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      Never Give an Inch review: Mike Pompeo as ‘heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass’

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      ReviewNever Give an Inch review: Mike Pompeo as ‘heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass’ The former secretary of state wants to be president. His vicious memoir will sell, but he may not find buyers at the pollsMike Pompeo is prescient, at least. Back in 2016, as a congressman, he warned Kansas Republicans of the danger posed by Donald Trump. Pompeo lamented that the US had already endured more than seven years of “an authoritarian president who ignored our constitution” – meaning Barack Obama – and cautioned that a Trump presidency would be no different.Schiff calls Mike Pompeo ‘failed Trump lackey’ after classified records claimRead more“It’s time to turn down the lights on the circus,” he said.Pompeo is an ex-army captain who graduated first in his class at West Point. But in the face of Trump’s triumphs, he turned tail and sucked-up. Pompeo was CIA director then secretary of state. On the job, his sycophancy grew legendary.“He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass,” a former ambassador recalled to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker.Never Give an Inch is Pompeo’s opening salvo in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. On cue, he puckers up to Trump, the only declared candidate so far, and thanks Mike Pence, a likely contestant, for bringing him into the fold. But where others are concerned, Never Give an Inch doubles as a burn book.Pompeo strafes two other possible contenders: Nikki Haley, Trump’s first United Nations ambassador, and John Bolton, Trump’s third national security adviser.Trump, Pompeo says, branded Bolton a “scumbag loser”. Pompeo thinks Bolton should “be in jail, for spilling classified information”. The Room Where it Happened, Bolton’s tell-all book, evidently ruffled feathers. As for Pompeo’s own relationship with classified documents? “I don’t believe I have anything classified.” It’s not exactly a blanket denial.Turning to Haley, Pompeo dings her time as UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and her performance in that post.“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” he observes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”Trump is largely spared criticism but his family isn’t. Ivanka Trump makes a dubious cameo. Jared Kushner is depicted as someone less than serious.Pompeo edited the Harvard Law Review. He can write. His memoir is tart and tight. Filled with barbs, bile and little regret, it is an unexpectedly interesting read. It is not the typical pre-presidential campaign autobiography. This one comes with teeth. Pompeo is always self-serving but never bland.He heaps praise on Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and has kind words for Volodymyr Zelenskiy.“I’m troubled by the evil that has befallen his country,” Pompeo writes of Ukraine, a year into the Russian invasion. He also says he is “encouraged” that Zelenskiy, a “onetime Jerry Seinfeld” has “turned into a kind of General Patton”.But while Pompeo deploys the word “authoritarian” more than a dozen times, he never does so in reference to Trump. Trump, remember, has lauded Vladimir Putin as “smart”; praised the Russian president’s war strategy as “wonderful” and “genius”; derided Nato as “dumb”; and unloaded on Joe Biden as “weak”.Pompeo, the brown-noser-in-chief, has zero to say about this.As for Netanyahu, Pompeo is silent on Trump’s reported “fuck him” for the Israeli leader. No Trump appointee has ever dared grapple with that breach of decorum.Pompeo is happy, of course, to blame Obama for alienating Viktor Orban from the US and western Europe, and to sympathize with the Hungarian leader’s efforts to “root his time in office in his nation’s history and Christian faith”. Pompeo’s loyalties are clear. In Hungary this week, Yair Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister’s son, slammed George Soros, the “global elite” and “radical leftist” control of the media.Pompeo is a fan of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s defeated former leader, who he says “largely modeled his candidacy for president on President Trump”. Words written, presumably, before the mini January 6 in Brasília. Birds of a feather, etc.Pompeo also takes Pope Francis and the Catholic church to task over their relationship with China, and derides both the reformist Pope John XXIII and the liberation theology movement of the 1970s. In 2014, five decades after his death, John XXIII was canonized. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, blurbed Pompeo’s book.As expected, Pompeo basically ignores the insurrection Trump stoked and the attack on Congress it produced. He refers to “mayhem at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 and targets the “left” for looking to exploit the day’s events, but says nothing of Trump’s concerted effort to subvert democracy and overturn an election.Pompeo knows the GOP base. Three in five Republicans believe voter fraud birthed Biden’s victory. The same number say Trump did nothing wrong on January 6. Not surprisingly, Pompeo omits mention of his own tweets that day or his appearance before the House January 6 committee.“The storming of the US Capitol today is unacceptable,” Pompeo tweeted. “Lawlessness and rioting here or around the world is always unacceptable. Let us swiftly bring justice to the criminals who engaged in this rioting.”Asked about the tweets by committee staff, he responded: “I stand by it.”He also told Liz Cheney, on the record: “I thought the courts and the certification that took place were appropriate … the vice-president [Pence] made the right decision on the evening of 6 January” to certify Biden’s win.None of this appears on the page. Instead, Pompeo gleefully recalls how Trump approved of his loyalty.How well is all this working? Pompeo may well sell books but fail to move the needle. Polls show him at 1% in the notional presidential primary, tied with the likes of Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, and Ted Cruz, the Senate’s own squeegee pest. Pompeo trails Haley and Pence.The appetite for a Pompeo presidency seems … limited. Like Ron DeSantis, he is grim and humorless. Unlike the governor of Florida, Pompeo has no war chest.
      Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love is published in the US by HarperCollins
      TopicsBooksPolitics booksMike PompeoTrump administrationDonald TrumpRepublicansUS elections 2024reviewsReuse this content More

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      Washington Post condemns Pompeo for ‘vile’ Khashoggi ‘falsehoods’

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      Washington Post condemns Pompeo for ‘vile’ Khashoggi ‘falsehoods’Fred Ryan says former secretary of state ‘outrageously misrepresents’ Post journalist murdered by Saudi Arabian regime The publisher of the Washington Post, Fred Ryan, has blasted the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for “outrageously misrepresenting” and “spreading vile falsehoods” about Jamal Khashoggi, the Post columnist murdered by the Saudi Arabian regime in 2018.Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book saysRead more“It is shameful that Pompeo would spread vile falsehoods to dishonor a courageous man’s life and service and his commitment to principles Americans hold dear as a ploy to sell books,” Ryan said.Pompeo’s memoir of his time in Donald Trump’s presidential administration, Never Give an Inch, was published on Tuesday.One of a slew of books from likely contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – if in this case one who barely registers in polling – the book recounts Pompeo’s time as CIA director and secretary of state under Trump.The Guardian obtained and reported a copy last week. In its own review, published on Tuesday, the Post called Pompeo’s book “vicious … a master class in the performative anger poisoning American politics”.The reviewer, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Tim Weiner, added: “Hatred animates this book. It’s got more venom than a quiver of cobras.”The murder of Khashoggi caused outrage around the world and stoked criticism of the Trump White House over its reluctance to criticise the Saudi regime, particularly the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who grew close to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.US intelligence believes the prince approved the killing of Khashoggi, whose remains have not been found.On the page, Pompeo deplores Khashoggi’s murder. But he also writes that Khashoggi was not a journalist but “an activist who had supported the losing team” and criticises what he calls “faux outrage” over a killing that “made the media madder than a vegan in a slaughterhouse”.On Monday, Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, told NBC News: “Whatever [Pompeo] mentions about my husband, he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband. It is such bad information and the wrong information … This is not acceptable.”Elatr Khashoggi also said she wanted “to silence all of these people who publish books, disparage my husband and collect money from it”.On Tuesday, Ryan said it was “shocking and disappointing to see Mike Pompeo’s book so outrageously misrepresent the life and work of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.“As the CIA – which Pompeo once directed – concluded, Jamal was brutally murdered on the orders of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. His only offense was exposing corruption and oppression among those in power – work that good journalists around the world do every day.”Pompeo responded on Twitter, writing: “Americans are safer because we didn’t label Saudi Arabia a pariah state. I never let the media bully me. Just because someone is a part-time stringer for the Washington Post doesn’t make their life more important than our military serving in dangerous places protecting us all. I never forgot that.”Ryan said Khashoggi, who wrote for the Post while resident in the US, “dedicated himself to the values of free speech and a free press and held himself to the highest professional standards. For this devotion, he paid the ultimate price.”TopicsBooksMike PompeoJamal KhashoggiPolitics booksUS politicsTrump administrationUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgent

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      InterviewLBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgentMartin Pengelly Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson died, the director of the 36th president’s library discusses his politics and progressive idealsFifty years ago on Sunday, Lyndon Baines Johnson died. He was 64, and had been out of power since stepping down as president in 1969, in the shadow of the Vietnam war. Forty-five years later, in 2018, the Guardian marked the anniversary of his death. The headline: “Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero.”Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero | Jack BernhardtRead moreMark Lawrence laughs.“I think I read that one,” he says.It seems likely. Lawrence, a distinguished Vietnam scholar, is director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.Johnson was a Texas Democrat who rose through Congress to be vice-president to John F Kennedy, then assumed the presidency when Kennedy was killed. From 1963 to 1969, Johnson presided over great social reform at home and gathering disaster abroad. His legacy has never been less than complex, his place in American culture attracting historians by the hundred and big-name actors in droves. Bryan Cranston, Brian Cox and Woody Harrelson have recently played LBJ.Lawrence continues: “One of the ideas that an awful lot of people hold about LBJ, and I think it’s not wholly incorrect, but it’s problematic, is that he was this vulgar, crude man who used four-letter words and demeaned his subordinates and threw temper tantrums.“There’s no question that Caro” – Robert Caro’s biographical masterwork – “is the go-to source for the uglier parts of his personal style. But I think you can also make an argument, and Caro I think comes around to this view in the later books, that LBJ managed to combine whatever elements of that old caricature hold up with a genuine sense of compassion for ordinary people.“Many biographers see the link between his own hardscrabble youth and the struggles of his family and a peculiar sensitivity to the plight of the downtrodden, which certainly affected his view of racial discrimination. The sensitivity to poverty, whether it affected Black, brown or white, came from his own experience.“My writing about LBJ has largely been critical, but I don’t have any difficulty saying this was a man with a genuine sense of compassion.”Lawrence is speaking to mark the half-century since the 36th president died. LBJ is in the news anyway. He was the architect of the Great Society, overseeing the passage of civil rights protections and a welfare system now under renewed attack. Joe Biden often compares his post-Covid presidency to that of Franklin D Roosevelt amid the Great Depression, but comparisons to Johnson are ready to hand.Lawrence says: “The points of similarity are remarkable. The guy with long service in the Senate” – Johnson from Texas, 1949-1961, Biden from Delaware, 1973-2009 – “the guy who could cross the aisle, the guy who spoke in pragmatic, bipartisan terms. Both of these guys became vice-president to a younger, less experienced but much more charismatic person” – Biden to Barack Obama – “and that was kind of their ticket to the presidency.“But I think some of these comparisons are ultimately unfair to Biden, because the political context is just so different. My own view is, sure, LBJ deserves credit for being this enormously persuasive, forceful guy who knew how to bend people to his will. But at the end of the day, LBJ was pushing an open door.“Even the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, these great achievements, they passed by big margins. There were bipartisan coalitions. LBJ deserves credit for his ability to put those coalitions together. But … I think it’s possible to exaggerate LBJ’s importance and to forget the importance of Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits and Everett Dirksen, all key players as well.”Bipartisan players, too. Humphrey was LBJ’s vice-president, Javits a Republican senator from New York, Dirksen, of Illinois, Republican Senate minority leader.“I think that’s precisely what’s lacking now. The situation is so polarised that you could bring LBJ back from the dead and he’d be an utter failure in this political context, because his skills would have been meaningless in the context of 2023.”Biden passed a coronavirus rescue package, an infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, all meant to help the US recover from Covid, with razor-thin margins in Congress and against Republicans gone to extremes. LBJ’s shadow may be long – at a shade over 6ft 3in he is the second-tallest president, after Abraham Lincoln – but Biden does not necessarily labour within it.So how might progressives see Johnson? If they read Caro, they will learn how he came from a world of Texas populism, tinged with socialism, that now seems far gone indeed.“At least by the standards of the era,” Lawrence sees in LBJ “a genuine willingness to think hard about poverty and how to insulate people against economic forces over which individuals had no control whatsoever.”Whether teaching in a dirt-poor school in Cotulla in 1928 or working “for the National Youth Administration in the 1930s, LBJ shows glimmers of his willingness to cross racial lines and to think seriously about the situation of African Americans and Mexican Americans”.1968: the year that changed AmericaRead moreTo Lawrence, the Texas years “indicate that LBJ was an unusual person, for a southern white man who came of age in the 1920s and 30s.”In the 1950s, when Johnson led the Senate, he defended white supremacy. As president, he oversaw the Vietnam disaster. But Charles Kaiser, a Guardian contributor and author of 1968 in America and The Gay Metropolis, also sees the bigger picture.“In 1968, I hated Lyndon Johnson with all my heart, because I was 17 – and lived in fear of being drafted. Fifty years later, it is clear three other things about his presidency were much more important than the war that destroyed him.“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made him the most courageous president since Lincoln. Johnson may or may not have said ‘We have lost the south for a generation’ after he signed the 1964 law, but he certainly knew that was true. By fighting for those two laws, he did more to redeem the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation than any president before him.“Medicare is the third prong of a noble legacy. It did more to improve the lives of senior citizens than anything else except Franklin Roosevelt’s social security. A hundred years from now, I think Johnson will be considered one of our greatest presidents.”To Lawrence, Johnson’s reputation is “mixed. But I think the mix of impressions is quite different from what it was certainly 30 years ago.“When he died, and for many years thereafter, Vietnam hung so heavily over LBJ that he was a little bit radioactive … it was something conservatives and the left could agree on. Vietnam was a debacle and LBJ bore principal responsibility for it. But I think in the last decade and a half, there’s been a gradual reappraisal.Turn Every Page: a peek into Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb’s long creative relationshipRead more“The level of dysfunction and partisanship in Washington has led people to take another look at LBJ and how he was able to work across the aisle and achieve so much. There’s a kind of longing, I think, for that kind of political effectiveness.“So many of the issues that LBJ worked on are back with us, and I think this has led at least parts of the political spectrum to have a new appreciation for him.“In a period when immigration and the environment and voting rights are under threat in a profound way, people are rediscovering LBJ as someone who maybe didn’t have perfect answers but worked very effectively, at least by the standards of recent decades, and achieved real results.”TopicsBooksUS politicsPolitics booksHistory booksDemocratsUS domestic policyUS foreign policyinterviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House book

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      Interview‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House bookDavid Smith in Washington Fight of His Life author on Kamala Harris’s struggles and growth, Afghanistan, a strong second year … and if Biden will run againThere are those who believe that at 80, Joe Biden is too old to serve a second term as president. Yet few clamour for him to hand over to the person who would normally be the heir apparent.The Fight of His Life review: Joe Biden, White House winnerRead moreTwo years in, Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to be vice-president, has had her ups and downs. Her relationship with Biden appears strong and she has found her voice as a defender of abortion rights. But her office has suffered upheaval and her media appearances have failed to impress.Such behind-the-scenes drama is recounted in The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, written by the author, journalist and film-maker Chris Whipple and published this week. Whipple gained access to nearly all of Biden’s inner circle and has produced a readable half-time report on his presidency – a somewhat less crowded field than the literary genre that sprang up around Donald Trump.“In the beginning, Joe Biden liked having Kamala Harris around,” Whipple writes, noting that Biden wanted the vice-president with him for meetings on almost everything. One source observed a “synergy” between them.Harris volunteered to take on the cause of voting rights. But Biden handed her another: tackling the causes of undocumented immigration by negotiating with the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.“But for Harris,” Whipple writes, “the Northern Triangle would prove to be radioactive.”With the distinction between root causes and immediate problems soon lost on the public, Harris got the blame as migrants kept coming.One of her senior advisers tells Whipple the media could not handle a vice-president who was not only female but also Black and south Asian, referring to it as “the Unicorn in a glass box” syndrome. But Harris also suffered self-inflicted wounds. Whipple writes that she “seemed awkward and uncertain … she laughed inappropriately and chopped the air with her hands, which made her seem condescending”.An interview with NBC during a visit to Guatemala and Mexico was a “disaster”, according to one observer. Reports highlighted turmoil and turnover in Harris’s office, some former staff claiming they saw it all before when she was California attorney general and on her presidential campaign. Her approval rating sank to 28%, lower than Dick Cheney’s during the Iraq war.But, Whipple writes, Biden and his team still thought highly of Harris.“Ron Klain [chief of staff] was personally fond of her. He met with the vice-president weekly and encouraged her to do more interviews and raise her profile. Harris was reluctant, wary of making mistakes.“‘This is like baseball,’ Klain told her. ‘You have to accept the fact that sometimes you will strike out. We all strike out. But you can’t score runs if you’re sitting in the dugout.’ Biden’s chief was channeling manager Tom Hanks in the film A League of Their Own. ‘Look, no one here is going to get mad at you. We want you out there!’”Speaking to the Guardian, Whipple, 69, reflects: “It’s a complicated, fascinating relationship between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.“In the early months of the administration they had a real rapport, a real bond. Because of Covid they were thrown together in the White House and spent a lot of time together. He wanted her to be in almost every meeting and valued her input. All of that was and is true.“But when she began to draw fire, particularly over her assignment on the Northern Triangle, things became more complicated. It got back to the president that the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was complaining around town that her portfolio was too difficult and that in effect it was setting her up for failure. This really annoyed Biden. He felt he hadn’t asked her to do anything he hadn’t done for Barack Obama: he had the Northern Triangle as one of his assignments. She had asked for the voting rights portfolio and he gave it to her. So that caused some friction.”A few months into the presidency, Whipple writes, a close friend asked Biden what he thought of his vice-president. His reply: “A work in progress.” These four words – a less than ringing endorsement – form the title of a chapter in Whipple’s book.But in our interview, Whipple adds: “It’s also true that she grew in terms of her national security prowess. That’s why Biden sent her to the Munich Security Conference on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She spent a lot of time in the meetings with the president’s daily brief and Biden’s given her some important assignments in that respect.”A former producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, Whipple has written books about White House chiefs of staff and directors of the CIA. Each covered more than 100 years of history, whereas writing The Fight of His Life was, he says, like designing a plane in mid-flight and not knowing where to land it. Why did he do it?“How could I not? When you think about it, Joe Biden and his team came into office confronting a once-in-a-century pandemic, crippled economy, global warming, racial injustice, the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol. How could anybody with a political or storytelling bone in his body not want to tell that story? Especially if you could get access to Biden’s inner circle, which I was fortunate in being able to do.”Even so, it wasn’t easy. Whipple describes “one of the most leakproof White Houses in modern history … extremely disciplined and buttoned down”. It could hardly be more different from the everything-everywhere-all-at-once scandals of the Trump administration.What the author found was a tale of two presidencies. There was year one, plagued by inflation, supply chain problems, an arguably premature declaration of victory over the coronavirus and setbacks in Congress over Build Back Better and other legislation. Worst of all was the dismal end of America’s longest war as, after 20 years and $2tn, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.“It was clearly a failure to execute the withdrawal in a safe and orderly way and at the end of the day, as I put it, it was a whole-of-government failure,” Whipple says. “Everybody got almost everything wrong, beginning with the intelligence on how long the Afghan government and armed forces would last and ending with the botched execution of the withdrawal, with too few troops on the ground.”Whipple is quite possibly the first author to interview Klain; the secretary of state, Antony Blinken; the CIA director, Bill Burns; and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about the Afghanistan debacle.“What became clear was that everybody had a different recollection of the intelligence. While this administration often seems to be pretty much on the same page, I found that there was a lot more drama behind the scenes during the Afghan withdrawal and in some of the immediate aftermath,” he says.The book also captures tension between Leon Panetta, CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama, who was critical of the exit strategy – “You just wonder whether people were telling the president what he wanted to hear” – and Klain, who counters that Panetta favoured the war and oversaw the training of the Afghan military, saying: “If this was Biden’s Bay of Pigs, it was Leon’s army that lost the fight.”Whipple comments: “Ron Klain wanted to fire back in this case and it’s remarkable and fascinating to me, given his relationship with Panetta. Obviously his criticism got under Ron Klain’s skin.”Biden’s second year was a different story. “Everything changed on 24 February 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Joe Biden was uniquely qualified to rise to that moment and he did, rallying Nato in defiance of Putin and in defence of Ukraine. Biden had spent his entire career preparing for that moment, with the Senate foreign relations committee and his experience with Putin, and it showed.“Then he went on to pass a string of bipartisan legislative bills from the Chips Act to veterans healthcare, culminating in the Inflation Reduction Act, which I don’t think anybody saw coming.“One thing is for sure: Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated from day one and, at the two-year mark, he proves that he could deliver a lot more than people thought.”Biden looked set to enter his third year with the wind at his back. Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections, inflation is slowing, Biden’s approval rating is on the up and dysfunctional House Republicans struggled to elect a speaker.But political life moves pretty fast. Last week the justice department appointed a special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents, from Biden’s time as vice-president, at his thinktank in Washington and home in Delaware.Whipple told CBS: “They really need to raise their game here, I think, because this really goes to the heart of Joe Biden’s greatest asset, arguably, which is trust.”The mistake represents a bump in the road to 2024. Biden’s age could be another. He is older than Ronald Reagan was when he completed his second term and if he serves a full second term he will be 86 at the end. Opinion polls suggest many voters feel he is too old for the job. Biden’s allies disagree.Whipple says: “His inner circle is bullish about Biden’s mental acuity and his ability to govern. I never heard any of them express any concern and maybe you would expect that from the inner circle. Many of them will tell you that he has extraordinary endurance, energy.“Bruce Reed [a longtime adviser] told me about flying back on a red-eye from Europe after four summits in a row when everybody had to drag themselves out of the plane and was desperately trying to sleep and the boss came in and told stories for six hours straight all the way back to DC.”During conversations and interviews for the book, did Whipple get the impression Biden will seek re-election?“He’s almost undoubtedly running. Andy Card [chief of staff under George W Bush] said something to me once that rang true: ‘If anybody tells you they’re leaving the White House voluntarily, they’re probably lying to you.’“Who was the last president to walk away from the office voluntarily? LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson]. It rarely happens. I don’t think Joe Biden is an exception. He spent his whole career … thinking about running or running for president and he’s got unfinished business. Having the possibility of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee probably makes it more urgent for him. He thinks he can beat him again.”
      The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House is published in the US by Scribner
      TopicsBooksJoe BidenBiden administrationKamala HarrisUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book says

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      Nikki Haley plotted with Kushner and Ivanka to be Trump vice-president, Pompeo book saysIn book aimed at 2024 run, ex-secretary of state also says Trump asked him to be secretary of defense at same time, a ‘nutty idea’ In a new memoir peppered with broadsides at potential rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, accuses Nikki Haley of plotting with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to be named vice-president, even while she served as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign booksRead moreDescribing his own anger when Haley secured a personal Oval Office meeting with Trump without checking with him, Pompeo writes that Haley in fact “played” Trump’s then chief of staff, John Kelly, and instead of meeting the president alone, was accompanied by Trump’s daughter and her husband, both senior advisers.“As best Kelly could tell,” Pompeo writes, “they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice-president’ option. I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America.”The gossipy nugget is contained in Pompeo’s new book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.The Haley story is not the only startling scene in a book which also says Trump had the “nutty idea” that Pompeo could be secretary of state and secretary of defense at the same time.But the story about Haley is firmly in the vein of Washington reportage and tell-alls that Pompeo claims to disdain. It also adds weight to stories which said Trump did indeed consider dumping his vice-president, Mike Pence, for Haley, a rumor Trump was compelled to deny in 2019.It will also add to intrigue around reports that Kushner’s family is fundraising for Haley ahead of her 2024 run.A year out from the primary, Trump is still the only declared candidate for the Republican nomination. But jockeying for position is increasing. Among campaign books from possible contenders, Pompeo follows Pence into print but is a month ahead of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is Trump’s only serious polling rival.Pompeo is studiedly respectful in his descriptions of Pence, a self-proclaimed fellow devout Christian, and mostly of Trump himself. Unlike Pence in his memoir, So Help Me God, Pompeo avoids overt criticism of his former boss. Pompeo is also more comfortable with the former president’s often vulgar language.For instance, Pompeo describes Trump calling John Bolton, his third national security adviser, a “scumbag loser”. After being fired, Bolton produced a memoir of his own, The Room Where It Happened. Trump sought to prevent publication but the book was a bestseller, relaying the president’s private conversations and what Pompeo considers highly sensitive material.Bolton has now floated a White House run of his own, to try to block Trump. Pompeo fires salvos Bolton’s way, at one point comparing him to Edward Snowden, who leaked surveillance secrets to the media in 2013, but saying the National Security Agency contractor “at least had the decency not to lie about his motive”.Bolton, Pompeo writes, should “be in jail, for spilling classified information”. Pompeo also says he hopes one day to testify at Bolton’s trial on criminal charges.Regarding Haley, who has also published books as she considers a presidential run, Pompeo disparages both the role of UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and Haley’s performance in it.“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” Pompeo writes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”Haley resigned – or, in Pompeo’s words, “flat-out threw in the towel” – in October 2018. By quitting, Pompeo writes, Haley “abandoned” Trump as she had “the great people of South Carolina”, by resigning as governor.True to his title, Pompeo does not give an inch in his descriptions of his own success, first as CIA director and then atop the state department.But the former soldier and congressman does spill details of a private conversation in which, he says, the president’s chief of staff said Trump wanted him to add secretary of defense to his portfolio while remaining secretary of state.According to Pompeo, on 19 July 2020, midway through the tempestuous summer of the coronavirus pandemic and protests for racial justice, Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told him Mark Esper was “not going to make it” at the Pentagon for much longer.So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead morePompeo says Meadows told him Trump wanted his secretary of state to “dual hat”, meaning to “take on leading the department of defense as an additional duty”.Pompeo says he told Meadows that was “a nutty idea” as he had “plenty” to do at state and “couldn’t possibly command defense at the same time”.Nor, Pompeo writes, was that the only time Trump asked him to do two jobs. After Bolton left, he writes, “someone had reminded the president that Henry Kissinger had been both national security adviser and secretary of state” to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.“President Trump pitched the idea to me,” Pompeo writes. “I think he was half-kidding.”Trump may not feel in a kidding mood when he reads Pompeo’s descriptions of such “nutty ideas” which, the former secretary of state writes, quickly “faded, all for the good”.TopicsBooksUS elections 2024US politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpTrump administrationMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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      White House says Republicans have ‘zero credibility’ over Biden documents case – as it happened

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      Republicans are continuing to pressure Joe Biden over the classified documents found at his residence and former office, while Democrats are telling anyone who will listen that there are significant differences between the president’s case and that of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the White House is demanding Kevin McCarthy release the details of agreements he made with conservative Republicans to win their support for his House speaker bid, arguing he has empowered extremists.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      The White House attempted to explain why it didn’t announce the discovery of classified documents in Biden’s possession when it was first made in November.
      Trump may be the big winner of the kerfuffle over Biden’s classified documents, especially if it undermines the investigation into the government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago.
      Daniel Goldman, who served as the Democrats’ lead prosecutor of Trump during his 2019 impeachment, will play a major role in defending Biden from the GOP’s investigation campaign.
      State Democratic parties are revolting against Biden’s plan to shake up the primary calendar for presidential nominations.
      George Santos lied his way into office, but he will nonetheless serve on committees in the House, McCarthy said.
      It’s going to be a tough couple of months for Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary who has become the subject of near-daily criticism from Republicans for his handling of the surge of migrants at the country’s southern border.The GOP has already vowed to call him repeatedly before the House, and will probably use the hearings as another cudgel against the Biden administration. Today, CNN reports that several top Republicans are ready to impeach the secretary – something that hasn’t happened to a cabinet secretary since 1876:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The House Judiciary Committee, which would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution, is prepared to move ahead with formal proceedings if there appears to be a consensus within the GOP conference, according to a GOP source directly familiar with the matter. The first impeachment resolution introduced by House Republicans already has picked up support, including from a member of the GOP leadership team.
      A GOP source said the first Judiciary Committee hearing on the border could come later this month or early February.
      One top chairman is already sounding supportive of the move, a sign of how the idea of impeaching President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretary has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of the conference.
      ‘If anybody is a prime candidate for impeachment in this town, it’s Mayorkas,’ Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN.But not all Republicans are on board, with several lawmakers worrying the public won’t see the need for the effort, which is sure to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate anyway. Here’s Republican Dusty Johnson’s thoughts on the matter, to CNN:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Clearly, the management of the Southern border has been incompetent … That is not the threshold in the Constitution for impeachment – it’s high crimes and misdemeanors. … I would want to think about the legal standard the Constitution has set out – and whether or not that’s been met.Mario Diaz-Balart was of a similar mind:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Has he been totally dishonest to people? Yes. Has he failed in his job miserably? Yes … Are those grounds for impeachment? I don’t know.For all the bombast of Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans in the House, keep this fact in mind: their margin of control is only four seats. If the party wants to maintain its grip on the chamber for the next two years, the GOP simply cannot afford to have any of their lawmakers leave office.That said, not all Republicans were happy with the deals that McCarthy cut to win the House speakership, and Puck reports that one lawmaker is particularly aggrieved over the Californian’s bargaining. That would be Vern Buchanan, who was passed over as chair of the tax-writing ways and means committee in favor of Jason Smith, an ally of the speaker.With no committee to helm, Puck reports that the 71-year-old Buchanan could decide that now’s the time to retire. According to their story, he already told McCarthy what he thought of his decision to promote Smith rather than himself on the House floor:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Just how angry was he? Well, a source on the House floor during the vote told me that while McCarthy was gaveling down the votes, Buchanan walked up to McCarthy and said, ‘You fucked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me.’ He then proceeded to chew out McCarthy’s deputy chief of staff for floor operations, John Leganski. It was shocking to see such fury from Buchanan, who’s known for being mild mannered. Indeed, I heard that the tirade was so heated that the Speaker’s security detail stepped in with a light touch. (McCarthy’s spokesperson Matt Sparks disputed this detail saying, ‘at no point did anyone have to step in.’ A spokesperson for Buchanan declined to comment.)The House hasn’t convened its committees yet, and thus Democrats and Republicans have taken their squabble over the investigations into Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s possession of classified material to the next logical venue: Twitter.Jim Jordan, chair of the House judiciary committee, fired the latest salvo by reiterating his latest talking points about the investigation into Biden’s documents:Why was President Trump’s home raided but not President Biden’s? Why did the FBI take pictures of President Trump’s so-called classified documents but not President Biden’s?Americans are tired of the double standard.— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) January 17, 2023
      To which Daniel Goldman, a Democrat who has lined up to be one of Biden’s chief defenders in the House and served as the lead counsel when Democrats impeached Trump in 2019, fired back:1) because Trump obstructed justice by failing to comply with a subpoena. Biden volunteered all docs. 2) It’s standard procedure for the FBI to photograph everything they find during a search warrant. In the future, feel free to reach out to me directly with your questions. https://t.co/05JVjbNCgI— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) January 17, 2023
      And before you “investigate the FBI” to obstruct their investigations into you and others, you might want to brush up on the FBI Manual of Investigative Operations and Guidelines (MIOG) so you don’t ask any more dumb questions.— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) January 17, 2023
      Arizona’s US senator Kyrsten Sinema, who recently left the Democratic party and declared herself an independent, drew political fire from critics Tuesday after defending her congressional chamber’s filibuster rule at Switzerland’s Davos World Economic Forum.Among other remarks Tuesday, Sinema reportedly said the Senate filibuster was the “basis of the productivity for some incredible achievements” in Congress during Joe Biden’s first two years in the White House.Both Democrats and Republicans have used the rule, which allows a relatively small group of senator to block action by the majority. Sinema outraged Democratic supporters before she left the party in December when she opposed filibuster reform to pave the way for the passage of voting rights legislation.A group named “Replace Sinema Because Arizona Deserves Better” on Tuesday issued a statement arguing that the first-term senator preferred to be at Davos rubbing elbows with “billionaires and Wall Street execs” as well as others belonging to the global elite rather than “doing her job” in her state or on Capitol Hill.Meanwhile, one journalist snapped and tweeted out a photograph of her appearing to speak warmly with former Donald Trump White House spokesperson Anthony Scaramucci and ex-US House speaker Paul Ryan, both figures in the Republican party. The tweet referred to both Ryan and Scaramucci – Republican figures and Democratic opponents – as “old pals”.Sinema, like centrist Democrat Joe Manchin (who was alongside her on stage at Davos), has often taken stands that undermined key Biden administration agenda items along with other left-leaning interests in the nation’s capital. Her defection from the party came shortly after Raphael Warnock’s victory over Republican challenger Herschel Walker in Georgia left the Democrats thinking they had a clear one-seat majority in the Senate.There has been no indication that Sinema will caucus with Republicans, and she has said she doesn’t intend to. Either way, when the Senate was split 50-50 for two years beginning in 2021, Vice-President Kamala Harris broke ties in the Democrats’ favor.The White House on Tuesday defended its public handling of revelations that classified documents were discovered at Joe Biden’s home and the president’s private office. In a call with reporters, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said the decision not to immediately inform the public of the discovery of sensitive records in November was “consistent with safeguarding the integrity of the investigation”.“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation, and rightful demands for additional public information,” Sams said. “And so we’re trying to strike that balance.” He pointed reporters to a line in a statement released by the president’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, after the discovery of additional documents, which stated that “regular ongoing public disclosures also pose the risk that, as further information develops, answers provided on this periodic basis may be incomplete.”The explanation did little to satisfy Republicans – or reporters – who have repeatedly pressed the White House on why it was not transparent with the public when the documents were first found at the president’s private Washington office on 2 November. On 2o December, Biden’s personal lawyers found “a small number of potential records bearing classified markings” in the garage of the president’s Delaware home. Five more pages of materials were found at his home on Thursday. ‘Rampant hypocrisy’After the first discovery two months ago, the White House said it “immediately”notified the National Archives and Records Administration, which then informed the US justice department.Sams repeated that the White House was cooperating with the investigation and would continue to do so, drawing a sharp distinction with the way Biden’s presidential predecessor Donald Trump handled sensitive documents. Trump refused to turn over troves of government documents that he took with him to his Mar-a-lago estate, even after being subpoenaed. Agents dispatched to his home to retrieve the materials, which Trump said he had the right to keep, and even argued without evidence that he had declassified. Sams accused Republicans of fomenting “faking outrage about disclosure and transparency” and “rampant hypocrisy.” ‘Fake outrage’He seized on comments by the newly installed Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, who has promised to aggressively investigate Biden’s handling of the documents. In a CNN interview this weekend, the Republican said: “At the end of the day, my biggest concern isn’t the classified documents, to be honest with you. My concern is there’s such a discrepancy between how President Trump was treated … versus Joe Biden.” Asked last year about Trump’s handling of the documents, Comer, Sams noted, said it “didn’t amount to a hill of beans.” “House Republicans lose credibility when they engage in fake outrage about an issue that they’re clearly pursuing only for partisan gain,” Sams said. Sams said the White House was reviewing “a few letters” from the House Oversight committee related to Biden’s retention of classified documents and will make a “determination about our response in due course.”Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has vowed to investigate both the classified documents found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and at Joe Biden’s properties.But his sympathies were clearly with Trump. The Republican leader argued that the former president had been treated more harshly than Biden, which “just does not seem fair.”“This is why the American people get so upset and distrust their government when they see that the law is not applied equally,” he continued, accusing Biden of “hypocrisy” for not making the document discovery public before the November midterms.Here’s C-SPAN with his full comments:.@SpeakerMcCarthy (R-CA) on Biden and Trump documents probes: “It’s not a fair process when you equalize this out, and that is what is wrong with the system.” https://t.co/wY8OFxGe89 pic.twitter.com/FZ8vlO1aDZ— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2023
      George Santos will be seated on committees in the House, even though the New York Republican admitted to lying about his qualifications for office, House speaker Kevin McCarthy said.While he did not say on which committees the freshman lawmaker will serve, the comment underscores that Republican leadership is disinclined to take any major steps to exclude Santos, who is facing an array of investigations into his admitted dishonesty on the campaign trail.Here are McCarthy’s comments, courtesy of C-Span:.@SpeakerMcCarthy (R-CA) on Rep. George Santos (R-NY): “He’ll get seated on committees.” https://t.co/77obCJittk pic.twitter.com/Oo2JIBf9Cc— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2023
      Republicans are continuing to pressure Joe Biden over the classified documents found at his residence and former office, while Democrats are working to point out the significant differences between the president’s case and that of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the White House is demanding Kevin McCarthy release the details of the agreements he made with conservative Republican to win their support for his House speaker bid.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      Trump may be the big winner of the kerfuffle over Biden’s classified documents, as it undermines the investigation into the government secrets found at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
      The House Democrats’ lead prosecutor of Trump during his first impeachment will play a major role in defending Biden from the GOP’s investigation campaign.
      State Democratic parties are revolting against Biden’s plan to shake up the primary calendar for presidential nominations.
      In Florida, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that US authorities are turning back more and more migrants amid a surge in arrivals:Authorities in Florida have been turning back growing numbers of undocumented Cubans and Haitians arriving by sea in recent weeks as more attempt to seek haven in the US.Local US residents on jet skis have been helping some of the migrants who attempted to swim ashore after making arduous, life-threateningand days-long journeys in makeshift vessels.Joe Biden’s turn to the center over immigration comes as Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, attempts to plot his own strategy for handling a sensitive situation in the south of his state, calling out national guard troops in a hardline approach.US turns back growing number of undocumented people after arduous sea journeysRead moreTo the GOP, the White House’s demand for answers from Kevin McCarthy is little more than a distraction from the unfolding investigation into Joe Biden’s classified documents.Here’s Republican operative Matt Whitlock:The communications wizards at the Biden White House right now: https://t.co/dT9swCaPVc pic.twitter.com/hTKj4qIntv— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) January 17, 2023 More

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      Senate passes $1.7tn funding bill to avert US government shutdown

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      Senate passes $1.7tn funding bill to avert US government shutdownBill includes $45bn in military aid to Ukraine after lawmakers reached agreement on a final series of votes The US Senate on Thursday passed a $1.7tn government spending bill, sending it to the House to approve and send to Joe Biden for his signature, averting a partial government shutdown.‘No money, nowhere to stay’: asylum seekers wait as Trump’s border restrictions drag onRead moreThe legislation provides funding through 30 September 2023, for the US military and an array of non-military programs.The legislation provides Ukraine with $44.9bn in wartime aid and bans the use of Chinese-owned social media app TikTok on federal government devices.Progress on the bill slowed after the conservative Republican Mike Lee introduced an amendment meant to slow immigration. That prompted Democrats to put forward a competing amendment that would boost funding for law enforcement agencies on the border. Both amendments failed, which allowed lawmakers to move forward.The massive bill includes about $772.5bn for non-defense programs and $858bn for defense. Lawmakers raced to get it approved, many anxious to complete the task before a deep freeze could leave them stranded in Washington for the holidays. Many also wanted to lock in funding before a new Republican-controlled House makes it harder to find compromise.On Wednesday night, senators heard from the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, about the importance of US aid for the war with Russia.“Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way,” Zelenskiy said.The funding measure includes emergency assistance to Ukraine and Nato allies above Joe Biden’s request.The Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the worst thing Congress could do was give the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, any signal the US was wavering in its commitment to Ukraine. He also said he met Zelenskiy.“He made it clear that without this aid package, the Ukrainians will be in real trouble and could even lose the war,” Schumer said. “So that makes the urgency of getting this legislation done all the more important.”But when lawmakers left the chamber, prospects for a quick vote looked glum. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said the funding bill was “hanging by a thread”.Republicans were looking to ensure a vote on a proposed amendment from Lee, of Utah, seeking to extend coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions on asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border, known as Title 42. Passage of the amendment would have doomed the bill in the Democratic-held House.“Senator Schumer doesn’t want to have a vote on Title 42 because he presumably knows it will pass,” said Mitt Romney, the other Utah Republican. But the House won’t go along in that case, he added, in which case “everything falls apart”.Lee told Fox News: “I insisted that we have at least one amendment, up-or-down vote, on whether to preserve Title 42. Because Title 42 is the one thing standing between us and utter chaos [at the border]. We already have mostly chaos. This would bring us to utter chaos if it expires, which it’s about to.”The spending bill was supported by Schumer and the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, for different reasons.McConnell cited the bill’s 10% boost in defense spending but faced pushback from Republicans resenting being forced to vote on such a massive package with so little time before a shutdown and Christmas. It was expected, however, that enough Republicans agreed with McConnell that the bill would reach 60 votes.Schumer touted the bill as a win on the domestic front, saying: “Kids, parents, veterans, nurses, workers: these are just a few of the beneficiaries of our bipartisan funding package, so there is every reason in the world for the Senate to finish its work as soon as possible.”Lawmakers worked to stuff priorities into the package, which ran to 4,155 pages. It included $27bn in disaster funding and an overhaul of federal election law to prevent presidents or candidates trying to overturn an election. The bipartisan overhaul was a response to Donald Trump’s efforts to convince Republicans to object to Biden’s victory.Hunter Biden hires Jared Kushner lawyer to face Republican investigatorsRead moreThe bill also contained policy changes lawmakers worked to include, to avoid having to start over in the new Congress next year. Examples included the provision from Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, to ban TikTok on government cellphones. A provision supported by Maine would aid the state’s lobster and Jonah crab fisheries, delaying regulations to help save North Atlantic right whales.On the healthcare front, the bill requires states to keep children enrolled in Medicaid on coverage for at least a year. Millions could still start to lose coverage on 1 April because the bill sunsets a requirement of the Covid-19 emergency that prohibited kicking people off Medicaid.The bill also provides roughly $15.3bn for more than 7,200 projects lawmakers sought for their states. Fiscal conservatives criticize such spending as unnecessary.The Senate appropriations committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, a Democrat retiring after nearly five decades in the chamber, praised bipartisan support for the measure following months of negotiations.His Republican counterpart, Richard Shelby, who also is retiring, said of the 4,155-page bill: “It’s got a lot of stuff in it. A lot of good stuff.”House Republicans, including Kevin McCarthy, probably the next speaker, had asked colleagues in the Senate to support only a short-term extension. A notice sent by leadership to House members urged them to vote against the measure.TopicsUS CongressUS SenateUS politicsUS domestic policyUS foreign policyUS militaryUS healthcarenewsReuse this content More

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      African leaders gather in US as Joe Biden aims to reboot rocky relations

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      African leaders gather in US as Joe Biden aims to reboot rocky relationsPresident and Antony Blinken woo nations at summit in Washington in hope they will align with west rather than Russia or China Dozens of African leaders have assembled in Washington for a summit aimed at rebooting US relations on the continent, which have languished in recent years.The US-Africa summit, the first since 2014, will be the biggest international gathering in Washington since the pandemic and the most substantial commitment by a US administration to boosting its influence in the region for almost a decade.The summit comes amid the sharpest great power rivalry for many decades, worsening security problems and acute economic problems in Africa.All three challenges are sometimes blamed on the US, which has been pushed on to the defensive in many areas by determined and often unconventional strategies adopted by strategic rivals such as Russia and China.In all, 49 leaders and heads of states have been invited to the summit, and the guest list underlines the difficulty faced by President Joe Biden and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in balancing values with pressing demands of power politics.Observers have noted tensions in US policy between a desire to win friends and also to reach out to populations suffering under repressive, exploitative regimes through promotion of diversity, tolerance, free speech and democracy.“It seems it’s now a numbers game and getting more countries to align with the west against Russia now and, in the longer term, China. The continent feels a lot more cold war-ish than at any time in my career,” said Alex Vines, director of the Africa programme at Chatham House.Four countries that were suspended from the African Union – Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Sudan – were not invited to the summit because coups in those nations led to unconstitutional changes in power. The White House also did not invite Eritrea.But Equatorial Guinea was invited despite the state department stating that it held “serious doubts” about last month’s election, in which President Teodoro Obiang’s ruling party won nearly 95% of the vote. So too was Zimbabwe, which has faced years of US and western sanctions over poor governance, human rights abuses and widespread corruption, and Ethiopia, some of whose commercial privileges were withdrawn in an attempt to force an end to a war in the Tigray region that led to “gross violations” of human rights.A peace deal was signed last month, with the significant involvement of US diplomats, but implementation faces major challenges.Many African leaders have come with their own agendas, such as seeking help with high debt repayments, the devastating legacy of the coronavirus, climate change, or military assistance. Most countries are suffering too from the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has pushed up inflation and disrupted food supplies.Geopolitical competition goes beyond that between China, Russia, the EU and the US to include middling powers such as Turkey, Japan, the Gulf states and the UK too, said Vines.On a tour of three countries in Africa earlier this year, Blinken appealed to “governments, communities and peoples” across Africa to embrace Washington’s vision of democracy, openness and economic partnership.The US diplomatic strategy appears in part to appeal directly to ordinary people in Africa, rather than their leaders, by promising support for democracy and accountability. Few rulers on the continent welcome Washington’s admonishments about their often poor human rights records or failures to implement political reform.“I do strongly believe that the United States is still seen as a superpower from the African perspective, but most African leaders do not want to align with its promotion of democracy,” said Abraham Kuol Nyuon, a political analyst and associate professor of political science at the University of Juba in South Sudan. “They need the support of America but not the system of America.”China has made little secret of its preference for strongman rulers, offering assistance without conditions. Sub-Saharan nations have also been major recipients of Chinese investment through its now flagging “belt and road initiative”, which supported infrastructure development.Cold war echoes as African leaders resist criticising Putin’s warRead moreThe Russian strategy has been more opportunistic, and has been focused on unstable countries with significant resources such as Sudan or those where once pro-western political leaders are now seeking new allies.On his tour, Blinken sought to counter Russian and Chinese accusations that the US is a “neo-imperialist power” by stressing that Washington wants to act in consultation with local leaders and communities, reinforcing existing African initiatives.“The United States prioritises our relationship with Africa for the sake of our mutual interests and our partnership in dealing with global challenges,” said Molly Phee, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs. “We are very conscious, again, of the cold war history, we’re conscious, again, of the deleterious impact of colonialism on Africa, and we studiously seek to avoid repeating some of the mistakes of those earlier eras.”A further aim is to make sure failures of Trump’s administration – marked by drift and a series of insulting gaffes – are forgotten.African leaders will be looking for Biden to make some big commitments during the summit, including announcing his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa. One crowdpleaser may be support for adding the African Union as a permanent member of the G20, according to the White House.The Senegalese president, Macky Sall, the current AU chair, has argued that by adding the African Union, the G20 “would come to represent the views of 54 additional members, the bulk of low-income countries, and about 80% of the world’s population”.He wrote in July: “The G20 compromises its effectiveness and influence by omitting such a large fraction of humanity and the world economy.”TopicsUS foreign policyBiden administrationJoe BidenUS politicsAntony BlinkenAfrican UnionAfricanewsReuse this content More