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      Wrestler, film star – and future president? Why we should all take Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson seriously

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      It’s proving to be a busy period for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, sometime WWE professional wrestler and Hollywood film star. Well, another one. Red One, a Christmas-themed action movie (Johnson plays Santa Claus’s bodyguard), was released earlier this month. The Disney animation, Moana 2 (for which he voices the tattooed demigod Maui) is about to be released. He is also in the process of filming the new live-action version of Moana, and embarking on another Disney movie, Monster Jam.If anyone is surprised by Johnson’s repeated donning of the cinematic mouse ears, or by his general presence in children’s films, they shouldn’t be. While he is probably still best known for the Fast & Furious film franchise, and other flexes of his big-screen muscle, he has long been a staple in family movies. With his reputed $50m fee for Red One, and with an estimated net worth of about $800m, he has become one of Hollywood’s highest paid stars. Johnson also made the Time magazine 100 list of influential people – not once but twice, in 2016 and 2019.The Rock should run for US president, you may josh. That very suggestion was tested by a size­able 2021 poll resulting in 46% of Americans saying they would back him (more of which anon).If, for some of us, Johnson does not register on our radar, leastways not in these rarefied zones, or to such an extent, then we haven’t been paying attention.These days, it’s not just about The Rock’s success, it’s also about the spread of it: films; wrestling; television; sundry business ventures; calls to go into politics.For all that, outside the US Johnson could represent something of a cultural blind spot. As in, you’ll have heard of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (probably), but he’s not someone you’d necessarily place in Hollywood’s top starry tier (you’re wrong). Doesn’t he just do fighting-grunting acting, and otherwise mainly stands there like a block of crudely honed wood? (You may be thinking of Jean-Claude Van Damme.)View image in fullscreenJohnson, 52, has a large dedicated female fanbase, with wider reach than you would think. He has talked honestly and regretfully of his troubles with depression, and past personal mistakes. A father of three daughters, his ex-wife is still his friend and business partner. In 2018, on International Women’s Day holding his eight-year-old daughter Jasmine (“Jazzy”) in his arms, he posted a message on then-Twitter: “To every woman out there ‘round the world – all ages and races – I proudly stand by your side to honour, protect and respect.”Saying that, Johnson’s appeal seems not one iota dependent on what women are supposed to like. Certainly not if reports about how macho rugged guys are currently “out” are correct – and modern women prefer prettier, more feminised men, offscreen and on, from Brad Pitt to One Day’s Leo Woodall.By contrast, The Rock represents the kind of male archetype that never truly goes out of fashion, primarily because such a solid unyielding block of men really like him, maybe even need him – viewing the unbridled alpha masculinity of his action movies as a form of rebellion against modern world reprimands and restrictions. Judged by these metrics, Johnson’s brand of masculinity is focus group-proof.If The Rock is now one of the most successful film stars in the world, the product isn’t always so celebrated. His humorous family-friendly film persona is nothing new; it’s an update on the mainstream “gentle giant” trope popularised by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s and 90s, with films such as Twins (1989) and Kindergarten Cop (1991). There’s nothing wrong with that, but the standard has to remain reasonably high.Despite costing a reputed $200m, some Red One reviews have been un-festively negative. The one-and-a-half star review from the well-read Roger Ebert site ended with the words “a state of unconsciousness might be the best way to enjoy it”.Johnson’s on-set behaviour has also been the subject of unflattering reports – including the Fast & Furious camp, allegedly involving Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, and Johnson (who now stars with Statham in the Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw spin-off series). The rumours mainly involved the alpha-male actors demanding scripts be tweaked so that their characters always won fights, which (oh, the irony) made them all look a little pouty and beta.On the Red One set, there were reports of Johnson arriving late, putting filming behind schedule (Johnson says his timings were pre-arranged), and, when away from his trailer, urinating in water-bottles that were then handed to assistants to dispose of (“Yeah, that happens,” admitted Johnson in a GQ magazine interview).Acting alpha is one thing; behaving like a spoiled boorish A-lister quite another, and damaging to Johnson’s earthy, blue-collar public profile (with parents in the wrestling community, the young Johnson constantly moved around the US so that his late father could wrestle).If The Rock as real-world US presidential material seems far-fetched, the 2021 poll suggests otherwise, as seemingly does Johnson. Posted on Instagram, his response was: “I don’t think our founding fathers EVER envisioned a six-four, bald, tattooed, half-Black, half-Samoan, tequila drinking, pickup truck driving, fanny pack-wearing guy joining their club – but, if it ever happens, it’d be my honour to serve you, the people.”View image in fullscreenThere have been screen-to-politics trajectories before: Ronald Reagan, Schwarzenegger, even Donald Trump. After the poll result, Johnson said he was visited by various political parties but, if he does ever run for office, what are his leanings?Increasingly, Johnson seems to suffer from wandering politics. In 2020, he called himself “centrist”, and declared for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Fast-forward to 2024, and Donald Trump was claiming on talkSPORT that when Johnson saw footage of the assassination attempt, he asked for Trump’s contact details, as the film star had been impressed by his bravery (Trump did not say whether Johnson had been in touch).Johnson also told Fox News he would not be endorsing Harris for president, and that he “would keep my politics to myself”.But he has also expressed his frustrations: “Today’s cancel culture, woke culture, division, etcetera – that really bugs me.” Is The Rock suffering from a bad dose of liberal buyer’s regret? Or is it rather his feeling, and of other interested parties, that should he ever run for office, it’s more likely Republicans who would prove supportive?Getting back to the day job, there are signs that Johnson may be chafing against his stereotyping in action films and family comedies. He is producing and starring in (alongside Emily Blunt) a forthcoming film The Smashing Machine, playing a character based on Mark Kerr, a wrestler and mixed martial artist from the 1990s, whose addictions nearly destroyed him.If this news instantly causes an eyebrow to arch (The Rock in a wrestling Raging Bull?), maybe it’s time to wonder if, with Johnson, it’s a case of: it’s not him, it’s us. Are people being snobbish about him trying to stretch himself? Are we just as guilty of buying into macho stereotypes – only in slightly knowing, ironic films such as this year’s Ridley Scott sequel Gladiator II?Perhaps we have not yet learned our lesson about underestimating The Rock. While some of us were not really looking, Dwayne Johnson, cultural outlier, got incredibly big – and in ways beyond his bulked-up physical frame. It could be time to take more notice. More

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      Trump voters hail controversial cabinet picks as the government they want

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      In the American heartland, they’re excited. Finally, say voters who put Donald Trump into the White House for a second time, they are about to get the president they wanted all along.Even as leading Democrats decry Trump’s cabinet nominations as “agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance”, the former and future president’s supporters are interpreting the selections as evidence that he has finally broken free of the Washington establishment.Democrats are fuming that Trump wants to put a vaccine denier in charge of health, former Fox News presenters at the helm of the Pentagon and transportation department, and at the prospect of Elon Musk slashing and burning his way through the sprawling federal bureaucracy.Even senior Republicans have been less than enthusiastic about some of Trump’s choices. The tapping of the former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be the US attorney general ran into the sand after just a few days over allegations of sex with a minor.But many of those who voted for Trump are weighing other priorities.Neil Shaffer, chair of the Republican party in Howard county, Iowa, which twice voted for Barack Obama but has swung ever more to Trump with each passing election, has never been an enthusiast for the former president even if he voted for him three times.“This time around I was still a little lukewarm on the whole thing but I’m very impressed with the people he’s surrounded himself with, especially Tulsi Gabbard and Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk. With each one of these people there’s a big, big part of their appointment that is reforming and streamlining,” said Shaffer, who works in water conservation for the state.“I like the idea of bringing people from outside government to look at this with eyes from the real world not Washington DC. Washington DC is not the real world. It’s a made-up puppet regime of dark shadows. You’ve got the military-industrial complex, big pharma, big agriculture pulling all the levers. They want all that money. It’s why we got the way we are with our food. I’m actually mystified that he’s this well organised, that all these names are coming out so quickly.”View image in fullscreenShaffer offers a frequently heard view among Trump supporters that the former president was ill-prepared for his unexpected victory in 2016, and was then captured by big business and the Republican establishment in making cabinet appointments. That, he said, held back Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp”.“He was inundated with all these lobbyists and corporate interests and individuals who really were there more to perpetuate the system instead of reform the system,” he said.This time, said Shaffer, Trump has the experience to put in place officials who will represent his ambitions.Among the most contentious nominations, and popular with the next president’s supporters, is the choice of Robert F Kennedy, scion of the US’s most famous Democratic political family, as secretary of health and human services. His liberal critics see a crank who rejected Covid vaccinations and promoted false claims over links between immunisation and autism.But more than a few Trump supporters are focused on Kennedy’s longstanding criticisms of the power of the food and agricultural industry over what Americans farm and eat, and the prescription drug makers’ influence on healthcare.Corporate lobbyists helped ensure that the US government spent more than $100bn subsidising the growing of corn over the past 30 years. Some of that ends up as high-fructose corn syrup now found in most processed foods in the US, from breakfast cereals to salad dressings and soft drinks, and is a major contributor to some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes in the world.A meme about the unhealthy ingredients in Heinz tomato ketchup made in the US, including corn syrup, compared with the UK version is doing the rounds among Trump supporters enthusiastic about Kennedy’s appointment. As Shafer sees it, corporations are getting taxpayers to subsidise an industry that is killing them.“It’s like I heard Bobby Kennedy say the other day, when you go back to the 1960s and what our health was then to where it is now, our DNA didn’t change, our diet changed. And what spurred our diet to change?” said Shaffer.“The food thing is huge. I’m so happy that he’s going to have a cabinet position.”Bo Copley, a former miner in West Virginia who now works as a salesman, said he was disappointed that Trump did not behave with more dignity during his first term. He’s not confident that will change but thinks the former president has learned from other mistakes, principally in who he appoints to positions of power.“Opponents would consider them radical but for the people who support him, he’s putting people in place who will help him get the job done. There are people that would shake up the establishment in Washington DC. We’re not looking for lobbyists to be in these positions. We’re not looking at people from big pharma to be in these positions,” he said.Copley named Kennedy and Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman who switched to the Republicans earlier this year and is nominated as director of national intelligence, as among the choices he most liked.Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who challenged Trump in the Republican primaries, on Thursday criticised Gabbard as “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathiser”. But Copley is not alone in welcoming Gabbard’s scepticism about Washington’s escalating military support for Ukraine, including the Biden administration’s decision this week to supply landmines and permit the firing of US-made missiles into Russia.View image in fullscreen“One of the biggest talking points the first time Donald Trump went into office was he’s going to start world war three and he actually de-escalated conflicts. Now we’ve sent Ukraine billions and billions of dollars when we have people in North Carolina who went through humongous disaster, the hurricane, and we offer them $750 apiece when their entire lives have been wiped out. It’s completely asinine to me,” he saidskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThen there is Elon Musk. Even before he was nominated to head the new “Department of Government Efficiency”, some were questioning how long the egotistical billionaire would remain in Trump’s favour. But Shaffer is particularly keen on Musk carrying through his promise of deep cuts to government spending after the national debt rose by more than $2tn over the past year.“I was in DC this summer. I walked past this ginormous education department building every time I left my hotel. I thought there’s no reason for this to be here. If that money was spent in our local communities, the quality of education would skyrocket,” he said.Copley, too, is enthused at the prospect of Musk “cutting down the wasteful spending that happens in Washington”. He acknowledges that West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the US, is heavily reliant on federal aid to fund education, transport and social services. A relatively high proportion of people on low incomes in the state receive welfare payments and healthcare coverage.“I know that a lot of West Virginians receive money and receive those kind of payments, but I’m all for revamping those so that people don’t game the system and use them as lifelong crutches,” he said.For Ed Bisch the desire to tear down parts of the system is deeply personal. He lost his 18-year-old son Eddie to a prescription opioid overdose in 2001, an early victim of an epidemic that has claimed close to 900,000 lives. Bisch voted solidly Democratic all the way up to supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 in the belief that the party would take on the big pharma interests that caused the opioid epidemic. But little changed.Then Bisch saw Trump in office and decided he was the president most likely to challenge the drug industry and what he sees as its corruption of American medicine and health regulation.Bisch is enthusiastic about Kennedy, who is a former heroin addict, and JD Vance as vice-president after he wrote a bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up in a region blighted by drugs.He is also pleased by the nomination of Pam Bondi to be the US attorney general after Gaetz dropped out. As Florida’s attorney general, Bondi shut down the “pill mills” churning out opioid prescriptions at a time when more oxycodone pills were sold in Florida than all other US states combined.Bisch wants to see Bondi prosecute the Sackler family which owned the company that kicked off the opioid epidemic with the powerful narcotic OxyContin. He’s also counting on Kennedy to follow through on a pledge to “close the revolving door” between the drug industry and its regulators at the Food and Drug Administration which has been accused of allowing the epidemic to take off because of lax oversight and too close a relationship with the drug makers.Kennedy has repeatedly criticised the FDA for conflicts of interest, accusing it of putting the interests of the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the nation’s health.Then there is Trump’s promise to finish building the wall on the border with Mexico. That is primarily about immigration but Bisch said it would also help stem the flow of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is responsible for most overdose deaths these days.“I’m excited. Let’s finish the border wall. I agree when people say most of the fentanyl gets in through ports of entry not the open border but once we get the wall built and secure the border, then you can put more resources at the ports of entry. The bottom line is, you’ll never be able to stop it but reducing the supply is a proven way to reduce deaths,” he said.How the desire to see Trump take on a system that has increasingly come to resemble a corporate oligarchy will square with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s authoritarian plan to impose rightwing control across the entire US government that would also enlarge the power of big business, remains to be seen. Trump has distanced himself from the plan even though members of his first administration were influential in its creation.Shaffer is no fan of Project 2025. He takes Trump assurances at face value and believes the next president will see that his supporters want to see the corporate grip on government broken.“The Democrats have leftwing crazies. We’ve got some wackos out there on the far right and they concocted this list of their priorities. There’s probably some good things in there but there’s a lot of screwball things. I don’t see those people coming to the table,” he said.“I think Trump is going to have enough free-thinkers and people that have already explicitly criticised a lot of the stuff that’s been going on out there. That will be his guiding force.” More

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      Yes, there is a lot of greenwashing, but Cop summits are our best chance of averting climate breakdown | Ashish Ghadiali

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      It was never an indication of great things to come when the chief executive of Cop29, Elnur Soltanov, was filmed attempting to broker gas and oil deals for Azerbaijan in the slipstream of the past fortnight’s UN climate summit in Baku.More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists have been operating in and around Cop29, outnumbering delegates from the 10 most climate-vulnerable countries combined. Many, including Greta Thunberg, now argue that the UN climate process has been entirely hijacked by corporate interests, reduced to a global stage for greenwash.As the 29th iteration of the Conference of the Parties reaches its delayed conclusion, this year is expected to be the hottest on record. The increased air and ocean temperatures have pushed up wind speeds in the Atlantic, turning what in the past might have been tropical storms into hurricanes on the scale of Milton, Helene and Beryl. Throughout the summer, deadly heatwaves have scorched east Africa, south and south-east Asia. Last month saw unprecedented flash floods in Spain that claimed more than 220 lives and racked up a bill in excess of £8.3bn.In spite of the mounting cost to governments the world over, we appear unable to take control of our collective destiny and turn the ocean tanker of a heating world around. Global carbon emissions are still increasing. According to the Global Carbon Budget, we will hit a new record of 41.6 gigatons of carbon emissions this year, giving us six years, at current rates, before triggering warming beyond 1.5C above preindustrial temperatures.Given the dire state of the planet and the abuses that have taken place at this and other Cop summits, it is perhaps unsurprising that leading architects of effective climate action – from climate scientist Johan Rockström to the former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of Cop umbrella organisation the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – chose this Cop to decry the process as “no longer fit for purpose”, calling for reform.In some circles, this criticism has been taken as a jab at the multilateral process itself, though Figueres has been quick to deny this, clarifying that she believes the Cop process is “an essential and irreplaceable vehicle for supporting the multilateral, multisectoral, systemic change we urgently need”.But it’s clear that an atmosphere of perceived hypocrisy has undermined the authority of the Cop process. Baku has seen countries in the global north and those in the global south at loggerheads again. Little by way of common ground has emerged as efforts to define meaningful new climate finance targets have failed to progress. Failure at the Cop follows a set of sobering results for climate action at the global ballot box, too, as extreme heat played out against a year of elections around the world.In India, for example, where electoral officials were literally dying from heat exhaustion at the poll booths in May, even this wasn’t enough to drive climate action up the political agenda. Elections in the EU have seen the continued ascendancy of rightwing forces explicitly hostile to decarbonisation and climate finance, while Donald Trump’s resounding victory in America points us into a new geopolitical era that will almost certainly see the US leave the Paris agreement again, if not the UNFCCC altogether. This could, in turn, be the move that inspires other countries to follow suit, heralding the collapse of the Cop process that some are starting to predict.And yet, and yet. However imperfect it may be, the UNFCCC has achieved huge amounts in its 30-odd-year fight for climate justice. My friend, the late, great Saleemul Huq, expert advisory group chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, who attended every Cop until his death last year, always pointed out how, unlike the G7, this was the one body where countries most affected by climate breakdown have some kind of voice.Diplomacy in this space has led to the recognition of 1.5C as a critical threshold. It has led to recognition, even as we wait for the world’s richest countries to put some money in the bucket created, of the need for global finance for loss and damage. Progress has not been enough and too slow. But how does a new world come into existence?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAt Baku, in spite of the despondency, we have seen indications of significant movement on decarbonisation in shipping and energy, new mechanisms to de-risk climate finance for developing countries, shifts even in the articulation of a global financial architecture which could conceivably withstand the pressure that climate breakdown will bring in the decades ahead. Speaking from the sidelines of Baku last week, a former high-level UN official told me: “I arrived feeling very depressed about things, but, you know, I’ve been looking around here and it suddenly clicked. The transition has begun.”Given Trump’s longstanding commitment to climate denial, his second presidency is unquestionably a disaster that will slow the transition just when we need to accelerate it. But it’s also entirely conceivable that, whatever the US does over the next four years, the momentum of a new world order will continue to be fashioned through future Cops in Brazil and Australia, as well as in other forums – and that, as the transition continues to gather pace, America’s abstention will not derail the process but open up a space of new possibility. More

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      Trump picks Brooke Rollins to lead Department of Agriculture

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      Donald Trump has chosen Brooke Rollins, president of the America First Policy Institute, to be agriculture secretary.“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American Farmers, who are truly the backbone of our Country,” the US president-elect said in a statement.Trump’s nomination of Rollins marks the completion of his top cabinet picks for his incoming administration.If confirmed by the Senate, Rollins would lead a 100,000-person agency with offices in every county in the country, whose remit includes farm and nutrition programs, forestry, home and farm lending, food safety, rural development, agricultural research, trade and more. It had a budget of $437.2bn in 2024.The nominee’s agenda would carry implications for American diets and wallets, both urban and rural. Department of Agriculture officials and staff negotiate trade deals, guide dietary recommendations, inspect meat, fight wildfires and support rural broadband, among other activities.“Brooke’s commitment to support the American Farmer, defense of American Food Self-Sufficiency, and the restoration of Agriculture-dependent American Small Towns is second to none,” Trump said in the statement.In response to her nomination, Rollins wrote on X: “Thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to serve as the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. It will be the honor of my life to fight for America’s farmers and our Nation’s agricultural communities. This is big stuff for a small-town ag girl from Glen Rose, TX — truly the American Dream at its greatest.”She added: “Who’s ready to make agriculture great again!”The America First Policy Institute is a right-leaning thinktank whose personnel have worked closely with Trump’s campaign to help shape policy for his incoming administration. Rollins chaired the Domestic Policy Council during Trump’s first term.As agriculture secretary, Rollins would advise the administration on how and whether to implement clean fuel-tax credits for biofuels at a time when the sector is hoping to grow through the production of sustainable aviation fuel.The nominee would also guide next year’s renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal, in the shadow of disputes over Mexico’s attempt to bar imports of genetically modified corn and Canada’s dairy import quotas.Trump has said he again plans to institute sweeping tariffs that are likely to affect the farm sector.He was considering offering the role to the former US senator Kelly Loeffler, a staunch ally whom he chose to co-chair his inaugural committee, CNN reported on Friday.In a separate announcement on Saturday, Trump urged Randy Fine, a former gambling industry executive and current Florida state senator, to run in a special election to represent the state’s sixth congressional district in the House of Representatives.Trump’s endorsement of Fine comes after he named Mike Waltz, Florida’s current sixth congressional district representative, to serve as his national security adviser.Writing on Truth Social, Trump called Fine “an incredible voice for MAGA”.“Should he decide to enter this Race, Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, RANDY, RUN!” Trump added. More

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      John Bolton rips into Trump’s pick for counter-terrorism chief Sebastian Gorka

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      Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has laid into Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s pick for counter-terrorism chief, as a “conman” whose selection is not “going to bode well for counter-terrorism efforts when the [national security council’s] senior director is somebody like that”.Trump praised Gorka, an immigrant from Hungary, as a “tireless advocate for the America First Agenda and the MAGA Movement”.But Bolton came out swinging at Gorka on Friday. The neocon, who served in the Reagan, George W Bush and first Trump administrations, has set out his stall against many of Trump’s picks, including former Democrat and Iraq veteran Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and told CNN that he “wouldn’t have him in any US government”.Earlier this week, Bolton told NewsNation’s The Hill that up until Gorka was nominated by Trump as a deputy assistant to the president and the senior director for counter-terrorism, he would have said that Gabbard’s nomination “was the worst cabinet appointment in recent American history”.Bolton’s not alone in his criticism. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Alex Floyd called Gorka “a far-right extremist who is as dangerous as he is unqualified to lead America’s counter-terrorism strategy”.Gorka is outspokenly pro-Israel and supportive of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced allegations of Islamophobia for supporting Trump’s 2017 Muslim travel ban that barred travel to the US for 90 days for visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.Gorka also claimed that Islam is “not a religion of peace”. He’s come under fire for showing up at Trump’s 2017 inaugural ball wearing an honorary medal from the Hungarian nationalist organization Vitézi Rend and for a previous position serving as an adviser to the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán.Bolton said Gorka “needs a full FBI field background investigation” and his “education claims” need to be investigated.“I think he is a perfect example of somebody who owes his position purely to Donald Trump,” Bolton told the outlet. “He doesn’t display loyalty. He displays fealty. And that’s what Trump wants. …“He doesn’t want Gorka’s opinions, he wants Gorka to say ‘yes, sir’, and I’m fully confident that’s exactly what will happen no matter what it is Trump says.” More

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      Keir Starmer played the China card in Rio – and sent a message to a hawkish Donald Trump | Simon Tisdall

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      Both were lawyers before they became politicians, but that’s where the similarities between Keir Starmer and Richard Nixon end. The former US president resigned in disgrace at the height of the Watergate corruption scandal exactly 50 years ago. Britain’s prime minister may have been unwise to accept free tickets from Arsenal FC – but he’s not in Nixon’s league.Except, perhaps, was there just a touch of Tricky Dicky about Starmer’s meeting with China’s president, Xi Jinping, at last week’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro? Watergate aside, Nixon is famous for his groundbreaking 1972 visit to Beijing, which opened the way to normalised relations between the US and Red China.Nixon’s surprise démarche had another purpose: to show the Soviet Union, America’s cold war adversary, that the US and China could act in alliance against Moscow, which broke with Beijing in 1961. Nixon’s move, known as “playing the China card”, had significant geopolitical consequences. Starmer, dealt a weaker hand, had no aces up his sleeve.All the same, the prime minister’s eagerness to reset what, under previous governments, became a very rocky relationship was striking. Starmer said he sought “consistent, durable, respectful, predictable” ties. “A strong relationship is important for both of our countries and for the broader international community,” he said.It was a pointed statement. Doubtless Starmer was thinking primarily about boosting UK trade, investment and growth. But were his words also designed, Nixon-style, to send a message to a third party – namely, Donald Trump?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US president-elect is a vociferous foe of China, which he believes threatens American global hegemony. He plans to impose sweeping, punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, re-igniting the trade war he began in his first term. Conservative backers, such as commentator Ionut Popescu, egg him on. Containment of China must be “the driving principle of US foreign policy in the new cold war”, Popescu wrote.Leading China hawks are being offered senior positions in the new administration, which takes office on 20 January. They include Marco Rubio as secretary of state. As a senator, Rubio railed against human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy – dramatised by last week’s jailings of activists and the show trial of British media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai. Rubio reviles “the wealth and corrupt activities of the leadership of the Chinese Communist party”.Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth, a rightwing TV personality, as defence secretary, and Michael Waltz, a fierce defender of Taiwan’s independence, as national security adviser, reinforces a strong anti-China bias. These men constitute what the New York Times calls “a new class of cold warrior, guns pointed at China”. And, like Trump, they will be unimpressed by Starmer’s cosying up to Xi.Starmer surely knows that, which makes his repositioning all the more interesting. Many in Britain, Labour and Tories, share American concerns. A House of Commons Library briefing in July traced a “sharp deterioration” in China ties in recent years, pointing in particular to Beijing’s “expansive” foreign policy and cyber-attacks and espionage in the UK. It noted Britain formally deems China a “systemic competitor” and “the greatest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security”.Speaking in Rio, Xi was adamant that his stance on Taiwan, democracy and other core issues would not change. But he also offered reassurance with a smiley face, stressing that he sought “stable, healthy and sustainable” relations with the west – words that, like Starmer’s, may have been partly aimed at Trump.Very deep differences remain. But Chinese and UK geostrategic interests may actually be converging in the face of Trump’s prospectively disruptive, costly, dangerous return. Climate change and post-pandemic health are two key areas of cooperation. Ongoing confrontation between the world’s top two economic and military powers would not be to Britain’s advantage. If Trump, the disquieting American, cannot be befriended and influenced, perhaps Xi can?Other countries are making similar calculations. Germany, with its huge Chinese exports, wants to keep things friendly. The EU prefers “de-risking” to open, Trump-like ruptures, though it is divided and inconsistent. Hungary and Greece hold China close, Lithuania feuds. Europe as a whole would suffer greatly in any US-initiated global tariff war.Emmanuel Macron was another leader making nice with Xi in Rio. France’s president raised China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, then claimed, mysteriously, to have achieved a “convergence of views”. Distancing himself from Trump, Macron said France would continue to promote European strategic autonomy, “precisely to be able to talk with China in complete independence”.Not to be left out, Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, set aside thorny bilateral disputes and, like Starmer, shook hands with Xi on a new start. Australia, too, valued steady “calibrated” ties. Trade was flourishing again, Albanese said. “Dialogue is critical, and we’ve made encouraging progress.” Jolly Xi hugged him right back (figuratively speaking).All this must be music to Xi’s ears. He has long dreamed of China supplanting the US as the 21st century’s foremost superpower. Beset by economic problems and a “wolf warrior diplomacy” backlash, he has launched a foreign charm offensive. Last month, he patched up a festering Himalayan border dispute with India, an old rival wooed by the US.Trump’s victory was initially assessed as bad news for China. It may be the exact opposite. He’s unpredictable. His views change. But if “America first” means putting everyone else last, if Trump’s isolationism, aggressive nationalism and trade war threats end up screwing America’s allies, then those allies, including Starmer, may ultimately swallow their misgivings and look elsewhere for reliable friends – if only to achieve some balance. If Xi’s dream of dominance comes true, he will know who to thank. Donald Trump: Making China Great Again. More

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      Women and LGBTQ+ people take up guns after Trump’s win: ‘We need to protect ourselves’

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      The misogyny and anti-trans rhetoric that were hallmarks of the 2024 election campaign have seemingly ramped up since Donald Trump’s win, prompting some women, queer and trans people to respond by buying guns – and learning how to defend themselves from potential attackers.The Guardian spoke to various Americans from marginalized groups taking firearms classes, arming themselves with stun guns and pepper spray and taking their friends shooting in an effort to protect themselves from bigots they fear will be emboldened by the president-elect’s return to power. A few left-leaning gun clubs say their numbers are increasing dramatically.“I am thinking about carrying every day,” said Ashley Parten, 38, a Douglasville, Georgia, resident who purchased stun guns for herself, her daughter and three nieces after the election. Parten, who is Black and bisexual, is also eyeing a maroon handgun that she plans on buying after taking a firearms class.“We all feel the need to make sure that we’re aware of our surroundings and protect ourselves in general, but even more so now,” she said.Earlier this week, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, in effect targeted Sarah McBride, the first openly trans person elected to Congress, by stating single-sex bathrooms in the Capitol “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex”. Trump, whose campaign released a firehose of anti-trans attack ads, has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors and “keep men out of women’s sports”.The president-elect and several of his cabinet picks are also facing sexual misconduct allegations; he and his allies have bragged about the overturning of Roe v Wade and denigrated childfree women.“Our identities are politicized every single day,” said Parten.View image in fullscreenA few days after Trump’s first presidential win in November 2016, Parten said she was filling up with gas in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white man in a red Maga hat shoved her against the pump. She says she elbowed the man and then drove off.“He told me that my N-word president couldn’t protect me any more, because it was Trump country,” she recalled.Some firearms sellers and trainers who serve marginalized groups said they had seen an explosion of interest following the election.“It’s been massively overwhelming,” said Tom Nguyen, founder of LA Progressive Shooters, a gun club that caters to Bipoc and LGBTQ+ people.His beginner pistol course is sold out until June 2025 and he says he’s been “getting more bookings on a daily basis, every single day since the election than I ever have in the past four years that I’ve been doing this work”.The nationwide Liberal Gun Club said it had fielded thousands of new membership requests since the election, about half of which have come from women, with queer and trans people also accounting for a bulk of newcomers. One Wisconsin-based instructor has already trained 100 new members, according to the club spokesperson, Lara Smith. The Pink Pistols, a national gun group catering to LGBTQ+ people, said it had opened six new chapters since the election.Politically motivated gun sales aren’t new, nor are they unique to progressive voters.Barack Obama’s 2008 election resulted in a sustained surge in gun sales throughout his tenure.Just a few days before the election, Michael Cargill, who owns Central Texas Gun Works in Austin, said he saw a spike in sales from conservatives stocking up on firearms and ammo because they believed Kamala Harris winning would result in a second amendment crackdown. (The US vice-president has said she owns a Glock.) Cargill, a Black, gay Republican, said his firearms classes have doubled in size since Trump’s win and are now at capacity. The influx is primarily coming from women and LGBTQ+ people worried about their rights and potential “civil unrest”, he said.The manosphere, an anti-feminist online ecosystem, has embraced Trump’s win with posts celebrating male dominance and the loss of bodily autonomy for women and LGBTQ+ people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter the election, the white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes wrote on X: “Your body, my choice. Forever.” Smith, the Liberal Gun Club spokesperson, said many new members said the post motivated them to join.“If there’s men out there that really think like that, I want at least a fighting chance if I ever encounter one,” said Kylee Ortega, a 24-year-old Texan who bought a pink stun gun featuring a cartoon Grim Reaper and a strawberry keychain that can be used to stab people.Trans gun enthusiasts and content creators are also hearing from their previously gun-shy friends who want to learn defensive shooting.View image in fullscreenJessie McGrath, 63, a lifelong Republican who is trans, grew up around guns on farms in Colorado and Nebraska. She decided to vote for Harris when Republicans started attacking gender-affirming care and “wanting to basically outlaw my ability to exist”. She ended up being a delegate at the Democratic national convention.“Government getting involved in making healthcare decisions is something that I never thought I would see the Republican party doing,” she said.McGrath, a veteran and prosecutor, now splits her time between Los Angeles and Omaha, and said she plans on taking a group of friends shooting when she’s back in Nebraska next month.“I’ve seen a huge uptick in women who don’t like guns who are thinking about at least getting trained on it,” she said. “It is a real, valid feeling that these people have, because the attacks have gotten larger. They’ve gotten more vitriolic.”While many women and LGBTQ+ folks cite protection as a reason for owning a gun, and may feel comforted having one, Harvard University research shows that it’s relatively rare to use a gun in self-defense. A meta-analysis by the University of California, San Francisco found that women with access to firearms are three times more likely to be killed than women who don’t have access.Tacticool Girlfriend, a trans woman and gun YouTuber with more than 62,000 subscribers, said she was concerned that people were panic-buying guns because of Trump’s win.“Guns are not going to answer most of people’s problems, even in the realm of self-defense. Training to use and carry pepper spray and studying martial arts will always be far more practical and useful in everyday self-defense scenarios,” she said, noting that gun ownership is costly in both time and money.“If you can’t dry-fire at least once a week and go out to the range once a month on average, you’re likely to become more of a liability to yourself and everyone around you in the event that you ever needed a gun.” More

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      ‘An existential battle’: how Trump’s win is shifting the US media landscape

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      When MSNBC’s morning hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced to their viewers last week that they had paid a visit to Donald Trump at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago they must have suspected there would be a reaction.The married co-hosts on the liberal news network made hay for years lambasting Trump, especially in the run-up to the presidential election. Now, in the wake of his victory, they told their viewers they were seeking to reset communications with the man they had warned only a few weeks ago was set to bring fascism to America.“Joe and I realized it’s time to do something different,’ Brzezinski told Morning Joe viewers on Monday. “That starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him.”Their reward? An online barn-burning by their critics online and a fall in viewer numbers for a show – and a network – already struggling in a rapidly declining US cable news sector. The following morning, broadcast viewing figures for the network plummeted 38%, according to Nielsen Media Research.Yet Scarborough and Brzezinski’s about-face is just one data point in the US media landscape that shows that some core elements of the press in America may be recalibrating its approach to how it covers the second Trump administration and where the all-in oppositional attitude that defined much of the press in his first term is in retreat.Yet the moves come after an election campaign in which Trump frequently attacked the media and dubbed them “enemies of the people”. It comes as his allies have threatened to curb the press and attack their media critics. They have also already launched a wave of multibillion-dollar lawsuits against a host of media companies for their coverage that they often baselessly claim to be bias, such as Trump’s allegation that CBS misleadingly edited an interview with Kamala Harris.Certainly those threats seemed to be at play with MSNBC, which is now also facing an uncertain future as the network is being spun off by its corporate parent, Comcast. A subsequent sale would come under the purview of Trump-appointed regulators.According to Puck News, the couple’s visit to Trump’s tropical paradise was because Scarborough was said to be “petrified” that the president-elect’s Department of Justice would go after him. “That’s what this was about,” a source told the news site about the motive. “It has nothing to do with ratings or Comcast. It’s all about fear of retribution and investigation.”“It was about access and power,” said Jeff Jarvis, a media writer. “But this visit didn’t do anything for access, and they didn’t come back with anything journalistic. They were willing to throw the reputation of the show, their reputations and the reputation of the network over for their own personal fears.”But MSNBC is not alone in facing tough choices. The US media are facing numerous issues: fears over what Trump might do, complex business decisions and interests faced by their corporate owners, and also an understanding that the president-elect won the popular vote, showing that their audiences exist beyond the safe havens of Trump criticism.But these are choppy waters. The Washington Post, famed for bringing down Richard Nixon, has been the focus of controversy under its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, and the British journalist, Will Lewis, he has tasked with running the once-storied brand.The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after it declined to make a presidential endorsement. Bezos defended the decision, triggering suspicion that Amazon’s role as a defense industry data cloud contractor had played a part. But since Trump won, Lewis has not changed tack and a longstanding and widely respected political editor at the paper was reportedly removed from his job last week.The Post’s controversy has played at the same time as the Los Angeles Times made a similar call to block an endorsement of Kamala Harris, also triggering widespread dismay in the newsroom and a questioning of how critical of Trump the newspaper would continue to be.The Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, framed the matter as an attempt at neutrality, though his activist daughter Nika Soon-Shiong also said the decision was informed by Harris’s continued support for Israel as it wars in Gaza – which he later confirmed in an internal email.After years of anti-Trump coverage under Jeff Zucker, CNN is also effecting course-correction. Last week, the cable news giant’s Dana Bash said it was unclear whether a group of men carrying swastika flags marching in Columbus, Ohio, belonged to the far right or far left.“A group of neo-Nazis paraded through that city wearing, waving swastikas, covering their faces,” Bash said. “We don’t know what side of the aisle this comes from. I mean, typically neo-Nazis are from the far right.” The statement immediately attracted ridicule for its seemingly bizarre attempt at neutrality.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome at the New York Times, too, are offering a more ameliorated tone than under the first Trump administration, even as the paper has continued to break stories on Trump’s preparations to return to power. The columnist David Brooks advocated soon after the election that Trump is a “sower of chaos, not fascism”, adding: “In chaos there’s opportunity for a new society and a new response to the Trumpian political, economic and psychological assault.”It is certainly a complex challenge. The media’s symbiotic relationship with Trump was both nurturing and self-destructive the first time around as readerships boomed, but a significant chunk of the population – the chunk that delivered Trump back into the White House – became even more hostile to the mainstream media and embraced the idea it was “fake news”.The news industry in the US, with a few exceptions, is on life support as audiences fracture and social media traffic referrals dry up. Social media is more trusted by the public, and the press is now facing a second hostile Trump administration with diminished resources.But would a more restrained approach work? Would it attract readers previously hostile to the media, and would it blunt any attacks from the Trump administration?Some are skeptical.“You’re trying to pursue readers you’ll never have and in the process pissing off the readers you do have,” Jarvis, the media writer, said of outlets playing it safe on Trump. “That’s the paradox – mass media still believes in the mass media. The challenge for journalism now is for people to feel heard and a separation from the power structures of politics and money.”The only network firmly in a good place appears to be rightwing Fox News, which dominated 24-hour news broadcasting through the election cycle and seems confident of its identity as America returns to life under a Trump presidency.Fox News finished the week of 11-17 November with its highest share of the cable news audience in the network’s 28-year history across multiple categories, while MSNBC saw its lowest-rated week in quarter of a century.For some observers, all this makes for worrying times ahead as America confronts a president with openly autocratic sympathies and a radical rightwing agenda.“The press is going to find itself in an existential battle for its own integrity if it does not decide to confront and challenge Trump top to bottom. There’s no way a truly free press can be neutral about lies and broken civic norms and survive,” said Jim Sleeper, author and retired lecturer in political science at Yale University.“If the populace has decided to trade in its freedom and rights for stability and security that authoritarians always promise, then the press has to make a choice and decide that honest journalists are dissidents.” More