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      US election: what a Biden or Trump victory could mean for Britain

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      US election: what a Biden or Trump victory could mean for Britain

      Boris Johnson and Donald Trump meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York in September last year.
      Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

      It could be the most significant election for US foreign policy since 1940, with huge implications for the UK
      by Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

      Main image:
      Boris Johnson and Donald Trump meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York in September last year.
      Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

      The British government has a long history of misreading America – from Lord Palmerston expecting the Confederacy to survive the civil war, to Ernie Bevin being shocked that the US would not pay the UK’s postwar bills, to Tony Blair believing in 2003 that he could ride the US military tiger in Iraq and create a democracy.
      Few serving or former British diplomats are confidently predicting the outcome of this November’s presidential election, or even whether an increasingly erratic Donald Trump will accept the result as legitimate. The collective delusion about the 2016 election hangs heavy.
      Between now and polling day, two fears will stalk the Foreign Office. The first is of a late October surprise – a Trump military showstopper in the Middle East or the South China Sea, designed to convulse America. The betting is that caution will prevail. “Trump talks very tough, but he has a habit of not following through” said Peter Ricketts, the former UK national security adviser.
      The second is of a November impasse – a constitutional crisis as Trump disputes the result. One former Foreign Office staff member said: “It is noticeable that Trump’s most consistent message this election is that it is rigged.” Kim Darroch, the former UK ambassador to Washington and an early Trump sceptic, notes all the preparations being made for a challenge in the supreme court.
      All observers agree that if the US can reach a consensus on the outcome, it will be the most consequential election for American foreign policy since 1940. The implications, in turn, for the UK and for the kind of government Boris Johnson will lead are enormous.
      Lord Ricketts points out that the UK is already at a historic turning point. “Put together Brexit, the return of muscular nationalism and the pandemic, you have an extraordinarily important moment, probably the biggest strategic moment facing the UK since the war. The US election only adds to that.”
      The outcome will throw up a particularly acute personal dilemma for Johnson. He knows Trump is wildly unpopular with the British electorate. The latest Pew research shows that only 19% of Britons have confidence in Trump.
      Yet if Trump wins, Johnson can reassure his party that rule-breaking populists still have a winning appeal for those who feel betrayed by mainstream politics. What have been described as “counter-order movements” will have shown they have not run out of steam. More

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      Facebook and Twitter restrict controversial New York Post story on Joe Biden

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      Facebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”.Twitter said it was limiting the article’s spread due to questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article, which contained material supposedly pulled from a computer that had been left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019. Twitter policies prohibit “directly distribut[ing] content obtained through hacking that contains private information”.The company further explained the decision in a series of tweets on Wednesday, saying some of the images in the article contained personal and private information. Twitter’s policy against posting hacked material was established in 2018. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, said the company’s communication about the decision to limit the article’s spread was “not great”, saying the team should have shared more context publicly.Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. https://t.co/v55vDVVlgt— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020
      Facebook, meanwhile, placed restrictions on linking to the article, saying there were questions about its validity. “This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said a Facebook spokesperson, Andy Stone.The move marks the first time Twitter has directly limited the spread of information from a news website, as it continues to implement stricter rules around misinformation ahead of the 2020 elections. On Wednesday evening Twitter also reportedly locked the personal account of the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the article.In recent weeks Twitter announced it would warn users who attempt to retweet a link without first clicking on it for more context. It has also started to take action against misinformation and calls to violence posted by Donald Trump and other public figures.Wednesday’s actions around the New York Post article drew swift backlash from figures on the political right, who accused Facebook and Twitter of protecting Biden, who is leading Trump in national polls. The New York Post blasted the companies, saying they were trying to help Biden’s election campaign and falsely claiming no one had disputed the story’s veracity. “Facebook and Twitter are not media platforms. They’re propaganda machines,” it wrote in an editorial.Meanwhile, the Republican senator Ted Cruz wrote a letter to Dorsey, saying: “Twitter’s censorship of this story is quite hypocritical, given its willingness to allow users to share less-well-sourced reporting critical of other candidates.”Trump’s campaign director, Jake Schneider, called the blocking of McEnany “absolutely unacceptable” and McEnany herself tweeted: “Censorship should be condemned.”Trump tweeted that it was “terrible” that the social media companies “took down” the article – in fact, it was restricted, not removed – and renewed his calls to “repeal section 230”, a measure that keeps website hosts from being held responsible for content posted. Ironically, repealing section 230 would require Twitter to take down more content, including many of Trump’s tweets.Even non-conservatives criticized the choice to limit the spread of the article as one that will play into the rightwing narrative that big tech firms censor conservative views. The decision was indeed quickly politicized – with House Republicans publishing the text of the story on their website in order to share the link without censorship.The article implicates the former vice-president in connection with his son Hunter’s Ukraine business and was headlined: “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.”The unnamed owner of the computer repair shop told the newspaper he passed a copy of the hard drive on the seemingly abandoned computer to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.The story focused on one email from April 2015, in which a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter for inviting him to a Washington meeting with his father. But there was no indication of when the meeting was scheduled or whether it ever happened.“Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague, have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official US policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”The campaign said it was not told by Facebook or Twitter that any action would be taken regarding the article.“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” the Biden campaign added.Others cast also doubt on the report, citing Giuliani’s record of producing disinformation and making bogus claims about both Bidens and Ukraine.AFP contributed reporting More

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      in Elections

      US election 2020: mistrust spurring black community to early voting in Georgia – video

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      1:29

      Thousands of members of Georgia’s black community have come out to vote early in the US election, enduring long lines and hours of waiting. Many acknowledged they could have voted by mail or returned to a polling place at a different time, but with no expectation of voting becoming easier in the weeks to come, they saw waiting as a necessary step. ‘I wanted to make sure that my vote was counted,’ Wilbart McCoy said as he queued to cast his ballot. ‘The suspicions, or the alleged suspicions around mail-in voting, we never had those before but it pushed me to come out early’
      More than 10-hour wait and long lines as early voting starts in Georgia

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      Georgia

      US elections 2020 More

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      Kamala Harris presses Amy Coney Barrett on whether she believes climate change is real – video

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      Play Video

      3:27

      Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris has continued to grill supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on a range of issues, including climate change and racial discrimination in the US. Harris pressed Barrett on whether she believed coronavirus was infectious, smoking caused cancer and climate change was happening. Barrett avoided answering directly to a number of issues during the questioning, including one from Democratic senator Cory Booker on whether it was wrong to separate children from their parents to deter immigrants coming to the US
      Amy Coney Barrett pledges ‘open mind’ and plays down conservative record

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      Amy Coney Barrett hearing: top Republican praises judge for being 'unashamedly pro-life' – live

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      Lindsey Graham lavishes praise on supreme court nominee
      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals
      Barrett dodges abortion and healthcare questions
      Trump and Biden offer different visions of US role in world
      Trump in trouble as Florida’s seniors shift towards Biden
      Sign up for Fight to Vote – our weekly US election newsletter

      LIVE
      Updated

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      Amy Coney Barrett questioned on third day of supreme court hearing – watch live

      Key events

      Show

      5.48pm EDT17:48
      Public hearing poortion ends

      5.00pm EDT17:00
      Today so far

      4.06pm EDT16:06
      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals

      1.15pm EDT13:15
      Today so far

      12.33pm EDT12:33
      Third day of Barrett’s nomination hearings resumes

      12.01pm EDT12:01
      First break in today’s hearing

      10.27am EDT10:27
      Virginia voter registration deadline extended after technical failure

      Live feed

      Show

      5.48pm EDT17:48

      Public hearing poortion ends

      Next is a closed hearing on FBI background checks. Tomorrow the judiciary committee will set up a vote and hear outside witnesses.
      “You will be confirmed, God willing,” Graham said.

      Updated
      at 5.49pm EDT

      5.40pm EDT17:40

      Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Republican, used a Trump campaign talking point that Harris’ past career as a prosecutor deepened racial inequities to rebut her claim that systematic racism exists.
      You can read more about Harris past as a prosecutor here. The Trump campaign – while itself promoting a “tough on crime” attitude and railing against Black Lives Matter protestors – has nonetheless adopted progressive critiques of Harris’ record as “top cop”.
      Harris “thinks America is systemically racist – I think our history is the best evidence of that it is not,” said the senator from Louisiana, citing the Barack Obama presidency as proof. “With the blink of an eye, we went from institutionalized slavery to an African American president,” he said.
      After lobbing several softball questions at Barrett including (“Do you hate little warm puppies?”) Kennedy ended by asking: “Who does the laundry in your house?” (which I’m sure he also meant to ask Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch).
      It is worth noting that Barrett didn’t clearly answer this one either: “We run a lot of loads of laundry.”

      5.19pm EDT17:19

      Barrett also would not comment on whether she believes voting discrimination exists.
      Harris: Do you agree with Justice Roberts when he said voting discrimination still exists?
      Barrett: “I will not comment on what any justice said in an opinion, whether an opinion is right or wrong, or endorse that proposition.”

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Under questioning from Kamala Harris, Amy Coney Barrett refuses to say if she thinks voting discrimination still exists pic.twitter.com/gv9KN904fu

      October 14, 2020

      5.14pm EDT17:14

      Harris took up questioning Barrett on climate change.
      Harris: Do you think COVID-19 is infectious?
      Barrett: Yes.
      Harris: Do you think smoking causes cancer?
      Barrett: I’m not sure exactly where you’re going with this… Yes, every package of cigarettes warns that smoking causes cancer.
      Harris: Do you think climate change is happening?
      Barrett: “Senator, again… You have asked me a series of questions that are completely uncontroversial, and then trying to elicit an opinion from me that is on a very contentious matter of public debate.”
      Climate change is not a contentious matter of public debate – about 8 in 10 Americans say that human activity is fueling climate change, per a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. But most importantly, climate change is not a contentious matter of scientific debate.

      5.00pm EDT17:00

      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 third day of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination hearings is still unfolding. Barrett has been answering questions from the Senate judiciary committee for eight hours, and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is currently questioning the nominee.
      Lindsey Graham praised Barrett as “unashamedly pro-life,” describing her nomination as historic. “I have never been more proud of a nominee,” the Republican committee chairman said. “This is history being made, folks. This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology. And she’s going to the court.”
      The first lady revealed Barron Trump had coronavirus. Melania Trump said Barron, her and the president’s 14-year-old son, tested positive for coronavirus but showed no symptoms. Barron and the first lady have both since tested negative, she said.
      Trump is en route to Des Moines, Iowa, where he will hold a campaign rally tonight. The president won Iowa by 9 points in 2016, but recent polls show Trump and Biden running neck and neck in the state.
      Virginia extended its voter registration deadline, after an accidentally cut cable caused the state’s online registration system to shut down yesterday. Virginia voters now have an additional two days to register.
      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.54pm EDT16:54

      Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris is now questioning Amy Coney Barrett. She is the last Democrat who will speak in this round of questioning.

      4.49pm EDT16:49

      Trump is en route to Iowa, a state that he won by 9 points in 2016. Polls currently show the president and Joe Biden running neck and neck in Iowa.
      The president will hold a rally in Des Moines tonight, and attendees will be greeted by this billboard when they arrive at the event site.

      Jim Acosta
      (@Acosta)
      Billboard outside Des Moines airport where Trump holds Iowa rally tonight. pic.twitter.com/XHix45wzlw

      October 14, 2020

      4.41pm EDT16:41

      Speaking to reporters before leaving for his Iowa rally, Trump very briefly addressed his son’s health before pivoting to praising Amy Coney Barrett.

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      Trump spent exactly one second answering a question about how his son Barron is doing after he tested positive for coronavirus pic.twitter.com/aiGXBSbHRZ

      October 14, 2020

      “Barron’s fine, and Amy is doing a fantastic job. We’re heading out to Iowa, and we have a big rally,” Trump said.
      The first lady said in a statement that Barron tested positive but experienced no coronavirus symptoms. He has since tested negative, as has the first lady.

      4.31pm EDT16:31

      Like other Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee, Cory Booker pressed Amy Coney Barrett on voting rights.
      As part of his questioning, Booker asked Barrett if she had ever waited in line for five hours to vote. She said no. Booker asked if she had ever waited an hour to vote. She said no.
      Booker compared those answers to the experience of many black voters in America, who often face long lines at their polling stations.

      4.22pm EDT16:22

      Trump said his son, Barron, is doing “fine” after testing positive for coronavirus.
      The president responded to a reporter’s question about Barron as he left for Des Moines, Iowa, where he is holding a campaign rally later tonight.
      Shortly before Trump’s departure, the first lady revealed Barron had tested positive but shown no coronavirus symptoms in a statement about her own experience with the virus.
      Melania and Barron Trump have both since tested negative, the first lady said.

      4.16pm EDT16:16

      Amy Coney Barrett told Democrat Cory Booker that she could not offer her opinion on whether it was wrong to separate immigrant children from their parents.
      “That’s a matter of hot political debate in which I can’t express a view or be drawn into as a judge,” Barrett said. “I can’t express a view on that.”
      The Democratic senator responded that he considered such matters to be “basic questions of human rights”.
      The Trump administration attracted severe criticism in 2018 after its “zero tolerance” immigration policy resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents.

      4.06pm EDT16:06

      Barron Trump had coronavirus, first lady reveals

      Melania Trump released a statement about her experience with coronavirus, and the first lady revealed her son with the president, Barron Trump, tested positive for coronavirus.
      The first lady said 14-year-old Barron initially tested negative after the president was diagnosed, as the White House announced. But the White House did not reveal Barron’s later test came up positive.

      Melania Trump
      (@FLOTUS)
      To all who have reached out – thank you. Here is my personal experience with COVID-19 :https://t.co/XUysq0KVaY

      October 14, 2020

      “To our great relief he tested negative, but again, as so many parents have thought over the past several months, I couldn’t help but think ‘what about tomorrow or the next day?’,” the first lady said in the statement.
      “My fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive. Luckily he is a strong teenager and exhibited no symptoms.”
      The first lady noted Barron has since tested negative again, as has she. Trump said her own experience with coronavirus was like “a roller coaster of symptoms in the days after” she was diagnosed.
      “I experienced body aches, a cough and headaches, and felt extremely tired most of the time,” Trump said. “I am happy to report that I have tested negative and hope to resume my duties as soon as I can.”
      The first lady added, “Along with this good news, I want people to know that I understand just how fortunate my family is to have received the kind of care that we did.”
      Trump said she continues to pray for the Americans who are currently struggling with coronavirus and their families.

      Updated
      at 4.09pm EDT More

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      Amy Coney Barrett pledges 'open mind' and plays down conservative record

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      Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s nominee to the US supreme court, returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a final round of questioning about her judicial record and personal views, with her confirmation all but assured despite Democrats’ forceful opposition.Members of the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday attempted to dig deeper into the conservative judge’s views on the Affordable Care Act, which expanded healthcare cover to millions more Americans under Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation, and abortion rights.Also on the agenda in this week’s hearings are same-sex marriage, gun control and any potential cases related to the result of the looming 2020 election.But Barrett, in the tradition of recent supreme court nominees, avoided answering directly about how she would rule on some of the most important issues that the court may be asked to address.Playing down the conservative positions she expressed in legal writings as an academic and in personal commitments she made as a private citizen, the 48-year-old appellate court judge she had no political agenda and would approach every case with “an open mind”.Barrett has been nominated to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month. The confirmation hearings have halted all other business on Capitol Hill as Republicans, eager to cement a conservative majority on the court for at least a generation, rush to confirm Barrett before the November election.Opening the session on Wednesday, after nearly 12 hours of questioning the day before, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the committee, celebrated Barrett’s almost inevitable confirmation as a momentous victory for conservatives, and particularly for conservative women, who he said have faced “concrete” social and cultural barriers in public life that do not exist for liberal women.“This is the first time in American history that we’ve nominated a woman who is unashamedly pro-life and embraces her faith without apology,” Graham said. “She is going to the court.”In moments of personal reflection during the hearings, Barrett suggested that mockery of her association with People of Praise, the insular Catholic community inspired by charismatic Christianity, as well as commentary about her large family, which includes two adopted children from Haiti, has been painful. But she said while faith was important to her personally, it would not influence her decisions on the supreme court bench.But she repeatedly declined to say how she would rule on a challenge to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 supreme court decision that established a woman’s right to an abortion. But she declined again on Wednesday to characterize the decision as a “super-precedent” that must not be overturned.Democrats continued to press their case that her confirmation would imperil the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, arguing that Donald Trump and Republicans were rushing to confirm her before the court hears arguments that could decide the fate of the healthcare law next month. Again, Barrett insisted that she was not “hostile” to the ACA and would decided cases “as they come”.Republican state officials and the Trump administration are effectively seeking to invalidate the entire healthcare law based on a single part of it.Though she did not say how she would rule, Barrett expressed skepticism of this view in an extended exchange with Graham. In such cases, the judge said “the presumption is always in favor of severability” – a legal doctrine applied to congressional litigation that she said requires a court to strike down one element while preserving the rest of the law.Democrats have urged Barrett to recuse herself in the forthcoming case involving the ACA – as well as potential challenges to the result of the election – because Trump has repeatedly said that his judicial nominees will dutifully advance his agenda. In a vague reference to the president’s tan, Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, suggested that Trump’s words cast an “orange cloud” over Barrett’s nomination.Barrett declined to say whether she would recuse herself in either instance, only that she would consider the matter. Again, she maintained her independence from the executive branch and the president who nominated her, first to a seat on the US court of appeals for the seventh circuit, and then to the supreme court.Pressed by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, Barrett would not say whether the president was allowed to pardon himself. She stated unequivocally that that “no one is above the law”, though cautioned that the supreme court has no real recourse to ensure that Americans, including the president, followed its orders.Republicans rushed to the judge’s defense, accusing Democrats of impugning her integrity as a judge.Recalling the 1987 nomination ofRobert Bork, which was derailed amid deep opposition from liberal groups and Democrats who warned that his confirmation would tilt the court to the right on key issues such as religion and abortion, senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, decried the “attempted Borking of Amy Barrett”.Republicans touted her adherence to “originalism”, an approach championed by Barrett’s mentor, the late justice Antonin Scalia, that aims to interpret the constitution as it was written centuries ago. Confronted by Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware, with several of Scalia’s more controversial opinions, including a scathing dissent in a landmark case establishing the right for same-sex couples to marry, Barrett said that they shared a philosophy but would not always reach the same conclusions.“I hope you’re not suggesting I don’t have my own mind,” she said.But Coons was not persuaded, and announced that he would not vote to confirm her.“Nothing has alleviated my grave concerns that rather than building on Justice Ginsburg’s legacy of advancing privacy and equality and justice, … in fact, you will take the court in a very different direction,” he said.Owing to the proximity of the election, and the near-certainty of the outcome, many senators have used the nationally televised hearings as an opportunity to amplify their campaign messages. Graham, locked in a tight race for re-election in South Carolina, was effusive in his praise of the conservative judge, who Republicans hope will energize their base while appealing to suburban women leaving the party over Trump.“I have never been more proud of the nominee than I am of you,” Graham said to Barrett. “This is history being made, folks.”Away from the hearing room, the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told donors that Barrett “seems like a decent person” but said it was “an abuse of power” to confirm her to the supreme court before the November election.The committee is expected to vote on 22 October, as Trump pressures the Senate to confirm Barrett before the November election. More