US elections 2020

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Mark Meadows was warned of illegality of scheme to overturn 2020 election

      by

      Mark Meadows was warned of illegality of scheme to overturn 2020 electionA former staffer testified that White House counsel said the scheme involving fake electoral college votes was not legally sound Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was warned the effort to overturn the 2020 election with fake electoral college votes was not legally sound – and yet proceeded anyway, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack said Friday.In a court filing, the panel also said that Meadows went ahead with plans to have Trump speak at the Ellipse rally that descended into the Capitol attack, only days after being expressly told by the US Secret Service that there was potential for violence on 6 January 2021.Mark Meadows is still registered to vote in South Carolina and Virginia, officials sayRead moreThe 248-page court filing could serve to increase the legal exposure for Meadows. It aims to portray Meadows as someone who was instrumental in trying to overturn the outcome of the election that Trump lost to Biden. The allegations, based on testimony from a former White House staffer, Cassidy Hutchinson, suggested that Meadows knowingly acted in an unlawful manner.Hutchinson testified that Pat Cipollone, who was the White House counsel at the time, told Meadows and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani that the scheme to have states send Trump slates of electors to Congress in states that he lost in the 2020 election was not legally sound, the panel said.Hutchinson testified that she heard White House attorneys tell Meadows and other officials – including “certain” but unspecified congressmen – that trying to certify a Trump win in that manner “did not comply with the law” and “was not legally sound”, the filing said.Nonetheless, it said, Meadows “participated in a widely publicized call” with the top election official in Georgia – the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger – “and other related efforts seeking to change the election results” there.Hutchinson, who worked in Meadows’ office, also testified in a separate deposition that Meadows knew about the potential for violence on 6 January 2021 after being briefed on intelligence reports by the Secret Service. “I know that people had brought information forward to [Meadows] that had indicated that there could be violence on the 6th,” she said.Hutchinson said Meadows had been presented with the warnings either one or two days before the Capitol attack took place. She said former White House chief of operations Anthony Ornato delivered them to Meadows in his office.“We had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th,” Hutchinson told the select committee in the first of her two depositions, one in February and another in March.“But despite this and other warnings,” wrote Douglas Letter, the general counsel for the House of Representatives, in the court filing, “President Trump urged the attendees at the January 6th rally to march to the Capitol to ‘take back your country.’”The select committee’s investigation into the Capitol riot and its aftermath has been investigating whether Trump and his staffers illegally conspired with the extremists who stormed the Capitol as Congress was certifying Biden’s presidential victory. It has also been examining whether Trump and members of his administration broke federal laws prohibiting obstruction of a congressional proceeding, which in this case would be the interrupted certification session.As part of that probe, the committee subpoenaed records from Meadows’s cellphone service provider, Verizon, among others.Though he has turned over at least some communications to the committee, Meadows sued to stop those subpoenas, portraying them as “overly broad and cumbersome”. The select committee included excerpts of Hutchinson’s testimony in an effort to persuade the district court in Washington DC to reject that lawsuit.If granted, the select committee’s motion for summary judgement could finally cap a protracted legal battle with Trump’s final White House chief of staff. It has detailed the numerous ways Meadows was involved in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, including the scheme to put forward “alternate” slates of electors for Trump in states that he lost.The aim of the scheme, the Guardian has previously reported, was to have then-vice president Mike Pence declare at the joint session of Congress on 6 January 2021 that he could not count states with slates for both Trump and Joe Biden, and return Trump to office.“The select committee’s filing today urges the court to reject Mark Meadows’s baseless claims and put an end to his obstruction of our investigation,” the panel’s chair, congressman Bennie Thompson, and vice chair, congresswoman Liz Cheney, said in a statement.Much of the panel’s new revelations late on Friday cited testimony from Hutchinson, who was present for key discussions in the White House in the weeks before the Capitol attack. Hutchinson testified after she was issued a subpoena in November.She also recounted how the White House counsel’s office had threatened to resign if Trump went ahead with an extraordinary plan to seize voting machines and assert emergency presidential powers over false claims of election fraud.“Once it became clear that there would be mass resignations, including lawyers in the White House counsel’s office – including some of the staff that Mr Meadows worked closely with – you know, I know that did factor into his thinking,” she said of Meadows.The former Trump White House aide, who served as special assistant to the president for legislative affairs, testified that some members of Congress, such as Scott Perry, who is now the chair of the rightwing House Freedom Caucus, supported sending people to the Capitol on 6 January 2021.Testimony from Hutchinson and other aides also corroborated a Senate judiciary committee report that found Trump unsuccessfully sought the imprimatur of the justice department to bolster his claims of election fraud.Meadows initially cooperated with the inquiry before abruptly withdrawing his assistance last year. He turned over a trove of evidence that included an email in November 2020 discussing appointing alternate slates of electors, and others about overturning the 2020 election.But he then proceeded to withhold more than 1,000 other messages on his personal phone over executive privilege claims, the filing said. He also refused to appear for a deposition, reversing a cooperation deal agreed between his lawyer and the select committee.In response, the House referred Meadows, who was the top official in the Trump administration, for prosecution for contempt of Congress, though the justice department has yet to issue charges.TopicsMark MeadowsUS Capitol attackTrump administrationDonald TrumpUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘All these men’: Jill Biden resented Joe’s advisers who pushed White House run

      by

      ‘All these men’: Jill Biden resented Joe’s advisers who pushed White House runFirst lady tells authors of new biography she cut off push to recruit her husband to challenge George W Bush in 2004 Feeling “burned” by her husband’s first run for the presidency, Jill Biden resisted advisers including Ron Klain, now White House chief of staff, who pushed him to mount another campaign in 2004.Trump ‘very intent on bringing my brother down’, Joe Biden’s sister saysRead more“All these men – and they were mostly men – coming to our home,” she said. “You know, ‘You’ve got to run, you’ve got to run.’ I wanted no part of it.”The first lady was speaking to Julie Pace and Darlene Superville, co-authors of Jill: A Biography of the First Lady, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.“I didn’t even know whether I wanted Joe to ever do it again,” Jill Biden said. “I mean, I had been so burned.”Joe Biden first ran for president in 1987, withdrawing amid allegations that he plagiarised the leader of the British Labour party, Neil Kinnock, in campaign remarks.Jill Biden was describing a meeting at the Bidens’ house in Delaware more than 15 years later, when Joe Biden met Mark Gitenstein, a long-term adviser, and Klain joined on speakerphone.John Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator, was favourite for the Democratic nomination to challenge George W Bush. But, the authors write, “some party leaders thought Joe could go head-to-head with [the] president … in the general election”.“There were always so many people trying to get Joe to run,” Jill Biden said. “You’ve got to run again. You’ve got to try again. Always. It was constant.“He knew that I wasn’t in favour of his running.”The authors cite Jill Biden’s autobiography, Where the Light Enters, published in 2019, in which she describes “‘fuming’ out by the pool” while the meeting with Klain and Gitenstein went on.Jill Biden writes that she eventually cut the meeting off by drawing “NO” on her stomach with a Sharpie pen and “march[ing] through the room in my bikini.“Needless to say, they got the message.”“Joe and Gitenstein did, at any rate,” Pace and Superville write. “Klain, still eagerly engaged on speakerphone and unaware of what had just transpired in the room, kept brainstorming away.“‘I don’t understand it,’ a bewildered Klain said later when Gitenstein called to explain. ‘The conversation was going so great and all of a sudden, it just stopped.’”Joe Biden did mount a second run for the White House in 2008, with Jill’s support, but dropped out early, unable to compete with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.Neil Kinnock on Biden’s plagiarism ‘scandal’ and why he deserves to win: ‘Joe’s an honest guy’Read moreHe was Obama’s vice-president for eight years, spent four years in apparent retirement, then beat Donald Trump in 2020 to become, at 78, the oldest president inaugurated for the first time. Pace and Superville describe how Jill Biden supported her husband’s second and third White House runs.Klain was appointed to oversee the effort against Ebola in 2014 and remains one of Joe Biden’s closest and most powerful advisers. Last year, the New York Times reported that “Republicans have taken to calling him Prime Minister Klain”, a characterisation Klain has disputed.Gitenstein, a lawyer who worked for the Senate judiciary committee when Biden chaired it, was ambassador to Romania under Obama. He advised Biden in 2020 and is now US ambassador to the European Union.Jill Biden’s most senior male aide is Anthony Bernal. He has been described, by Politico, as both “an influential figure” and “one of the most polarising people” in the Biden White House.TopicsBooksPolitics booksJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsUS elections 2004US elections 2020newsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump ‘very intent on bringing my brother down’, Joe Biden’s sister says

      by

      Trump ‘very intent on bringing my brother down’, Joe Biden’s sister saysValerie Biden Owens, who has worked on all her brother’s campaigns, also says ‘no there there’ on her nephew Hunter Donald Trump is “very intent on bringing my brother down”, Joe Biden’s sister said.The Republican judge blocking her party from rigging electoral districtsRead more“The only race I wasn’t enthusiastic about Joe getting involved in was the 2020 presidency,” Valerie Biden Owens told CBS News.“Because I expected, and was not disappointed, that it would be ugly and mean, and it would be an attack on my brother, Joe, personally and professionally, because the former president is very intent on bringing my brother down.”A year and a half into his presidency, Biden is battling crises at home including inflation and the coronavirus pandemic and abroad, over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Trump dominates the Republican party, propagating the “big lie” about voter fraud in his defeat by Biden which fueled the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, continuing to attack Biden as incapable of the demands of office, flirting with a third White House run and dispensing endorsements to candidates in the midterm elections.On Sunday, the Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, claimed Republicans would not swiftly impeach Biden “for political purposes”, should as expected the party take the House in November.Biden Owens helped raise her brother’s children after his first wife and daughter were killed in a car crash and has worked on all his campaigns. She has written a book called Growing Up Biden: A Memoir.“I assumed from the beginning that the former president and his entourage would attack my brother by going and attacking my family,” she said.Trump has focused on Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who has written his own book about his struggle with addiction and whose business affairs are the subject of scrutiny.Hunter Biden was one subject of Trump’s attempt to withhold military aid from Ukraine in exchange for political dirt, an attempt that led to Trump’s first impeachment. To Republicans, Hunter Biden remains a tempting target. Federal investigators are known to be looking at his financial affairs.His aunt told CBS: “There hasn’t been a there, there since it was mentioned in 2019 or whenever it was.”‘TV is like a poll’: Trump endorses Dr Oz for Pennsylvania Senate nominationRead moreShe also said: “Hunter has written in exquisite detail about his struggle with addiction, his walk through hell, and I am so grateful he has been able to walk out of hell, but I don’t think there’s a family in this country who hasn’t tasted it.”Trump’s destructive power remains widely feared. Pundits and rivals are watching his endorsements closely, among them a choice to back Mehmet Oz, a TV doctor, for the Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, a pick many Republicans opposed.On Monday, a possible rival to Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, Ron DeSantis, was offered a warning that might have sounded familiar to Valerie Biden Owens.Nikki Fried, a Democrat running to oppose DeSantis for governor in Florida, told Business Insider that if Trump runs again and gets back on Twitter – from which he has been banned since the Capitol attack – “I say one tweet created [DeSantis] and one tweet can destroy him”.TopicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpHunter BidenUS politicsUS elections 2024US elections 2020DemocratsnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump says he regrets not marching on Capitol with supporters on January 6

      by

      Trump says he regrets not marching on Capitol with supporters on January 6 Ex-president also rejects suggestions he used ‘burner phones’ on day of the assault in Washington Post interview Donald Trump has said he regrets not marching on the US Capitol building with his supporters on the day of the January 6 insurrection and again rejected suggestions he used “burner phones” on the day of the assault.In a defiant interview with the Washington Post the former president said he had pressed to march with his supporters on January 6, but was blocked from doing so by Secret Service agents. “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” Trump told the Post, later bragging about the size of the “tremendous crowd” at the “Save America” rally that day.Last month CBS News and the Post revealed internal White House phone records from the day of the attack on the Capitol showed a seven-hour-and-37-minute gap in Trump’s phone logs including the period in which the assault occurred. The reports revealed the House committee investigating the attack were examining whether Trump had used burner phones – disposable mobile phones – during that period.Trump has denied doing so and said he did not know the meaning of the term, but last week his former national security adviser John Bolton said the former president had used the term several times in conversations.In his interview with the Washington Post, Trump again denied use of burner phones and said he had not destroyed any call logs. He claimed instead he had not received many phone calls on the day of the assault, but remembered talking to two Republican congressmen, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and Jim Jordan.“From the standpoint of telephone calls, I don’t remember getting very many,” he told the Post, later adding, “Why would I care about who called me? If congressmen were calling me, what difference did it make? There was nothing secretive about it. There was no secret.”Trump also acknowledged he had communicated with Ginni Thomas, wife of the conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, during his presidency but said he was not aware of her lobbying around the 2020 election results.Text messages obtained by the Washington Post and received by the 6 January committee, revealed Ginni Thomas had repeatedly lobbied Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to push to keep Trump in power after Joe Biden won the election.“First of all, her husband is a great justice. And she’s a fine woman. And she loves our country,” Trump said in his interview with the Post.The former president also said he had not been contacted by the 6 January committee and offered no clear indication of how he would respond if contacted. He branded his daughter Ivanka’s appearance before the committee earlier this week as “shame and harassment” but told the Post he was not aware of what she had said.The interview came as the committee received a cache of 101 emails belonging to the Trump lawyer John Eastman, which are likely to reveal details of the efforts undertaken to block former vice-president Mike Pence from certifying the election result in Congress on 6 January.On Wednesday the House also voted to hold two former senior Trump aides, Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with subpoenas issues by the committee, paving the way for potential criminal prosecution.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      MyPillow CEO sued for defamation by former Dominion Voting employee

      by

      MyPillow CEO sued for defamation by former Dominion Voting employeeSuit alleges Mike Lindell and his media platform targeted Eric Coomer as part of his ‘efforts to undermine faith in US democracy’ The CEO of bedding company MyPillow, Mike Lindell, has been sued for defamation by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems.Eric Coomer, the former employee of the voting machines company that became embroiled in Donald Trump’s false claims that he was denied victory at the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud, has filed a court complaint against Lindell, Insider reported.The suit alleges that Lindell and his media platform Frankspeech, targeted Coomer as part of his “efforts to undermine faith in American democracy and enrich himself in the process”.Lindell, a Trump supporter, conservative activist and conspiracy theorist, was handed the lawsuit while at a political rally he hosted in Denver, Colorado.“What’s this?” Lindell said upon receiving the envelope.“It’s for you,” the messenger said.As Mike Lindell walks away from his “election integrity” speech on the steps of the CO Capitol today, he gets served with Eric Coomer’s (Dominion Security) defamation lawsuit. “What is this?” “It’s for you.” From @Marshall9News pic.twitter.com/F9Aq3qHdfl— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) April 5, 2022
      In the lawsuit, Coomer, Dominion’s former director of product strategy and security, said Lindell “has publicly accused [him] of being a ‘traitor to the United States’…[and] has claimed, without evidence, that Dr Coomer committed treason and that he should turn himself in to the authorities.”The complaint went on to accuse Lindell of publishing numerous false statements, defamatory interviews and other “dishonest content maligning Dr Coomer” on Frankspeech, often along with a sales pitch for MyPillow products.“Despite defendants’ baseless claims of election fraud being disproven by credible authorities across political parties, they persist in their campaign to profit from the ‘Big Lie’ [that Joe Biden didn’t win] by destroying the lives of private individuals like Dr Coomer,” the filing said.“They have not acknowledged the harm they have caused, nor have they retracted any of their false statements,” it added.According to the complaint, Coomer’s reputation has been “irreparably tarnished” and he is no longer able to work in the election industry “on account of the unwarranted distrust inspired by defendants’ lies.”Instead, Coomer now receives frequent death threats and bears the “burden of being made the face of an imagined criminal conspiracy of unprecedented scope in American history”, the complaint said.In a statement to Insider in response to the lawsuit, Lindell said: “MyPillow and Frankspeech didn’t do nothing. I don’t even know if I’ve ever mentioned Eric Coomer … They’re trying to cancel Frankspeech, your favorite show!”Last year, Lindell appeared on Frankspeech, accusing Coomer by name of voter fraud and urging him to surrender himself to authorities.TopicsUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      ‘I didn’t win the election’: Trump admits defeat in session with historians

      by

      ‘I didn’t win the election’: Trump admits defeat in session with historiansThe ex-president also said that Iran, China and South Korea were happy Biden won, adding that ‘the election was rigged and lost’

      Review: The Presidency of Donald Trump
      Donald Trump has admitted he did not win the 2020 election.Capitol attack panel scores two big wins as it inches closer to Trump’s inner circleRead more“I didn’t win the election,” he said.The admission came in a video interview with a panel of historians convened by Julian Zelizer, a Princeton professor and editor of The Presidency of Donald Trump: A First Historical Assessment. The interview was published on Monday by the Atlantic.Describing his attempts to make South Korea pay more for US military assistance, Trump said Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, was among the “happiest” world leaders after the 2020 US election put Joe Biden in the White House.“By not winning the election,” Trump said, “he was the happiest man – I would say, in order, China was – no, Iran was the happiest.“[Moon] was going to pay $5bn, $5bn a year. But when I didn’t win the election, he had to be the happiest – I would rate, probably, South Korea third- or fourth-happiest.”Trump also said “the election was rigged and lost”.Trump’s refusal to accept defeat by Biden provoked attempts to overturn results in key states in court – the vast majority of such cases ending in defeat – and the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.Trump was impeached a second time, for inciting an insurrection, and acquitted a second time after enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.Trump thus remains free to run for the White House again in 2024, which he has repeatedly hinted he will do.Writing for the Atlantic, Zelizer said Trump “was the one who had decided to reach out to a group of professional historians so that we produced ‘an accurate book’”.The former president called the historians assembled by Zelizer “a tremendous group of people, and I think rather than being critical I’d like to have you hear me out, which is what we’re doing now, and I appreciate it”.Trump, Zelizer wrote, “seemed to want the approval of historians, without any understanding of how historians gather evidence or render judgments”.Zelizer also pointed out that shortly after the session with the historians, Trump announced he would give no more interviews for books about his time in office.“It seems to me that meeting with authors of the ridiculous number of books being written about my very successful administration, or me, is a total waste of time,” Trump said in a statement, in July 2021.“These writers are often bad people who write whatever comes to their mind or fits their agenda. It has nothing to do with facts or reality.”TopicsBooksHistory booksPolitics booksDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS elections 2020US politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Capitol attack rioter gets 3.5 years in prison for illegal possession of guns

      by

      Capitol attack rioter gets 3.5 years in prison for illegal possession of gunsSamuel Fisher was also a self-declared dating coach who sold a $150 package of misogynistic tips for men to pick up women A rioter who believed the QAnon conspiracy theory and joined the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, as they attempted to overturn his election defeat, has been sentenced in New York to 3.5 years in prison.Samuel Fisher, 33, was sentenced on Monday after being charged with illegal possession of firearms, including a modified semi-automatic AR-15-style assault rifle, a “ghost gun” pistol, a shotgun, and 11 pre-loaded high capacity magazines at an apartment in the upscale Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan.He had pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.For years, Fisher established a prolific online presence, the authorities said.Under the alias Brad Holiday, Fisher posted photos of himself with firearms on Facebook and YouTube. In one, Fisher posed in front of a flag that said “Don’t tread on Trump. Keep America great” while grinning and holding a pistol.“Can’t wait to bring a liberal back to this freedom palace,” he wrote as his caption. Behind him was a rifle and a shotgun.Fisher was also a self-declared dating coach who sold a $150 package of misogynistic supposed tips and tricks for men to pick up women, called “Attraction Accelerator”, the New York Times reported.“How to use online dating to build abundance of women! Never feel that you can’t get women again…with online dating you’ll ALWAYS be getting laid,” his website said.In a video posted online, Fisher said, “Is Satanism a good thing? Should we conjure demons to get our goals met like the Left does?”He added: “Are women trustworthy in 2020? You tell me. I’ll tell you, No.”Prior to the January 6 insurrection aimed, on the urging of Trump at a rally prior, at preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, Fisher espoused QAnon conspiracy theories online and claims that the 2020 election was “stolen”.In reference to a pro-Trump, so-called Stop the Steal rally, the authorities said Fisher told a Facebook friend: “Get a firearm and go, lol, its 1776 time dawg.”He also went on to write online: “The Deep State is arrested and hanged on the White House lawn for High Treason. We rebuild America with a government for the people by the people…Patriot show up in the millions with guns. They execute all the treasonous members of government and rebuild.”Trump believed a “deep state” secret shadow government existed to thwart his agenda.In 2020, after attending the deadly January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, Fisher wrote on his social media accounts that “people died” but it was great, according to court records reviewed by the New York Times.“Seeing cops literally run…was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he continued.Fisher was arrested on 20 January 2021, outside his Upper East Side apartment in New York City in connection with his involvement with the Capitol attacks. Police found a shotgun, machetes and over a thousand rounds of ammunition in his vehicle, according to court records.In a statement on Monday, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said: “Samuel Fisher is a dangerous conspiracy theorist who participated in one of the gravest attacks on our democracy. Not only did he threaten to commit violence against his fellow citizens, he had the potential to follow through with his arsenal of advanced weaponry and ammunition.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsNew YorkDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of history

      by

      The Presidency of Donald Trump review: the first draft of history Julian Zelizer of Princeton has assembled a cast of historians to consider every aspect of four years that shook AmericaAfter thousands of articles and scores of books about Donald Trump’s mostly catastrophic presidency, it’s difficult for anyone to break dramatic new ground. But this new volume, with contributions from 18 American academics, is broader and deeper than all its predecessors, with essays covering everything from Militant Whiteness to the legacy of Trump’s Middle East policies, under the title Arms, Autocrats and Annexations.The result is a great deal of information that is familiar to those who have already plowed through dozens of volumes, enlivened by a few new facts and a number of original insights.One of the best essays, about the Republican party Trump inherited, is written by the book’s editor, Julian Zelizer. The Princeton historian reminds us that the “smashmouth partisanship” perfected by Trump actually began when Newt Gingrich snared the House speakership nearly 30 years ago. In 1992, Pat Buchanan’s speech to the Republic convention featured all of the gay-bashing Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, (and may other Republicans) have revived with so much gusto in 2022.Trump swooped in to profit from White House photographer’s book deal – reportRead moreWith major contributions from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the rightwing media machine, most of the GOP moved so far right it didn’t become Trump’s party because he “seized control” but rather because “he fit so perfectly” with it. Most Republicans were “all in” for Trump, from Mitt Romney, the ex-never Trumper who voted with his former nemesis more than 80% of the time, to “moderate” Chris Christie, who gave Trump an “A” four months after his four years of scorched-earth governance were over.Nicole Hemmer, from Columbia, offers an excellent primer on the irresistible rise of rightwing media, reminding us that in the last year of the first George Bush presidency, Limbaugh was spending the night at the White House. By 2009, the shock jock “topped polls asking who led the Republican party”.By the time Trump started his run for the presidency, in 2015, he had “grown far more powerful than the political media ecosystem that had boosted his rightwing bona fides”. This became clear after his dust-up with Megyn Kelly. Moderating a primary debate, the Fox anchor challenged his long history of sexist statements. Trump declared afterwards: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”The Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, “stayed silent”, Hemmer writes. Another executive, Bill Shine, “told on-air anchors not to come to Kelly’s defense”.By the spring of 2016, Fox was becoming less important than Breitbart, an extreme-right website which researchers at Harvard and MIT declared the new anchor of a “rightwing media network”. It was Steve Bannon of Breitbart who “armed Trump with something like a cohesive political platform … built on anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal politics – the same agenda Breitbart.com was promoting”.“Sure enough”, Trump’s Twitter feed “during the campaign linked to Breitbart more than any other news site”.Eventually, just about everyone on the right became a Trump disciple. Glenn Beck compared him to Hitler in 2016. By 2018, Beck was wearing a red Make America Great Again hat, though he blamed the media’s “Trump Derangement Syndrome” for “forcing him to become a Trump supporter”. As a former rightwing radio host, Charlie Sykes, explained: “There’s really not a business model for conservative media to be anti-Trump.”A Brown historian, Bathsheba Demuth, demonstrates that Trump was also a perfect fit for a party that endorsed a propaganda initiative of the American Petroleum Institute that portrayed environmental protection as “a dangerous slide toward communist authoritarianism”. Among loyal constituents were evangelicals, who either saw human dominion over nature as “a doctrinal requirement” or just thought the whole debate was irrelevant because of “Christ’s imminent resurrection”.The most surprising fact in this chapter is that the fossil fuel industry was so sure Trump was a loser in 2016, it gave the bulk of its contributions to Hillary Clinton.Margaret O’Mara, of the University of Washington, describes big tech’s key role in our national meltdown. She reminds us of a key, mostly forgotten moment 10 years ago, when “Google and Facebook successfully petitioned the Federal Election Commission for exemptions from disclaimer requirements” that required political ads to say who paid for them and who was responsible for their messages.The companies argued the requirements would “undermine other, much larger parts of their businesses”. Disastrously, the FEC went along with that pathetic argument. After that, no one ever knew exactly where online attack ads were coming from.O’Mara also recalls that Facebook provided the 2016 Trump campaign with “dedicated staff and resources” to help it purchase more ads on the platform. O’Mara mistakenly reports that the Clinton campaign received the same kind of largesse. Actually, in what may have been the campaign’s single worst decision, it refused Facebook’s offer to install staffers in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters.Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to taskRead moreAnother chapter, by Daniel C Kurtzer of Princeton, analyses what Trump supporters consider their president’s greatest foreign policy achievement: the initiation of diplomatic relations between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco.A conservative journal summarized the accomplishment this way: “Washington is strengthening repression in Bahrain, underwriting aggression by UAE, sacrificing the Sahrawi people [of Western Sahara, to Morocco], undermining reform in Sudan and even abandoning justice for Americans harmed by Sudan. The administration calls this an ‘American first’ policy.”The last chapter focuses on the two failed attempts to convict Trump in impeachment trials. Those outcomes may be Trump’s worst legacy of all. Gregory Downs, from the University of California, Davis, writes that the failures to convict “in the face of incontrovertible proof” may convince all Trump’s successors “that they have almost complete impunity as long as they retain the support of their base, no matter what the constitution says”.
      The Presidency of Donald Trump is published in the US by Princeton University Press
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS elections 2020RepublicansUS domestic policyreviewsReuse this content More