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      Robert F Kennedy Jr announced as speaker at hard-right CPAC event

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the attorney, conspiracy theorist and political gadfly set to next week transform his run for the Democratic presidential nomination into an independent campaign, was announced on Friday as a speaker at an event staged by the hard-right Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.“Robert F Kennedy Jr has a unique voice in advocating for the defunding of the weaponised bureaucracy and ensuring the constitutional right of medical freedom,” said the CPAC chair, Matt Schlapp.Kennedy, 69, will speak at the CPAC Investor Summit to Save America, in Las Vegas, Nevada, between 18 and 21 October. Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech investor who has performed unexpectedly strongly in the Republican primary, will also speak.Kennedy comes from a storied US political family – the son of former US attorney general Robert F Kennedy and nephew of President John F Kennedy. He built a public profile as an attorney and environmental campaigner but has now emerged as a prominent anti-vaccine campaigner, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.A claim that Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews have greater immunity from Covid caused huge controversy. So did a comparison of government public health mandates to laws in Nazi Germany, invoking the name of Anne Frank. Last month, Kennedy repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.Kennedy has polled relatively strongly against Joe Biden, the incumbent Democratic president. Standing next to no chance of winning the nomination, however, Kennedy’s announcement of an independent run was trailed last week. The announcement is set for Philadelphia on Monday.Polling shows the potential for a third-party candidate to pull votes from both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the president’s expected challenger in what would be a contest between aging and unpopular candidates.This week, a Reuters-Ipsos poll showed Kennedy “could draw the support of about one in seven US voters”.Some observers think Biden likely to sustain worse damage from a strong third-party candidate, perhaps handing the White House back to Trump: a twice-impeached ex-president who faces 91 criminal charges, 17 over election subversion culminating in the January 6 attack on Congress, as well as assorted civil trials.Nonetheless, Kennedy’s links to rightwingers including the mega-donor Timothy Mellon and Steve Bannon, a close Trump ally, have been widely reported and his more extreme stances could see also pull support from Republicans.Bannon was among other figures listed to appear at the CPAC Las Vegas event. So were Ric Grenell, a former Trump aide; Kari Lake, a failed gubernatorial candidate now running for US Senate in Arizona; the Utah Republican senator Mike Lee; and Ken Paxton, the impeached and acquitted Texas attorney general.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSchlapp, the CPAC chair, is a former White House political director under George W Bush now the subject of claims of sexual misconduct, which he denies.Schlapp said: “Kennedy joining such an important event is a reflection of the splintering of the leftwing coalition that has gone full woke Marxist to the point that traditional liberals don’t feel welcome anymore.”Not everyone thinks a Kennedy candidacy will only damage Biden. This week, a “Kennedy campaign insider” told Mediate: “This is going to fuck Trump. Bobby’s values are much more in line with patriots. He’s against Big Pharma. He’s pro-Bitcoin. Decentralise so the government can’t control it.”That prompted Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, to say: “Blame Bannon. His monster got out of the cage.” More

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      Trump again requests delay in Mar-a-Lago documents trial until after 2024 election

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump are asking a federal judge for a second time to postpone until after the 2024 election his trial on charges that he illegally retained dozens of national defense documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and conspired to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.The request, made in a 12-page court filing to US district judge Aileen Cannon on Wednesday night, proposed delaying the start of the trial from May until at least mid-November – leaning into the justice department’s complaint last week that Trump was trying to “re-litigate” the trial date.Trump has tried to delay the classified documents trial ever since he was charged by prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith, including asking to postpone setting a trial date indefinitely as they worked through complex procedural and evidentiary rules in the case.The efforts are the result of Trump’s bet that if he were to win the election and the trials were delayed, he could direct his attorney general to drop the cases. Even if he lost, the closer the trials were to the election, the more he could allege the prosecutions were politically motivated.The dueling complaints from both sides set up another test for Cannon, a Trump appointee who came under widespread criticism last year during the criminal investigation after she issued a series of favorable decisions to the former president before her rulings were struck down on appeal.In their renewed attempt to push back the trial date, Trump’s lawyers accused prosecutors of failing to meet their statutory obligations to turn over nine of the 32 documents Trump was charged with retaining, in violation of the Espionage Act, as part of the discovery process.The filing argued that the delay in getting access to those documents, which prosecutors said last week were so sensitive that they could not be stored in a special facility in Florida to review such materials and were removed to Washington, necessitated revising the schedule for the case.Trump’s lawyers added that they needed to push back the trial schedule because the secure facility being constructed for the judge to review the classified documents in Fort Pierce, where her courthouse is located, was running more than three months behind schedule.“The special counsel’s office has failed to make very basic arrangements in this district for the handling of the relevant classified information,” wrote Trump’s lawyers Chris Kise and Todd Blanche. “The requested adjournments are necessary to allow time for these facilities to be established.”Trump’s lawyers also hit back at prosecutors for previously suggesting that the former president was trying to weaponize the complex procedures for using classified information at trial – known as Cipa, short for the Classified Information Procedures Act – to buy time.In particular, and previewing a potential defense at trial that some of the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago could not be charged because they were not “closely held” materials, Trump’s lawyers argued prosecutors needed to say whether they had tangential information that could be exculpatory.The materials are known as “prudential search requests”, a process where national security prosecutors check with the US intelligence community about the nature of sensitive documents they are considering charging.“Because some of the documents at issue address topics that are covered in open-source materials,” Trump’s lawyers wrote, “it is extremely likely that some USIC holdings undercut the Office’s contention that documents dating back to 2017 contain information that was closely held.”The Trump legal team also cited Trump’s increasingly crowded courtroom calendar as a further reason why the classified documents trial needed to be delayed, arguing that neither they nor the former president could be in two places at once.The issue stems from Trump’s other federal trial, in which he is accused by special counsel prosecutors of conspiring the subvert the 2020 election results, being scheduled to start on 4 March. But delays in that case could lead to overlap with the start of the classified documents trial set for 20 May. More

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      Voter drive: Biden and Trump battle for blue-collar votes in auto heartland

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      Joe Biden became the first sitting US president to join a picket line when he stopped at a General Motors facility just outside Detroit to show support for striking United Auto Workers last week. “Stick with it. You deserve a significant raise,” Biden told the crowd.A day later, Donald Trump told raucous blue-collar supporters at a speech north of Detroit: “Just get your union guys, your leaders, to endorse me and I will take care of the rest.”The tug-of-war remarks represented the unofficial opening salvoes of the 2024 election season as the parties’ likely candidates set out to woo blue-collar voters in Michigan, a critical bloc in a state that’s a must-win in any White House bid.“Politically, Michigan is ground zero right now because of the auto strike,” said Bill Ballenger, a conservative state political analyst. Biden, he said, was seeking to shore up his slipping support among unions, while Trump had spotted a “weakness in Bidenomics” that the former president was set on exploiting as the strike pushes into its third week.Trump won Michigan, an upper midwest swing state, by about 12,000 votes in 2016. Biden took the state by nearly 150,000 votes in the next election. Michigan is a heavily unionized state, and Biden won with 64% support among union members. But August polling found support among Michigan union members hangs at 49%, and Biden and Trump are in effect tied.“Clearly there’s division among the rank and file,” said pollster Bernie Porn, president of Epic MRA, a Michigan-based survey research firm. Political observers say Michigan is very much in play in the 2024 election.The dueling visits showcased two very different visions for America’s future. Trump criticized the Biden administration’s support for the auto industry’s shift to electric vehicles, which unions fear because they require fewer workers to make. “You can be loyal to American labor or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics,” Trump told the crowd in a meandering, hour-long speech. (Later he insisted he would make “sex changes for children” illegal.)Biden’s minutes’ long pitch zeroed in on the unions: “The fact of the matter is that you guys, the UAW – you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 … You made a lot of sacrifices. But now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what? You should be doing incredibly well too.”The visits also put on display two competing styles. Despite the historic nature of Biden’s visit, the daytime visit was a low-key, invite-only event among a small crowd of UAW members. The tone was supportive, good-natured. At the nearby Ford Michigan Assembly plant, Biden’s supporters viewed it as a morale boost.Trump, by contrast, set up at night in a non-union shop in Macomb county, an Obama-to-Trump blue-collar swing county. Hundreds of boisterous supporters lined the streets, banging on drums and shouting “Freedom!” and breaking into chants of “USA! USA!” and “Back the blue!” The Trump campaign dismissed Biden’s visit as a “cheap photo op”, and said the rank and file support him, not Biden. Some of his supporters echoed that.“We’ve always known that the blue-collar workers are behind Trump, but the party heads and elites have such a command of the microphone that the floor worker is really underrepresented,” said Trump supporter James Anthony Minnick Jr after attending the former president’s Wednesday speech.Biden’s visit seems to convey an understanding of that, political observers say, but despite that the UAW leadership has been very clear in who it supports.“I see no point in meeting with [Trump] because I don’t think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for,” the UAW president, Shawn Fain, said before Trump’s visit. “He serves a billionaire class, and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”Biden had attended the UAW picket at Fain’s invitation, but the union has yet to officially endorse anyone, which could signal an understanding of rank-and-file divisions, or could be read as leverage to gain continuing White House support.Scott Malenfant, 47, an Obama-to-Ted Cruz-to-Trump supporter and union rep, was among those on the picket line outside Ford’s Michigan Assembly plant on Tuesday who split from UAW leadership. After Biden’s speech, the 23-year line veteran said Democrats lost him and other union members over the EV transition and their support of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Democrats are “on the record saying those jobs are never coming back”, Malenfant noted.“Trump is the first one who said ‘We’re going to bring these jobs back,’” he added while acknowledging that Republicans are typically anti-union. But Trump was different, he said: “All he cares about is whether the country does well … and at least he’s the one pushing for workers.”Biden’s Tuesday message that auto companies need to reward workers did resonate with some who are undecided, or describe themselves as “not political”, like Lisa Carter, 53, who works in the plant’s stamping department. She has two jobs despite 17 years on the line, and she cannot afford to buy a new Ford.“If you’re for the people, then I’m for you,” Carter said. “And Trump can stay where he’s at because when he was president he said we make too much money.”Biden needs to address the EV concerns, Porn said, and talk to union members about how batteries and chips could be produced by autoworkers in the state. The visit also comes in the wake of another Trump indictment, and Porn said the former president’s mounting legal numbers appear to be a drag on his favorability numbers, which are down to 37%.Some of that may be down to Trump’s ever mounting legal troubles. But those cases are unlikely to shake his diehard supporters “because they see him as he likes to see himself – a victim, a martyr being crucified by the deep state”, said Ballenger.For now, with more than a year to go before the election, Porn and Ballenger each say Biden has the edge in the state despite his concerning poll numbers. But Ballenger warned the race was far from decided. Just like in 2016: “It could be deja vu all over again,” Ballenger said. More

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      Enough review: Cassidy Hutchinson on Trump and the damage done

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      Cassidy Hutchinson may have done more to place Donald Trump in legal jeopardy than anyone other than Trump himself. By the time the twentysomething deputy to Mark Meadows (Trump’s last chief of staff) completed her first public appearance before the January 6 committee, in June last year, the US had received an up-close-and-personal view of the venom, wrath and malice of the 45th president.Hutchinson “isn’t crazy”, a Trump White House veteran confided to the Guardian before that first hearing. But she is a “time bomb”.When told that he would not be driven to the Capitol to join the rioters, Trump lunged for the steering wheel of his car. He said Mike Pence “deserved” to be hanged for his refusal to overturn the election. He broke dishes and splattered condiments. Hutchinson “grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off of the wall to help the valet out”. Her testimony was extraordinary. It has also withstood scrutiny.The Capitol was defaced for the “sake of a lie”, Hutchinson declared, on camera. She placed Trump, Meadows and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, in the middle of it all.Fifteen months later, however, Trump is both a 91-times charged criminal defendant and the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, tied with, if not ahead of, Joe Biden in the polls. In Fulton county, Georgia, a grand jury indicted Meadows and Giuliani as well as Trump, for seeking to illegally overturn Biden’s win. As for Hutchinson, she is out with Enough, her memoir.She shares her life story, pointing a damning finger at the powerful, the guys she once worked for and her own father. She tries to exhale but doesn’t fully succeed. She can’t. She is likely to be a witness at Trump’s Washington trial on four election subversion charges, slated to kick off the day before Super Tuesday, the key point of the Republican primary next year.Hutchinson expresses gratitude for life’s opportunities and disgust for what she has seen and endured. Her nameless “dad”, her mother’s first husband, was all too often a no-show in clutch moments. She considers Paul, the man who followed, to be her “chosen father”. He was there when it counted. Meadows once asked if she had a happy childhood, she writes. She offers a detailed answer.Hutchinson’s disdain for Trump is on record. Now, too, is her deep disillusionment with Meadows and disgust for Giuliani.On January 6, “America’s mayor” allegedly preyed upon her. John Eastman, Trump’s legal adviser in his attempted coup, purportedly looked on and smiled.Over time, Meadows let Hutchinson down, then abandoned her entirely. When the subpoenas began to fly, he left her to fend for herself. He never offered to help, she says, in contrast to how he treated his male deputy, Ben Williamson. To Hutchinson, Meadows extended platitudes as if she were a mass shooting victim.“Tell her me and Debbie are thinking about her,” he told Williamson.In her own memoir, Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last White House press secretary, gushed at Hutchinson: “You were a constant reminder of faith. Thank you for being an inspiring leader for the entire West Wing.” The contrast in the two women’s post-White House lives is remarkable. McEnany is ensconced at Fox News. Hutchinson gives interviews at home with the shades drawn, worried for her safety.According to Hutchinson, Meadows ceaselessly sought to endear himself to Trump, a task impossible for anyone other than Ivanka, Trump’s oldest daughter. Early on, Meadows told Hutchinson he would take a bullet for his boss.“I would do anything … to get him re-elected,” he said.Months later, Meadows did something: he hid Trump’s Covid from Hutchinson and from the world at large. He knew Trump had fulfilled appearances and taken the debate stage against Biden after testing positive. He did not share that information. Later, when Hutchinson and Meadows were in a limo, she asked if Trump had Covid. Meadows did not answer.“His silence answered every question I had,” Hutchinson writes now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe did not sicken and flirt with death, as Chris Christie did after helping prep Trump for the debate. But no apology was forthcoming. All were expected to take the bullet.Out of office, however, Meadows ratted Trump out, in his own memoir, The Chief’s Chief. Hutchinson cites his book in hers.“Stop the president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley, the White House physician, told him. “He just tested positive for Covid.”“Mr President,” Meadows says he said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for Covid-19.” Trump’s reply, the devout Christian writes, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me”.When Meadows’s book came out, Trump trashed it as “fake news” and derided Meadows as “fucking stupid”. Meadows concurred. These days, though, he appears to be cooperating with Jack Smith, the special counsel. The prospect of prison can bring clarity. Ask Michael Cohen.Giuliani and Eastman deny Hutchinson’s description of how the former groped her as the latter smiled. They also threaten to sue but they have larger things to focus on, professions and freedom at risk.If anyone’s character can be judged by the identities of their enemies, Hutchinson is well placed. Starting with Trump, she has amassed an array of appalling detractors. But she has able folks in her corner. Liz Cheney, the January 6 vice-chair whose stand against Trump cost her so dearly, is there. Hutchinson’s roster of legal talent, meanwhile, includes Jody Hunt and Bill Jordan. A justice department veteran, Hunt was chief of staff to Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general.When news of Enough was breaking, another former Trump legal adviser, Ty Cobb, told the Guardian: “Hutchinson was a very devoted White House employee who worked very very hard. She was proud to serve her country. So sad she had to endure this.”
      Enough is published in the US by Simon & Schuster More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr to run for president as independent in 2024 – report

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr is reportedly set to end his challenge to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and run instead as an independent candidate, in a move that could upset the 2024 race for the White House.Kennedy, 69 and a scion of a famous political dynasty – a son of the former US attorney general and New York senator Robert F Kennedy, a nephew of President John F Kennedy – will announce his run in Pennsylvania on 9 October, according to Mediaite.“Bobby feels that the Democratic National Committee is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” the website quoted a “Kennedy campaign insider” as saying.Whether Kennedy, the Green party pick, Cornel West, or a notional nominee backed by No Labels, a supposedly centrist group, a third-party candidate is widely seen to be likely to peel more support from Biden than the likely Republican nominee, Donald Trump, thereby potentially handing the presidency to the Republican.Kennedy is an attorney who made his name as an environmental campaigner before achieving notoriety as a prominent vaccine sceptic, particularly over Covid-19. His campaign has been rife with controversy, not least in a podcast interview released this week in which he repeated a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 attacks on New York.His campaign has also been roiled by an antisemitism scandal after Kennedy told reporters at a press dinner that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” at Caucasians and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people had greater immunity. The false claim was embraced by neo-Nazi groups and condemned by scientists and Jewish organizations.Kennedy’s remarks echoed antisemitic tropes that circulated widely during the pandemic which portrayed the coronavirus as a global Jewish plot and caused members of his own family to denounce him for “deplorable and untruthful” comments.Polling has shown Kennedy performing relatively well against Biden, the incumbent president, in the Democratic primary, but not close to posing a serious threat.However, Biden aides are reportedly nervous about the possible impact of third-party candidates in a likely presidential election match-up with Trump.Polling shows widespread concerns, including among Democrats, that at 80, Biden is too old to serve an effective second term in the White House. Trump is only three years younger – and faces 91 criminal charges, including for election subversion, and assorted civil threats – but polls show less concern among his fervent Republican base that he could be unfit to return to office.Rightwing figures – prominent among them Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s White House strategist – have encouraged Kennedy to run against Biden or as an independent.As cited by Mediate, in July the Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said: “I think he should run as a third-party candidate because I do think he should, he would win.”But not every observer thought Kennedy’s move would be bad for Biden.Joe Conason, editor of the National Memo, said: “Go Bobby! Running ‘independent’ means you’ll draw more voters from the candidate you resemble most in political ideology, personal conduct, and narcissistic mentality. (That’s Trump, not Biden.)” More

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      Unless Joe Biden stands aside, the world must prepare for President Trump 2.0 | Timothy Garton Ash

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      During the two months I spent in the US this summer, I kept asking every journalist, academic and analyst I met one simple question: “Who will be the next president of the United States?” The response was usually the same. First there was a distinct hesitation, then they said “Well, probably Joe Biden, but …”What followed the “but” was a long list of concerns, partly about deeper trends but mainly about how old and frail the 80-year-old president looks. Often, the conversation ended with my interlocutor saying it would be better if Biden stood aside, to let a younger candidate turn the age card against the 77-year-old Donald Trump.Biden has been a good president of the United States. Although the retreat from Afghanistan was chaotic, he dealt with the Covid pandemic well and is handling the war in Ukraine fairly well. He is presiding over a remarkably vibrant economy, with New Deal-style public spending accelerating a green transition and creating jobs. But if he stumbles – physically, mentally or politically – during the gruelling marathon that is a US presidential campaign, and lets Trump back in, that’s the only thing Biden will be remembered for.In a recent NBC poll, Trump and Biden were neck-and-neck, scoring 46% each. Any one of a number of factors unrelated to the characters and performances of the two candidates might swing such a close election. In the country’s hyperpolarised media environment, many Republican voters simply don’t see that the economy is doing well. AI will add to the already high possibility of misinformation, with Vladimir Putin certainly eager to tip the scales in favour of Trump. Third candidate initiatives, such as the well-intentioned centrist initiative No Labels and the intellectual activist Cornel West’s progressive-environmentalist campaign, are likely to take more votes from the Democrats than from the Republicans.Most worryingly for the Democrats, there’s a trend of Black, Hispanic and other non-white voters shifting from Democrat to Republican, and especially from Biden to Trump. There are sociological and historical explanations for this, as well as the strange appeal of Trump himself, but there’s little doubt that Biden’s age and frailty play a role.In a recent poll, three out of every four Americans said Biden was too old for a second term – at the end of which he would be 86. Only half those asked expressed the same concern about Trump. I spoke to four individuals who had seen Biden at close quarters in recent months. They said he was mentally fine, but physically showing his age. One commented on the way his voice sometimes faded to almost inaudible at the end of a sentence.All this will be ruthlessly exposed in the 24/7 media coverage of a presidential election campaign. A single fall from an election rally stage by the Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole played a part in his defeat in 1996. And Dole was a mere spring chicken of 73, in a more sedate media environment.Biden comes with one other liability. Because of his age, unusual attention will be focused on his running mate, who may have to step into the hot seat. But the vice-president, Kamala Harris, is not a great electoral asset, and hardly convinces as a possible “leader of the free world”. Despite the initial excitement, she has seemed marginal to the presidency, has an approval rating lower even than Biden’s and has made almost no impact on the world stage.Of course, Trump has huge liabilities too – above all, the multiple lawsuits that are taking much of his time and campaign funding. If Jack Smith, the prosecutor in the central case concerning possible fraud in the 2020 presidential election, is as effective as some think he is, Trump might even be in prison when Americans vote next November. Yet, astonishingly to an outsider, there’s little evidence that these prosecutions have so far seriously damaged his election prospects.Obviously, there are also risks associated with Biden stepping aside at this late stage. Some observers expressed a concern that the fragile rainbow coalition of the Democratic party could tear itself apart if set to find a new candidate. A former congressman disagreed, pointing to the disciplining effect of the threat of Trump. Certainly, there are credible contenders of a younger generation, such as the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro (who would then be the first Jewish president), the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer (who would then be the first female president), or California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.Not only would they turn the age card against Trump; they would also rejuvenate the image of the US in the world. At the moment, outsiders contemplate with astonishment what looks to us like a Brezhnevite gerontocracy in Washington. Biden, 80 going on 81. Trump, 77. The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, 81, freezing for half a minute like an old desktop with a bad internet connection. The former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, running again at the age of 83. The Californian Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein refusing to retire at 90. Really? Give us a break.One thing, however, is clear: the only person who can make this decision is Biden, with his wife, Jill. If it’s to happen, it would be best it happens fast, so younger candidates can declare themselves, raise sufficient funds and organise national campaigns, and then one of them can be selected and choose a credible running mate. “It must be before Thanksgiving,” one longtime observer of US politics exclaimed. That’s less than two months away.At this point, some American readers might be huffing, “Who’s this Brit telling us what we ought to do?” All I would say in reply is: sorry, but it’s not only your future that this contest will decide.There’s a bunch of interesting elections coming up on our side of the Atlantic: a crucial Polish election next month, which may determine the future of a fragile democracy; European parliament elections next June, which may see a sharp turn to the populist right; a British general election, which may see the post-Brexit UK returning to something vaguely resembling sanity; perhaps even a Ukrainian presidential election. None of these European elections will be as consequential for Europe as this American one.A second Trump presidency would be a disaster for the US. It would also be a catastrophe for Ukraine, an emergency for Europe and a crisis of the west. If Biden steps aside now, democrats everywhere will honour him, while the US Democrats can choose a younger candidate to see off Trump – and perhaps even inspire the world again with a sense of American dynamism.
      Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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      Trump gets done for fraud as GOP candidates vie for attention – podcast

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      Wednesday was debate night for almost all the Republican candidates for the White House, but once again, the man who chose not to turn up was stealing the headlines for yet another legal issue that went against him.
      Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and the others had ample opportunity to bring up the fact that a judge in New York ruled that Donald Trump had committed fraud for years while building a real estate empire. But they didn’t focus on that or any of the other court cases set to interrupt his campaign next year. So what did they all have to say? Did they manage to steal any of the limelight?
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Bill Kristol, the former chief of staff to the vice-president Dan Quayle and top conservative commentator, to get his take on the Republican field

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      This pointless Republican debate left us all feeling a little bit dumber | Moira Donegan

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      “Every time I hear you I feel a little bit dumber,” Nikki Haley said at the second Republican presidential primary debate last night. She was talking to Vivek Ramaswamy, the businessman currently polling at an average of about 6% among likely Republican voters. But she could have been talking about any one of the seven candidates: Haley, Ramaswamy, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, South Carolina senator Tim Scott, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former vice-president Mike Pence and the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum. The debate was rancorous, chaotic and punctured by statements so hateful, outlandish and extreme that they made an impression even by the current Republican party’s very low standards.Worst of all, the whole thing was pointless: Donald Trump, who is leading in the polls by more than 40 points, was not there. The candidates, wannabes, also-rans and cynical self-promoters, spent much of the evening attacking each other. But for the most part, they did not attack him.Donald Trump’s absence was, like in the first Republican debate, the most significant presence on the stage. As indictments, debts and civil judgements against the former president accumulate, and as his bluster and vulgarity lose their novelty and capacity to shock, there has been some suggestion that perhaps Trump will disqualify himself from running for president. Can a candidate make a credible bid for the presidency while also being charged with dozens of felonies? Can Trump persuade voters – of whom a majority have never voted for him, and who turned on him in large numbers just four years ago? These are legitimate questions, but they are questions for a general election: they are not relevant in the primary. Neither charges, nor convictions, nor legal judgments, nor mounting attorney’s fees will cause Trump to withdraw or lose significant support. His followers are immune to facts, and he is immune to shame. Barring his death, he will be the Republican nominee. His shadow loomed over the candidates onstage at the Reagan library like former Air Force One, which hung from the mezzanine above their line of gleaming podiums. One was tempted to imagine, more than once, what would happen if it fell.The purpose of the Republican presidential primary debates, if they can be said to have one, is to begin to define the party’s post-Trump identity. But this is premature: Donald Trump is very much still the party’s gravitational center, the sun that all other Republican politicians orbit around. And so why, exactly, were any of the candidates there? Why are these people running? DeSantis, for his part, seems to have once entertained sincere delusions that he might become president, but surely those have long since waned. Chris Christie’s campaign is something of a suicide mission, an expenditure of money and effort in the hope of damaging Trump; it is not working. Nikki Haley spends much of her time on the debate stages trying to steer her party away from what she views as its unelectable fringes, primarily the charismatic incoherence of Ramaswamy’s breed of “America First” right-populism. Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, appears to be seeking to reignite the Christian conservative sect of the party, but that lane is already crowded by the stiff and uncomfortable presence of Mike Pence, who is in the delicate position of trying to claim credit for all of Donald Trump’s accomplishments while also condemning the man who tried to get an angry mob to hang him. Doug Burgum, for his part, spent much of his time on stage complaining that everyone was ignoring him.To their great credit, the Fox and Univision moderators did attempt to press the candidates on policy, challenges that the seven contenders on stage largely ignored. Towards the start of the debate, in response to a question about the autoworkers’ strike, several of the candidates attempted to push the claim that Republicans are becoming the party of the working class, by which they mean white men in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. All dodged a question about the affordability of childcare. Nikki Haley tried to attack Ron DeSantis for being insufficiently friendly to energy interests; Tim Scott attacked Nikki Haley for the curtains that hung in her official residence while she was ambassador to the United Nations.That exchange commanded more total airtime than abortion, the issue that has driven the greatest trends in voting over the past year, but in the candidates’ brief foray into the topic, Ron DeSantis did take one of the evening’s few shots at Trump, whose anti-abortion stance he says is not extreme enough. Tim Scott, the only Black person onstage, made a point of asserting that slavery had no redeeming qualities – evidently a point that has to be made, for a Republican audience. And yet, he said, Black people survived slavery (in point of fact, many of them didn’t); worse, he suggested, was Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program.Ramaswamy, in two of the evening’s moral nadirs, both called for the elimination of birthright citizenship and referred to “transgenderism” as “a mental disorder”. Chris Christie attacked Joe Biden for “sleeping with” a member of the teacher’s union – an evident reference to the first lady, Jill Biden, who is a community college professor. By way of a response, Mike Pence, who has been known to refer to his wife as “mother”, commented that he has been sleeping with a teacher, his own wife, for 38 years. Like the debate itself, Pence’s comment left an image in my mind that I will never be able to expunge (and now, neither will you).If you think things cannot possibly sink lower, know that another Republican presidential debate is scheduled for November, in Miami. The presidential election is still more than a year away, but it is certain to feel much, much longer.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More