US elections 2024

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      CNN’s Trump debacle suggests TV media set to repeat mistakes of 2016

      by

      Donald Trump and CNN were in rare agreement: the former president’s hour of free prime-time television on Wednesday evening, dressed up as a “town hall” with Republican voters, was a triumph.“America was served very well by what we did last night,” CNN’s chief executive, Chris Licht, told skeptical members of his own staff at the network’s daily news conference the following morning.“You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.”As it happens, quite a lot of people said that not only did CNN fail to get answers but it was repeating the terrible mistake of 2016 when it treated Trump as an entertainer not a hostile politician by giving him hours of airtime to spout freely because he was good for ratings, and therefore profits.One of CNN’s own reporters, Oliver Darcy, was less enthused than his boss.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” he said in his daily newsletter, Reliable Sources.Darcy then listed all that was wrong. The same old “professional lie machine” that is Trump ignoring the question, talking over the moderator, unleashing “a firehose of disinformation upon the country”.“And CNN aired it all. On and on it went. It felt like 2016 all over again,” he wrote.More than a few Republicans shared that view. Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for the George W Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, condemned the news network.“CNN was completely unprepared to hold Trump accountable. CNN has done a complete disservice to our democracy,” he wrote. “CNN, you failed journalism and our country.”The New York Times said Trump’s advisers were delighted: “They can’t believe he is getting an hour on CNN with an audience that cheers his every line and laughs at his every joke.”Which raises the question of how television, in particular, should cover Trump as the next election comes into focus. It’s a question even Fox News, which has fallen out with the former president, is now grappling with.Ted Koppel, former anchor of ABC News’s Nightline, asked what the alternative is to television time for a leading contender for a return to the White House.“So no more live political events, because politicians can be nasty? Because politicians can tell lies?” he told the New York Times. “I’m not sure that news organisations should necessarily be in the business of making ideological judgments. Is he a legitimate object of news attention? You bet.”Bob Schieffer, the former CBS news anchor who moderated presidential debates, took much the same position.“We’re in the business of telling people who’s running for what and what they stand for,” he said.But many Americans wondered if it had to be in front of a supportive, jeering audience that evidently included a fair number of his “Make America great again” supporters with little to restrain his torrent of lies, distractions and evasions.Mark Lukasiewicz, former vice-president at NBC News, said of the programme that the mistake was to do it live: “Proving again: Live lying works. A friendly Maga crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punch lines – including re sex assault and January 6 – and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”Even Fox News recorded its most recent interviews with Trump.Writing in the Washington Post, Perry Bacon said CNN’s mistake was to say, in the words of its political director, David Chalian, that is it going to “treat Trump like any other presidential candidate”.“CNN should, of course, treat Trump differently from other candidates. His record of anti-democratic behavior makes him a much more dangerous potential president than other candidates,” wrote Bacon.“In 2016, the media not only played down Trump’s chances of winning, but also suggested Trump would not pursue the outlandish and far-right ideas that he was running on if he won. This attitude was summed up by an Atlantic article titled ‘Taking Trump Seriously, Not Literally’. This perspective was entirely wrongheaded.”Part of the problem is that few journalists in the US, striving for ill-defined objectivity and almost invariably deferential to present and former presidents, are a match for a man who views the established norms of interviewing and discussion as a provocation. As Kaitlan Collins proved, as she tried, and failed, to contain Trump, even as he called her a “nasty woman” on her own air.Bacon is not alone in worrying that Trump will continue to exploit CNN’s desperation to win back at least some of the Maga voters it lost when the former president led chants of “CNN sucks” at his rallies.That’s certainly how Trump saw it, writing on his Truth Social site shortly before the programme that CNN was “rightfully desperate to get those fantastic (TRUMP!) ratings once again.“Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News, or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me. Let’s see what happens?” he added.As it turned out, what was good for CNN and Trump was viewed by a large part of the rest of America as another disaster in the making. More

    • 275 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      There is a clear and present danger of a new Trump presidency. Democrats must act now to prevent it | Jonathan Freedland

      by

      We may come to remember this period as the interlude: the inter-Trump years. After the sigh of relief heard around the world when Donald Trump was defeated in November 2020, a grim realisation should be dawning: the threat of a Trump return to the White House is growing.His first task is to win the Republican party’s presidential nomination, but that hurdle is shrinking daily. Trump’s grip on his party remains firm, with none of his putative rivals coming close. Of course, the first round of primary voting is months away and much could change, but the shape of the race is already clear – and Trump is dominant. Witness the reaction to an event that would once have been terminal for any politician: this week’s civil court verdict that he had sexually abused the magazine writer E Jean Carroll in a New York department store in the 1990s, and then defamed her by branding her a liar.That “makes me want to vote for him twice”, said Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama of the jury’s decision, articulating the view held by many millions of Republicans that this judgment – and any other legal finding against the former president – proves only that the elites are out to get him.There was a similar Republican response in March when Trump was indicted, also in New York, over hush money paid to the former porn star Stormy Daniels. That saw his approval numbers among Republicans – the self-proclaimed party of family values – go up. For the believers, the indictment merely vindicated Trump’s claim that he is the martyred victim of a liberal deep state. The pattern is clear: what should kill him only makes him stronger.It means Democrats and those who wish to see Trump finished need to let go of the hope that the courts will dispatch him once and for all. There are multiple other cases pending, perhaps the most serious relating to his pressure on election officials in Georgia to “find” the votes that would overturn Joe Biden’s victory in that state. But on the current evidence, a slew of guilty verdicts would barely dent his standing with his own party. As Trump intuited back in 2016, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and Republicans would still vote for him.It helps that his most obvious challenger, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is growing smaller in the spotlight. He is tetchy and struggles to connect: this week tape surfaced of advisers urging him before a TV debate to write the word “likable” at the top of his notes – just as a reminder. DeSantis’s failure to go after Trump directly makes him look like a coward. Above all, DeSantis is pursuing a flawed strategy. He is offering Trumpism without Trump. The trouble is, too many Republican primary voters like Trump, while DeSantis’s brand of Trumpism is a hard sell to the wider electorate who will vote in November 2024.Plenty of Democrats concede that Trump is likely to win his party’s nomination. Indeed, many want him to win, so sure are they that he will lose to Biden in a rematch of 2020. And he may. But that contest will be far too close for comfort, at least in the electoral college that decides the outcome. In 2020, just 44,000 votes in three states stood between a Biden victory and an electoral college tie. Now the polls look much worse for him.This week a Washington Post/ABC survey not only showed the president six points behind Trump, it also found 63% of Americans believe Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, lacks the mental sharpness to serve effectively, up from 43% in 2020. Put simply, it was a photo finish last time and Trump’s prospects are better now than then.What would a Trump restoration entail? He himself has promised “retribution”, and those who served under him warn that a returned Trump would be less chaotic, more focused, than he was first time around. His appearance at a CNN town hall event this week provided several clues. On policy, Ukraine should get ready to be abandoned, while the world should brace for a US prepared to default on its debts. Americans will once again be deluged with a torrent of lies, delivered so fast that by the time you’ve challenged one, there will have been four more. (That is one reason why the CNN broadcast was horribly misconceived: it failed to learn a key lesson of 2016, when the US media made itself a tool of misinformation.)Trump also called Carroll a “whack job” and dismissed the sexual abuse verdict because it had been delivered in a liberal state under a judge appointed by Bill Clinton. This too has become a pattern, casting the justice system as merely another theatre in the partisan culture wars. Not content with destroying Republicans’ faith in electoral democracy in order to divert attention from the fact he lost an election, Trump is now doing the same to his followers’ trust in the law, this time to distract from the fact that he is a sexual predator.A second-term Trump would set about finishing what he started, breaking any institution that might stand in his way, whether that be the ballot box or the courts. As Senator Mitt Romney, a rare Republican voice of dissent, put it after the CNN show: “You see what you’re going to get, which is a presidency untethered to the truth and untethered to the constitutional order.”None of this is certain, but all of it is possible. Democrats need to snap out of the complacency brought by victory in 2020 and work as if they are in a race against the devil and lagging behind – because they are. They need to address the Biden age issue fast: several party veterans urge the president to get out more, recommending the kind of closeup encounters with the public at which he thrives. They need to sell their achievements, not least a strong record on jobs. And they have to sound the alarm every day, warning of the danger Trump poses. Because it is clear and it is present.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
      Join Jonathan Freedland and Marina Hyde for a Guardian Live event in London on Thursday 1 June. Book in-person or livestream tickets here More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      CNN head defends Trump’s lie-strewn town hall: ‘America was served very well’

      by

      CNN bosses have defended their decision to host a primetime town hall with Donald Trump, after triggering widespread outrage by allowing the former president to spout lies and disinformation on subjects from sexual assault to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Addressing staff anger over the decision to host the New Hampshire event, the CNN chief executive, Chris Licht, saluted what he called a “masterful performance” by Kaitlan Collins, the anchor who attempted to cope with Trump’s lies and abusive comments in front of a raucous Republican audience.On an internal call, Licht reportedly told staffers: “You do not have to like the former president’s answers, but you can’t say that we didn’t get them.“Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news … Made a lot of news, [and] that is our job.”Before the town hall, CNN said it was hosting Trump because he is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination to face Joe Biden in the presidential election next year.After the event, in a Thursday statement, the network said it had acted “to get answers and hold the powerful to account”.But CNN saw widespread criticism for hosting the twice-impeached former president, who is under investigation for a litany of alleged crimes and civil offenses.Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal charges over a hush-money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. This week, he was found civilly liable for sexually assaulting and defaming the writer E Jean Carroll.He also faces state and federal investigations for election subversion, federal scrutiny of his retention of classified information and a multimillion-dollar civil suit over his business affairs.Licht took over at CNN last year and has faced criticism for pursuing changes in staffing and tone. His comments on Thursday were reported by Brian Stelter, a media commentator and anchor who Licht pushed out of the network.Licht reportedly said: “While we all may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story.”At St Anselm’s College in Manchester, members of an audience of Republican voters clapped when Trump denied assaulting Carroll and mocked her as a “whack job”, a day after he was found liable for assaulting and defaming her and was ordered to pay her around $5m.When Trump denied taking three hours to tell supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 to to go home, audience members applauded.When Trump called Collins “nasty” and said she did not know what she was talking about, audience members laughed.Licht reportedly told staffers the audience in New Hampshire, the state which will host the first Republican primary, represented “a large swath of America”, a reality US media missed in 2016, when Trump shocked Hillary Clinton to become president.According to Stelter, Licht also said covering Trump would “continue to be messy and tricky, but it’s our job”, adding: “America was served very well by what we did last night.”Stelter said: “Many CNN employees strongly disagree.”One employee, the reporter Oliver Darcy, began the Reliable Sources newsletter he inherited from Stelter with stern words for his own network.“It’s hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies that aired on CNN Wednesday evening,” Darcy wrote.Calling Collins “as tough and knowledgable of an interviewer as they come”, Darcy pointed to how she “fact-checked Trump throughout the 70-minute town hall” … repeating “that there was no evidence for the lies he was disseminating on stage.“… Yet … Trump frequently ignored or spoke over Collins as he unleashed a firehose of disinformation upon the country, which a sizable swath of [Republicans] continue to believe.”Reed Galen, a Republican operative turned co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, pointed to CNN’s retreat from the adversarial stance it maintained throughout Trump’s presidency.He said: “Is anyone surprised by what we saw? If you are, you weren’t watching the last eight years. Thanks again to CNN, who helped get us into this in 2016, and is now helping us get deeper into this in 2023.”Galen also said Collins “probably tried the best she could, given the circumstances”.But the anchor was not universally praised, critics pointing for example to her failure to correct or challenge Trump’s comments on abortion, including claiming Democrats support abortion at nine months and killing babies after they are born.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, told MSNBC his party’s “position on reproductive freedom is very clear. We support a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive decisions. And it’s unfortunate that [Trump] was allowed to repeat those lies repeatedly without it being questioned, including by anyone in the audience, which was very disturbing.”In a statement on Thursday, a CNN spokesperson said: “Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist.“She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner.“That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.”Not all observers said CNN was wrong. Jon Ralston, chief executive of the Nevada Independent, said on Twitter: “I still believe CNN should have put Trump on, and Kaitlan Collins did her best.“But for every interview, you have to have a strategy. She didn’t, and that’s why it was a farce. You have to be willing to ignore the audience … and interrupt him and call out every lie.”Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading progressive congresswoman from New York, called the decision to host Trump “profoundly irresponsible”.Referring to Carroll, she told MSNBC: “What we saw tonight was a series of extremely irresponsible decisions that put a sexual abuse victim at risk … in front of a national audience and I could not have disagreed with it more. It was shameful.” More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Fact-checking Donald Trump’s CNN town hall – video report

      by

      The former US president consistently spread falsehoods, lies and misinformation throughout his town hall hosted by CNN on Wednesday night in front of a crowd of mostly Republican voters in New Hampshire. Trump made false and misleading claims about the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, immigration, his border wall, abortion, his sexual abuse trial, the investigation into his handling of classified documents and other subjects. The host, Kaitlan Collins, attempted to interject and fact-check his claims in real time, though many falsehoods got through, as Trump followed his long history of touting baseless conspiracy theories amid his mounting legal troubles More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump repeatedly lied at his CNN town hall. His biggest claims, factchecked

      by

      Donald Trump consistently spread falsehoods, lies and misinformation throughout his town hall hosted by CNN on Wednesday night in front of a crowd of mostly Republican voters in New Hampshire. The former president made false and misleading claims about the 2020 election, the January 6 insurrection, immigration, his border wall, abortion, his sexual abuse trial, the investigation into his handling of classified documents and other subjects.The host, Kaitlan Collins, attempted to interject and factcheck his claims in real time, though many falsehoods went unchecked as Trump followed his long history of touting baseless conspiracy theories amid his mounting legal troubles.Here are the Guardian’s factchecks of some of Trump’s statements.Claim: Trump started off the night falsely claiming that “millions” of votes were stolen in the 2020 race, and that the election was rigged.Factcheck: There’s no evidence of widespread fraud, and election officials across the US, including Republican leaders, have repeatedly reaffirmed this over the last two years.The Trump campaign’s own efforts to show that thousands of ballots cast under the names of deceased people in Georgia came up empty, with findings that contradicted the former president’s claims, a recent report revealed. There is no evidence in any state of fraud or irregularities that affected any election outcomes.Claim: Trump asserted without evidence that other countries are sending migrants from “mental institutions” into the US.Factcheck: The former president has repeatedly made this claim, but there is no evidence to support it. Trump’s campaign has been unable to produce evidence of this, CNN recently reported. Anti-immigration groups have also said they are unaware of what Trump may be referencing with these remarks. CNN did a “broad search” for any evidence of this story and came up empty.Trump also said the US was suffering from “open borders” in his initial remarks on immigration. On the contrary, Joe Biden has maintained many of the policies of the Trump administration, angering immigrant rights groups. The Biden administration also recently announced it was sending 1,500 active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border.Claim: Trump misleadingly suggested that the judge in the sexual abuse and defamation trial brought by writer E Jean Carroll had prevented him from producing evidence.Factcheck: Trump has repeatedly made false claims that he was “not allowed to speak or defend” himself. But Trump did not call any witnesses, nor did he make an appearance during the two-week trial, except when excerpts of a video deposition from last year were played in the courtroom.The judge, Lewis A Kaplan, whom the former president has repeatedly attacked, told Trump’s legal team that he could file a request to testify, but he chose not to. The jury found that the former president sexually abused Carroll, meaning he subjected her to sexual contact with the use of force and without her consent, and ordered him to pay $5m in damages.Claim: Donald Trump falsely claimed that pro-choice Democrats want to “kill the baby” after they are born, an assertion that went unchecked in the CNN town hall. The former president also suggested abortion rights groups want doctors to be able to “execute” babies.Factcheck: This false and inflammatory claim was a common refrain of the former president during the last election and has no basis in fact.Claim: Donald Trump, who as president faced widespread outrage for separating families at the US southern border, defended the policy, saying it has a deterrent effect: “People don’t come.”Factcheck: There is no clear evidence suggesting that harsh policies such as family separation deter asylum seekers from coming to the US. A 2017 pilot program of family separation was followed by an increase of families entering the US at the border. A 2018 analysis found that the policy was not having the intended effect.Immigrant rights groups note that policies like detaining children or separating them from their families do not discourage people from coming, and can instead lead to more dangerous journeys.Claim: Questioned about the continuing criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia, Donald Trump misrepresented a phone call with the state’s top election official, falsely claiming, “I didn’t ask him to find anything.”Factcheck: A recording of the phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, revealed that Trump had said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” The former president said in the town hall that he called to “question” the election. But the recording suggested that he clearly pressured the official to overturn the election results in his favor. More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Dear CNN, giving Trump a town-hall platform is the height of irresponsibility | Siva Vaidhyanathan

      by

      With 18 months to go before the next US presidential election, it’s already clear that – barring a physical collapse or two – Joe Biden will represent the Democrats and Donald Trump will carry the hopes of Republicans.This will be the first presidential election after one of the candidates, the president at the time, tried to foment a violent insurrection to overturn the last election. It will be the first election since 1912 in which a former president (in that case Theodore Roosevelt) challenges a sitting president (in that case William Howard Taft). It will be the first election in American history in which one candidate has already been impeached – twice, in fact. It will be the first election since 1800 in which one of the major candidates can reasonably be called a threat to or disloyal to the United States of America (Aaron Burr in 1800 was the first). And Burr had not yet revealed his propensity for treachery in 1800. It will be the first election in which one of the candidates has been indicted on state criminal charges (and possibly federal charges by the time of the election).In other words, it will be a weird election in every way. Yet, despite staring at a growing, violent, nativist, fascist-like movement that doggedly supports Trump, the mainstream American news media seems poised to treat both candidates as if they are viable, reasonable representatives of the traditions their political parties have grown to symbolize.It’s as if they have learned nothing.CNN, the leading 24-hour news network, will host Trump for a “town hall” forum in New Hampshire on Wednesday, as if he were a regular candidate leading the race for the nomination of a regular party. Of course, CNN will probably do the same for the three or four others who are likely to challenge him for the Republican nomination (so far, the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are the only viable non-crank candidates).A few more might jump in, but the more challenges Trump faces, the more likely he will lock up the nomination on the first primary day, rather than a month later.Putting a microphone and three cameras on Trump as if he were just another candidate and not an instigator of the violent disruption of American democracy and leader of a conspiracy to overthrow the results of a national election is the height of journalistic irresponsibility.The conservative columnist Alyssa Farah Griffin defended CNN by saying that the host, Kaitlan Collins, is “tough” and won’t let Trump “get away with lying without being called out”. That’s exactly the problem. CNN is in the business of performing toughness and balance, not primarily producing journalism that serves to enlighten citizens and enhance democracy. CNN seems to exist to create tweetable moments of anchor “toughness”, through which the celebrities who appear on air make events and interviews all about them. The CNN faces are tough enough to stand in the wind and rain of a hurricane, and tough enough to call out a politician – even a bully like Trump – for lying. But that’s easy and shallow. Ultimately, it hurts democracy.The issue is not whether Trump gets caught in a lie or “gets away” with something. Trump doesn’t care when that happens and neither do Republican supporters. We have 40 years of Trump shamelessness to demonstrate that – seven years of Trump as a political figure. He has been “called out” time and time again. It makes no difference to his support or to his habits. Exposing Trump as a liar changes no minds about anything.But he will receive the imprimatur of respectability for warranting this platform in the first place. CNN and all journalists must concede that they perform that work, despite wishing and pretending they did not. They have just been too lazy to question doing things the way they had always done things. Every major news organization has done the same. No one has wanted to admit it is a dangerous moment or new environment.So how should mainstream journalistic organizations like CNN cover Trump – or any candidate – through the election? All plans and policies should be based on the realization that democracy is under direct threat from many small factions in the United States, supported by at least one foreign power (Russia), and that they all support the return of Donald Trump to power. Trump himself is immune to shaming and exposure. So that 20th-century assumption about shining a light or exposing or embarrassing a wrongdoer is not appropriate now. The situation is more dire and the political climate in the United States is beyond such tepid, genteel moves.News organizations should do everything differently. No more “town halls” for any candidate, not just Trump. No more interviews in comfortable chairs and good lighting intended to demonstrate both access to power and a certain toughness in approach. No more unfiltered coverage of rallies and speeches as if they constitute “news” before they are ever broadcast or rendered in text.Coverage should be driven by clear editorial choices. Journalists should decide what the candidates will respond to. They should approach each story based on an issue at hand, in the country, in the world, rather than whatever the candidate chooses to say that day. Every report should be couched in deep context, with every quote encased in statements and reminders of the candidate’s record, the facts about the issue, and what the choice is for voters.Reports should be delivered as multimedia packages, accompanied by deep research just a click away from the video, audio or text that invites the citizen into the story. Organizations should begin planning such coverage now so that nothing they do gets hijacked by shenanigans or games by any candidate – with full knowledge that hijacking the normal practices of 20th-century political journalism was precisely Trump’s strategy from 2015 through today. Steve Bannon told us so. Editors and reporters chose not to take it seriously.If a potential story does not serve to inform voters about what is at stake, it should never make it to publication or broadcast. That’s a simple test: does this story enlighten and enable the electorate? Or does this story merely serve to enrage and entertain the electorate? The moment when news organizations began gathering deep and sophisticated data about audience engagement, they began competing for attention against games and pornography and sitcoms and YouTube clips. That’s a fact of the business and a fact of life. But pandering to that fact instead of resisting it is rendering journalism incapable of functioning because journalism can never win the entertainment game.News organizations must accept that they make news by virtue of their choices. They don’t cover things that already exist as “news”. They are political actors. They must choose democracy or risk being used for free by the forces that oppose democracy. The stakes are too high to continue doing business as usual. The stakes are high in a business sense, of course. But they are higher in the sense of our survival as a democratic republic in a world in which democracy is in danger. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Fears grow in North Carolina as ultra-extreme Republican eyes governor’s mansion

      by

      To Mark Robinson, gay and transgender people are “filth”, homosexuality is an abominable sin, and the transgender movement is “demonic” and “full of the spirit of the antichrist”.Muslim Americans, meanwhile, are invaders, and Robinson is not afraid to dabble in antisemitism: in his mind an international cabal of Jewish financiers make up a modern-day “four horsemen of the apocalypse”, who rule the banks in “every single country”.Lots of people have offensive and conspiracy-minded beliefs. But not all of them are running, as Robinson is, to be governor of North Carolina.And to people who don’t share Robinson’s views, the problem is that it looks like he could win – furthering the Republican party’s years-long lunge to what was previously rightwing fringe politics.“Mark Robinson would be the most extreme gubernatorial candidate but also governor that we’ve ever seen in our history,” said Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic party.The risk Robinson would pose if elected in November 2024 – polling is scarce at this stage, but experts believe the race between Robinson and Josh Stein, his expected Democratic opponent, is a toss-up – is real. Republicans control both the state house and senate, and the GOP expanded its lead in last year’s elections.Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor whose tenure is forced term limits to come to an end in 2023, has vetoed 52 bills from becoming law in his six years in office, the Assembly reported, including laws that would have rolled back gun control and reduced abortion access.With a Republican in the governor’s office – particularly a governor like Robinson – there would be no one to hold back a wave of rightwing bills.“We have bills right now going through our general assembly to ban gender affirming care for trans youth. We have a ban against trans athletes or young people competing in sports right now. We have a lot of discriminatory, just persecuting our own citizens-type of legislation happening in our state,” Clayton said.“And Mark Robinson is only going to be the person who’s going to make that worse.”There was a time, not that long ago, when North Carolina was seen as a future Democratic state.Barack Obama won there, narrowly, in 2008, and Democrats giddily held their national convention there in 2012, with the hope they could triumph in North Carolina for years to come. It didn’t happen, and Republicans have won every presidential election since.Republicans have super-majorities in the state legislature, yet Chris Cooper, a professor of political science at Western Carolina university, said elections for state positions like governor have tended to be close.“North Carolina has been right on the razor’s edge between Democrat and Republican. We were the bluest red state in the country in 2020 – of all states that Trump won, his margin was among the smallest in North Carolina,” he said.“I think it is the definition of a purple state in that it’s right in the middle. What it has not done at the presidential level is to swing – so it is a purple state but not a swing state.”Taken in isolation, Robinson’s back story is compelling. One of 10 children who grew up poor in Greensboro, he was elected North Carolina’s lieutenant governor in 2020, becoming the first Black person to hold the position.A former furniture manufacturer who has been declared bankrupt three times, Robinson credits his political career to a moment in April 2018: “My life changed when I gave a speech to the Greensboro city council that went viral,” he writes on his website.That speech gave a flavor of what was to come.There had been more than 50 mass shootings between January and March 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive, but Robinson used his speech to rail against stricter gun control laws, claiming: “We need to drop all this division we have going on here.”“When are you all going to start standing up for the majority. And here’s who the majority is. I’m the majority,” Robinson said.“I’m a law abiding citizen who’s never shot anyone, never committed a serious crime, never committed a felony. I’ve never done anything like that. But it seems like every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to blame… put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter’s feet. You want to put it at my feet.”Polls have shown that most North Carolinians support stricter gun control laws, but it hasn’t stopped Robinson crowing about the issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe spoke at the National Rifle Association’s Texas convention in May 2022 – the gun lobbying event was held days after 19 students and two adults were killed in a school shooting in the state. In another event that month Robinson told a crowd that he owns an AR-15 – the assault-style rifle used in a majority of recent mass shootings – “​​in case the government gets too big for its britches”.Guns are far from Robinson’s only passionate issue.Gay rights and trans rights – specifically, the idea that the groups should have fewer – have dominated his communications in the past. After the 2016 shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Robinson wrote on Facebook that he would “pray for the souls” of those killed and wounded, but added: “However, homosexuality is STILL an abominable sin.”In June 2021, Robinson told a crowd at a Baptist church: “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth,” and two months later declared that the transgender movement “is demonic and is full of the spirit of the antichrist”.Robinson has also said Muslim-Americans are “invaders” who “refuse to assimilate to our ways while demanding respect they have not earned”, and responded: “That’s exactly right,” when it was put to him by a pastor that the Rothschild family of “international bankers that rule every single national or federal reserve-type style of central bank in every single country”.Since becoming lieutenant governor Robinson has been accused of hypocrisy over his admission that he paid for his now wife to have an abortion in 1989, given he supports banning the procedure from six weeks after fertilization, but little seems to have dented his popularity – he is firmly the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.Robinson’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but in the days following his 2020 election to lieutenant governor, Robinson declined to distance himself from several of his past remarks, which also include claiming Obama is an “anti-American atheist” and suggesting “half of black Democrats don’t realize they are slaves”.“He’s cut right out of the Trump mold, in that he is rhetorically extreme,” Cooper said.“He has a penchant for making extreme, bombastic and offensive statements, particularly about the LGBTQ community. He’s a candidate who is very comfortable in the culture wars and stoking the flames of the culture wars.”Given his history, and the looming threat of what he might do in office, Clayton said a victory for Robinson could have ramifications similar to those North Carolina experienced in 2016.Back then businesses, performers and even the National Basketball Association ditched the state after it passed a law which banned transgender people from using the public bathrooms that match their gender identities.If Robinson wins the Republican primary – which is “bordering on a certainty”, Cooper said – it could potentially cause problems for the Republican party at large, highlighting the extreme anti-LGBTQ views that lurk within the GOP.“He’s a risky candidate in a lot of ways,” Cooper said.“He will have ramifications up and down the ballot. But he’ll also motivate some voters, much like Trump motivated Republicans and Democrats, Mark Robinson’s going to do the same.” More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      CNN’s planned town hall with Donald Trump faces pushback

      by

      The announcement that CNN will host a New Hampshire town hall event for Donald Trump was met with widespread criticism on Monday.Angelo Carusone, chief executive of Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, said: “The transparent attempt to goose their ratings does feel at least a little odious. But all the more reason that they need to get this right.”Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, said: “First, CNN systematically purged anyone on the network who was deemed too anti-Trump. Now this.”Keith Olbermann, a Trump critic and former MSNBC host, said: “I think we can say Chris Licht’s conversion of CNN into a political and journalistic whorehouse is complete.”Licht took over from Jeff Zucker as CNN’s chief executive last year, with a mission to remodel.Announcing the event to be held at St Anselm College on Wednesday 10 May, CNN said: “The former president and 2024 Republican presidential candidate will take questions from [anchor Kaitlan] Collins and a live audience of New Hampshire Republican and undeclared voters who say they intend to vote in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary.”Trump and CNN were at odds throughout Trump’s run for the White House and his presidency, over what he deemed its hostile coverage and liberal slant. Collins, a morning show anchor, formerly worked for the Daily Caller, a website cofounded by Tucker Carlson, the far-right anchor fired by Fox News last week.In polling regarding the Republican nomination next year, Trump enjoys commanding leads.He continues to peddle the lie that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was the result of electoral fraud. On 6 January 2021, he used that lie to incite an attack on Congress now linked to nine deaths and carried out by supporters seeking to block Biden’s win.More than 1,000 arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured, some for seditious conspiracy. Trump was impeached a second time but acquitted when Republican senators stayed loyal to him.He now faces a federal investigation of his election subversion and incitement of the Capitol attack, as well as a state election subversion investigation, in Georgia, in which indictments are expected this summer.In New York, Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges over a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. In the same state, a civil rape case brought by the writer E Jean Carroll is at trial while a civil lawsuit brought by the state continues, over Trump’s tax and business practices.Jack Smith, a federal special counsel, is also investigating Trump’s retention of classified materials.CNN said it had “a longstanding tradition of hosting leading presidential candidates for town halls and political events as a critical component of the network’s robust campaign coverage”.It also said the Trump event would be “the first of many in the coming months as CNN correspondents travel across the country to hear directly from voters”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCarusone said: “Donald Trump is the frontrunner for Republican nomination; it benefits no one to pretend otherwise.“But this is risky business and CNN should go into this clear-eyed: Trump will lie and he will attack. Trump has been repeating the same torrent of lies in his speeches and interviews with rightwing media figures for months. Nothing he will say will be new.“So if CNN lets him get away with it unchallenged, they have no excuse. CNN isn’t being graded on a curve here.”Carusone also pointed to cable networks’ struggles since Trump left office.“I can’t help but notice that this comes just as Fox’s ratings are in freefall and CNN’s shift hasn’t born any fruit,” he said.David Rothkopf, a Daily Beast columnist and author of Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, called CNN’s decision “irresponsible”.The town hall, he said, would be “a sham if it does not lead with the question, ‘You lead an insurrection against the government of the US, why should any American voter support a candidate who sought to undermine the constitution, institutions and values he was sworn to uphold?’”A CNN spokesperson said: “There is certainly a lot of news to cover with him and we’ll do that next Wednesday.” More