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      Trump response to Capitol attack can’t be ‘swept under rug’, White House says – live

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      Key events

      Show

      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      Today so far

      4.47pm EDT
      16:47

      Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

      3.33pm EDT
      15:33

      Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

      2.29pm EDT
      14:29

      ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

      2.07pm EDT
      14:07

      Trump’s response to Capitol attack cannot be ‘swept under the rug,’ Psaki says

      12.31pm EDT
      12:31

      Interim summary

      Live feed

      Show

      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

      Sam Levine

      Texas Republicans are on the verge of enacting new voting maps that would entrench the state’s Republican and white majority even as its non-white population grows rapidly.
      Texas Republicans approved the congressional plan on Monday evening, sending it to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to sign the measure.
      The Texas maps offer perhaps the most brazen effort in the USs so far this year to draw new district lines to benefit one political party, a practice called gerrymandering. The proposed congressional map would blunt growing Democratic strength in the Texas suburbs. Texas Republicans already have a 23-13 seat advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and the new maps would double the number of safe GOP congressional seats in the state from 11 to 22, according to the Washington Post.
      Democrats would have 12 safe seats, up from eight. There would be just one competitive congressional district in the state, down from 12.
      Read more:

      5.14pm EDT
      17:14

      The Supreme Court has declined to stop a vaccine requirement for health workers in Maine.
      Justice Stephen Breyer declined to hear an emergency appeal to block a vaccine requirement announced by Maine governor Janet Mills. The policy requires health workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by 29 October or risk losing their jobs.
      According to the state’s dashboard tracking vaccinations among health workers, between 84 and 92% of workers are vaccinated in various settings so far.
      This is the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a statewide vaccine mandate.

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is expected to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. The expected committee vote comes one day after Donald Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to block certain White House documents from the subpoenas by claiming executive privilege, which is considered a dubious legal argument given that he is no longer president.
      The White House said Trump’s response to the insurrection cannot be “swept under the rug”. “Our view, and I think the view of the vast majority of Americans, is that former President Trump abused the office of the presidency and attempted to subvert a peaceful transfer of power,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when asked about Trump’s lawsuit. “The former president’s actions represented a unique and existential threat to our democracy that we don’t feel can be swept under the rug.”
      FBI agents raided a Washington home linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin who was sanctioned by the treasury department in 2018.
      Progressive lawmakers voiced optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon. The president is now meeting with a group of centrist Democratic lawmakers to continue the negotiations over the reconciliation package and the infrastructure bill. Democrats are still working to reach an agreement on the top-line cost of the reconciliation package, and House progressives are holding up the passage of the infrastructure bill until a deal is struck.

      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.47pm EDT
      16:47

      Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

      Progressive lawmakers expressed optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon.
      Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the group had a “really good, productive meeting” with Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
      “And I think we all feel still even more optimistic about getting to an agreement on a really transformational bill,” Jayapal told reporters after the meeting.
      Jayapal said she was confident that “a majority” of progressive priorities would be included in the final bill, and she thanked Biden for his engagement in the negotiations.
      When asked if they agreed to a top-line cost of the bill, Jayapal said that Biden has consistently pushed for a price tag between $1.9tn and $2.2tn, after moderates like Joe Manchin indicated they would not support a $3.5tn package.
      “It’s not the number that we want,” Jayapal said. “But at the end of the day, the idea that we can do these programs, a multitude of programs and actually get them going so that they deliver immediate transformational benefits to people is what we’re focused on.”

      4.24pm EDT
      16:24

      Joe Biden’s first meeting with congressional Democrats has now ended after about two hours, according to the White House.
      The president’s first meeting was with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Vice-president Kamala Harris and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen attended as well.
      Biden will now meet with some of the centrist Democrats in Congress to continue discussions about the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

      Updated
      at 4.35pm EDT

      4.04pm EDT
      16:04

      Gloria Oladipo

      In an attempt to recruit more officers, US Capitol police chief Thomas Manger is using the 6 January insurrection as a reason for why more people should join the force.
      As seen in a promotional video titled The US Capitol Police: A Call to Service, Manger describes how the attack, which many have cited as a failure on the part of Capitol law enforcement, made him want to once again join the force.

      U.S. Capitol Police
      (@CapitolPolice)
      One of our top priorities is to hire more officers to protect Congress and the U.S. Capitol: pic.twitter.com/xbKBOhmNpz

      October 19, 2021

      “I wanted to be a police officer again. I wanted to be there to help. We are looking for really good men and women who have that spirit for public service, who want to serve their country,” said Manger in the video.
      Following the insurrection, officers testified during a House committee about the events of 6 January, describing being swarmed and attacked by rioters as well as the trauma they dealt with.

      Updated
      at 4.35pm EDT

      3.33pm EDT
      15:33

      Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

      Gloria Oladipo

      US Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has tested positive for Covid-19, according to DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa.
      “Secretary Mayorkas tested positive this morning for the Covid-19 virus after taking a test as part of routine pre-travel protocols. Secretary Mayorkas is experiencing only mild congestion; he is fully vaccinated and will isolate and work at home per CDC protocols and medical advice. Contact tracing is underway,” said Espinosa in a statement to CNN.
      Mayorkas will no longer be participating in a planned trip to Colombia with secretary of state Antony Blinken and will be working from home, reports CNN.

      Updated
      at 4.44pm EDT

      3.19pm EDT
      15:19

      Gloria Oladipo

      An FBI spokesperson has said that the agency is conducting law enforcement activity in a New York City building in connection with an investigation into Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch whose Washington, DC home was raided today, according to ABC news.
      Stay tuned as more information emerges.

      3.13pm EDT
      15:13

      Gloria Oladipo

      House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland discussed the best strategy for Democrats to pass the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, arguing that lawmakers should fund fewer programs for longer, reports Politico.
      “My own view is that we ought to do fewer things better. We ought to make sure that which [programs] we include in the bill will have a real impact,” said Hoyer.
      Hoyer added that he wants “sense of permanency to those policies” that make it in the final version of the financial bill.
      Democrats are still working to get the megabill passed before a self-imposed deadline of 31 October but face opposition from key moderates such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Lawmakers including House speaker Nancy Pelosi of California have supported the idea of funding fewer programs, but contention remains around which programs will get cut, including threats to key climate change legislation.
      Hoyer added that Democrats are still aiming towards passing the social spending package and the infrastructure bill by the Halloween deadline and that “if [Congress] make significant progress that’ll also be success towards those ends.”

      2.53pm EDT
      14:53

      Gloria Oladipo

      Five people with the climate activist group Sunrise Movement will begin participating in a hunger strike in front of the White House tomorrow at 9am to demand that Congress pass the climate initiatives in the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, a key part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, reports the New Republic.
      “We’re here to highlight how dire this moment is,” said Kidus Girma, 26, who is participating in the strike. “A couple hundred people in a two-part building in D.C. are deciding the scope of what climate justice can look like—and not just climate justice, but a lot of critical programs that before this pandemic folks did not think were possible.”
      Protestors decided to strike after news broke from the New York Times on Friday that Democrats were considering getting rid of the Clean Energy Payment Program, an initiative that would award utilities who increase their use of renewable energy, because of holdout from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other centrists.
      The hunger strike is apart of a longer week of actions targeting key Democrats who have not supported the legislation. Yesterday, Sunrise activists previously protested outside of Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona’s Phoenix office. Protestors have also previously protested by Manchin’s yatch.
      Protestors are asking people to participate in the hunger strike on Thursday, followed by a nationwide strike from school–coined Fridays for Future–that will result in a break in fasting.

      Updated
      at 2.53pm EDT

      2.29pm EDT
      14:29

      ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

      Joanna Walters

      In further developments in the story of Russian metals billionaire Oleg Deripaska, FBI agents have raided a mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Washington, DC, that is linked to him.
      Deripaska has ties to the Kremlin and Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former election campaign manager who served time for fraud and was pardoned by the former president. More

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      Bannon and other top Trump officials face legal peril for defying subpoenas

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      Steve BannonBannon and other top Trump officials face legal peril for defying subpoenasDevelopments in select committee’s move to secure Bannon’s conviction come as Trump files lawsuit blocking the release of his White House records Hugo Lowell in WashingtonTue 19 Oct 2021 03.38 EDTLast modified on Tue 19 Oct 2021 04.03 EDTSteve Bannon and other former top officials in the Trump administration are facing legal peril for defying subpoenas issued by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, as the panel prepares to pursue criminal referrals for non-compliance.The legal jeopardy for Bannon – who is expected to be held in contempt by the committee on Tuesday – is anticipated after it emerged in a letter to his attorney, obtained by the Guardian on Monday, that he had claimed executive privilege protections on materials unrelated to the executive branch.Capitol attack panel’s message to Steve Bannon: we won’t forget about youRead moreThe House select committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, also said in the letter that even if the panel entertained the claims of executive privilege, Bannon had no basis to ignore the order since not even a president could grant him immunity from a House subpoena.The dual legal arguments in the letter, which served as Bannon’s final warning to cooperate a day before the select committee is expected to hold him in contempt of Congress, underscores the weakness of the executive privilege claim advanced by Donald Trump.The Guardian first reported that the former president would instruct his top four aides subpoenaed by the select committee – White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, his deputy Dan Scavino, defense department aide Kash Patel, as well as Bannon, his former chief strategist – to defy the orders.But even though Bannon is alone in defying a subpoena after Meadows and Patel were “engaging” with the panel over the potential scope of their cooperation and Scavino was served late, the letter shows similar attempts to invoke executive privilege appear treacherous.The missive from the select committee came in response to a previous letter from Bannon’s attorney, Robert Costello, who insisted his client was precluded from complying with the subpoena until claims about executive privilege by Trump were settled in a court ruling.Thompson said in his response that he rejected the entire argument leaning on Trump and considered Bannon as having violated federal law after he “wilfully failed to both produce a single document and to appear for his scheduled deposition”.The chairman of the select committee said the executive privilege claim could not apply in Bannon’s case, because the panel had in part sought his contacts with members of Congress and the Trump campaign, which are not covered by the presidential protection.Thompson added that even if the select committee accepted that some materials demanded by the panel were shielded by executive privilege, Bannon would not be exempt from complying with a congressional subpoena.The chairman also said that the select committee believed Costello’s interpretation of a previous case involving the testimony of a Trump administration official – the former White House counsel Don McGahn – actually undermined Bannon’s argument to defy his subpoena.In the case with McGahn, said Thompson, the US district court for the District of Columbia ruled that even senior White House aides were not entitled to absolute immunity from testifying. McGahn, pursuant to that ruling, ultimately testified to Congress in July.Furthermore, the citation referring to McGahn used by Costello “makes clear that a president lacks legal authority to order an aide not to appear before Congress based on a claim of executive privilege,” Thompson said.The legal rebuttals outlined in the letter were specific to Bannon’s non-compliance. But a source close to the select committee said the same arguments would be pressed against Meadows, Scavino and Patel should they also attempt an executive privilege claim.And with a reversal in position from Bannon not forthcoming before a 6pm ET deadline on Monday, the select committee is now expected to proceed with a vote recommending the House refer him to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia for criminal prosecution.The letter outlining the select committee’s arguments was earlier reported by the Washington Post.The developing contours of the select committee’s move to secure Bannon’s conviction – which would carry a maximum penalty of a one year sentence in federal prison and up to $100,000 in fines – came as Trump filed a lawsuit blocking the release of his White House records.Trump filed a lawsuit with the DC district court to stop the National Archives from releasing records to the select committee a tranche of records, after Joe Biden’s White House counsel, Dana Remus, declined to assert executive privilege protections.The Guardian first reported that Trump would sue to block the release of records from his administration last month. Trump’s legal counsel has indicated the former president is seeking to shield about 50 documents from scrutiny.TopicsSteve BannonUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel’s message to Steve Bannon: we won’t forget about you

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      US Capitol attackCapitol attack panel’s message to Steve Bannon: we won’t forget about youRepublican Adam Kinzinger says pursuit of a criminal contempt referral was ‘the first shot over the bow’ for Trump allies Richard Luscombe@richluscSun 17 Oct 2021 13.36 EDTLast modified on Sun 17 Oct 2021 13.37 EDTAdam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the special committee investigating the deadly 6 January US Capitol attack, said on Sunday the pursuit of a criminal contempt referral against Steve Bannon was “the first shot over the bow” for allies of Donald Trump defying subpoenas to testify.“It’s very real, but it says to anybody else coming in front of the committee, ‘Don’t think that you’re going to be able to just kind of walk away and we’re going to forget about you’,” Kinzinger, a vocal critic of the former president, told CNN’s State of the Union.He added that the committee would not rule out calling Trump himself to testify, though he acknowledged that such a move was not imminent.Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, has declined to appear before the committee, or respond to the subpoena demanding documents and testimony, claiming executive privilege. The committee will decide on Tuesday whether to make a criminal contempt referral to the full House of Representatives.Kinzinger, an Illinois congressman who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment in January following the insurrection, also said that Joe Biden was right to call for the prosecution of those who resisted subpoenas. Republican criticism of the president’s comments forced the justice department to issue a rare statement on Friday reaffirming its independence from the White House.“The president has every right to signal, I think he has every right to make it clear where the administration stands. God knows the prior administration every two hours was trying to signal to the justice department,” Kinzinger said, referring to Trump’s prolific pressuring of the DOJ.“But that has to do with other pretty horrific things, and I think the president has made it clear that we need answers to this. The vast majority of Americans agree, so this potential criminal contempt referral for Steve Bannon is the first shot over the bow.”The 6 January committee has issued a number of subpoenas in recent days and weeks to former Trump acolytes or administration officials thought to have key knowledge of the events of the day.Last week’s subpoena for the former top DOJ official Jeffrey Clark was seen as an escalation of its investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat and subsequent false claims that he was cheated out of victory, otherwise known as the big lie.The Guardian reported earlier this month that Trump had directed aides including Bannon, the former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and defense department aide Kash Patel not to testify.Trump granted clemency to Bannon over federal fraud charges in one of his last acts before leaving office on 20 January. Kinzinger was also asked if Trump would receive a subpoena.“We want to make sure we’re getting every piece of this puzzle, that’s going to include people that have already come in talking to us, it’s going to include people that we’ll potentially subpoena in the future, whose names you probably never heard [and] will have a very good incentive to come in and talk,” he said.“That begins to put the building blocks in this together. Speaking honestly, if we subpoena all of a sudden the former president, we know that’s going to become kind of a circus, so that’s not necessarily something we want to do up front. But if he has pieces of information we need, we certainly will.”TopicsUS Capitol attackSteve BannonUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Steve Bannon: Capitol attack panel to consider criminal contempt referral

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      Steve BannonSteve Bannon: Capitol attack panel to consider criminal contempt referralHouse 6 January select committee to decide on Trump’s former strategist, who has snubbed subpoena requests, on Tuesday Hugo Lowell in WashingtonThu 14 Oct 2021 14.52 EDTFirst published on Thu 14 Oct 2021 13.54 EDTBennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack on Thursday announced the panel’s intention to consider a criminal contempt referral against Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena as part of its 6 January inquiry.The vow to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings against Bannon – one of Donald Trump’s top advisers – puts the select committee on the path to enforce the subpoena issued to uncover what the former president knew in advance of plans to mount an insurrection.House Capitol attack panel issues subpoena to Trump official Jeffrey ClarkRead moreThompson said in a statement that the committee would move to consider prosecuting Bannon for refusing to comply with a subpoena demanding documents and testimony after rejecting his claims that he could not appear for a deposition because of executive privilege.“The select committee will not tolerate defiance of our subpoenas, so we must move forward with proceedings to refer Mr Bannon for criminal contempt,” Thompson said. “Witnesses who try to stonewall the select committee will not succeed.”The select committee will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to recommend the full House authorize a criminal referral for Bannon to the justice department, Thompson said, though with the panel’s members united in their fury, the decision is expected to be unanimous.House select committee investigators had ordered Bannon and Kash Patel, a former Trump defense department aide, to testify on Thursday, with additional closed-door interviews with Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his deputy, Dan Scavino, on Friday.Neither Bannon nor Patel ultimately appeared on Capitol Hill for the first set of scheduled depositions, after Trump instructed his aides to defy the subpoenas on grounds that any discussions that involved him were protected by executive privilege.The select committee temporarily postponed depositions with Patel and Meadows while their lawyers continued to discuss cooperation, according to a source familiar with the matter. Scavino was also granted a reprieve after having his subpoena served late.But Thompson made clear that he had run out of patience with Bannon, who twice told the select committee that he intended to defy his subpoena in its entirety, abiding by the former president’s instructions first reported by the Guardian.“Mr Bannon has declined to cooperate with the select committee, and is instead hiding behind the former president’s insufficient, blanket, and vague statements regarding privileges,” Thompson said. “We reject his position entirely.”The select committee chairman also rejected Bannon’s executive privilege claim, in part because the protection exists to protect the interests of the country, and not the private, political interests of a former president, the source said.Once the select committee adopts a contempt report, it is referred to the full House for a vote. Should the House approve the report, Congress can then send the request for a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia.The earliest the select committee can vote to adopt a contempt report for Bannon is Tuesday, because House rules require Thompson to issue a three-day notice in advance of a business meeting at which members can discharge the report.Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, a member of the select committee, said on MSNBC that the panel was moving to enforce the subpoenas as soon as it could. “I fully expect this Department of Justice to uphold and enforce that subpoena,” she added.House select committee investigators had expressed optimism when they first issued subpoenas to the four Trump administration officials that they would be able to hear from at least one of their marquee witnesses on the scheduled deposition dates.Yet the initial optimism rapidly turned sour in the weeks that followed, after Trump announced his intention to block the select committee at every turn and the prospects of deposing some of the closest aides to the former president vanished before their eyes.The move to consider launching a criminal referral for Bannon to the justice department sets up a potentially lengthy legal battle that is certain to test Congress’s oversight authority over the executive branch and ability to uncover presidential secrets.And in preparing for the first step to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress, the select committee now faces the prospect of fighting Trump in court on two fronts – over the release of White House records, as well as his power to block his aides’ testimony.The former president, however, faces a steep uphill struggle in both instances after the justice department previously authorized officials from the Trump administration to testify to Congress about the Capitol attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.TopicsSteve BannonUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      House committee on Capitol attack subpoenas Trump’s ex-chief of staff and other top aides

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      US Capitol attackHouse committee on Capitol attack subpoenas Trump’s ex-chief of staff and other top aidesMark Meadows, Steve Bannon and Dan Scavino among advisers called to testify over president’s connection to 6 January events Hugo Lowell in Washington DCThu 23 Sep 2021 19.48 EDTLast modified on Thu 23 Sep 2021 20.30 EDTThe House select committee scrutinizing the Capitol attack on Thursday sent subpoenas to Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a cadre of top Trump aides, demanding their testimony to shed light on the former president’s connection to the 6 January riot.The subpoenas and demands for depositions marked the most aggressive investigative actions the select committee has taken since it made records demands and records preservation requests that formed the groundwork of the inquiry into potential White House involvement.House select committee investigators targeted four of the closest aides to the former president: deputy White House chief of staff Dan Scavino, former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, and the former acting defense secretary’s chief of staff Kash Patel as well as Meadows.“The select committee has reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding important activities that led to and informed events at the Capitol on January 6,” the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said in the subpoena letters.“Accordingly, the select committee seeks both documents and your deposition testimony regarding these and other matters that are within the scope of the select committee’s inquiry,” Thompson said.The select committee is expected to authorize further subpoenas and schedule closed-door interviews with key witnesses – as well as the inquiry’s second public hearing – in the coming weeks, according to two sources familiar with internal deliberations.The Trump aides compelled to cooperate with the select committee have some of the most intimate knowledge of what the former president was doing and thinking during the insurrection – and what he knew in advance of plans to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.Several administration officials, such as Meadows and Scavino, remained by Trump’s side for most of the day on 6 January, while campaign aides such as Bannon strategized how to subvert the results of the 2020 election and reinstall Trump in the Oval Office.Meadows also accompanied Trump back to the White House after the conclusion of the “Stop the Steal” rally that swiftly descended into the Capitol attack, from where Trump told Republican senator Ben Sasse he was “delighted” at seeing the images of the insurrection.Patel, who was nearly appointed CIA director in the final weeks of the Trump administration four years after emerging from obscurity as a Hill staffer, may also hold the key to unlocking the full picture of the Capitol attack as one of the former president’s top lieutenants.The subpoena authorizations came after the Guardian first reported on Tuesday that House select committee investigators were considering issuing the orders to Meadows and other Trump aides as the panel ramps up the pace of its investigation.There is no guarantee that the subpoena targets will comply. Trump has suggested he will demand that the Biden administration invoke executive privilege over Trump-era executive branch records requested by the select committee and try to block damaging witness testimony.But it appears unlikely that the White House Office of Legal Counsel would assert the protection in the case of 6 January materials, given it previously allowed Trump DOJ officials to testify to Congress and the protection does not extend to an individual’s private interests.TopicsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressSteve BannonUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Sounds about right: why podcasting works for Pence, Bannon and Giuliani

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      What do Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Mike Pence and Anthony Scaramucci all have in common?
      They worked for Donald Trump, obviously, and several have been implicated in alleged crimes connected to the former president, but as of this month, each of these one-time high-profile Trump acolytes also has his own podcast.
      Pence became the most recent to announce his own show this week, with the announcement that the oft-derided former vice-president will launch a podcast to “continue to attract new hearts and minds to the conservative cause”.
      Like his one-time associates, Pence will enjoy the benefits of a regulation-free platform to share his thoughts on any topic of his choosing, and similarly to Bannon et al, Pence will also be able to keep himself in the public sphere – although the dry, mild-mannered Pence is likely to differ in tone from the Bannons and Giulianis of the podcast world.
      On his War Room podcast, Bannon has called for the beheading of Anthony Fauci – something Pence is unlikely to do – while Giuliani’s Common Sense podcast has been used to further often unhinged claims of political fraud, which Pence might leave alone.
      Cohen and Scaramucci’s podcasts, which are critical of Trump, may not fit in with the Trump worshippers’ efforts, but the fact that five of Trump’s most prominent acolytes chose this format for propagating their views – over television, radio or the written word – is pretty remarkable.
      So, why podcasts? One major factor is one of the oldest in politics: money.
      “I think in part it’s because it’s an easier medium to get into than something like radio or television. The overhead costs are much much lower. If you have an avid base, and the Trump base tends to be an avid base, you can make a ton of money doing this,” Nicole Hemmer, author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics, said.
      “So there’s a real revenue opportunity for them.”
      Bannon et al will get paid through advertising, the amount varying depending on how many downloads they get.
      “If you have audience of just 35,000 people, you can make a profitable podcast,” Hemmer said. “If you have an audience of 100,000 people, now you’re starting to talk real money, and if you’re getting millions of downloads, you can build kind of an empire.”
      Everyone likes money, but Bannon, Giuliani and Pence will also be pushing their version of conservative politics.
      Meanwhile, the very title of Cohen’s podcast, Mea Culpa, sets out his own, different goal – specifically, an earnest attempt to re-enter polite society. The aims of the notoriously self-promoting Scaramucci – his podcast is co-hosted with his wife and is called Scaramucci and the Mrs – probably include keeping himself famous.
      Podcasts give their hosts the freedom to push all those agendas to a potentially huge audience.
      Bannon, who was pardoned by Donald Trump on the former president’s last day in office, recently claimed that his podcast, Bannon’s War Room, had been streamed 29m times. Bannon is known to lie, but the architect of Trump’s “America first” policies has undoubtedly found an audience, including among those who ransacked the US Capitol on 6 January.
      “It’s all converging, and now we’re on the point of attack tomorrow. It’s going to kick off, it’s going to be very dramatic,” Bannon told his listeners on 5 January. “It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. And all I can say is strap in. You have made this happen and tomorrow it’s game day.”
      Bannon’s podcast was banned from YouTube after the insurrection, while Giuliani has also had episodes removed, but the power of podcasting is that there is always somewhere for the series to run – both shows are still available on Apple Podcasts, on Bannon’s and Giuliani’s websites, and elsewhere.
      “You have an independence and a freedom if you have a podcast – you’re not going to get de-platformed by social media, you’re not going to get kicked off of Fox News, you’re not going to get kicked off of radio stations,” Hemmer said.
      “You have control and independence, which is a big selling point right now on the right.” More

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      To be Trump, or not: what Shakespeare tells us about the last five years

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      The time is out of joint. When lost for words, as many have been over the past five years, William Shakespeare is a useful go-to guy. His plays have helped us make sense of plague, political upheaval and a mad monarch, delivering soliloquies by tweet.
      “While maintaining his career as the most-produced playwright in the world, he is also moonlighting as the most-cited provider of metaphors for the Trump era – and particularly its denouement,” Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of the New York Times, observed last month. “Hardly a thumb-sucking political analysis goes by without allusion to one of the 37 canonical plays, however limited or far-fetched the comparison may be.”
      But as the dust settles on the Trump presidency, Green’s exhortation – brush down your Shakespeare, stop quoting him now – seems unlikely to gain much traction.
      Books have been written. Jeffrey Wilson, a Harvard academic, is the author of Shakespeare and Trump, published last year. The book’s cover features its title emblazoned on a red cap, in lieu of the words “Make America great again”, beneath a pair of donkey’s ears.
      “The thesis of the book is tragedy but we’ve got a little bit of comedy in there too,” Wilson says. “So the cover alludes to Shakespeare’s character Bottom, who’s this kind of huckster blowhard who gets his head turned into a donkey to symbolise the stupidity. Plus, Bottom’s just obsessed with building a wall in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
      Which other characters parallel Trump? “There’s going to be Julius Caesar, who thinks he’s a god over people, not one of them. There’s going to be Richard III, this power-hungry criminal whose clownishness seduces supporters. There’s going to be Macbeth, whose thirst for power is wrapped up in his fragile masculinity.
      Book embed
      “There’s going to be Henry VI, this child king whose weak leadership creates this fractious counsellor infighting all around him. There’s going to be Angelo in Measure for Measure, a self-declared law-and-order guy who is himself a criminal. And there’s going to be King Lear, who so completely binds the personal and the political that the collapse of his government is also the collapse of his family.”
      When the pandemic finally ends and theatres spring back to life, that list will offer rich pickings to directors. There is a long tradition of holding up the mirror of Shakespeare to specific cultures, from Akira Kurosawa’s Throne Of Blood, The Bad Sleep Well and Ran to irreverent productions in South Africa that critiqued apartheid.
      Some are subtle, others on-the-nose. In 2017, the director Oskar Eustis’s production of Julius Caesar in New York’s Central Park depicted the eponymous character with blond hair and red tie. It all caused a brouhaha in conservative media: corporate sponsors pulled support, protesters stormed the stage and Eustis received death threats.
      Wilson reflects: “When I asked [Eustis], he insisted he wanted it to be a very blunt instrument. The fascinating thing for me about that production is that it may or may not have helped us better understand Donald Trump but it helped me better understand Julius Caesar as a text.
      “It allowed us to use Trump as a lens for understanding the way that Shakespeare wrote this play, which is so filled with comedy in the first half, the kind of outrageous, obnoxious, satirical comedy that is so associated with Trump. That’s how Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar should be performed.”
      The play, he says, “is drawing upon tropes of the 17th-century clown, the antichrist who comically comes on stage and thinks that he’s the most glorious thing ever invented and is revealed to be a total fraud.
      “You don’t really get that sense of Julius Caesar when you watch most Shakespearean stagings of the play but by using Trump as a lens to understand that, we can use the accessible emotions and knowledge that we have from current events to rethink how we should read this distant, old, obscure literature.”
      Wilson’s book also considers how America has seen Shakespeare in the age of Trump. A month after his victory in 2016, for example, students at the University of Pennsylvania took down a portrait of Shakespeare and replaced it with a photo of Audre Lorde, an African American writer, feminist and civil rights activist.
      Steve Bannon, who led Trump’s winning campaign and became a White House strategist, was previously a banker, media executive and Hollywood producer who in the 1990s co-wrote two Shakespearean adaptations: a Titus Andronicus set in space, complete with ectoplasmic sex, and a hip-hop Coriolanus, based in South-Central LA.
      The screenplays are not publicly available but Wilson tracked them down – and found an insidious racism. He writes: “Specifically, Bannon’s Coriolanus suggests that African Americans will kill themselves off through Black-on-Black crime, while his Andronicus tells the story of a ‘noble race’ eliminating its cultural enemies on the way to securing political power.”
      Wilson adds: “NowThis did a table read of Coriolanus and actors were just sprinting to get through the lines. One of them said, ‘It sounds like he’s never met a Black person in his life.’” More