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      Trump running for 2024 ‘to stay out of jail’, Republican rival says

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      Donald Trump is running for election in 2024 “because he’s trying to stay out of jail”, one of his rivals for the Republican White House nomination said, as legal woes continue to surround the former president.Will Hurd, a former Republican congressman for Texas, offered the sharp rebuke of Trump’s conduct in an interview with CNN, as Chris Christie questioned whether “the guy under indictment in four different cases” can beat the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.The criticism of Trump, who is comfortably leading in Republican polls, came as several primary candidates – including the former president – have refused to sign a pledge committing to support the ultimate GOP nominee.On Sunday, Hurd was asked about a CNN report that Trump’s legal team was connected to a voting system breach in Georgia in January 2021. CNN reported that prosecutors had found text messages and emails documenting an effort by Trump’s team to gain “unauthorized access to voting systems” in Coffee county.“I think this is an example of how this is not about the first amendment,” Hurd told CNN’s State of the Union while referring to the constitutional protection for political speech. “This is about a president trying to overturn an election and creating a conspiracy.“To me, it’s an indication of how fragile our election system is, and how Donald Trump’s efforts were making us increase our lack of trust in our systems.“And [it is] one more example of why Donald Trump is running for president: because he’s trying to stay out of jail. Because as more of this information comes out and as the American people recognizes the extent of his baggage, they’re getting sick and tired of it.”Speaking to ABC’s This Week show, Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is running for the GOP nomination, drew attention to the fact that Trump has, so far, been indicted three times, with a pending fourth on state election-related charges in Georgia.“Let me remind the viewers out there: if he’s indicted in Atlanta this week, as we’re anticipating that he will be, we will have the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president out on bail in four different jurisdictions: New York, Miami, Washington, and Atlanta. Four different jurisdictions he’s out on bail,” Christie said, referring to the cities where the combination of federal and state authorities who have obtained charges against Trump are based.“What I think Republican voters have to ask themselves is two things. First is: is he really the guy, under indictment in four different cases given the conduct that he committed, someone who can beat Joe Biden or any other Democrat in November 2024?“And when are we going to stop pretending that this is normal? It is not. It is not acceptable.”The criticism of Trump rolled in as several Republican primary candidates have refused to sign a pledge committing to support the ultimate GOP nominee.Addressing the refusal of some of her party’s candidates to sign the “Beat Biden pledge”, Republican National Committee chairperson Ronna McDaniel has said endorsing pledge is required to participate in the first GOP primary debate next week.Hurd, who is yet to meet the polling and donor threshold to make the debate stage, has repeatedly said he will not sign the pledge.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“My issue is, I’m not going to support Donald Trump,” Hurd told CNN.Indignantly invoking the former president’s slogan, Hurd added: “Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is running for president to stay out of prison.”Candidates must have reached 1% in at least three national polls – or 1% in two national polls and 1% in a poll in an early-voting state – to participate in the upcoming Republican debate. They must also prove they have 40,000 unique donors and then sign the loyalty pledge.Christie, who has met the polling and donor threshold, told ABC the pledge was a “bad idea” and would not commit to signing it.Trump himself has said he will not sign the pledge and has not committed to participating in the 23 August debate.“Why would I sign it?” Trump said in an interview with the rightwing news channel Newsmax last week.“I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president. So right there, there’s a problem.” More

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      ‘People just want change’: political circus at Iowa state fair can’t dispel civic discontent

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      Donald Trump held aloft a pork chop on a stick. Ron DeSantis and children rode bumper cars and a ferris wheel, played carnival games and ate snow cones and ice-cream. Vivek Ramaswamy rapped Lose Yourself by Eminem, Marianne Williamson recalled her days as a cabaret singer and Mike Pence said he was hoping to renew his acquaintance with a cow called Chippy.All the fun of the state fair in Iowa includes an agriculture and livestock show, amusement rides, every fried food imaginable and, every four years, a political circus like no other. Presidential aspirants make the pilgrimage to Des Moines to field questions from voters – including hecklers – and show their ability to speak, dress and eat like Middle America in the state that kicks off the Republican nominating contest in January.But for all the sunshine, the opening weekend of this year’s fair did little to dispel a sense of America as nation sunk in a political depression. It was difficult to find fans of Joe Biden. While Trump drew the biggest crowd, plenty of Iowans said they were eager to move on from the former president. Some of the most passionate and sizeable support was for radical outsiders such as Robert Kennedy Jr and Vivek Ramaswamy, suggesting discontent with the status quo and yearning for disrupters, no matter how unorthodox or outrageous.“I see it everywhere – people just want change,” said Gail Buffington, 62, wearing a white “Kennedy 2024” cap and “RFK Jr for president 2024” T-shirt. “They want this oligarchy to be done with. We saw that with Bernie Sanders in 2015. That was the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen in my life.”But this being Iowa, even populism comes deep fried in nostalgia. The fair, first held in 1854 and now spanning about 445 acres and attracting a million people over 11 days, is a point of pride for a state that often feels flown over and left behind. Homages to the way things used to be are everywhere, from a pipe band in revolutionary-era garb to an early 20th-century barber shop to a diner with old school Coca-Cola signs. Each morning, the national anthem is played, and visitors stand to attention.This is a majority white heartland where Trump’s “Make America great again” message still resonates. On Saturday he swooped in on his “Trump Force One” Boeing 757, stealing the thunder of Florida governor DeSantis. He drew thousands of sweaty, chanting supporters to his stops at a pork tent, baby farm animal exhibit and Steer ‘n’ Stein bar. In a dig at DeSantis, he was joined by about a dozen members of Congress from Florida, including Matt Gaetz, who said darkly: “We know that only through force can we make any change in a corrupt town like Washington DC.”Trump was not alone in trading on the idea that America needs to rediscover its mojo. Several other candidates harked back to the country they grew up in: Republican Nikki Haley recalled her childhood in small town South Carolina. “It was always about faith, family and country,” she told a crowd, citing research that 78% of Americans think their kids will not live as good as a life as they did. “And that’s what I want America to be again. That’s what I want us to get back to.”Kennedy also spoke with gauzy nostalgia about living during the period of great prosperity after the second world war. “When I grew up in the sixties, my uncle [John F Kennedy] was president, we had created the greatest generator of wealth in the history of mankind,” he told a big and enthusiastic crowd at the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox. “We owned half the wealth on the face of the earth in our country.”These laments for the past pointed to malaise in the present. For Democrats, the choice is between an 80-year-old whose son is the subject of a special counsel investigation, a self-help author with no experience in elected office and a vaccine conspiracy theorist who has won praise from Steve Bannon and other far-right extremists.For Republicans, the runaway leader in the opinion polls is twice impeached and facing 78 criminal counts in three separate court cases. There could be a fourth criminal case filed against him within days.His principal rival is running even further to the right and has become embroiled in a debate over whether slavery had upsides. And Ramaswamy, whose youthful energy and talk of “revolution” could appeal to a new generation, speaks of a climate change agenda “hoax” while voting to drill, frack and burn coal as never before. He also vowed to shut down the Federal Bureau of Investigation.It might be argued that neither party is offering an inspirational optimist in the mould of John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. The country is divided and at odds with itself. Many voters are turned off, especially by the prospect of a Biden v Trump rematch.Ginny McKee, 73, a retired special education teacher from Claremont, California, said: “I just wish Trump and Biden would go away. Both of them damaged the presidency or, in Trump’s case, what people did to him damaged the presidency.“I don’t think Biden is running the government. There’s just a whole group and they keep him tethered for fear he might say his views. My husband at home watches Fox News all the time so I’m getting a lot of things that other people don’t see: the blunders and all of the word games and all of that.”Despite the White House pointing to figures that show low unemployment, inflation falling and the best post-coronavirus pandemic recovery of any major industrial nation, negativity about the Biden economy now seems baked in with many voters.Patty Reeve, 68, a retired accountant, said: “He caused the inflation with all the excess spending. He continued to pour money into the economy that went far past the point we needed it, continued to pour money into things on the environment. We’re not ready for electric vehicles. We don’t have the infrastructure. He’s pushed that to no end. Just all of his policies have been wrong and I’m not buying his spin on it.”Dennis Alatorre, 30, a call centre worker, claimed that he was living proof of the president’s failure. “I actually just lost my job because of Biden’s economy. The company that I work for no longer could afford to continue to have my position because they were paying so much in taxes and regulations for work-at-home employees. So my position basically just got eliminated.“It had nothing to do with my performance or anything of that nature. It was simply because they just couldn’t afford to continue to have that position for me anymore. So I can directly relate that the unemployment rate has in fact increased and it’s very apparent just based on the economy that Biden has presented. The cost of gasoline is almost the same price as milk.”Even Biden’s supporters wish that someone else was the party nominee. Kathy Jones, 73, a retired public school teacher from Iowa City, said: “I felt like he has accomplished amazing things and he’s too old. I’m sorry that the Democratic party has not been able to come up with a candidate other than, like, Marianne Williamson, who’s kind of out there, or a conspiracy theorist: Robert Kennedy’s son. That’s disappointing.”On the Republican side, Trump continues to reign despite – or because of – criminal charges widely dismissed here as politically motivated. Some fans wore bright green hats that said “Donald Trump Back to Back Iowa Champ” and bright green T-shirts that declared: “Make Our Farmers Great Again”.Joe Wiederien, 52, said: “He says it straight up and he’s the best president we’ve ever had. He says things as he means it and, for the United States, he puts our people first. He had a good, strong economy built up and safe borders.”But there is a significant chunk of Republicans at the state fair who wish it wasn’t so. John Rusk, who refused to vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, said: “It looks like it’s a done deal. He’s got his 30%, 40% of diehard followers. The others are all splitting the vote – 2% here, 10% there, 15% there. The other problem is they’re still following Trump’s line. They will not come out and tell the truth that Trump is a traitor and shouldn’t be back in the White House. He’s an insurrectionist.”DeSantis once seemed to provide an alternative, but his struggles to show the kind of down home charm that Iowa expects were laid bare again on Saturday. As he held an event with Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, a plane circled overhead with the taunting message, “Be [likable] Ron!” – reportedly paid for by the Trump campaign. The conversation was also interrupted by LGBTQ+ rights protesters blowing whistles and ringing bells. DeSantis also had to run the gauntlet of pro-Trump hecklers at various stops.Rusk added: “Ron DeSantis might have been all right, except he’s trying to out-Trump Trump and he’s fighting the culture wars. The average middle American that’s not too liberal and not too conservative – the poor people in the middle of the political spectrum who don’t have a voice right now – doesn’t care about the culture wars. It’s all been ginned up by the rightwing press. I don’t care if somebody wants to transition to another sex or gender or whatever. It’s none of my damn business.“As a Republican I’m in a small minority but I’m one of the swing voters in the middle that’s going to keep Trump out.”DeSantis, Haley, Pence and Republican candidate Larry Elder had one more important pilgrimage, passing the aroma of cheese curds, corn dogs, cotton candy, funnel cakes and deep fried pickledawgs to visit the state fair’s 600lb butter cow – an attraction dating back more than a century. Sarah Pratt, 46, who has sculpted the butter cow since 2006, said: “It’s tradition, almost like you have to have a corn dog, ride the giant slide, see the butter cow. It’s like a checklist.”Come the end of the fair, the cooler will be switched off, and the cow will melt down and end up in five-gallon buckets. But for those seeking a hopeful metaphor, Pratt and her twin daughters will sculpt it all over again next year. More

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      A tsunami of AI misinformation will shape next year’s knife-edge elections | John Naughton

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      It looks like 2024 will be a pivotal year for democracy. There are elections taking place all over the free world – in South Africa, Ghana, Tunisia, Mexico, India, Austria, Belgium, Lithuania, Moldova and Slovakia, to name just a few. And of course there’s also the UK and the US. Of these, the last may be the most pivotal because: Donald Trump is a racing certainty to be the Republican candidate; a significant segment of the voting population seems to believe that the 2020 election was “stolen”; and the Democrats are, well… underwhelming.The consequences of a Trump victory would be epochal. It would mean the end (for the time being, at least) of the US experiment with democracy, because the people behind Trump have been assiduously making what the normally sober Economist describes as “meticulous, ruthless preparations” for his second, vengeful term. The US would morph into an authoritarian state, Ukraine would be abandoned and US corporations unhindered in maximising shareholder value while incinerating the planet.So very high stakes are involved. Trump’s indictment “has turned every American voter into a juror”, as the Economist puts it. Worse still, the likelihood is that it might also be an election that – like its predecessor – is decided by a very narrow margin.In such knife-edge circumstances, attention focuses on what might tip the balance in such a fractured polity. One obvious place to look is social media, an arena that rightwing actors have historically been masters at exploiting. Its importance in bringing about the 2016 political earthquakes of Trump’s election and Brexit is probably exaggerated, but it – and notably Trump’s exploitation of Twitter and Facebook – definitely played a role in the upheavals of that year. Accordingly, it would be unwise to underestimate its disruptive potential in 2024, particularly for the way social media are engines for disseminating BS and disinformation at light-speed.And it is precisely in that respect that 2024 will be different from 2016: there was no AI way back then, but there is now. That is significant because generative AI – tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion et al – are absolutely terrific at generating plausible misinformation at scale. And social media is great at making it go viral. Put the two together and you have a different world.So you’d like a photograph of an explosive attack on the Pentagon? No problem: Dall-E, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion will be happy to oblige in seconds. Or you can summon up the latest version of ChatGPT, built on OpenAI’s large language model GPT-4, and ask it to generate a paragraph from the point of view of an anti-vaccine advocate “falsely claiming that Pfizer secretly added an ingredient to its Covid-19 vaccine to cover up its allegedly dangerous side-effects” and it will happily oblige. “As a staunch advocate for natural health,” the chatbot begins, “it has come to my attention that Pfizer, in a clandestine move, added tromethamine to its Covid-19 vaccine for children aged five to 11. This was a calculated ploy to mitigate the risk of serious heart conditions associated with the vaccine. It is an outrageous attempt to obscure the potential dangers of this experimental injection, which has been rushed to market without appropriate long-term safety data…” Cont. p94, as they say.You get the point: this is social media on steroids, and without the usual telltale signs of human derangement or any indication that it has emerged from a machine. We can expected a tsunami of this stuff in the coming year. Wouldn’t it be prudent to prepare for it and look for ways of mitigating it?That’s what the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University is trying to do. In June, it published a thoughtful paper by Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan on how to prepare for the deluge. It contains a useful categorisation of malicious uses of the technology, but also, sensibly, includes the non-malicious ones – because, like all technologies, this stuff has beneficial uses too (as the tech industry keeps reminding us).The malicious uses it examines are disinformation, so-called “spear phishing”, non-consensual image sharing and voice and video cloning, all of which are real and worrying. But when it comes to what might be done about these abuses, the paper runs out of steam, retreating to bromides about public education and the possibility of civil society interventions while avoiding the only organisations that have the capacity actually to do something about it: the tech companies that own the platforms and have a vested interest in not doing anything that might impair their profitability. Could it be that speaking truth to power is not a good career move in academia?What I’ve been readingShake it upDavid Hepworth has written a lovely essay for LitHub about the Beatles recording Twist and Shout at Abbey Road, “the moment when the band found its voice”.Dish the dirtThere is an interesting profile of Techdirt founder Mike Masnick by Kashmir Hill in the New York Times, titled An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology.Truth bombsWhat does Oppenheimer the film get wrong about Oppenheimer the man? A sharp essay by Haydn Belfield for Vox illuminates the differences. More

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      Mike Pence tours Iowa state fair in search of votes – but who is his candidacy aimed at?

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      Mike Pence and wife Karen strolled through the Iowa state fair, their little fingers locked together, as soap bubbles drifted by and chairlifts trundled overhead. The couple donned red aprons – his said “Vice President Mike Pence” – and flipped pork chops on a giant grill while smiling for photographers.Then, with a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead and settling on his cheek on a hot August day, Pence told reporters that he was the “most qualified candidate” and “most consistent conservative in the field” for the Republican nomination for US president in 2024.But the carefully choreographed scene hit a glitch. Andrew Wallace was wearing a “Make America great again” cap and “Buck Fiden” T-shirt and holding a “Trump” sign as well as Pence’s memoir So Help Me God. The 21-year-old from Wisconsin said loudly: “Mike Pence is a traitor and we all know it. He could have sent the votes back to the states but he chose not to do it because he’s a coward.”The episode offered a stark reminder that Pence, once loyal to the point of sycophancy, now stands accused of treachery by supporters of former president Donald Trump over his refusal to overturn their defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Some called for the then vice-president to be hanged as they stormed the US Capitol on January 6 2021 (this week in Iowa a man approached Pence and remarked: “I’m glad they didn’t hang you.”)Now Pence has emerged as one of the central figures in a criminal indictment of Trump over his alleged effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Filed earlier this month by special counsel Jack Smith, the indictment documents Trump’s many attempts to pressure Pence to disrupt the certification process on January 6. At one point, Trump allegedly told Pence, “You’re too honest.”Although constitutional experts agree that Pence had no authority to challenge the election results, his role in certifying Trump’s defeat has won him few fans with Republican voters, 70% of whom believe Biden’s win was illegitimate. That reality has complicated, if not erased, the hopes of a man seen by many as a throwback to a Republican party that has largely ceased to exist.Pence used his platform at the Iowa state fair – a rite of passage for candidates to gorge on fried food and woo middle America – to defend his actions in protecting the constitution, affirm a hawkish approach foreign policy and endorse cutting welfare benefits in the name of fiscal responsibility. He spoke of his faith in God, civility and former president Ronald Reagan. These would once have been uncontroversial, even essential foundations of any Republican candidacy, especially in religiously conservative Iowa, which holds the first-in-the-nation caucuses in January.But Trump took over the party of Reagan and transformed it from within. He attacked constitutional democracy with a barrage of lies, promoted “America-first” isolationism and ran up a huge national debt. There is nothing traditional about his approach to civility or God. All of which has left Pence out of step with the party base.One example is over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Pence has pledged continued US support but Trump and his allies in Congress want to halt funding. Wallace, the Trump supporter, said: “If Mike Pence was a true conservative, he would join the conservative movement and oppose the war in Ukraine.”John Rusk, a Republican who opposes Trump, retorted: “How would you like it if your country was overtaken – your democratic country was attacked, bombed, raped, murdered, looted? Come on. That’s not the American way. The American way is to stop people like that, stop tyrants.”Wallace replied: “Talk to the majority of young Republicans. They did a poll of that kind down in West Palm Beach and 96% opposed it. Those are the young people, Gen Z, millennials. If the people that are going to be fighting in a war don’t want to fight the war then why are the people like you, the older generation, fighting for us to go to Ukraine?”With that he left and Rusk shouted after him: “You want Russia to come here then, don’t you? You’d love it.”Pence is also the only major candidate who supports a federal ban on abortion at six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Recent voters across America suggest this could be an electoral liability. But Pence said on Friday: “I reject the notion that … standing for the sanctity of life is a political loser. There are things more important than politics but I really believe that, when we stand for the sanctity of life on principle and with compassion, the American people will rally to our cause.”Earlier, the former vice-president drew a crowd of about a hundred people to an event hosted by Iowa governor Kim Reynolds. Wearing checked shirt, blue jeans and brown boots, the white-haired Pence, once described by Trump as “central casting”, looked the part of a Republican candidate from another era. He played folksy by praising the food at the state fair, saying he would see its famed butter cow sculpture and recalling a meeting in Iowa with a cow called Chippy.Sherry Power, 78, a retired nurse from Corona, California, who said: “I love him. He’s got integrity like we don’t see any more here and he’ll build on that if he gets in. He doesn’t have bad things to say about any of the other people that are running for president and I like that. He has experience and that is the big difference between he and a lot of the other people that are running.”But Pence’s poor standing in opinion polls underscores the monumental challenge he faces. According to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, he stands at a distant fourth in the race, winning the support of roughly 5% of likely Republican primary voters across the country. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed Pence at just 3% in Iowa, which will hold its caucuses in January.In one bleak sign of his primary prospects, Pence raised a meagre $1.2m during the second quarter of the year. That haul put Pence behind two other candidates, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who announced their campaigns the same week that he did.The Pence campaign is remaining upbeat and content with the notion that he represents traditional values. Marc Short, an adviser, said: “I would argue that he’s the only classical conservative in this race. But as he says, what the Trump-Pence era did was to build upon that, not to replace it. It took that as the foundation and there were some populist policies added on top of that. There’s a much broader number of classical Republicans still in our party and we’ll test that theory.”But political analysts regard his chances as slim. Michael D’Antonio, co-author of The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence, said: “I don’t know what he’s doing in this race other than trying to keep himself in the public eye. His candidacy is really puzzling. I don’t get it. Maybe he’s trying to recover some of the dignity he lost as vice-president.”D’Antonio suggested the former vice-president’s campaign may be intended for the history books rather than the primary voters of today. “The stand that he took on January 6 is the main thing that has distinguished him as a public official, and he could be trying to make sure that history doesn’t forget,” he said. “In a way, defying Trump’s base is similar to defying Trump himself on that day.”But in Iowa, David Stelzer, who at the Des Moines Register newspaper’s political soapbox asked Pence if he had committed treason, thinks he should have spoken out much sooner after January 6. “The sad thing is he won’t get that chapter in a future Profiles in Courage book because he didn’t finish the job and it was because he’s so worried about alienating the Trump base.”Stelzer, 63, a retired federal government employee who lives in Denver, added: “His chances in the Republican primary are zero. This is the tragedy. He will not win because the Trump base will not allow it. I mean, Jesus, they set up gallows for him.” More

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      Perverse as it sounds, Donald Trump in a prison cell may be the worst possible outcome | Emma Brockes

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      It seems a long time ago, but there was a brief period, after Joe Biden’s inauguration and before the 6 January hearings and the start of campaigning for next year’s presidential election, when it was possible to avoid Donald Trump for days at a time. He was still there, obviously, wandering the corridors at Mar-a-Lago, Gloria Swanson-style, and posting screeds to Truth Social. But there was no real reason to think about him and, for that short period, he was returned to his essential state: just another person posting unhinged rants online.This is not where Trump is now – in the US, at least. Thanks to a raft of legal actions, culminating earlier this month in the justice department’s arraignment of the former president for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election result, Trump is not only front and centre every day, but in danger of ascending to a new position in the news cycle: political martyr and victim of a witch-hunt. Given the preposterousness of the events leading up to this moment – only recently, a jury found Trump liable for defamation and sexual abuse – it seems inevitable we should find ourselves here.Trump, of course, is keenly aware of the potential in his superficially dire situation and has already leaned fully into it. In campaign stops across the US, and with the threat of jail hanging over him, he is doing the thing we know from experience to be the man’s absolute forte: siphoning the heat and energy from any given charge against him and refracting it back on his enemies. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you,” he told a crowd in New Hampshire on Tuesday. As the New York Times pointed out this week, his new campaign message for the 2024 election is: “I’m being indicted for you”. (A woman at the New Hampshire event told the reporter, nonsensically but with heart: “What, am I next?”)It is an exceedingly weird and insoluble problem. From experience we know that the only blows that land on Trump are either ridicule – recall his face when Obama mocked him, all those years ago, during the White House correspondents’ dinner – or ignoring him. Of the two, only the latter really promises results. In the shocked days after Trump’s election in 2016, I recall that Obama’s moment of mockery was singled out as an example of precisely the kind of leftwing self-indulgence that dislodged the first pebble in Trump’s psychology, and ended in his run for the White House. It is a mistake to take the man seriously; indicting him on four criminal counts of allegedly attempting to overturn a democratic election is the very definition of taking someone seriously. And yet, in a functioning democracy, how on earth might one let this pass?As such, the unfolding of the latest and most serious legal action against Trump highlights a stark divide between the political and judicial rationales for pursuing him. As has already been observed, Trump is on exceedingly thin ice with Moxila A Upadhyaya, the judge who set the terms of his conditions for release pending trial. In the last week, Trump posted what might be construed as vague threats in the direction of any prospective juror (“If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”), raising the possibility of a scenario in which he is yanked to jail and campaigns for the presidency from his cell.There is, in the current climate in the US, nothing pleasing about this image. In fact, with every passing day, and with a perversity no amount of exposure to Trump can ever quite normalise, Trump in jail seems like the worst possible outcome. Campaigning from a prison cell would lend Trump a righteousness exceeding even his present grandiose narrative, and widen the sweep of his supporters by offering them a wildly romantic and dramatic cause to join.What remains so hard to grapple with is that in spite of the deadly seriousness of the events that got us here – it is easy to forget, sometimes, that people died on 6 January – as ever with Trump, one senses the wink behind every gesture. When he tells supporters, as he did in March, “I am your retribution”, his language is like a biblical script with Mel Gibson behind it, a hokey narrative that serves two purposes: it offers a genuine cause for aggrieved supporters to latch on to and, simultaneously, it extends an invitation to join him in a cosmic joke against everyone else. One imagines Trump in jail, his demeanour unchanged, which is to say that of an after-dinner host, smirking and shrugging and rolling his eyes as he says: “I’m like Jesus Christ at this point.”
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist based in New York
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      DeSantis claims agents can tell traffickers from migrants in call for deadly force

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      The rightwing Florida governor and 2024 presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has sparked controversy by outlining a hardline border policy of deadly force despite acknowledging that drug traffickers could be difficult to distinguish from migrants crossing into the US.DeSantis, whose ailing campaign has failed to cut into the lead of the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, said that under his direction as president, US law enforcement on the lookout for drugs would not mistakenly use lethal force on migrants because US agents would have “rules of engagement” similar to police or US forces in war zones like Iraq.In an NBC interview broadcast on Monday night, the Republican Florida governor was asked about a campaign-trail promise: “If cartels are trying to run product into this country, they’re going to end up stone-cold dead.”“How do you know you’re using deadly force against the right people?” his interviewer, Dasha Burns, asked.“Same way a police officer would know,” DeSantis said. “Same way somebody operating in Iraq would know.“You know, these people in Iraq at the time, they all looked the same. You didn’t know who had a bomb strapped to them. So those guys have to make judgments.”Data analysis by Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit, shows police killed at least 1,201 people in the US in 2022.John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, called DeSantis’s proposal “terrifying”.“That ‘same way in Iraq’ line is terrifying,” Pfaff wrote. “It’s an open embrace of any sort of false positive rate and the large-scale murder of innocent people. DeSantis really is really being quite openly murderous. (And imputing that same murderous indifference to police, as a compliment.)”Pfaff also pointed to a 2020 ruling in which conservatives on the US supreme court said the family of a 15-year-old Mexican boy shot dead by a US border patrol agent could not sue, because the shooting was a matter of national security.In Iraq, between the invasion in 2003 and the large-scale US withdrawal in 2011, American forces were often attacked with bombs either vehicle-borne, remote-controlled or carried or propelled by suicide bombers.The US defense department puts the US military and civilian death toll between 2003 and 2010 at 4,431. Iraq Body Count, a British non-profit, says 15,162, or 13%, of documented civilian deaths in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 were caused by US-led coalition forces.As a US navy lawyer, DeSantis deployed to Iraq in 2007, advising special forces. He has touted his military service, also at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, saying it sets him aside from the rest of the Republican field.But he has struggled to make his mark on the primary, falling further behind Trump despite the former US president’s criminal indictments and other forms of legal jeopardy.Amid a widely reported campaign reset, the hard-right governor, who has targeted LGBTQ+ rights, the teaching of race in US history and other progressive priorities, also attempted to show a softer side. Joined by his wife, Casey, to discuss their children and life at home, DeSantis told NBC he was “really good” at making waffles, adding that his children “actually do like the eggs”, as well as macaroni and cheese from a box.With his children, he said, “I’m very even keeled, but if I do raise the voice a little bit, they do, they snap to attention.”On the campaign trail, DeSantis has faced fierce criticism after using violent imagery, including a promise to “start slitting throats” among federal workers once elected.Discussing his hardline border policy, DeSantis said his proposal to authorise lethal force against cartels would be “similar to like if you’re in the military.“You have rules of engagement. Anyone that’s hostile intent or a hostile act, which … cartels are, you know, you would then engage with lethal force.“I think these cartels are basically foreign terrorist organisations. They are responsible for killing more Americans on an annual basis than any other group or country throughout the entire world. And yet, this is just happening, and it’s happening in communities all across the United States.”Hardline rhetoric about the border and law enforcement is common among Republican candidates. In office, Trump reportedly wanted to bomb cartel facilities in Mexico but was blocked by aides.DeSantis continued: “It really hit me when I was down in Arizona. You know, most of the border doesn’t have a wall, of course, but there was parts where there was a wall. And these guys are working on the wall. I’m like, ‘What are you doin’?’ They’re like, ‘We’re repairing the hole the cartels cut through the steel beams.’“So if you see that happening, and they’ve got the satchel of fentanyl strapped to their back, you use deadly force against them, you lay them out, you will see a change of behaviour. You have to take the fight to the cartels; otherwise we’re going to continue to see Americans dying.” More

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      in US Politics

      DeSantis says Trump ‘of course lost’ in 2020 when pressed in interview

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      “Of course” Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Ron DeSantis said in an interview broadcast Monday – after being pressed on the issue.Appearing on NBC, the Florida governor and nearest challenger to Trump for the nomination in 2024 was asked: “Yes or no – did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”DeSantis said: “Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on 20 January every four years is the winner.”His interviewer, Dasha Burns, said: “If you can’t give a yes or no on whether or not Trump lost –”DeSantis said: “No, of course he lost!”Burns said: “Trump lost the 2020 election?”DeSantis said: “Of course! Joe Biden’s the president.”Trump continues to lie that the 2020 election was decided by voter fraud, even after the former president was last week indicted on four criminal charges related to his attempts to overturn the result.Despite those charges and 74 others over hush-money payments and retention of classified records, and despite the prospect of more election-related charges in Georgia, Trump leads DeSantis by more than 30 points in most polling averages and by healthy margins in early voting states.DeSantis’s campaign is widely seen to be tanking. He and the rest of the Republican field have struggled to find a way to attack Trump, given his hold on the party. Discomfort when asked to say Biden won in 2020 or to condemn Trump’s lie is widely seen to be a symptom of that malaise.DeSantis told NBC the 2024 election should be a “referendum on Joe Biden’s policies, and the failures that we’ve seen and we are presenting a positive vision for the future”.If it is, he said, “We will win the presidency, and we will have a chance to turn the country around.“If, on the other hand, the election is not about 20 January 2025 [inauguration day] but 6 January 2021 [the day of the deadly attack on Congress by Trump supporters] or what document was left by the toilet at Mar-a-Lago, if it is a referendum on that, we are going to lose, and that’s just the reality.”A Trump spokesperson, Steve Cheung, told NBC: “Ron DeSantis should really stop being Joe Biden’s biggest cheerleader.”Another Trump aide, Liz Harrington, said: “If you think Joe Biden got 81 million votes, you’re an idiot. If you’re just saying that, you’re either a coward or corrupt. Either way it’s disqualifying.”In 2020, Biden received 81,282,916 votes to 74,223,369 for Trump. Biden won the presidency in the electoral college by 306-232, the result by which Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.DeSantis did offer Trump support, echoing his claim that his proliferating legal problems are the results of political persecution.DeSantis also said the 2020 election was not a “good-run election”.“But I also think Republicans didn’t fight back,” DeSantis added. “You’ve got to fight back when that is happening.“But here’s the issue that I think is important for Republican voters to think about: Why did we have all those mail votes? Because of Trump turned the government over to [former Covid task force leader Dr Anthony] Fauci.“They embraced lockdowns. They did the Cares Act, which funded mail-in ballots across the country.”As NBC pointed out, Florida has long allowed voting by mail.In the interview, scheduled to air on NBC Nightly News on Monday night, DeSantis was also asked about new standards for teaching history in Florida schools, which have proved controversial for saying some Black people benefited from being enslaved.DeSantis said: “We’ve been involved in education, not indoctrination. Those standards were not political at all.”Kamala Harris, the vice-president, has attacked DeSantis on the issue.Asked about criticism from Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the US Senate and a rival for the presidential nomination, DeSantis said: “Don’t take that side of Kamala Harris against the state of Florida. Don’t indulge those lies.” More

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      in Elections

      Pence has ‘no plans to testify’ against Trump but vows to ‘obey the law’

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      Former vice-president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence said that he has “no plans to testify” against Donald Trump but vowed to “obey the law”.In a recent interview after federal prosecutors charged Trump over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Pence was asked by CBS correspondent Major Garrett whether he would be a witness against Trump if the case went to trial.Pence replied: “In this case, we’ve stood firmly for the rule of law. I took a stand, we challenged in court the scope of any testimony that I could provide, because as [the former] president of the Senate, the constitution provides me with the protections that are afforded to members of Congress. We won that at the lower court level and ultimately, we responded to a subpoena, and I have no plans to testify.“But people can be confident we’ll obey the law. We’ll respond to the call of the law, if it comes and we’ll just tell the truth.”Garrett went on to ask Pence whether he regards the latest indictment against Trump as political persecution, a claim that rightwing media outlets have been promoting in attempts to undermine the ex-president’s charges.Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding in connection with his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6 2021, the day that Congress met to certify his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.Pence said: “I’ve been very concerned about politicization at the justice department for years. I’ve been deeply troubled to see the double standard between the way that the justice department has gone after the president … and the way they seem to … take no interest in getting to the bottom of allegations of corruption around” Biden’s family.The Democratic incumbent president’s son Hunter Biden is facing tax- and gun-related charges filed by prosecutors.Nonetheless, Pence added he didn’t want to “prejudge” the indictment against Trump.“I don’t know whether the government has the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to support this case,” Pence said during the interview, scheduled to air Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation. “[Trump] is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”Pence vowed to “clean house” at the justice department, should he become the next president, saying that he will appoint “men and women at the highest levels … in this country that will restore the confidence of the American people in equal treatment under the law.”In response to whether he believed Trump can receive a fair trial in Washington DC’s federal courthouse, Pence replied that he has “every confidence” that the former president will make his case before a judge.“I’m never going to waver in making it clear to people that whatever the outcome of this indictment and – wherever it goes – I know I did my duty … to the constitution.”Earlier this week, Pence told Fox News that Trump and his “gaggle of crackpot lawyers” asked him to “literally reject votes” during the certification process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the indictment, Trump pressured Pence repeatedly from late December to early January to reject electoral college votes, including on Christmas Day.At one point, Trump allegedly told the former vice-president, “You’re too honest,” a phrase that the Pence campaign has since capitalized on by selling “Too Honest” merchandise.Pence, in a separate interview Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, said: “I’ve been called worse. … I’m more than happy to wear that label.”In a typically combative post on his Truth Social platform, Trump denied saying Pence was “too honest”.“He’s delusional,” said Trump’s post, which also dismissed Pence as “not a very good person”.Trump’s charges related to his 2020 defeat were contained in one of three indictments pending against him as of Sunday. He is also facing charges in New York state stemming from hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels. And he is also facing a separate federal indictment pertaining to his allegedly illicit hoarding of government secrets at his Florida resort after he left the Oval Office.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. He is widely seen as the frontrunner to clinch the Republican nomination for president, with the rest of the field – including Pence – trailing him substantially in the polls. More