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      Trump speech mixes unity and hate as he caps off Republican convention

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      As Donald Trump recounted the terrifying moment when a would-be assassin attempted to kill him on Saturday, the adoring audience at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee hung on his every word. Trump then accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the third time with a momentary message of unity, calling on the country to come together in the wake of the violent attack.“As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny,” Trump said on Thursday night. “We rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America.”Then Trump, as he so often does, stepped on his own message. Often veering away from his prepared remarks displayed on a teleprompter, Trump peppered his speech with interjections about the former Democratic House speaker (“crazy Nancy Pelosi”) or a hated news program (“De-Face the Nation”).While promising to “make America great once again”, he painted a picture of an American hellscape under Joe Biden’s leadership, torn apart by “a devastating inflation crisis” and “a massive invasion on our southern border”. And even though past convention speakers largely avoided litigating the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump couldn’t help himself, accusing Democrats of having “used Covid to cheat”.The speech reflected a pattern that played out again and again over the course of the week in Milwaukee, as Republicans tried to project a message of unity with decidedly mixed success. Trump’s newly minted running mate, the Ohio senator JD Vance, preached a message of economic opportunity for all as convention attendees waved signs reading: “Mass deportation now!” Nikki Haley emphasized the need for Republicans to build a big-tent party based on decency just before Ron DeSantis stepped up to sneer at Biden’s “Weekend at Bernie’s” presidency.The conflicting messages foreshadowed the weighty task that Republicans face looking ahead to November, even with an edge in the polls; they must reach out to independent voters, many of whom disapprove of both the major presidential candidates, without alienating the hard-right loyalists who elevated Trump to his third nomination.In an implicit acknowledgment of that dual task, many of Trump’s most controversial opinions received little air time over the first three days of the convention. Mentions of election denialism, pardons for January 6 insurrectionists and Trump’s criminal cases were few and far between – even as the nominee himself could not resist attacking the “fake documents case” and the “partisan witch-hunts”. They also avoided mentions of pressing issues like abortion access, the climate crisis and gun safety, all of which are sure to be a primary focus at the Democratic convention in Chicago next month.Instead, many speakers attempted to paint a softer picture of Trump. Family members, friends and former colleagues described Trump, who was recently convicted on charges related to paying hush money to his alleged mistress, as a devoted family man. They praised the former president, who infamously boasted about his tendency to “grab ‘em by the pussy,” as a champion of women in the workplace.The message was clear: forget what those awful Democrats have told you, the speakers said. This benevolent, innocent and powerful man is a paragon of good virtue who absolutely can – and should – be trusted with another four years in the White House, they argued.The argument relies on a certain amount of amnesia of Trump’s chaotic first term, which often saw the then president firing members of his cabinet by tweet or musing about buying Greenland. But it would seem that a sort of national forgetfulness has already started falling over Trump’s years in office; a growing number of Americans now say that he left the nation better off, even though his presidency ended when the country was still in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic.Somehow – after four criminal indictments, two impeachments and one failed assassination attempt – Trump is not only still standing but is now the favorite to win the presidential election in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe attendees of the Republican convention this week appeared optimistic and even relaxed, a mood that may reflect their confidence heading into the final stretch of election season. As “everyday American” speakers praised Trump’s policies on everything from the economy to foreign policy, convention-goers seemed secure in the knowledge that the man they view as a savior would soon return to the nation’s highest office.Democrats have spent recent months trying to remind voters of the chaos that defined Trump’s presidency, but that argument has been somewhat undermined by the drama now encircling Biden’s campaign. Since Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, more than 20 Democratic members of Congress have called on him to withdraw from the presidential race, with the Montana senator Jon Tester joining their ranks just moments before Trump took the stage on Thursday.As Biden quarantines in his home state of Delaware after testing positive for Covid (again), it remains deeply unclear whether he will be the Democrat facing off against Trump in November. Those questions overshadowed much of the Republican convention this week, and they bolstered Republicans’ efforts to present themselves as the more unified and organized party.If Republicans can maintain that image through the next four months, they might see an overwhelming victory in November. But if the past week has taught Americans anything, it’s that much can change in just a short time. More

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      Trump expected to plead for national unity in first speech after assassination attempt

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      With political winds at his back, Donald Trump on Thursday is expected to use his first speech since surviving an assassination attempt to plead for national unity.Strategists view the Republican national convention address, likely to be watched by tens of millions of Americans on prime time television, as a unique opportunity to redefine the former US president as more palatable to moderate voters.But critics remain sceptical that a Trump reset can last, citing past supposed “pivots” that were hyped by the media only for the septuagenarian to soon revert to dark, divisive and incendiary outbursts.“That was a profound existential moment and I’m sure it’s impacted him in the short run, but you are who you are,” David Axelrod, a former chief strategist for President Barack Obama, said. “He isn’t by habit or orientation a unifier.“Maybe so long as the race is going well others can persuade him that it’s better to be quiet than noisy. But you never know what happens in two in the morning when he’s got his phone in his hand and an impulse in his head.”In opinion polls, Trump is running 11 percentage points ahead of where he was nationally in the 2020 race of the White House. He is surfing a wave of sympathy and adulation after his right ear was injured by a would-be assassin’s bullet at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.Two days later, his ear bandaged, Trump received a hero’s welcome from cheering, sign-waving supporters at the convention in Milwaukee. Some echoed Trump’s initial response to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”Speaker after speaker suggested that Trump’s life was spared by God’s providence so that he can continue a sacred mission for the nation. But they backed away from early accusations that Democrats were to blame for the shooting.Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who on Saturday tweeted that the Joe Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly” to the attempted assassination, struck a different tone in his convention address on Wednesday night.“Now consider what they said. They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be stopped at all costs. But how did he respond? He called for national unity, for national calm literally right after an assassin nearly took his life.”He added: “He is tough – he is – and he cares about people. He can stand defiant against an assassin one moment and call for national healing the next. He is a beloved father and grandfather and, of course, a once in a generation business leader.”In another move aimed at softening Trump’s image, his granddaughter Kai Madison Trump made her debut on the political stage. “He calls me during the middle of the school day to ask how my golf game is going and tells me all about his,” she said. “Grandpa, you are such an inspiration and I love you. The media makes my grandpa look like such a different person but I know who he is.”Some have shifted their emphasis from “Make America great again” (Maga) to “Make America one again”. Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law and co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told the convention on Tuesday that Americans should remember “there is more that unites us than divides us”.In a nod towards moderation, Trump invited his erstwhile Republican rival Nikki Haley to speak. She was greeted with cheers and some boos but quickly quelled the latter by giving Trump a full-throated endorsement. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him,” she said. “Take it from me.”Republicans’ show of harmony offers a stunning contrast with Democrats, who have spent weeks mired in intra-party tensions over whether 81-year-old Biden should abandon his reelection bid after a hapless debate performance. A national NBC News poll found that just 33% of Democrats are satisfied with Biden as their party’s presidential nominee, versus 71% of Republicans satisfied with Trump.Speaking at an event in Milwaukee organised by the Cook Political Report and University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Republican pollster and strategist Tony Fabrizio said: “Right now the Democrats are the perfect circular firing squad and, while they’re the perfect circular firing squad, we have the run of the field, and the run of the field for us is to do exactly what we are doing. Running the messaging we are running. The president doing what the president is doing.”Trump’s near-death experience, and the ensuing national attention, present an opportunity when he formally accepts the party’s nomination to face Biden in a rematch of 2020. His wife Melania and daughter Ivanka, both of whom have been mostly missing from the campaign trail, are expected to attend.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome Republicans hope that Trump can recreate Ronald Reagan’s defiant optimism after he survived an assassination attempt in 1981, casting himself as unifier-in-chief. On Sunday Trump told the New York Post newspaper that he had intended to deliver biting remarks against Biden until the shooting prompted him to throw them out.Trump is understood to have been reworking his remarks with his speechwriter Ross Worthington since the shooting, according to a person close to Trump, and has discussed making himself sound like he is still the president, as opposed to just a candidate.But at an event hosted by the Axios website, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, suggested that even if Trump shifted to a gentler tone, his core political attacks were likely to continue. “You can be nicer on the margins but you still have to call out insanity when you see insanity,” Trump Jr said when asked about more caustic language turning off potential voters, for instance on transgender issues. “That’s different, that’s not about tone.”Trump Jr also said that, even though he believed that Trump’s unity tone would last until the vice-presidential debate, he expected Trump to counter-punch if attacked by Biden, who recently urged the country to tone down the political rhetoric in a televised address from the Oval Office.“I think he’s going to be tough when he has to be. That’s never going to change. He’s not going to just take an attack. My father will always be a fighter, that’s never going to change, but he’s going to do his best to moderate that. He’s never going to stop being Trump when attacked, that’s what makes him an effective leader because he doesn’t cower under fire – quite literally.”At an event hosted by Georgetown University on the sidelines of the convention, Trump’s co-campaign chief Chris LaCivita acknowledged that the unity messaging would not come at the expense of winning the election in November.LaCivita said: “This is obviously an opportunity to bring our country together. But let’s not forget we’re in the middle of a campaign. Our focus is very much on putting everything back squarely on the issues that are hurting everyday Americans and providing them an answer to those.”Indeed, for all the talk of a softer, more inclusive Trump, he has sat in a box in the convention hall alongside extremists such as Tucker Carlson, a broadcaster who has promoted white nationalism and praised Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative who once floated a conspiracy theory involving “Jewish space lasers”.Many of the speeches in Milwaukee have been centered on the theme of law and order and infused with Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, with speakers angrily denouncing Biden’s southern border policies and referring to an “invasion”. Delegates waved signs that said, “Mass deportation now” and chanted, “Drill, baby, drill!”There are also some striking absences: the former president George W Bush, the former vice-president Mike Pence and senators Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine), Todd Young (Indiana), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Rand Paul (Kentucky) are all skipping the convention.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “‘New’ Trump is teleprompter Trump. He comes out once every six months or so, sticks around for a few minutes and then disappears. He’ll talk about unity and use all the buzzwords for one night but let’s not kids ourselves: it’s an act.” More

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      in Elections

      Peter Navarro airs grievances in convention speech hours after prison release

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      Walking out to a standing ovation, Peter Navarro, the former Trump official, delivered a speech of personal grievances at the Republican national convention on Wednesday, hours after he was released from federal prison following his conviction on contempt of Congress charges for obstructing the January 6 committee investigation.The former Trump White House adviser tried – as he has done previously – to portray his criminal case as an egregious overreach of prosecutorial power, taking a page from Trump’s own playbook to claim he was a martyr taking hits on behalf of voters.“If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, they can come for you,” Navarro said. “If we don’t control our government, their government will control us.”“I went to prison so you don’t have to,” Navarro later added.Navarro, 75, was found guilty last September on two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation into the 2021 Capitol attack, claiming executive privilege protections meant he did not have to cooperate.The committee took a special interest in Navarro because of his proximity to Trump and his involvement in a series of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including to have members of Congress throw out the results in a plot he named “the Green Bay Sweep”.But Navarro’s subpoena defiance prompted a criminal referral to the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which brought the charges and ultimately asked for six months in jail because he brazenly ignored the subpoena even after being told executive privilege would not apply.“He cloaked his bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt behind baseless, unfounded invocations of executive privilege and immunity that could not and would never apply to his situation,” prosecutors wrote of Navarro in their sentencing memorandum.At trial, Navarro’s lawyers offered evidence that Trump had asserted executive privilege over a subpoena issued by a different congressional committee examining the Trump administration’s handling of the Covid pandemic. But there was no such explicit letter for the January 6 subpoena.The reality of the charges did not dissuade Navarro from offering a sanitized version of the story, for which he received thunderous applause from the crowd at the convention.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Your favorite Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, created your favorite committee, the sham Jan 6 committee, which demanded that I violate executive privilege,” Navarro said as the crowd booed. “What did I do? I refused.”“The January 6 committee demanded that I betray Donald John Trump to save my own skin. I refused,” Navarro continued. “And the Democratic majority in the House then voted to hold me in contempt.”At the end of his remarks, Navarro brought out his fiance, who appeared in a red Maga hat, and abruptly jumped into a kiss – before continuing his remarks assailing the justice department for causing his separation from his family: “On election day, the American people will hold these lawfare jackals accountable.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden hasn’t done enough to ease age concerns, former top Obama adviser says – live

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      David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, warns that Joe Biden has not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.“I’ve felt for a long time, and I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee on Wednesday.“But it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons. This is the hardest job on the planet. It takes a lot out of you. It’s a legitimate concern that people have and that concern has been intensified by what happened at the debate. I don’t think anything that’s happened has relieved that concern.”Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, was speaking after an event organised by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report on the sidelines of the Republican national convention.Asked whether he thinks Biden can survive, Axelrod replied: “That’s entirely in his hands and that’s been the case. This whole race has been in his hands, his decision to run and now his decision to stay.“There’s a lot to think about because I know he’s laid out the stakes in this election. The question he has to answer is, what are the odds of his winning? Would the odds be better with another candidate? I’m sure there’s a lot of discussion about that.”The president’s re-election campaign has ended the pause on advertising it imposed following the Saturday assassination attempt against Donald Trump, a Biden-Harris campaign official told the Guardian’s US politics live blog.The first new ad features abortion-rights activist Hadley Duvall, and in addition to attacking Trump singles out JD Vance, Trump’s newly announced running mate. See it here:Jack Smith, the justice department special counsel, has filed an appeal of judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling earlier this week dismissing Donald Trump’s indictment on charges of illegally possessing classified documents.Here’s the latest on this long-running legal saga:The Trump campaign has announced that it will not yet schedule a debate between JD Vance and Kamala Harris, citing uncertainty over who will be the Democratic nominee for vice-president.The decision is a reference to continued tension among Democrats over whether Joe Biden should seek re-election, after his poor showing at his first debate with Donald Trump. The president insists he has no plans to step aside, but if he did, the new nominee would have to find their own running mate.“We don’t know who the Democrat nominee for vice-president is going to be, so we can’t lock in a date before their convention. To do so would be unfair to Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer, or whoever Kamala Harris picks as her running mate,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes said in a statement.The Biden-Harris campaign had previously proposed three possible dates for the vice-presidential debate, all before the beginning of the Democratic convention on 19 August, where the party will formalize the presidential ticket.Donald Trump’s campaign has encouraged speakers at the Republican national convention to stay away from extreme rhetoric, and in some cases directly edited their speeches, NBC News reports.At the convention thus far, there have been few to no mentions of topics liked the January 6 insurrection, or Trump’s baseless claims that he lost the 2020 election unfairly. That’s a deliberate strategy his campaign shifted to following the assassination attempt on Saturday, as it now looks to project an image of unity.Here’s more on that, from NBC:
      Trump said that he had rewritten his own speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination ahead of Thursday night after surviving an assassination attempt. The Trump campaign has said that now he intends to home in on the theme of unifying America.
      Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga, said Wednesday before delivering his convention address, ‘Frankly, they sent the same message to those of us giving speeches.’
      ‘We always planned to be a reflection of our party’s unity and remind the American people of the difference between President Trump’s success and Crooked Joe Biden’s failure,’ Brian Hughes, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said in a statement. ‘The convention messages from everyday Americans and policymakers have met that goal. This convention is one of the greatest ever held and will launch us forward to victory in November.’
      While convention speakers this week have served up plenty of red meat to the thousands of delegates in attendance, particularly on the issues of immigration and crime, they have steered away from some of the party’s more divisive topics and talk of seeking retribution.
      Through the convention’s first two nights, speakers have not mentioned the following issues: unfounded claims of stolen elections; the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; investigating Trump’s political opponents, including Biden; and investigating the prosecutors who have sought indictments against him, like Special Counsel Jack Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
      A video where Trump mentions the unsubstantiated threat of Democrats ‘cheating’ in the upcoming election was played during the first two nights of the convention.
      Asked if the toned-down theme would continue through the week, Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., said, ‘I do.’
      ‘I mean, it starts with Trump,’ he continued. ‘Hopefully, JD [Vance] picks that up. And others. Trump said he didn’t want people to change their speeches, but I think that they will.’
      Anyone attending the Republican national convention could be forgiven for thinking they have stepped into a mirror world where Donald Trump is a saint, not a twice-impeached former president convicted of 34 felonies.On Wednesday, Brenna Bird, the attorney general of Iowa, was asked why she travelled to New York to support the former US president during his hush-money trial.“I was glad to go out to New York to support him during that trial because I’m a prosecutor and I have prosecuted many criminal defendants, but I’ve never seen anything like that,” Bird told international reporters at a Foreign Press Centers briefing.“It’s a travesty. It’s not how the legal process is supposed to work. As a prosecutor, I’ve never taken someone’s politics into account when deciding whether to charge a crime. That is just wrong and, if it’s allowed to happen, it breaks down the rule of law and the constitutional order.”Bird added: “I went there specifically as a prosecutor to support President Trump because what was happening was an injustice and I wanted to be there and stand up for what was right and support President Trump. I think we saw his character during that trial. He doesn’t give up and he keeps on moving forward and that’s exactly what our country needs right now.”In May, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records alleging he was involved in a scheme that sought to cover up extramarital affairs in advance of the 2016 presidential election. The New York state prosecution had no connection to Biden and there was no evidence of jury bias against Trump.Here’s where the day stands:

      Joe Biden said he would consider dropping out of the presidential race if a “medical condition” emerged, the New York Times reports, citing an excerpt released from Biden’s interview with Ed Gordon of BET News. According to the Times, Biden was asked if there was any reason that would make him reconsider staying in the presidential race. In response, Biden said: “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem and that problem.”

      John Hinckley, the man who shot and wounded president Ronald Reagan in 1981, has released his own statement following Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on Saturday. In a tweet on Wednesday, Hinckley, who was released in 2022 after spending 41 years under federal oversight, wrote: “Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance.”

      Kamala Harris has accepted a third possible date to hold a CBS-hosted vice-presidential debate against Trump’s newly announced running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance. The Biden-Harris campaign said it was open to a showdown with Vance on Monday, 12 August, as well. Harris had previously agreed to participate in the debate on either Tuesday, 23 July, or Tuesday, 13 August.

      The high-profile California Democrat Adam Schiff has called on Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race. Schiff, in a statement to the Los Angeles Times, said that Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history, and his lifetime of service as a Senator, a vice president, and now as president has made our country better” adding: “But our nation is at a crossroads.”

      Joe Biden lashed out at a “tense” meeting with dozens of House Democrats who bluntly questioned his viability as their party’s presidential nominee, according to reports. During the Saturday Zoom call, Colorado representative Jason Crow told Biden that voters are concerned about his vigor and strength, and noted the importance of national security in the November election, the reports say.

      Lloyd Doggett, the Texas representative who became the first House Democrat to publicly call on Joe Biden to step aside, has doubled down and urged the president to withdraw from the ticket in the face of “the reality of steadily, worsening poll numbers”. “My call for President Biden to step aside remains even more urgent,” Doggett said in a statement on Wednesday.

      During the Democratic press conference in Milwaukee, the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, was pressed on the party’s plans to nominate Joe Biden via a roll call vote in the coming days. Walz, who co-chairs the Democratic national convention’s rules committee, confirmed that delegates would not begin voting before 1 August, and the governor’s spokesperson confirmed that the process should wrap up by 7 August.

      Donald Trump does not have stitches but has a “nice flesh wound”, his son Eric Trump said following his father’s assassination attempt. In an interview with CBS, Eric said: “You know, he was millimeters away from having his life expunged … I’m sure the ear doesn’t feel well.”

      Nearly two-thirds of Democrats want Joe Biden to withdraw his re-election bid, a new AP-NORC poll has found. According to the poll, which was mostly conducted before Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on Saturday, 65% of Democrats say that Biden should withdraw. Overall, seven in 10 American adults say that Biden should drop out of the race.

      The Democratic National Committee said that its virtual roll call to officially nominate Joe Biden as its party’s presidential nominee will happen in August, CBS reports. In a letter obtained and reported by CBS on Wednesday, the chairs of the Democratic national convention’s rules committee, Leah Daughtry and Tim Walz, wrote: “We have confirmed with the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic National Convention that no virtual voting will begin before August 1 … .”
      David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, warns that Joe Biden has not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.“I’ve felt for a long time, and I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee on Wednesday.“But it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons. This is the hardest job on the planet. It takes a lot out of you. It’s a legitimate concern that people have and that concern has been intensified by what happened at the debate. I don’t think anything that’s happened has relieved that concern.”Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, was speaking after an event organised by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report on the sidelines of the Republican national convention.Asked whether he thinks Biden can survive, Axelrod replied: “That’s entirely in his hands and that’s been the case. This whole race has been in his hands, his decision to run and now his decision to stay.“There’s a lot to think about because I know he’s laid out the stakes in this election. The question he has to answer is, what are the odds of his winning? Would the odds be better with another candidate? I’m sure there’s a lot of discussion about that.”Following Rudy Giuliani’s fall at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee on Tuesday, the 80-year-old disbarred lawyer’s spokesperson Ted Goodman released the following statement on Wednesday:
      Mayor Rudy Giuliani appreciates everyone’s concern after tripping over a dip in the walkway on the convention floor of the convention.
      The mayor and I were both filming footage for his social media and livestream programs on the floor of the convention, when he turned to set some equipment on a chair and tripped over a dip between the walkway and chairs.
      Those falsely suggesting anything else are misleading the public for their own agendas.
      The rift among Democrats is deepening over Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy despite party leaders saying Biden is the nominee.Joan E Greve and Martin Pengelly report for the Guardian:Demands for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump have slowed since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, to the extent that on Wednesday one “prominent strategist” was moved to say of the rebellion: “It’s over.”The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill – and before the influential California congressman Adam Schiff said publicly that Biden should quit.Nonetheless, in Milwaukee, at a press conference during the Republican national convention, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention.For the full story, click here:Joe Biden’s campaign team released a new ad on Wednesday featuring Hadley Duvall, a 22-year-old abortion-rights activist from Owensboro, Kentucky.In the ad, Duvall, who was in an emotional ad last year during governor Andy Beshear’s re-election campaign, describes her experience of being impregnated by her stepfather, who raped her when she was 12 years old.She said:
      I’m from Kentucky where, because of Donald Trump, an extreme abortion ban is now in place, with no exceptions for rape or incest. During the overturn [of Roe v Wade], I went back to the time I was 12 years old and I was holding my first pregnancy test in my hand …
      Trump brags about overturning Roe v Wade. He is ‘proudly responsible’ for each and every abortion ban across the country. And he calls them a ‘beautiful thing to watch.’ What is so beautiful about telling a 12-year-old girl that she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her? The stakes of this election could not be higher for our choices. More

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      in US Politics

      Republican convention day three: JD Vance to speak as focus turns to foreign policy

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      JD Vance will give his first major address as Donald Trump’s running mate on Wednesday and Republicans will turn their focus to foreign policy during the third day of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.Vance will be introduced by Donald Trump Jr. The theme for Wednesday – “Make America Strong Once Again” – comes amid internal divisions on how to handle the war in Ukraine. Earlier this year, House speaker Mike Johnson only narrowly passed a bill to provide additional funding for Ukraine over the loud objection of some Republicans.The day will also offer an opportunity for Republicans to attack Joe Biden over his handling of the US military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war between Israel and Gaza.Some Republicans have already started attacking Biden’s foreign policy.“When Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing. No invasions. No wars. That was no accident. Putin didn’t attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn’t start wars. A strong president prevents wars,” Nikki Haley, said on Tuesday.The focus on foreign policy comes after Republicans focused on crime and safety Tuesday and on the economy on Monday.The four-day event has marked a full-on coronation for Trump, who has made his dramatic return to the campaign trail after surviving an assassination attempt over the weekend.It has also underscored the firm hold he has on the party.Haley and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who challenged Trump for the GOP nomination, both unequivocally backed Trump in speeches from the convention floor on Tuesday. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me. I haven’t always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree,” Haley said in her remarks.Other speakers on Tuesday highlighted crimes they blamed on the Biden administration. Texas senator Ted Cruz, for example, highlighted Americans who had been killed by undocumented people. Madeline Brame, one of several ordinary Americans picked to speak during the convention, blamed Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for not prosecuting her son’s killer.Other speakers on Tuesday included Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, Ben Carson, and Rick Scott and Tom Cotton. More

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      in US Politics

      Day two of the Republican National Convention: key takeaways

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      1. Confident in Trump’s victory, Republicans focused on winning control of the US SenateThe official theme of the Republican national convention’s second night was “Make America Safe Again”, with a focus on crime and border security. But as a series of Republican senate candidates got their turn in the spotlight on Tuesday, it was clear that a major theme of the night was helping the GOP win a majority in the US Senate. Among the featured speakers locked in competitive senate races were Kari Lake of Arizona, Eric Hovde of Wisconsin, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Sam Brown of Nevada and Hung Cao of Virginia.Earlier on Tuesday, Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of Trump’s campaign, said the campaign was now very confident in Trump’s chances of victory. “We have nearly 20 paths to get to where we need to get,” LaCivita said. “[Democrats] have one, maybe two.” It’s a dramatic reversal just four years after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to forcibly prevent the certification of Biden’s victory.If Republicans win a majority of seats in the US Senate and keep control of the US House, they will have achieved the trifecta of power in Washington. Republicans will effectively have majority control over all three branches of government, with even the increasingly partisan supreme court dominated by a majority of rightwing appointees.Leading Democratic members of Congress are also raising concerns about Republicans taking the Senate majority, with representative Adam Schiff reportedly telling Democratic donors that he believes Democrats will not only lose the presidency if Biden continues as the party’s nominee, but that they may “very well lose the Senate” as well.2. Republicans falsely claimed Democrats rely on ‘votes from illegals’Trump supporters were still chanting “build the wall”. Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, have both said they support “mass deportations”, and multiple RNC speakers falsely suggested that Democrats were trying to win elections by encouraging undocumented immigrants to vote.Florida senator Rick Scott falsely claimed it was “easy for Democrats” to rig elections, saying they did so by allowing “all the non-citizens to vote”.“Democrats decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, said in a speech in which he referenced several examples of women and girls who had been raped by undocumented immigrants. It’s an echo of the remarks that Trump made at his campaign launch in 2015, when he falsely said that many Mexican immigrants to the US were rapists.Kari Lake, the Arizona senate candidate, falsely claimed that Ruben Gallego, the Democrat she is running against, had voted to allow undocumented immigrants to cast ballots in the upcoming election, a claim that Gallego’s campaign labeled “a blatant lie”.It’s already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and there’s no evidence that it happens often: a Brennan Center study found just 30 instances of suspected non-citizen voting out of 23.5m votes cast in the 2016 general election.3. Trump’s criminal cases and convictions went unmentioned amid rhetoric on ‘crime’As Republicans portrayed themselves as the party of law and order, there was little mention of the fact that their candidate has been juggling multiple criminal cases throughout the campaign and recently made history as the only former president to be convicted of felonies, in being found guilty on 34 felony counts as part of a hush-money scheme to cover up an affair.“Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, they stand with the criminals,” Randy Sutton, a former police officer, said in his remarks Tuesday night. In reality, though both Democrats have supported some criminal justice reforms, Biden has been an enthusiastically pro-cop Democrat for decades, and Harris was a career prosecutor who literally served as California’s top cop in her role as state attorney general. Neither of them has a mug shot or is able to continue campaigning only because they can afford bail, as is the case with Trump.As one Republican after another linked undocumented immigrants to rape, crime and violence, they did not talk about how Trump had been found liable in 2023 of sexual abuse and defamation in a civil trial brought by magazine writer E Jean Carroll, after being accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women in alleged incidents that spanned decades.Trump is characteristic of a much broader trend: US citizens are much more likely to be arrested for crimes than undocumented people. A recent study using data from Texas found that US-born citizens were more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes and more than four times as likely to be arrested for property crimes than undocumented immigrants.But in less explicit ways, Trump’s own legal troubles have lurked in the background of the RNC speeches, as Republicans have railed against progressive prosecutors and the media. Critical mention of Alvin Bragg, the New York district attorney who secured Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in the hush-money case, prompted one of the loudest boos of the night. Bragg was accused of being a “soft-on-crime prosecutor” by a New York mother, Madeline Brame, whose son was murdered, and who accused Bragg of dismissing and reducing the charges faced by her son’s killers.4. In the name of ‘unity’, Trump’s Republican critics kissed the ring and urged others to fall in lineNikki Haley, one of Trump’s most determined rivals in the 2024 Republican primary, took the stage at the RNC, announcing, to cheers: “President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity.”“Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” Haley went on, prompting chants of: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”Earlier this year, Haley publicly called Trump “unhinged” and “diminished” and said he was “not the same person he was in 2016”.But on Tuesday night, both she and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, another Trump primary campaign rival, proclaimed their loyalty to Trump. Haley, in particular, urged Republicans who did not agree with Trump to nonetheless fall in line behind him in the election.“You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me,” she said. “I haven’t always agreed with President Trump, but we agree more often that we disagree.”Another never-Trump critic, JD Vance, who once wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler”, was named Trump’s vice-presidential pick yesterday.5. Despite talk of ‘national unity’ at the convention, Republicans went on attack Republican speakers at the convention continued to frame Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt this weekend as a miraculous act of God, rather than blaming the attack on Biden or on broader Democratic rhetoric.“God spared President Trump from that assassin, because God is not finished with him yet,” Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.But by the end of the day Tuesday, any idea that Trump’s party might embrace a tone of broader national unity had evaporated, amid fierce attacks on Harris, comparisons of Biden to the corpse in the film Weekend at Bernie’s, and Lake’s renewed attacks on the media. Lake, a former television anchor, said: “I don’t welcome everybody … in this room. You guys up there in the fake news have worn out your welcome.”Joan E Greve and Alice Herman contributed reporting More

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      RNC day two to focus on crime and immigration after energetic first day

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      Republicans could not have asked for a more eventful day to kick off their nominating convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and they will be looking to keep party members’ energy high on Tuesday.Donald Trump opened the convention on Monday with the announcement that Ohio senator JD Vance would serve as his running mate, ending months of heated speculation over who would join the former president at the top of the ticket. After formally winning the nomination in the afternoon, Trump brought convention-goers to their feet when he made a surprise appearance at Fiserv Forum on Monday evening.In his first public appearance since the assassination attempt against him on Saturday, Trump appeared at the convention with a bandage over his ear, which was injured in the attack. Multiple speakers who addressed the convention on Monday expressed deep gratitude that Trump survived the shooting, which left one rally attendee and the suspected gunman dead.“Two days ago, evil came for the man we admire and love so much,” hard-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told convention attendees. “I thank God that his hand was on President Trump.”On Tuesday, Republicans are expected to focus their attention on crime and immigration, as the theme of the day will be “Make America Safe Once Again”. Immigration has become a rallying cry for Republicans, as Trump and his allies have repeatedly and falsely accused Joe Biden of supporting “open borders”.Trump has previously called for the deportation of 15 to 20 million undocumented immigrants if he wins re-election, and Vance voiced his own support for mass deportation in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday.“We have to deport people,” Vance told Hannity. “We have to deport people who broke our laws who came in here. And I think we need to start with the violent criminals.”The speaker schedule for Tuesday remains unclear, as Republicans have not yet specified who will next be addressing the convention. But a number of Republican lawmakers and members of Trump’s family, including his sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump, have been named as speakers and have not yet addressed the convention crowd.While Republicans rally in Milwaukee, Biden and his Democratic allies are resuming some campaign communications after suspending their planned anti-Trump ads in response to the assassination attempt. In an NBC News interview with Lester Holt that aired Monday evening, the president made a case for his re-election while acknowledging it was a “mistake” to say during a recent donor call that Trump should be Democrats’ “bullseye” right now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I meant focus on him. Focus on what he’s doing. Focus on – on his – on his policies. Focus on the number of lies he told in the debate,” Biden said. “I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one. I’m not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election. I’m not the guy who said that I wouldn’t accept the outcome of this election automatically. You can’t only love your country when you win.”As of now, it seems like Biden still needs to sell more voters on that message. National polls show a neck-and-neck race between Biden and Trump, and Biden appears to be in trouble in several states he won in 2020. A pair of New York Times/Siena College polls conducted last week found the two candidates virtually tied in both Pennsylvania, a must-win state for Biden, and Virginia, which he won by 10 points in 2020.If Virginia is indeed competitive, Biden’s chances of re-election appear bleak. And Republicans will be looking to further damage those chances on Tuesday. More

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      ‘Braveheart of our time’: Trump inspires more awe than ever at Republican conference

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      “Braveheart” is how delegates at the Republican national convention are describing Donald Trump after he survived an attempted assassination.The first day of the jamboree in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, showed that the former US president inspires more awe and admiration than ever among his dedicated Republican base after the incident on Saturday.Some expressed hope that Trump will seize the moment by accepting the party’s presidential nomination on Thursday night that redefines him as a unifier intent on lowering the political temperature.“I do think the slogan ‘Make America one again’ sounds pretty cool,” said Reince Priebus, chairman of the host committee and formerly Trump’s White House chief of staff. “The president has said that he is apparently looking at his speech. It’s an enormous opportunity that he has to galvanise the country and we’ll just see what he does with it.”Downtown Milwaukee has been turned into Trumpville for the week, festooned with the stars and stripes, Republican banners and “Make America great again” hats, T-shirts and other merchandise. On display are a cardboard cutout of Trump as Rambo, a Trump bust carved from Indiana limestone and a Trump shoe – a classic black cap-toe oxford crafted by Johnston & Murphy.Inside the arena, jubilant delegates cheered as they formally nominated Trump to the Republican presidential ticket soon after he announced the Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate. When a video montage of Trump dancing at rallies – a source of mockery for political satirists – was shown on giant screens, the crowd cheered and danced along with “Trump” signs.Memories of the 2016 convention, when vocal Trump critics could be found with ease, have been banished. A gunman’s attempt to kill him has turned him into “the Braveheart of our time”, North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, said in a floor speech.It was also an excuse to castigate Joe Biden. Wes Nakagiri, a county commissioner in Livingston county, Michigan, arrived at the convention on Monday wearing a homemade shirt that said: “Hey Joe, it’s called an attempted assassination.”Nakagiri said that he was upset that the president did not immediately refer to the attack on Trump as an attempted assassination. “That’s what it is. They talk about unity. I think that one of the things that’s a prerequisite for unity is truth. If you’re going to try to downplay that it was something other than an assassination, that’s not the truth. I don’t think that helps bring us together.”Biden referred to the incident as an attempted assassination during an Oval Office address to the nation on Sunday evening. Law enforcement officials are also investigating the incident as an attempted assassination.Others spoke of their horror at learning of the attack at Pennsylvania rally which injured the 45th president’s right ear and caused the death of a supporter in the crowd.Rebecca Harary, co-founder and president of the America First Club in Boca Raton, Florida, said: “My heart broke immediately. I started crying. I didn’t even see any of the videos yet or anything. I heard that he was shot. I stopped what I was doing, I found the nearest television set and turned it on and tried to catch up and see what was going on. Thank God he was OK.”Asked if the incident had changed the tone and tenor of the convention, Harary replied: “It gives us much more power, much more strength, much more will to make sure that Trump wins and wins loudly, greatly, strongly and with all of the determination and perseverance that he portrays.”Mary Beth Kemmer, 75, an Ohio delegate, said: “I was shocked and in tears because I don’t want this to happen to anybody. I don’t think that says anything good about the country for anybody to have that happen. I wouldn’t want that to happen to President Biden either. That’s horrible.”Kemmer praised Trump’s reaction. “I was just so impressed that he came up and he’s like, no, we’re gonna fight, we’re not going to let somebody win that’s going around the system in a sense. He’s brave – they keep calling him Braveheart.””Her husband Mel, 76, a retired judge, weighed in: “He is the leader in every minute of every day.”Despite his violent rhetoric in the past, and his instigation of the deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, some here believe that Trump is the right man to bind the nation’s wounds after nearly being killed at a campaign rally.Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, said at a CNN/Politico Grill event: “It’ll be one of those moments that our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read about in history books.“I hope what they’re saying then is that this was a moment when the United States of America turned a page from a toxic chapter in its national history and that Donald Trump, when he got back for that second term, was ready to fight fire with water.” More