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      Donald Trump v the United States review: how democracy came under assault

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      Now disgraced, Jerry Falwell Jr once announced that Donald Trump was entitled to an extra two years on the job as “reparations” for a “failed coup”, meaning the Mueller investigation. Joe Biden has gone so far as to predict the president will try to steal the election.Trump and his backers openly speak of four terms in office. “If you really want to drive them crazy, say 12 more years,” the president cackles, despite express constitutional strictures to the contrary.Even as doubts surrounding its legitimacy grow, the election assumes ever greater significance. Michael Schmidt’s first book is aptly subtitled: “Inside the Struggle to Stop a President.”The Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter chronicles what he has seen from his “front-row seat”. It was Schmidt who broke news of Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email while secretary of state, and of James Comey authoring a memo that detailed the president ordering him to end the FBI investigation of Gen Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something elseSchmidt argues persuasively that the Trump presidency has highlighted the fragility of American democracy, and that Trump views the rule of law as something for others. More precisely, the president believes prison is meant for his political adversaries but not so much for his convicted cronies and for himself, never. Schmidt documents how Trump sought to prosecute Clinton and Comey: literally and seriously.A central premise of Donald Trump v the United States is that those who have sought to thwart the president have failed. Comey is no longer FBI director, Gen John Kelly is no longer White House chief of staff. Donald McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel, is back in private practice.Trump usually gets what he wants. Jared Kushner, for example, holds a “top secret” security clearance despite persistent objections from senior White House staff and the intelligence community. After all others refused, Trump personally granted his son-in-law his clearance. Hindering Trump is one thing, stopping him something else. Over on Capitol Hill, according to Schmidt, Trump has “routinely outflanked the Democratic lawmakers investigating him”, while Republican leaders have emerged as “Trump’s public defenders”. Career civil servants, including those at the Food and Drug Administration, are “maligned” as part of a ‘Deep State’.” So what if a pandemic rages?Similarly, Trump targets journalists as “fake news” and as “enemies of the people”, a term popularized by Joseph Stalin. As one administration insider has said, it’s all a “bit” reminiscent of the “late” Weimar Republic.Schmidt frames his book as a four-act play, Comey and McGahn the central actors, a quote from King Lear as prelude. Chapters weave context with drama, even as they inform.The reader is continuously reminded of how many days remained before a particular event, such as “Donald Trump is sworn in as president”, “the appointment of special counsel Robert S Mueller III” or the “release of the Mueller Report”. It difficult to forget what came next. Donald Trump v the United States is laden with direct quotes and attribution. It is credible and intriguing. Beyond that, it is also unsettling.Schmidt details McGahn’s cooperation with the special counsel. Here, he recalls a conversation for the ages, with McGahn while he was still White House counsel and Mueller’s investigation was months away from its end.“You did a lot of damage to the president,” Schmidt tells McGahn, minutes before a thunderstorm over the White House. “I understand that. You understand that. But [Trump] doesn’t understand that.”McGahn replies: “I damaged the office of the president. I damaged the office.”Schmidt parries: “That’s not it. You damaged him, and he doesn’t understand that.”Ultimately, McGahn responds: “This is the last time we ever talk.”On cue, the rain begins to fall.Equally vivid are exchanges between Comey and his wife, Patrice, she of a keener sense of peril. As he moved toward announcing the FBI’s determination surrounding Clinton’s emails, in late June 2016, she presciently warned: “This is going to be bad for you.”According to Schmidt, Patrice Comey also pleaded, “You’re going to get shot … you’re going to get slammed.” Months later, her husband would tell the Senate judiciary committee it made him “mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election”.The book also clears up the mystery of what happened to the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, which if concluded would likely have examined Trump’s broader ties with Moscow. One day it was there, the next day it had vanished.Specifically, the special counsel’s report addressed conspiracy and obstruction of justice but did not discuss related counterintelligence issues. Schmidt reveals that we can blame that on Rod Rosenstein, then deputy attorney general.According to Schmidt, in the hand-off of the FBI investigation to Mueller, in the aftermath of the firing of Comey, Rosenstein deliberately narrowed the special counsel’s remit. The deputy attorney general directed Mueller to concentrate on criminality. Whether Trump was a Russian agent was not on the special counsel’s plate.According to Schmidt, Rosenstein “had foreclosed any deeper inquiry before investigation even began”. This is the same Rosenstein who in spring 2017 suggested he secretly record the president, and that the cabinet consider removing him from office.“The president had bent Washington to his will,” Schmidt writes.The question now is whether the electorate follows. America goes to the polls in little more than nine weeks. More

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      House Democrats launch contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo

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      Congressional Democrats have launched contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo for his refusal to comply with subpoenas for documents connected to the Ukraine scandal that led to Donald Trump’s impeachment.The move is the culmination of a long-running struggle over Congress’s authority to conduct oversight of government agencies. The secretary of state, who was a fierce advocate of congressional rights when he was a Republican representative from Kansas, has ignored a string of demands for documentation from the Democrat-controlled House foreign affairs committee (HFAC).Experts and former officials questioned what impact a resolution declaring Pompeo in contempt would have on a secretary of state determined to defy Congress and undermine its authority, other than to register frustration at his behaviour and the erosion of the constitutional division of power.A state department spokesperson dismissed the contempt announcement as “political theatrics” and said the documents could be available to the HFAC, but gave a different version of the conditions attached from those laid down in a letter Pompeo sent to the committee on Thursday.In that letter, the secretary of state said the documents would be handed over if Engel could confirm he was “substantively investigating” Ukraine’s alleged “corrupt influence” on US foreign policy – an apparent reference to a conspiracy theory that has been debunked by US intelligence agencies.The spokesperson said on Friday the relevant documents would be produced to Engel on the “only condition being that he send a letter explaining what foreign policy issue he is investigating that requires these documents”.Pompeo has swept away a raft of norms as secretary of state. In May, he orchestrated the firing of the inspector general who had been looking into his use of departmental resources for personal errands and his declaration of an emergency to get around a congressional block on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.This week, he took part in the Republican national convention with a filmed address from Jerusalem, while on a visit as secretary of state, in what legal scholars said was a likely violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits public funds from being used for electoral purposes.“He seems to think the office he holds, the department he runs, the personnel he oversees and the taxpayer dollars that pay for all of it are there for his personal and political benefit,” Eliot Engel, the HFAC chair, wrote.The trigger for the contempt proceedings was Pompeo’s refusal to deliver to the HFAC documents about US policy towards Ukraine that the state department provided to the Republican-controlled Senate in the run-up to the impeachment of Trump.At the end of July, Engel issued another subpoena for documentation on the alleged use of state department resources to collect material to supply to the Senate aimed at discrediting Trump’s challenger for the presidency, Joe Biden.“From Mr Pompeo’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry to his willingness to bolster a Senate Republican-led smear against the president’s political rivals to his speech to the RNC, which defied his own guidance and possibly the law, he has demonstrated alarming disregard for the laws and rules governing his own conduct and for the tools the constitution provides to prevent government corruption,” Engel said.The HFAC published a letter Pompeo sent to Engel on Thursday, in which the secretary of state said he would hand over the material if the committee opened an investigation in line with a Republican-led Senate inquiry into allegations of Ukraine exerting influence on Obama administration policy towards the country through Biden’s son, Hunter. Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, from 2014 to 2019.“If you can confirm by letter that the committee is, in fact, substantively investigating identical or very similar corruption issues involving Ukraine and corrupt influence on US foreign policy, the department is ready to commence production of documents,” Pompeo said in the letter.No evidence of any such evidence has been found, and the head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre, has issued a warning that a pro-Russian politician in Ukraine has been “spreading claims about corruption..to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.”The HFAC said Pompeo was seeking to involve the committee in a smear campaign being pursued by Senate Democrats.“I want no part of it,” Engel wrote. “Under no circumstances will I amplify Putin’s debunked conspiracy theories or lend them credence. And I won’t stand by and see the committee or the House treated with such disdain by anyone.”A state department spokesperson issued a statement setting out less onerous conditions for the delivery of the documents.“We have previously offered to provide copies of these documents to Chairman Engel, with the only condition being that he send a letter explaining what foreign policy issue he is investigating that requires these documents,” the spokesperson said. “Once this letter is received, the Department will produce the documents. This press release is political theatrics and is an unfortunate waste of taxpayer resources.”Former officials expressed concern the HFAC contempt proceedings might ultimately serve to underline the impotence of a Congress in the face of a defiant, rule-breaking executive.Rori Kramer, the former deputy assistant secretary of state in the bureau of legislative affairs, said of Engel’s announcement: “That’s wonderful but there’s not as much teeth as there used to be with congressional oversight.“It’s really shocking. Four years ago, it would have been completely bizarro Twilight Zone, that Congress could subpoena you and hold you in contempt, and the answer of the administration would be: “I don’t care”,” said Kramer, who is now director of US advocacy at the American Jewish World Service.“The people who work for the people who say we don’t care about oversight [see that] and then his senior leadership and/or political appointees also don’t follow the rules… and it’s a race to the bottom.” More

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      Donald Trump slams Joe Biden in Republican nomination acceptance speech – video

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      Play Video

      2:27

      Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican party’s nomination for re-election in front of the White House on Thursday night.
      ‘This is the most important election in the history of our country,’ Trump said after he ‘profoundly’ accepted his party’s nomination.
      Trump went on to excoriate the Democratic party and argue that the choice for voters is between a president who has a record of unmatched accomplishments and an opposition party and candidate eager to tear down the country.
      RNC: Trump accepts nomination and attacks Biden as eager to ‘tear down the country’
      Republican national convention 2020

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      in Elections

      Donald Trump pushes falsehoods about Nato, border wall and coronavirus in RNC speech – live

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      President rails against Joe Biden in dark address
      Crowd prompts fears over Covid-19 spread
      Protesters gather outside White House on convention’s final night
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      LIVE
      Updated

      Play Video

      Republican national convention: Trump accepts presidential nomination

      Key events

      Show

      10.39pm EDT22:39
      Trump’s speech continues dark tone of Republican convention

      10.31pm EDT22:31
      Trump accepts Republican presidential nomination

      10.24pm EDT22:24
      Trump takes the stage to accept Republican nomination

      10.10pm EDT22:10
      Ivanka Trump introduces her father at convention

      10.00pm EDT22:00
      Alice Johnson praises Trump for her commutation

      9.47pm EDT21:47
      Giuliani falsely accuses BLM of having ‘hijacked peaceful protests’

      9.22pm EDT21:22
      Protesters gather outside White House on last night of RNC

      Live feed

      Show

      11.22pm EDT23:22

      Trump made his first reference to the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as protests continue over the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
      But the president did not mention the name of Blake, who was repeatedly shot in the back by Kenosha police officers.
      Instead, like other convention speakers this week, Trump condemned “the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities.”

      11.22pm EDT23:22

      During the Democrat Convention, the words “Under God” were removed from the Pledge of Allegiance – not once, but twice,” Trump said. “The fact is, this is where they are coming from.”
      The fact is, that is a bit misleading.
      During the DNC, several caucuses were organized alongside the main convention.
      At the LGBTQ Caucus Meeting and at the Muslim Delegates and Allies Assembly, the words “under God” were omitted
      But during the primetime DNC broadcasts, the full Pledge of Allegiance was recited with the word God.
      – Maanvi Singh

      11.20pm EDT23:20

      Ann Dorn, the widow of officer David Dorn who addressed the convention earlier tonight, is in the audience for Trump’s speech at the White House.
      The president recounted how Dorn was fatally shot during unrest in St Louis earlier this year.
      “To each of you: we will never forget the heroic legacy of Captain David Dorn,” Trump said.

      11.15pm EDT23:15

      “Days after taking office,” Trump said, his administration “ended the unfair and very costly Paris climate accord.”
      That is not what happened.
      Trump served notice that the US would withdraw from the Paris climate accord in 2019, not the day after he took office in 2017. Due to the accord’s rule of withdrawal, the US will not officially exit the agreement until 4 November this year.
      Read the Guardian’s Climate Countdown series, which spotlights what the withdrawal will mean for the US:
      – Maanvi Singh

      Updated
      at 11.16pm EDT

      11.15pm EDT23:15

      Repeating a line from one of his campaign commercials, Trump said, “No one will be safe in Biden’s America.”
      Amid nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, the president added, “My administration will always stand with the men and women of law enforcement.”
      Mike Pence delivered a similar line in his convention speech last night, and Biden responded to the vice-president in a statement today.
      “Did Mike Pence forget Donald Trump is president? Is Donald Trump even aware he’s president?” Biden said in the statement.
      “These are not images from some imagined ‘Joe Biden’s America’ in the future. These are images from Donald Trump’s America today. The violence we’re witnessing is happening under Donald Trump.”

      Updated
      at 11.15pm EDT

      11.11pm EDT23:11

      Trump blamed Joe Biden and the Democratic party for the recent power outages in California amid an intense heatwave.
      “How can Joe Biden claim to be an ally of the light when his own party can’t even keep the lights on?” Trump said, prompting laughter from the crowd gathered on the South Lawn.

      Updated
      at 11.16pm EDT

      11.08pm EDT23:08

      Trump promised that a coronavirus vaccine would be developed by the end of this year.
      “We will have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and together we will crush the virus,” the president said.
      There are multiple vaccine candidates that are currently being developed, and Dr Anthony Fauci has previously said he is cautiously optimistic a coronavirus vaccine will be approved by the end of this year or early next year.

      11.07pm EDT23:07

      Here’s what Trump said on economic relief for Americans affected by the coronavirus crisis:

      We enacted the largest package of financial relief in American history. Thanks to our Paycheck Protection Program, we have saved or supported more than 50 million American jobs. As a result, we have seen the smallest economic contraction of any major western nation, and we are recovering much faster. Over the past three months, we have gained over 9 million jobs, a new record.

      A bit of context here:
      The PPP program expired, and the Trump administration and Republicans couldn’t make a deal with congressional Democrats to extend the program.
      The US gained 9m jobs, after losing 22m as the pandemic hit.
      – Maanvi Singh

      Updated
      at 11.13pm EDT

      11.04pm EDT23:04

      “We are focusing on the science, the facts and the data” on coronavirus, Trump said.
      Trump has not been doing that. The Trump administration has continuously undermined science and facts in its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
      Here’s my explainer from a while back:

      Play Video

      5:28

      From miracle cures to slowing testing: how Trump has defied science on coronavirus – video explainer
      – Maanvi Singh

      11.01pm EDT23:01

      After Democrats spent a week highlighting Joe Biden’s empathy and compassion, Trump used his convention speech to dismiss the importance of such character traits.
      “The laid off workers in Michigan, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and many other states didn’t want Joe Biden’s hollow words of empathy, they wanted their jobs back,” Trump said.
      Over the past four nights, a number of Trump’s advisers and family members have tried to paint him as a compassionate president, although those comments generally lacked examples of such behavior.

      10.59pm EDT22:59

      Trump said he “passed VA Accountability and VA Choice”. He did not.
      President Barack Obama signed the Veterans Choice Act in 2014. Trump expanded it, under a 2018 law called the Mission Act.
      – Maanvi Singh

      Updated
      at 11.15pm EDT

      10.57pm EDT22:57

      Trump continued his attacks against Joe Biden, painting the Democrat’s long career in government as a string of failures.
      “Biden’s record is a shameful roll call of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders in our lifetime,” Trump said. “He has spent his entire career on the wrong side of history.”
      The president has already mentioned Biden’s name dozens of times in his convention speech, which is noteworthy given Biden never once said Trump’s name in his speech last week.

      10.55pm EDT22:55

      Some quick fact checks:
      Donald Trump said this is the first time in 20 years that Nato members have increased spending. The president likes to repeat this false claim. But he’s still wrong: Nato Europe and Canada increased defense spending in 2015 and 2016, before Trump took office.
      Trump touted the southern border wall, saying that 300 miles were built. That more or less true, if embellished – there’s new wall across about 245 miles of the border – but only thirty miles of wall has been erected where there was no barrier before.
      – Maanvi Singh

      Updated
      at 10.57pm EDT

      10.53pm EDT22:53

      Trump repeated his outlandish claim that he has done more for the African American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln.
      He added, “I have done more in three years for the black community than Joe Biden has done in 47 years.”
      Trump apparently believes his accomplishments for African Americans exceed those of, for example, the Democratic president Lyndon Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

      Updated
      at 10.55pm EDT

      10.48pm EDT22:48

      Trump praised his own record on a wide range of issues, exaggerating his accomplishments and spewing a number of falsehoods.
      On immigration, Trump said, “The wall will soon be complete and it’s working beyond our wildest expectations.”
      That is not true. The border wall is nowhere near complete, and Trump has built very few new miles of the wall. More

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      in Elections

      RNC: Trump accepts nomination and attacks Biden as eager to ‘tear down the country’

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      Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for re-election in front of the White House on Thursday night.“This is the most important election in the history of our country. At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies, or two agendas,” Trump said after he “profoundly” accepted his party’s nomination.Trump went on to excoriate the Democratic party and argue that the choice for voters is between a president who has a record of unmatched accomplishments and an opposition party and candidate eager to tear down the country.“At the Democrat national convention, Joe Biden and his party repeatedly assailed America as a land of racial, economic, and social injustice,” Trump said. “So tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?”Trump’s remarks were the capstone of a night where speakers focused on national security and safety, describing the country as rife with chaos and lawlessness in the streets. Speakers also repeatedly stressed that Trump was a longstanding friend of the African American community and minorities.Few mentioned the coronavirus pandemic, which has left more than 180,000 Americans dead. Trump himself delivered his speech in front of an audience of around 1,500 officials and supporters at the White House, sitting packed together, few wearing masks.“I did what our political establishment never expected and could never forgive, breaking the cardinal rule of Washington politics,” Trump said. “I kept my promises.”Trump has kept around half of his 2016 campaign pledges, according to Politifact. Trump’s address was the main event of the party’s national convention.Over the past four days, speakers at the convention have included White House aides to Trump, his family members, and a few statewide elected politicians. Broadly they have argued that Biden is a leftist radical that would bring ruination to the country and Trump is the only person who can stop it.Trump delivered his speech amid heightened tensions across the country over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was repeatedly shot in front of his children and left paralyzed by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Sunday. The shooting has sparked a wave of anti-racism and anti-police brutality protests across the country.Trump and his campaign have charged again and again that Biden is a “socialist” and liberal extremist who wants to defund police across the country and supports a Medicare for All healthcare plan championed by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. Both are untrue.In his speech, Trump portrayed himself as a president focused on law and order. During the protests across the country, Trump has expressed support for law enforcement using tougher tactics. He has dispatched federal law enforcement and military officials to cities experiencing protests, which has served to inflame tensions.Biden himself has pointed out that the dire picture Trump has described is actually what’s going on now, during his time in office.“The violence you’ve seen is in Donald Trump’s administration. Donald Trump’s America,” Biden said during a fundraiser Thursday afternoon.Trump, Mike Pence, and other speakers have also argued that under Trump the economy has only improved, foreign terrorists have been defeated, and the coronavirus pandemic is an afterthought. But the US defense department says Isis has not been entirely defeated; tens of millions remain unemployed; and more than 180,000 people have died from Covid-19, far more than in any other country.Trump has made some kind of appearance every night of the convention, at times blurring the lines between campaigning and governing, and raising ethics concerns. But Trump aides, including his chief of staff, have denied allegations that the president and his team violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from conducting political activity while on duty.Besides Trump, the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani delivered speeches. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, used his speech to paint a portrait of an America on the verge of anarchy, and accused New York current mayor Bill De Blasio of allowing protests and crime to spiral.“Today, my city is in shock. Murders, shootings, and violent crime are increasing in percentages never heard of in the past,” Giuliani claimed. In reality, serious crime is down under de Blasio, the annual number of murders is around half the number it was under Giuliani.“These continuous riots in Democratic cities gives a good view” of a Biden administration, Giuliani claimed. He ended by saying “Mr President, make our nation safe again!”In a taped speech, senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, described Trump as his friend, and framed himself as a midwestern champion leading the defense of the Senate from Democrats.“Today’s Democratic party doesn’t want to improve life for middle America,” McConnell said in the video, going on to say “we are the firewall against Nancy Pelosi’s agenda”.Unlike most speakers this week, Trump’s housing secretary Ben Carson directly addressed Blake’s shooting, starting his remarks by saying “our hearts go out to the Blake family” before launching into a full throated defense of Trump on the African American community.“Before the pandemic African American unemployment was at an all time low,” Carson said, in a somewhat misleading statement. “At this point in time President Trump is the man with the courage, the vision, and the ability to keep it shining brightly.”The RNC has notably lacked some key party figures and the presence of the last Republican president, George W Bush. Meanwhile, Democrats’ convention included speeches by former Republican elected officials who have emerged as outspoken critics of the president.On Thursday morning, aides to the previous two Republican nominees for president, the late John McCain and the Utah senator Mitt Romney, released statements endorsing Biden. The Biden campaign hopes that support will motivate moderates and Republicans to support the centrist Democrat.Earlier on Thursday, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, delivered a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic.“The Republican convention is designed for one purpose: to soothe Donald Trump’s ego, to make him feel good,” Harris said. “But here’s the thing: he’s the president of the United States, and it’s not supposed to be about him. It’s supposed to be about the health and the safety and the wellbeing of the American people.” More