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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books

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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books The GOP flopped in the midterms but its White House hopefuls still hope to find readers – and conservative group bulk-buyersIn one of the clearest signs that the 2024 Republican presidential primary will feature rivals to Donald Trump, a host of likely candidates have released or will soon release books purporting to outline their political visions.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreSuch books often sell poorly, but that is rarely their point. They are markers of ambition. To judge from the political bookshelves, after midterm elections in which many Trump-endorsed candidates suffered humiliating losses, the former president will not be the only declared candidate for long.Among the first rank of likely challengers, Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, released a memoir last month and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will follow suit in February.Other possible candidates include the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo (book out next year); the Missouri senator Josh Hawley (one book done, another coming); the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (two books out already); and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott (book published in August, including an inadvertent admission that he is going to run). Even Marco Rubio, the GOP’s great slight hope until Trump took him to the cleaners in 2016, has another book coming.Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, said: “These books serve as a way to generate free media and a way to put one’s name and platform, to an extent that it exists, in the eyes of voters you’re looking to reach.“It gives TV producers a hook. And so even though most of these books are, to be generous, pablum – filled with aphorisms and cliché – from the perspective of the candidate, it allows them to get their story out there, to put themselves before the public and to take a free media ride.”In short, these are not works of great literature, or even the sort of thing the great essayist Christopher Hitchens produced via “the junky energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply … crouched over a book or keyboard [in] mingled reverie and alertness”.It’s hard to picture evangelical hero Pence or culture warrior DeSantis like that, hunched over a desk, hammering out passages of memoir and policy to meet a publishing deadline. But perhaps their ghostwriters did.01:41The announcement this week of DeSantis’s book – The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal – made the biggest splash. After all, the governor who won re-election in a landslide and declared his state “where woke goes to die” is Trump’s only serious polling rival.DeSantis has released a campaign book before, namely Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama, published in 2011 when he was aiming for Congress. According to his publisher, HarperCollins, the Ivy League-educated ex-navy lawyer will now offer “a first-hand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr Fauci”. True to DeSantis’s success in pursuing distinctly Trumpist policies, the announcement was replete with such culture-war themes.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead moreDaniel Uhlfelder, a former Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, tweeted: “Ron DeSantis, who has led a statewide effort to ban books, is writing a book called The Courage to be Free. This is not a joke.”Trump books are a publishing phenomenon but books about what the agent Howard Yoon recently called the “milquetoast” Biden administration have not sold so well. Neither, it seems safe to say, will the flood of Republican books.Asked if she was eager to read DeSantis’s book, Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, laughed and said, “Are you kidding me?” She also pointed to the common fate of such books: bulk sales to political groups rather than bookstore crowds.“The DeSantis book is something the Heritage Foundation gives people at a lunch, and then goes on a shelf. This is book that is swag. When the Kochs have their big shindig with donors, it’ll be given away. Of course, that means publishers at least know it will earn out the advance.”In sales terms, Pence has an advantage. His campaign book, So Help Me God, is also in large part a Trump book. Pence has refused to testify to the House January 6 committee but on the page he provides detailed if partial testimony, written from the rooms where it happened. The result was a New York Times bestseller.Jong-Fast said: “The reason to read his book is because he’s such a liar. I think if you went through with a fine-tooth comb, you could find a lot of inconsistencies. But … at least Pence is charismatic. The irony is he’s probably more charismatic than Ron DeSantis.”So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead moreIt is possible to write a good campaign book. Barack Obama wrote two. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was published in 1995, as he set out for the Illinois senate. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, came two years before the presidential run of 2008.“And he probably read them,” Jong-Fast said. “And also he knows good writing. So many people don’t. The constant problem with conservatives is that you’ve alienated most of the writers. Remember, Trumpworld didn’t have any intellectuals because they couldn’t find any. The thought leader was Newt Gingrich.”Asked what Guardian readers might glean from the new campaign books, and from DeSantis in particular, Dallek said: “If you know nothing or little about him, you could probably learn about the biggest political fights he’s had, you could get a sense of the soundbites he likes to use, you know, his war against so-called woke culture. Probably some sense of a why he thinks Florida is the greatest place on Earth, some of the attacks he’s going to use against Joe Biden, if he were to run.“But it will not be the most informative place to go if you want to learn about Ron DeSantis. There are many other places, including profiles in the Guardian, that would probably be much more fruitful.”TopicsBooksUS politicsUS elections 2024RepublicansRon DeSantisMike PenceMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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      Ron DeSantis book announcement a clear sign of presidential ambition

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      Ron DeSantis book announcement a clear sign of presidential ambitionFlorida governor expected to challenge Trump for Republican nod in 2024 will publish The Courage to Be Free in February In the clearest signal yet that Ron DeSantis is preparing a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, it was announced on Wednesday that the rightwing governor of Florida will publish a campaign-style book, mixing memoir with policy proposals.Republican Nikki Haley to decide on presidential bid over Christmas holidaysRead moreThe Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal, will be published by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins, on 28 February.The governor, his publisher said, will offer readers “a first-hand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr Fauci”.DeSantis has not announced a 2024 run, but he is widely reported to be considering one. His victory speech after a landslide re-election this month met with chants of “Two more years!”The cover of the governor’s book shows him smiling broadly in front of a US flag.With Donald Trump under fire over disappointing midterms results, looming indictments and a controversial dinner with a white supremacist, possible Republican opponents are rapidly coming into focus.Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, has released a campaign-focused memoir, seeking to balance appeals to Trump’s supporters with distancing himself from the violent end to Trump’s time in office.Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, will release a book in the new year. Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who released a memoir in 2019, is also edging up to the starting line.Announcing DeSantis’s book, HarperCollins signaled a focus on the culture-war issues and theatrically cruel policy stunts that have propelled the governor to the front rank of potential candidates, alongside Trump in polls and sometimes ahead, prompting the former president to lash out.DeSantis clashed with Disney, a large employer in Florida, over legislation regarding the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues in schools, which was branded “don’t say gay” by critics.DeSantis’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, through which Anthony Fauci has advised two presidents, remains highly controversial. Florida has recorded nearly 83,000 deaths, third among US states in a national death toll approaching 1.1m.HarperCollins said DeSantis would “reveal” how he “accomplished more for his state” than any other “American leader”. Citing DeSantis’s graduation from Yale and Harvard, service in Iraq – as a navy lawyer – and election to Congress in 2012, the publisher said “in all these places, Ron DeSantis learned the same lesson: he didn’t want to be part of the leftist elite.”01:41“Since becoming governor of the sunshine state, he has fought – and won – battle after battle, defeating not just opposition from the political left, but a barrage of hostile media coverage,” it added.The announcement – which echoed numerous rightwing talking points on hot button social issues like Covid-19 and education – echoed DeSantis’s strident speech in Tallahassee earlier this month, after his easy win over the Democrat Charlie Crist, in which he proclaimed Florida the state “where woke goes to die”.HarperCollins also promised to “deliver something no other politician’s memoir has before: stories of victory”.That might seem to some a curious claim, given, for just one recent example, the publication just two years ago of A Promised Land, Barack Obama’s memoir of his rise to the presidency, significan legislative victories and preparations for his second presidential election win.TopicsBooksRon DeSantisUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansFloridanewsReuse this content More

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      ‘They will bend the knee’: Lincoln project cofounder cautions against dismissing Trump

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      ‘They will bend the knee’: Lincoln project cofounder cautions against dismissing TrumpRick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist, suggests the ex-president still holds sway despite multiple crises Donald Trump, the former US president, is all washed up. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is poised to dethrone him. This is the view currently in vogue among many in Washington.Not so fast, argues Rick Wilson, a veteran Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group that shot to prominence with go-for-the-jugular advertisements before becoming mired in scandals of its own.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read more“The greatest danger in American politics is not recognising that there are great dangers,” Wilson, who lives in Florida, says in a phone interview. “The same people in 2015 and 2016 were confidently asserting Donald Trump could never, ever under any circumstances win the Republican nomination, and there were never any circumstances where Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton, and then he could never have almost a million people die because of his mishandling of Covid and on and on and on and on.“I know that the Republicans who right now are acting very bold and the donors who are acting very frisky – as Trump starts winning primaries, they will bend the knee, they will break, they will fall, they will all come back into line.”When Trump scheduled his announcement of a third run for the White House this month, he had hoped to ride a “red wave” of midterm election successes and sweep aside potential rivals within the Republican party. But the red wave ebbed and his anticlimactic campaign launch had the opposite effect.With Trump at arguably his weakest point since last year’s January 6 insurrection, senior Republicans are criticising his losing habit, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is ridiculing him and big money donors such as Ken Griffin and Stephen Schwarzman are deserting what they perceive as a sinking ship.The new conventional wisdom – or wishful thinking – among numerous pundits is that, after surviving crisis after crisis, Trump has finally met his Waterloo. A slew of federal, state and congressional investigations and opinion polls showing DeSantis ahead or level lend credence to this view.Some have noted, however, that Trump maintains an iron grip on his base and, just as in 2016, that might be enough to win a Republican primary race in which the anti-Trump vote is split among several candidates.Wilson, 59, author of the books Everything Trump Touches Dies and Running Against The Devil: A Plot To Save America from Trump and Democrats From Themselves, says: “He controls a quarter, at the minimum, of the Republican base. Even if it’s 15% and he goes into Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and he wins primaries because he has 15% going in, that’s the ballgame. It’s over. It’s done. Everybody else, it’s all over bar the crying.”He adds: “Right now they’re all talking so much shit: ‘I’m not going to get with Trump. I’m going to be with the hot new number, DeSantis.’ When DeSantis gets his ass handed to him, when he gets his clock cleaned in a debate or forum or just by Trump grinding away at him, eating him alive mentally for weeks on end, and suddenly Donald Trump’s numbers start posting up again, all the conservative thinkers who are right now like, ‘We will never vote for Trump again, we have integrity!’ will find themselves some excuse. ‘Well, you know, we don’t like Trump’s tweets, but otherwise it’s pure communism!’“It’s all bullshit, it’s all a fucking game, and that game is going to play out in a way that does not result in the outcome that the donor class thinks they’re going to get.”Wilson, who began his career on the 1988 presidential campaign of George HW Bush, worked as a consultant and political ad maker for numerous candidates and state parties. In December 2019 he and other Republican operatives founded the Lincoln Project, a political action committee that assailed Trump with a punch-in-the-mouth brio eschewed by “when they go low, we go high” Democrats.Some of the co-founders have acknowledged their part in the Republican party’s descent into bloodsport, hypocrisy and extremism. Wilson told an audience at the group’s launch event: “We have, as the great political philosopher Liam Neeson once said, a particular set of skills. Skills that make us a nightmare for people like Donald Trump.”He produced slick advertisements that got under the president’s skin and helped make the Lincoln Project the best known of the so-called Never Trump groups, raising tens of millions of dollars.But its meteoric rise was followed by an equally spectacular fall. The group’s co-founder John Weaver was revealed to have sent sexually charged messages to multiple men, sometimes with offers of employment or advancement. There were allegations of opaque accounting and financial impropriety that Wilson and others adamantly deny. A glut of high-profile figures resigned.But the Lincoln Project has survived in slimmed down form and continued to wage war on Trump and Trumpism in the midterms. Paradoxically, its continued relevance partly depends on Trump’s own; without him, it loses the principal reason for its creation. It has already launched attacks on DeSantis as a “new ultra-Maga megastar” who poses his own threat to American democracy.Living in the Florida state capital, Tallahassee, Wilson is ideally placed to take stock of the governor, a former US navy lawyer and congressman whose own brand of conservative populism and “anti-wokeness” helped him win re-election by nearly 20 percentage points over the Democrat Charlie Crist.He says: “Ron DeSantis won an election in Florida against a three-time loser, a campaign that was run by the best Republican party in the country, and I mean that because I’m a guy who helped over many years elect many people in the great state of Florida. The quality of our operation here made it look easy.“Has Ron DeSantis been to the rodeo? Has he been out there in the fight? Has he actually faced up against a full campaign of the brutality and the cruelty that Donald Trump will level against him? He has not. It’s like he’s walked on to the field on to third base and thought he hit a grand slam home run. It’s easy for Republicans to win in Florida. It’s how it’s supposed to be: we built it that way. In a Republican primary against Trump, even Trump in a weakened state still has an innate feral sense of cruelty and cunning that Ron DeSantis does not have. How does Trump know that? He watched the debate.”Wilson is referring to a gubernatorial debate in which Crist asked his opponent to commit to another full four-year term in the governor’s mansion; like a rabbit caught in headlights, DeSantis, 44, struggled to answer directly.“It was nine seconds of the gears moving in his head and you could see the agony on his face, like ‘I don’t know what to say.’ Trump never has a doubt. He may be an asshole but he never has a doubt. Ron is over-intellectualising it and I’m telling you: this guy has a glass jaw.”This, Wilson predicts, will become apparent on the debate stage, a setting where Florida Republicans such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio struggled against Trump in 2016. “All of a sudden, all that donor money is going to go, ‘Oh, fuck,’ and then they’re going to call Ron’s people and go, ‘Hey, listen, we love Ron but we’re worried. We’re gonna have to sit this one out for a little while. Let’s see what it looks like in a month.’“And then a month will pass and all of a sudden Donald Trump is the nominee. That’s how it’s going to go and I don’t say this out of any joy; I say this because I’ve just been to this fucking party too many times now.”Wilson also suggests that DeSantis may lack the personal touch and knack for retail politics that is crucial in a Republican primary. A recent New Yorker magazine profile noted several people describing “his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids”.Wilson opines: “You’re telling me you’re going to send Ron DeSantis to New Hampshire where he has to go and sit in a diner with the Merrimack county GOP chairman and that 79-year-old codger is going to want to talk to Ron DeSantis about the gold standard or whatever and Ron DeSantis is going to sit there and get bored and restless and leave or be angry? I’m sorry. Sell me another fantasy of Ron DeSantis the perfect candidate.”TopicsRepublicansRon DeSantisDonald TrumpFloridaUS politicsHillary ClintonUS elections 2016featuresReuse this content More

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      Elon Musk says he will back Trump rival Ron DeSantis in 2024 if he runs for president

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      Elon Musk says he will back Trump rival Ron DeSantis in 2024 if he runs for presidentBillionaire says he prefers ‘someone sensible and centrist’ but that he had been disappointed by the Democrats so far Elon Musk has said he would support Donald Trump’s arch rival, Ron DeSantis, in 2024 if the Florida governor were to run for president.“Yes”, Musk said in a tweet when asked if he would support DeSantis in 2024, after suggesting he had not found his ideal candidate among Democrats.Elon Musk to launch new blue, gold and grey Twitter ticksRead more“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration, but have been disappointed so far,” Musk tweeted.The entrepreneur’s remarks are the clearest sign of his political backing after he indicated in June this year that he was still mulling his Republican preference for president but that he was “leaning towards” DeSantis.The move may prove a boost for DeSantis in what Republicans expect to be a bruising battle between Trump and DeSantis for presidential nomination, with some predicting “a lot of blood on the floor” in a fight between the two. The Florida governor won a landslide in this month’s midterm elections, while Trump was criticised for the Republicans’ failure to deliver the much-promised “red wave” after the defeat of key candidates he endorsed.Musk also said on Friday night that he was “fine with Trump not tweeting” after having his account reinstated last weekend. “The important thing is that Twitter correct a grave mistake in banning his account, despite no violation of the law or terms of service. Deplatforming a sitting president undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America.”Twitter banned Trump after the January 6 attack last year, saying his posts were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol”. Trump was also banned from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube after the riot.Musk’s tenure at Twitter has been turbulent, with the owner admitting that Twitter has suffered a “massive” drop in advertising revenue amid concerns about his plans for moderating content on the platform, including the fate of banned accounts.He has told Twitter employees that “roughly half” of the platform’s revenues need to come from subscriptions in order to “survive the upcoming economic downturn”. According to Twitter’s last set of annual results, advertising accounted for 90% of its $5.1bn in revenues.With ReutersTopicsElon MuskRon DeSantisDonald TrumpTwitterUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump v DeSantis: how ex-president’s fan could be his biggest rival – podcast

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      Florida governor Ron DeSantis passionately praised the former president – now he is being talked about as a possible presidential candidate himself.

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      When he was first running for governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis was fulsome in his admiration for Donald Trump. The Yale-educated, Catholic family man may have a very different background to the glamour-loving businessman, but politically they soon became entwined. But as Trump’s star has waned, DeSantis has shone brighter. In the midterms, Trump-backed candidates performed poorly, while DeSantis won a resounding victory to become re-elected governor of Florida with his focus on culture war issues. Yet as DeSantis has grown in political popularity, relations between him and Trump have cooled. Now many are talking of DeSantis as a potential Republican candidate for the presidential elections in 2024 – just as Trump announced his own bid. Is DeSantis ready to take on his former idol – and, if he does, what could a bitter battle between the two Republicans mean for the party and US politics? More

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      Wednesday briefing: Trump announces his third presidential bid – but can he win?

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      Wednesday briefing: Trump announces his third presidential bid – but can he win?In today’s newsletter: The former president wants to make American great again … again. Here’s what he said, how it was received and what the arguments are for and against – gulp – Trump 2024

      Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition
      Good morning. To many observers in the Republican party, Donald Trump was the single biggest drag on their hugely disappointing performance in last week’s US midterm elections. Trump has listened, weighed the available evidence, undertaken a searching examination of his own role in the debacle, and – you are not going to believe this – concluded that he disagrees. Instead, he told an enthusiastic audience at Mar-a-Lago overnight, “in order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”Persuaded of his own magnificence though Trump is, there are many good reasons to think that his return is extremely bad news for the Republican party. And yet. With the help of the Guardian US reporting team, today’s newsletter will run you through what the former president said, how it was received and what the arguments are for and against – gulp – Trump 2024. That’s after the headlines.Five big stories
      Russia | Joe Biden has said that a missile that landed in Poland killing two people on Tuesday was “unlikely” to have been fired from Russia due to its trajectory. Amid alarm over at the implications of any attack on Nato territory, Moscow has denied responsibility, while Poland would only say that the missiles appeared to be “Russian-made”.
      Cop27 | Fear of countries backsliding on their commitments to tackle the climate crisis dominated the Cop27 UN climate talks in Egypt on Tuesday, as the first tentative drafts started to emerge of key potential decisions. Documents and proposals seen by the Guardian showed some countries attempting to unpick agreements and water down commitments.
      Housing | The death of Awaab Ishak, an “engaging, lively, endearing” two-year-old, was a result of chronic mould in his family’s social housing flat in Rochdale, an inquest said. The coroner said Awaab’s tragic death should be a “defining moment” for the housing sector.
      G20 | Rishi Sunak will extend Britain’s hand to China for the first time in almost five years, asking for closer relations on energy and the economy in a meeting with president Xi Jinping on Tuesday. The move risks a backlash from Conservative MPs who have had sanctions imposed upon them by Beijing.
      Egypt | Alaa Abd el-Fattah, the British-Egyptian democracy activist in jail in Egypt, has said in a letter to his family that he has ended his six-month hunger strike.
      In depth: ‘It feels very strange to be back here again’Trump’s advisers had hoped his speech might be limited to 45 minutes: in the event, he continued for more than an hour. David Smith sent a voice note from the Mar-a-Lago ballroom shortly after he finished. Trump’s confirmation of his intention to run “prompted an eruption of cheers and whistles from several hundred guests under the crystal chandeliers,” he said, but “apart from that I think the general consensus here is that it was a pretty low energy speech … unusually for anyone who’s been to one of his rallies, it was at times quite boring.”There were some characteristically wild moments, like his vow that drug dealers will “receive the death penalty for their heinous acts”. But overall, David said, “I did not see much at Mar-a-Lago tonight that is going to rattle Joe Biden or potential Republican rivals in the primary.” You can read David’s sketch, in which he compares Trump to “an ageing champ returning to centre court only to find he’s holding a wooden racket,” here.It feels “very strange to be back here again”, said Guardian US political correspondent Lauren Gambino. After disappointing midterm results, “there are all these questions about what the future of the party should look like, and he’s just really pulling them back to 2020”.Here are some arguments for and against Trump’s chances of winning the Republican nomination.Why Trump’s not the force he was1 He was a drag on Republicans in the midtermsIf ideological or ethical concerns have never been enough to wean the GOP off Trump, cold electoral arithmetic might be. The party has now failed in three elections in a row with him as its figurehead. In a midterm year which by any historic guide should have been a success for the “out” party, Republicans failed to capture the Senate and will only squeak the narrowest of victories in the House of Representatives.Trump ignored those disappointments, instead celebrating: “Nancy Pelosi has been fired. Isn’t that nice?” But whatever he says, it looks as if his influence was a crucial reason for the failure. In this analysis for the Washington Post, Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, writes that in competitive races, candidates with Trump endorsements fared around seven percentage points worse than those he didn’t support.2 He’s lost important support in the media and party establishmentUntil recently, Trump could count on the near-unanimous backing of the conservative media in the US. Now, as Adam Gabbatt writes in his analysis of rightwing media coverage, there have been signs that Rupert Murdoch’s empire may have turned on the former president, who was branded “Trumpty Dumpty” by the New York Post and called “the Republican party’s biggest loser” by the Wall Street Journal.On Fox News last night, Adam writes, “it seemed that not everyone was ready to let Trump go”. But there were still nuances to the coverage which would once have been unimaginable.“Fox News has been tied so closely to Trump for so long that an immediate ditching was always unlikely – but there were some small signs through the evening that perhaps they’re pulling away,” Adam said in a voice note. He pointed to an interview with possible rival Mike Pence, a “quite subdued” appearance from longtime supporter Sean Hannity, and the decision to cut away from Trump’s speech to analysis even as it continued.“I think in previous years if Trump had a big announcement to make at 9 o’clock, that’s, like, three hours of Fox News coverage sorted – just Trump, Trump, Trump. It wasn’t that.”It’s not just the media: for one example of how the party establishment feels more able to take on Trump, see this story from Monday on Politico, which notes that the influential Club for Growth – once a reliable Trump cheerleader – has pushed out polling data showing him trailing rival Ron DeSantis in key primary states. Even his daughter Ivanka says she will not be part of the 2024 campaign.3 He has a viable rival on the far rightDeSantis (below) was one of the Republican party’s few big winners on election night, beating his Democratic rival by almost 20 points in the race to be governor of Florida. DeSantis is a threat to Trump precisely because he hews pretty closely to his extreme ideology without the former president’s baggage or unpredictability – and a YouGov poll shows him with a seven-point lead among Republican voters nationally.Trump’s nickname for the man he views as the only serious threat to his domination of the Republican party, Ron DeSanctimonious, is pretty funny – but Republican voters may ask themselves if they wouldn’t prefer a more “normal” politician who, at 44, also presents a helpful generational contrast with 79-year-old Joe Biden. For more on the Trump-DeSantis rivalry, see this piece from yesterday by Chris McGreal. And Martin Pengelly has a guide to the other likely candidates.Why he might be the candidate anyway1 He wasn’t the Republicans’ only problem in the midtermsWhile Trump was undoubtedly an issue for Republican candidates, there are sound arguments that the party’s difficulties were not limited to his influence. In the American Conservative, the successful Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Ohio, JD Vance, argues that blaming the former president ignores the Democrats’ advantage in “small-dollar fundraising” and calls Republican efforts “paltry by comparison”. While the overall fundraising picture is complex, Axios reported that in the 10 most competitive Senate races, Republicans were outraised by $75m among small-dollar donors.It may be hard to wholly separate fundraising from Trump’s influence as rallying force for Democrats. But Vance argues that the best way to solve the problem is to “build a turnout machine” and that the party has “one major asset … to rally these voters: President Donald Trump”. (Unsurprisingly, Trump agrees: he has blamed the GOP establishment, the electoral system, the candidates themselves and reportedly, for her alleged role in leading him to support doomed Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, his wife, Melania.)2 He can still win the nomination without being very popularA presidential election is another question – but in the contest for the Republican nomination, Trump can prevail with the highly motivated minority of Republican voters who still prefer him to any other candidate. Republican pollsters estimate that proportion of GOP primary voters at between one-third and 40%. In 2016, Trump won the Republican primary with about 45% of the vote overall, and many states with less than that. Until DeSantis or anyone else proves they can defeat him with voters, he remains a very serious candidate for the nomination.3 He’s been underestimated beforeIt would be foolish to write off the extensive evidence that Trump’s star is on the wane – but past experience suggests that it would be equally unwise to write him off so early. Meanwhile, there is no sign that the Republican party is thinking hard about what a successful political message that repudiates Trumpism would look like.One plausible theory is that despite his many disadvantages, his supporters are less interested in winning elections than in maintaining their love affair with the politician who tells them they’re right about everything. “It’s tempting to see the strength of the Maga forces ebbing at last, the calendar leaf turning over on the Trump era,” Tom Scocca wrote for the New York Times this week. “But how do you declare defeat for a movement that is built around refusing to accept defeat?”Extremely onlineFor a raucous summary of how Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has gone so far, look no further than this exhaustive thread from @christapeterso. Features Mario giving the finger, and Musk on the future of the company: “We all need to be more hardcore.”What else we’ve been reading
      Once you’ve read Dan Hancox’s account of “proper binmen” memes, you’ll see the past and the present differently. Beautifully written, subtle and featuring a three-paragraph rendition of the sweep of the “baby boomer nostalgia industrial complex” that could hardly be bettered. Archie
      India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has presented himself as a committed environmentalist who wants his country to embrace renewable energy, all while unveiling plans to increase coal production to 1bn tonnes a year. Hannah Ellis-Petersen dives into India’s energy conundrum. Nimo
      Ageing gamers like me have much to learn from Keith Stuart’s guide to surviving an online ecosystem ruled by trigger-happy teens. As with most things for the over-30s, it comes down to not running, spending a lot of money on equipment and hiding as much as possible. Archie
      David Squires’ cartoon on the death of Qatar World Cup worker Rupchandra Rumba by “natural causes”, building on the reporting of Pete Pattisson, makes the brutal conditions faced by those who made the tournament possible inescapable. And read Pattisson’s piece on what he’s learned in reporting on migrant workers’ plight. Archie
      In this hilarious and honest Q&A, Liam Pape spoke to the comedian Sara Pascoe about the best and worst advice she’s ever received, her relationship with feminism and her new show Success Story. Nimo
      SportWorld Cup | Gay Qataris have been promised safety from torture in exchange for helping authorities track down other LGBTQ+ people, a prominent Qatari campaigner told the Guardian. Dr Nasser Mohamed said foreign gay fans would not face prosecution during the tournament but warned that gay Qataris faced a very different reality.Football | England’s Lionesses could not find a 17th victory of the year but signed off on an unbeaten 2022 with a 1-1 draw against Norway, who equalised late on despite the sending off of Anja Sønstevold.Cricket | Simon Burnton’s review of the T20 World Cup reflects on the tournament’s thrilling unpredictability – the Netherlands v South Africa for best match? – and asks the hard questions of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.The front pagesOur Guardian print edition leads with “Russian barrage strikes Ukraine amid claims missiles hit Poland”. The front-page picture is Awaab Ishak, not even two, who died from mould in the family flat. Of that, the Daily Express says “Tragic death of boy from mould shames Britain”. The Times has “Russians blamed for fatal strike on Poland” while the Daily Mirror says “Russian bombs hit Poland” under the banner “Tyrant’s war on Ukraine” with a picture of Vladimir Putin. “Putin’s war spills into Poland” – that’s the i, while the Daily Telegraph has “Russian missile strikes Poland”. The Metro says “Putin’s war escalates – ‘Russian missiles’ hit Poland”. In the Financial Times, it’s “Sunak urges bosses to curb their pay and look after staff”. The culture wars are back on in the Daily Mail: “Universities are told to ‘decolonise’ maths and computing”. And the footballer Ronaldo has told the Sun that “I keep our baby Angel’s ashes. I talk to him all the time”.Today in FocusReclaiming Kherson: what Russia’s retreat reveals about the fight for UkraineUkrainians have reacted with jubilation after retaking Kherson city and the region around it. But what did living under Russian occupation do to the area and its people – and is this really the beginning of the end of the war?Cartoon of the day | Martin RowsonThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badCorals that were planted in 2017 at Fitzroy Island on the Great Barrier Reef have spawned for the first time. They were planted as part of a pilot programme testing the benefits of offshore “coral nurseries” – the hopes were that the corals that were grown from fragments that had survived mass bleaching would be resilient to heatwaves in the future. The spawning has been described as a “beautiful milestone” in the journey to recovering Australia’s corals. So far the Reef Restoration Foundation has established 33 coral nurseries to help the health of the reef on a small localised scale.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
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      TopicsDonald TrumpFirst EditionRepublicansUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022Ron DeSantisnewslettersReuse this content More

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      Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riot

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      Donald Trump announces 2024 run for president nearly two years after inspiring deadly Capitol riotTwice-impeached ex-president makes expected election announcement despite shaky midterms and surge from rival Ron DeSantis00:52Donald Trump on Tuesday night announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, likely sparking another period of tumult in US politics and especially his own political party.“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States,” Trump said from ballroom of his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he stood on a stage crowded with American flags and Make America Great Again banners.Vowing to defeat Joe Biden in 2024, he declared: “America’s golden age is just ahead.”The long-expected announcement by a twice-impeached president who incited a deadly attack on Congress seems guaranteed to deepen a stark partisan divide that has fueled fears of increased political violence.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreBut it also comes as Trump’s standing in the Republican party has suddenly been put into question. Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago a week after midterm elections in which his Republican party did not make expected gains, losing the Senate and seeming on course for only a narrow majority in the US House.In his remarks, Trump took credit for Republicans’ performance victory in the House, even though they are poised to capture a far narrower majority than anticipated. “Nancy Pelosi has been fired. Isn’t that nice?” he said. The Associated Press has not yet projected which party will win the majority.In a party hitherto dominated by Trump, defeats suffered by high-profile, Trump-endorsed candidates led to open attacks on the former president and calls to delay his announcement or not to run at all. As Trump’s standing has slipped, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has surged into strong contention after sailing to reelection last week.Trump’s announcement also coincided on Tuesday with the release of Mike Pence’s memoir, So Help Me God, in which the ex-president’s once-faithful lieutenant criticizes him for his conduct on January 6. The former vice-president is also maneuvering toward a possible 2024 run despite falling out of favor with the Maga base.Brushing past Republican setbacks in 2022 and his defeat in 2020, Trump insisted that he was the only candidate who could deliver a Republican victory in 2024.“This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate,” he said. “This is a task for a great movement.”His third candidacy comes as he faces intensifying legal troubles, including investigations by the justice department into the removal of hundreds of classified documents from the White House to his Florida estate and into his role in the 6 January attack. Trump has denied wrongdoing and used the attacks to further his narrative that he has been unfairly targeted by his political opponents and a shadowy “deep state” bureaucracy.“I’m a victim,” Trump said, making reference to the Russia investigation and the raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate. On Tuesday, Trump nevertheless pressed forward with his run.Painting a bleak portrait of the United States, with “blood-soaked” city streets and an “invasion” at the southern border, Trump said his campaign was a “quest to save our country.”In the less than two years since Biden took office, a period Trump referred to as “the pause”, he accused his successor of inflicting “pain, hardship, anxiety and despair” with his economic and domestic policies.Trump offered an alternative vision, which he called the “national greatness agenda”. Among the policy proposals he endorsed on Tuesday were the death penalty for drug dealers, term limits for members of Congress and planting an American flag on Mars. And wading into the social fights he enjoys inflaming, Trump promised to protect “paternal rights” and keep transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.Though he made no explicit mention of his stolen-election lies, he promised to overhaul the nation’s voting laws, vowing that a winner would be declared on election night. In close contests, it can take several days before enough votes are tabulated in a state to project a winner, but Trump and his allies have seized on the delay to spread baseless conspiracy theories about results.Despite promising to deliver remarks as “elegant” as the gold-plated room he was standing in, Trump’s rambling, hourlong speech turned to name-calling and ridicule, lashing the “fake news”, mocking the former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s accent and accusing Biden of “falling asleep” at international conferences. At one point, he appeared to confuse the civil war with the reconstruction period that followed and scoffed at climate science.Without acknowledging his 2020 defeat, Trump insisted that beating Biden in 2024 would be much easier because “everybody sees what a bad job has been done.”He called Biden the “face of left-wing failure and government corruption” and accused him of worsening inflation and “surrendering” America’s energy independence. He also slammed the administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan as “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country”.“Our country is being destroyed before your very eyes,” he said, casting his four years in office as a glowing success, despite leaving behind a nation shaken by disease and political turmoil.Now 76, Trump was long seen as a colorful if controversial presence in American life, a thrice-married New York real-estate mogul, reality TV star and tabloid fixture who flirted with politics but never committed.But in 2015, after finding a niche as a prominent voice for rightwing opposition to Barack Obama – and a racist conspiracy theory about Obama’s birth – Trump entered the race for the Republican nomination to succeed the 44th president.Proving immune to scandal, whether over personal conduct, allegations of sexual assault or persistent courting of the far right, he obliterated a huge Republican field then pulled off a historic shock by beating the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.Trump’s presidency was chaotic but undoubtedly historic. Senate Republicans playing political and constitutional hardball helped install three supreme court justices, cementing a dominant rightwing majority which has now removed the right to abortion and weakened gun control laws while eyeing further significant change.Trump is running for president again – but these legal battles might stand in the wayRead moreTrump’s third supreme court pick, replacing the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline Catholic, came shortly before the 2020 election. That contest, with Obama’s vice-president, Joe Biden, was fought under the shadow of protests for racial justice and the coronavirus pandemic, the latter a test badly mishandled by Trump’s administration as hundreds of thousands died.Trump was conclusively beaten, Biden racking up more than 7m more votes and the same electoral college win, 306-232, that Trump enjoyed over Clinton, a victory Trump then called a landslide.But Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, based on his “big lie” about electoral fraud, fueled election subversion efforts in key states, the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters and far-right groups, a second impeachment for inciting that insurrection (and a second acquittal, if with more Republican defections) and a deepening crisis of US democracy.01:41With a third White House bid, Trump hopes to defy political history. Only one former president, Grover Cleveland, has served two nonconsecutive terms. Cleveland was elected in 1884 and 1892, but, unlike Trump, he won the popular vote in the intervening election of 1888.Trump flirted with announcing a new run throughout Biden’s first two years in power, ultimately delaying until after midterm elections, which did not go as he or his party expected. But while high-profile backers of Trump’s stolen election myth were defeated, among them his choice for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, more than 170 were elected, according to the Washington Post.Until his midterms reversal, Trump dominated polling of potential Republican nominees for 2024. His closest rival in such surveys, DeSantis, reportedly indicated to donors he would not compete with Trump. But the landscape has now changed. DeSantis won re-election by a landslide, gave a confident victory speech to chants of “two more years” and has surged in polling – prompting attacks from Trump. At least one Republican mega donor, Ken Griffin, has said he backs the Florida governor.Should Trump dismiss DeSantis as he has so many other challengers and win the nomination, the 22nd amendment to the US constitution would bar him from running again in 2028. But a rematch of 2020 remains possible. Though Biden will soon turn 80 and has faced questions about whether he should seek a second term himself, he is preparing a re-election campaign.TopicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansRon DeSantisJoe BidenUS midterm elections 2022newsReuse this content More

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      Trump v DeSantis: Republicans split over 2024 run and predict ‘blood on the floor’

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      Trump v DeSantis: Republicans split over 2024 run and predict ‘blood on the floor’ County leaders say they fear ex-president is even more divisive than he was two years ago and is therefore unelectableTerri Burl was an early member of Women for Trump. As chair of her local Republican party branch in northern Wisconsin, she twice campaigned vigorously for his election in the key swing state. By the time Trump left office, Burl rated him the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Maybe even better.But now Burl has had enough.She viewed the prospect of Trump announcing another run for the presidency – as he did in Florida on Tuesday evening – with trepidation. Burl predicts “a lot of blood on the floor” if it comes to a fight with rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination, and defeat in the 2024 election if the former US president is the candidate.Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake’, Republican says as blame game deepens Read more“I will back whoever the Republicans choose to run in 2024. That’s a given. But I want them to go through the primaries and I hope it’s not Trump. He has too much baggage now. We need new blood because it’s obvious that he can’t get to business now without doing things to make people angry. His behaviour hasn’t changed,” she said.Burl, a substitute teacher, is not alone.The Republicans’ failure to deliver the much promised “red wave” in the midterms was a significant blow to Trump’s claim to be the voice of his party’s voters, not least because of the defeat of key candidates endorsed by him. But backing from the grass roots, which gave him a tight grip on the Republicans for years and kept its hostile leadership at bay, has been eroding for months.Republican county chairs and activists say support for the former president has diminished as a result of his continued pushing of election conspiracy theories, the investigations into his businesses and political actions, and his attacks on his most threatening challenger, DeSantis. Above all, there is a deepening fear that Trump is now even more divisive than he was two years ago when he lost the popular vote to Joe Biden by more than 7m votes, and is therefore unelectable.But local Republican leaders also say that Trump retains a substantial and virulently loyal following within the party that will fight to the last and could still decide the primaries.In rural Iowa, Neil Shaffer, chair of the Howard county Republican party, said he would rather see DeSantis as his party’s candidate in two years but that the membership of his branch is split.“Honestly, Trump’s got a lot of baggage, self-inflicted. Had he taken the loss gracefully, and held his tongue, and didn’t further these conspiracy theories, he probably could have been a president again, with an interim of Biden,” he said.“People that came to the Trump bandwagon, there were a lot of independents, a lot of first-time voters, a lot of everyday people. They did overlook some of the issues. Since then, a lot of the people that I’ve talked to that were first-time Republican voters would have a very difficult time being as enthusiastic for Trump this time around just because of how he didn’t gracefully take an exit. He lost a lot of political capital between November 2020 and January 6, and unnecessarily. All self-inflicted.”Shaffer said he has faith in the electoral system and that Biden legitimately won the election.Like Burl, Shaffer wants to see other candidates challenge Trump for the Republican nomination.“I honestly am a big fan of Governor DeSantis and have been for several months just following through this last campaign. Fresh face. Has the same kind of agenda as Trump without all the baggage,” he said.But Shaffer, speaking before Trump’s announcement, said he doubted Trump could be beaten.“If Trump runs, I’m 99% sure he’ll have the nomination. I know how caucuses and primaries work. You don’t have to have that many people show up and he has a very loyal and dedicated following,” said Shaffer.Burl is not so sure that Trump would win the primaries but she predicts a bitter fight that could further damage the Republican party.“If these two guys are the ones that are left, going back and forth, I think it’s gonna be brutal. There will be a lot of blood on the floor,” she said.A YouGov poll in the days immediately after the midterms gave DeSantis a seven-point lead over Trump among Republican primary voters, including independents. That’s a shift from a month before the elections when Trump had a 10-point advantage. However, among “strong Republicans”, Trump retains a narrow lead.Burl administrates a private Facebook group, American Patriots. She polled its members and found that Trump had a slight edge in support. In other social media forums, some of his supporters say he is a “proven fighter” who can connect with the public in ways no other politician can. Others say the time has come to “dump Trump”.“I love what DJT did for America. But … is he even electable?” asked one of his supporters.Others questioned his judgment after he backed weak candidates in the midterms solely because they were loyal to his claim that the last presidential election was stolen.Trump’s deriding of his Florida rival as Ron “DeSanctimonious” days before the midterms was a last straw for some. Then he took to Fox News to warn off DeSantis from running for the presidency, saying “he could hurt himself very badly” and threatening to “tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering”.“I think he would be making a mistake. I think the base would not like it. I don’t think it would be good for the party,” said Trump.Burl said she was “shocked” by the former president’s attack on DeSantis.“Trump is starting to call him names and that really disappointed me. And then he said that if DeSantis tries to run against him, he’s got some dirt on DeSantis that he’s going to bring up. That’s not the way to do things,” she said.Burl said some Republicans were concerned that while they saw Trump as his own man, DeSantis was too much of an accomplished politician whose decisions are calculated according to what he thinks will play well with voters.“Some people are saying that they don’t trust DeSantis because they think that he will cross into the establishment side. I’m not establishment. I don’t like establishment candidates. I like people like Trump,” she said.“But even though some people might look on DeSantis as establishment right now, I think he is coming out as his own type of Republican and really doesn’t want to cavort with all of the establishment Republicans and do what they say.”Shaffer is concerned about the damage Trump will do to the Republican party, and its presidential nominee, if he loses and goes down fighting.“How does Trump run and not tarnish the other candidates?” he said.And if Trump is the nominee? Shaffer said he would still campaign for the former president, but doesn’t relish the prospect.“If Trump got the nomination it will be a much more difficult for him this time around than it was in 2020. We’re gonna have to work very hard, much harder than in 2016 or two years [ago],” he said.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022US elections 2024US politicsDonald TrumpRon DeSantisRepublicansnewsReuse this content More