poll taken just after Trump said he would be arrested, Trump shot into the lead 47% to 39%. After he was indicted, he left DeSantis in the dust, 57% to 31%.Trump had already sent Murdoch’s and Koch’s presumptive candidate reeling. DeSantis has positioned himself as a cultural warrior but Trump smashed into his vulnerable flank. Before he adopted his gay bashing and race- and Jew-baiting persona, DeSantis was a cookie-cutter Tea Party congressman who voted several times to cut social security and Medicare. When Trump slammed him for his votes in early March as “a wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy”, DeSantis renounced his position, saying he would not “mess” with social security. Even before the indictment, Trump had Il Duce of the Sunshine State dancing like Ginger Rogers backwards in the Cuban heels of his cowboy boots. Trump has not relented. The day after he was indicted, his Make America Great Again political action committee broadcast an ad ripping DeSantis: “President Trump is on the side of the American people when it comes to social security and Medicare. Ron DeSantis sides with DC establishment insiders … The more you see about DeSantis, the more you see he doesn’t share our values. He’s not ready to be president.” On the right that Trump has made, national socialism beats laissez-faire.DeSantis reacted to Trump’s indictment by stating that he would not extradite him from Florida to New York, which nobody had asked him to do. His empty gesture as a two-bit secessionist would be in defiance of the constitution’s article IV extradition clause. Between the emotion and the response falls the hollow man. His rhetorical lawlessness in tribute to Trump only enhanced Trump’s pre-eminence over him.If anyone should have known better, it was Murdoch. His media properties now veer from slavishly outraged defense of the accused Trump on Fox News (“Witch-hunt!”) to trashing him in the New York Post (“Bat Hit Crazy!”) to puffing DeSantis in the Times of London, not widely read in Iowa or New Hampshire. The ruthless operator has been outplayed. Murdoch, who takes no prisoners, is Trump’s prisoner.Murdoch profitably buckled in for the Trump ride all the way to January 6. His decision not to jump off for the crash has now landed him in his biggest scandal, thrusting him in the middle of the Trump debacle with a January 6 trial of his own. After the 2020 election, following the lead of Trump and his attorneys, Fox News broadcast that Dominion Voting Systems had changed or deleted votes to help steal the election. The Fox chief executive, Suzanne Scott, wrote in an email shutting down the fact-checking of Trump falsehoods: “This has to stop now … this is bad business … the audience is furious and we are just feeding them material.” On 5 January, the eve of the attack on the Capitol, Murdoch discussed with Scott whether the network should report the truth: “The election is over and Joe Biden won.” He said those words “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen”. Scott told him that “privately they are all there” but “we need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers”. On 12 January, Murdoch emailed the Fox board member Paul Ryan that he had heard that the Fox host Sean Hannity “has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers”.Fox was terrified of its own audience, the Trump base it had whipped up day after day, fearful it would defect to a more pro-Trump site, Newsmax or One America News Network. Instead of broadcasting the facts, its executives ordered conspiracy theories and lies be aired to satisfy voracious demand. Murdoch admitted in an email that Trump’s claims of voter fraud were “really crazy stuff”. But the show must go on. Dominion is now suing Fox News for $1.6bn for defamation.Much of the material in the discovery documents reads like dialogue from a bad French farce.“I hate him passionately,” wrote a histrionic Tucker Carlson about Trump. Murdoch told Scott about Giuliani’s and the others’ lies: “Terrible stuff damaging everybody, I fear.” On 21 January 2021, Murdoch called Trump “increasingly mad”. Murdoch wondered, after serving as Trump’s chief enabler, “The real danger is what he might do as president.” Quel surprise!Of course, the specific falsehoods Fox recklessly and maliciously broadcast about Dominion were of a piece with those the network has been pumping out for years. That Murdoch is shocked, shocked is worthy of Capt Renault discovering there is gambling in the backroom of Rick’s Café in Casablanca. “Your winnings, sir.”The day after Trump was indicted, Judge Eric Davis ruled that the Dominion case would go to trial.“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that [it is] CRYSTAL clear that none of the [Fox News] statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” he wrote. That trial will begin in mid-April and will probably last for weeks with major Fox personalities and Murdoch called to the stand. The very bad news is that in Delaware, where the trial will take place, unlike in New York, where the Trump trial will be held, television cameras are allowed in the courtroom. Undoubtedly, Fox will not be airing the humiliation of its stars and executives, but it is certain that CNN, desperate for ratings, and MSNBC will happily fill schedules with a Fox cavalcade.Fox’s propaganda was intimately linked to the January 6 coup, but could not be investigated by the January 6 committee. Murdoch’s desperate desire to separate himself from Trump will be impossible when Fox’s lies for Trump in the subversion of constitutional democracy are on full display. The Dominion trial will provide a necessary complement to the trials of Trump, more than an atmospheric touch of political theater, but bearing on politics moving forward. Murdoch, chained to his service to Trump, will not escape a judgment any more than Trump.The response of Fox’s audience to Fox in the dock will inevitably be to rally around Trump. Murdoch may be finished with Trump but Trump is not finished with him. Murdoch’s trial will contribute to the tightening of support for his object of contempt.“I am your retribution,” Trump promises. He rages against DeSantis and Fox as “Rinos” – Republicans In Name Only, which is to say Republicans. In the courtroom drama ahead, Trump will flail against his host of prosecutors, but his retribution during his battle for the nomination will be levied against the Republican party.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and 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 More

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      The Observer view: Donald Trump deserves to face the full force of justice | Observer editorial

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      In the tumultuous, multifaceted case of Donald J Trump versus the people of the United States, the biggest question is why this former president, political con artist and serial offender is not already in jail. Trump will be charged this week in Manhattan over alleged “hush money” payments to a former porn star. This action, both welcome and overdue, makes him the first US president to be criminally indicted. Yet twice-impeached Trump stands accused of a string of infinitely more serious, well-documented crimes, including a violent attempt to overthrow the government. The continuing mystery is why justice is so long in coming.The full Trump charge sheet reads like a horror novel in which democracy is murdered. In the weeks following his clear-cut defeat by Joe Biden in November 2020, Trump did everything he could to subvert the result, legally and illegally, by making baseless accusations of fraud. This is not in dispute. Not disputed, either, is a taped telephone conversation on 2 January 2021 between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which the then president pressed the latter “to find 11,780 votes” – sufficient to cancel Biden’s victory in the key swing state.Why has Trump not been criminally charged in what appears to be an open-and-shut case of shameless election interference? A special grand jury in Atlanta has recommended the prosecution of all involved in the illegal lobbying of Raffensperger. Perhaps the courage shown by Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, in indicting Trump will inspire his Fulton County counterpart, Fani Willis – and other state and federal prosecutors – to follow suit without further delays. If this case had been conducted in a timely manner, Trump might be behind bars now.It is more than two years since Trump incited his supporters to attack the Capitol in order to halt Congress’s ratification of Biden’s victory. The ensuing riot on 6 January 2021 led to deaths and injuries. Yet Trump did nothing to call off the mob until it was far too late. He has since hailed the rioters as heroes. Again, much of this is on the record. Congress has conducted exhaustive investigations. Why has Merrick Garland, the US attorney general, failed to act against the chief instigator as well as the perpetrators of the coup attempt? Only in November did Garland finally appoint a special counsel – which amounts, in effect, to another delay.It is hard to avoid the conclusion that reluctance to energetically pursue these and other crimes, such as Trump’s apparent theft of secret documents found at his Florida home, stems from political timidity at the top. As he showed again last week, Trump is ready and able to use his mafia-like grip on the Republican party and rightwing media to intimidate the entire US body politic. He plays the victim, turns the tables and claims Biden and the Democrats are the lawbreakers. Trump says political enemies have singled him out. Yet the only special treatment he has received is to have been allowed to avoid prosecution for so long.Diffidence over confronting Trump full-on stems in part from an understandable desire to avoid feeding national divisions. The entire Trump saga, akin to tawdry, never-ending reality TV show, is a distraction from pressing issues such as post-pandemic economic revival, the climate emergency and war in Europe. The US should focus on these challenges rather than endlessly indulge the antic ravings of a narcissistic, foul-mouthed, misogynistic crook.Biden would surely wish it so. At the start of his term, he plainly hoped that, by ignoring him, Trump would eventually go away. Yet sadly, here he is again, hogging the limelight. Trump will have his day in court amid blanket media coverage and feared street violence. He will repeat his usual inflammatory lies and slanders, proceedings will be adjourned, probably for months, and meanwhile, this arch-enemy of democracy, decency and justice will try to exploit his “victimhood” to secure the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. In a sense, Trump-ism is eternal. It cares for nothing and no one but itself.The Trump case poses potentially historic challenges for an American republic founded on the rule of law. The idea, peddled by Republicans, that a current or former president enjoys de facto immunity from prosecution is at odds with modern-day concepts of justice. The fact that it appears such a person may stand again for the White House while under criminal investigation, or even following a criminal conviction, points to dangerous flaws in America’s constitutional arrangements. No person, however famous, big-headed or threatening, should be above the law.The aggressive reaction to the indictment of many leading Republicans, and especially Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest competitor, is dismaying. By parroting Trump’s line about “weaponisation” of the courts, the Florida governor shows himself to be no better or wiser than his egotistic rival. The party as a whole continues to place its interests ahead of the principles for which America stands. Democrats, meanwhile, should avoid talk that exacerbates national polarisation. “Lock him up!” is a tempting slogan, given how Trump used it against Hillary Clinton. But calm, restraint and patience are required. If there’s any justice, Trump’s time in court will ultimately be followed by time served.The manner in which this unprecedented legal drama is handled, and its outcome, could decide America’s immediate political future. It may also have a significant, lasting impact on US influence and moral authority in the global struggle to uphold a democratic, law-based international order. The world is watching – and that, regrettably, is what Trump likes.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      Disney v DeSantis dispute hinges on clause referencing King Charles III

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      A dispute between the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Disney over control of the company’s Florida theme park district hinges on a clause referencing King Charles III and his descendants.The row began after DeSantis in March 2022 passed a “don’t say gay” law banning classroom teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity. The law was highly controversial, with LGBTQ+ activists saying it was discriminatory. Joe Biden denounced it as “hateful”.Under former chief executive Bob Chapek, Disney was initially hesitant to state public opposition to the bill, but did so after pressure. That prompted DeSantis and Florida Republicans to try to revoke privileges Disney has had for decades at its theme park, which employs 75,000 people.However, a new governing board appointed by DeSantis on Wednesday reportedly said it will need to overturn last-minute agreements which would prevent it from taking control.The document states that its provisions will stand until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England living as of the date of this declaration”.“Royal clauses” of this kind are used to avoid rules in some places against contracts which last in perpetuity. The British royal family was chosen for the clauses because information about the family tree was readily available, but also because of the “better healthcare available to, and longer life expectancy of, a royal family member compared to a non-royal”, according to the law firm Birketts.In February, the Florida state house passed a bill to end the unusual status that allowed Disney World to govern itself. Under the status, Disney World had its own police and fire departments, planning powers and some other public functions.The bill gave DeSantis the power to appoint the five members of the board that controls government services for the Reedy Creek district.“We’re going to have to deal with it and correct it,” board member Brian Aungst said of the last-minute agreements on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. “It’s a subversion of the will of the voters and the legislature and the governor. It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a statement, Disney said: “All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s ‘Government in the Sunshine’ law.”Buckingham Palace declined to comment. More

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      ‘Executive guy’ DeSantis doesn’t want to be Trump 2024 running mate

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      Ron DeSantis, the rightwing Florida governor and rising Republican star, has said he would not accept an offer to be Donald Trump’s running mate because he is “probably more of an executive guy”.“I think that you want to be able to do things,” the Florida governor told the hard-right Newsmax channel.DeSantis has not yet entered the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination but he is Trump’s only serious rival in polling and is widely expected to announce his run in the coming months. DeSantis’s growing influence in Republican politics has seen Trump turn his guns on his ambitions.This week, relations between the two men turned especially sour.Though DeSantis has dutifully attacked Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney expected to indict Trump, he has also floated criticism of Trump for making the hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels that is at issue in New York.DeSantis has also questioned Trump’s governing style and handling of the Covid pandemic. Performing a U-turn on the Ukraine war after widespread criticism of earlier remarks, DeSantis moved away from the isolationist position favoured by Trump and much of the right of the party.Trump has fired off nicknames, abuse and insinuations about DeSantis’s behaviour around young women as a teacher and even that he might be gay.Perhaps correspondingly, the former president has increased his polling lead.Despite all that, on Thursday the Newsmax host Eric Bolling asked DeSantis if he would consider becoming Trump’s vice-president.“I think I’m probably more of an executive guy,” DeSantis said. “I think that you want to be able to do things. That’s part of the reason I got into this job is because we have action. We’re able to make things happen, and I think that’s probably what I am best suited for.“The whole [Republican] party, regardless of any personalities or individuals, you have got to be looking at 2024 and saying, if the Biden regime continues, and they’re able to pick up 10 to 15 seats in the House and a Senate seat or two, this country is going to be in really, really bad shape.”The governor then plugged his book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.Rather than a primary campaign, DeSantis has mounted a book tour: in part because under Florida law he is supposed to resign his state office to pursue a federal post.On Friday, the Daily Beast detailed what it said were “a few road bumps” hit by the tour, including the withdrawal of the top event coordinator.Amid reports of missing podiums and snubbed power brokers, a source described as a “seasoned GOP presidential campaign strategist” told the Beast: “This is amateur hour.” Another “Republican observer” said the operation was “out over its skis”.A “Florida Republican consultant who has advised DeSantis” said: “I think it’s gone poorly. I hear nothing but they are unhappy.”Such reports have provoked glee in the Trump camp. In a message viewed by the Guardian, one veteran operative said: “Heard this was coming. No one is running the place.”Many primaries feature an early frontrunner who soon flames out. Examples include Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who went nowhere quickly in 2016, and Howard Dean of Vermont, who crashed out after a strong start in the Democratic race in 2004.Discussing DeSantis’s decision to take shots at Trump, the anonymous Republican strategist told the Beast: “If you’re running for president … you’re selling to the largest stakeholder audience anyone could have. Why would he go out there … and offend voters that you need?“I think that they blew it. People need to remember, when you peak too soon, that’s a problem. And DeSantis peaked too soon.” More

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      DeSantis hits Republican poll low as Trump tightens grip on primary

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      Donald Trump may be in legal trouble over his alleged weakness for vice, but his predicament is increasingly placing Ron DeSantis – his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination – in a political vise.The Florida governor must join Republican attacks on Alvin Bragg, the Democratic Manhattan district attorney whose indictment of Trump over a hush money payment to a porn star is reportedly imminent, while trying not to lose ground in a primary he has not formally entered.DeSantis has floated criticism of Trump over the hush money payment but on Tuesday a new poll showed how Trump, who is also fundraising off his legal peril, has tightened his grip on the primary race.The Morning Consult survey shows the former president has 54% support among likely primary voters and DeSantis has 26%, tying his lowest score since the poll began in December.The two men are still way ahead of the rest of the field. Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, was third in the Morning Consult poll, with 7%, three points ahead of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming representative who lost her seat after turning against Trump over the January 6 attack on Congress, and who has not ruled out a run, had 3% support. No one else, including likely candidates Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott, got more than a point.Like DeSantis, Pence has not declared a run but is seen to be positioning himself to do so. In a telling detail, Morning Consult noted that Pence’s favorability rating “declined from 60% to 55% during a week that featured news coverage of his condemnation of Trump’s behavior surrounding the January 6 attack”.Speaking to reporters in Florida on Monday, DeSantis was asked to comment on Trump’s looming indictment in the Stormy Daniels affair.Using a common rightwing attack line with antisemitic overtones, he condemned Bragg as a puppet of the progressive philanthropist George Soros.But DeSantis also took a shot at Trump, saying: “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just – I can’t speak to that.”Trump responded with typical aggression, recycling an attack line questioning DeSantis’s behaviour around young women when he was a teacher but also insinuating the governor might be gay.The following day, a close Trump ally warned of worse to come.“If you start this thing,” the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News, “you better be willing to take it. I don’t like it. You know, Trump is not into ‘Thou shall nots’. That’s not his thing.”DeSantis did not seem to listen, repeating his hush money jab to the British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview for Fox Nation excerpted in the New York Post.“There’s a lot of speculation about what [Trump’s] underlying conduct is,” DeSantis said. “[The payoff] is purported to be it and the reality is that’s just outside my wheelhouse. I mean that’s just not something that I can speak to.”Morgan wrote: “The message was clear: I’m nothing like Trump when it comes to sleazy behaviour.”DeSantis also said he would have handled Covid “different” to Trump, including firing the senior adviser Anthony Fauci and claimed that he governed without “daily drama”.He also called Trump’s attacks “background noise” and mocked the former president’s nicknames for him, saying: “I don’t know how to spell the [De]sanctimonious one. I don’t really know what it means, but I kinda like it, it’s long, it’s got a lot of vowels … you can call me whatever you want, just as long as you also call me a winner.”For leaders, DeSantis said, Americans “really want to look to people like our founding fathers, like what type of character … are you bringing?”Trump had switched from flattery to attacking him, DeSantis said, because “the major thing that’s happened that’s changed his tune was my re-election victory”.DeSantis beat the Democrat Charlie Crist by a landslide in November.Amid it all, the Morning Consult poll contained another worrying message for Republicans in general.According to the poll, if Trump were the nominee he would lose a head-to-head with Joe Biden by three points, 44% to 41%. If the Republican nominee were DeSantis, he would lose by one point less. More

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      in US Politics

      Birchers review: how the Republican far right gave us Trump and DeSantis

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      Out of sight but not forgotten, the John Birch Society is a husk of its old self. Still, its penchant for conspiracy theories courses in the veins of the American right. A mere 37% of Republicans believe Joe Biden beat Donald Trump legitimately. “January 6, I think, is probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam in my lifetime,” says Tucker Carlson, the face of Fox News.Back in the day, the society trashed Dwight D Eisenhower and his successor as president, John F Kennedy. That Ike and JFK were war heroes made no difference. They were suspect. Eisenhower attempted to navigate around the Birchers. Kennedy used them as a foil. Dallas, where JFK was assassinated, was a Bircher hotbed.“Birchers charged that President Eisenhower abetted the communists, distributed flyers calling President John F Kennedy a traitor, and repudiated Nato,” Matthew Dallek writes in his in-depth examination of the society’s rise, fall and continued relevance.Dallek, a professor at George Washington University, is the son of Robert Dallek, a legendary presidential biographer. Under the subtitle How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, Dallek’s book is quick-paced and well researched. However troubling, it is a joy to read.Dallek argues convincingly that despite the end of the cold war, amid which the Birchers were born, its antipathies and suspicions continue to animate and inflame, a reality Trump and his minions remember and Democrats forget at their peril.Dallek looks at how the Birchers’ ideas came to pollenate and populate the Republican party. It didn’t happen randomly or suddenly. The society never disappeared and nor did its ideas and resentments. The “quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq” coupled with the “financial crisis and Great Recession” breathed fresh currency into isolationism, nativism and scorn for elites.Founded in 1958, at a secret meeting in Indianapolis led by Robert Welch, the candy manufacturer, the group took its name from a missionary and intelligence officer killed in 1945 by communists in China. Birch’s Christianity and the circumstances of his death were central to the society’s message.Original members included Fred C Koch, founder of Koch Industries and father of Charles and David, the hard-right political activists and billionaire donors.“In the 1930s [Fred Koch] had helped build oil refineries, first in Stalin’s Soviet Union and then in Hitler’s Germany, and his brushes with both regimes shaped his cold war philosophy,” Dallek writes.“In the USSR, he knew people who had been purged by Stalin … In contrast, he liked what he saw when he inspected his refineries in Nazi Germany.”Fascism came with the trappings of prosperity. These days, the Koch-funded Quincy Institute takes a dim view of US and western assistance to Ukraine.The John Birch Society is now obscure yet basks in undreamed-of success. Instead of railing against fluoridated water and embracing laetrile (an apricot derivative) as a cancer cure, the Birchers’ intellectual heirs dump on the Covid vaccine, roll the dice on polio and worship ivermectin as a miracle drug.Ron DeSantis, Florida governor and Trump mini-me, is all in with his nonstop attack on modernity and vaccination. Trump no longer reminds voters of Operation Warp Speed, the great success in combating the latest plague.The mortality gap between precincts populated by red and blue America says plenty, but Republican animus to vaccine mandates appears baked in. Fringy need not mean down and out. Just look at Ginni Thomas and her husband, Clarence Thomas, the conservative supreme court justice.Ginni Thomas, a longtime far-right activist entangled in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election up to and including January 6, grew up nestled in comfort. As Dallek points out, many in the Birchers’ ranks possessed a firm foothold in the middle and upper-middle classes.“A childhood neighbor recalled that Ginni Thomas’s parents were active in a losing 1968 referendum campaign in Omaha to ban putting fluoride in the water supply,” Dallek notes.“My Republican parents, who knew them well, certainly considered them Birchers,” the journalist Kurt Andersen recalls.Dallek reminds us of the bookstores opened by the society and the role played by female Birchers. Phyllis Schlafly, the great hard-right crusader, was a Bircher as well as a Harvard grad. She opposed the Voting Rights Act, wrote Barry Goldwater’s 1964 manifesto and successfully opposed the Equal Rights Amendment.Aloise Josephine Antonia Steiner, a non-Birch conservative and the mother of William Buckley, the founder of the National Review, encouraged an acquaintance to establish a society chapter. Buckley eventually – and circuitously – came to stand against the Birchers. Welch heaped praise on his mom.Race was always near the surface. The society attacked Brown v Board of Education, the 1954 supreme court decision which held that de jure racially segregated schools were unequal and unconstitutional. The Birchers, as Dallek recounts, branded the decision “procommunist”.Even now, Brown sticks in the craw on the right. Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump supreme court appointee, refers to Brown as inviolate super-precedent but Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist and Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network both attack its underpinnings.Decisions such as Brown, they wrote after the confirmation fight over Brett Kavanaugh, another Trump-picked conservative justice, “may have been correct in their result but were decided on the basis of sociological studies rather than legal principles”.“May”? Let that sink in.Another Republican primary is upon us. Trump again leads the way. The furor over his dinner with Ye, the antisemitic recording artist formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist, recedes. DeSantis loses ground. Authenticity and charisma matter. The governor parrots Trump and Carlson on Ukraine, flip-flopping in the process.Yet no other Republican comes close. The John Birch Society is still winning big.
      Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right is published in the US by Hachette More