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      ‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6

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      ‘A nutso proposition’: Robert Draper on Trump, Republicans and January 6 The New York Times reporter’s new book considers the Capitol attack and after: the fall of Liz Cheney, the rise of MTG and moreIn mid-December 2020, Robert Draper signed to write a book about the Republican party under Donald Trump, who spent four wild years in the White House but had just been beaten by Joe Biden.‘Devoid of shame’: January 6 cop Michael Fanone on Trump’s Republican partyRead more“Trump hadn’t conceded,” Draper says, from Washington, where he writes for the New York Times. “But the expectation was that he would. The notion of the ‘Be there, will be wild’ January 6 insurrection had not yet taken root. And so I thought that the book would be about a factionalised Republican party, more or less in keeping with When the Tea Party Came to Town, the book I did about the class of 2010.”“All that changed on my first day of reporting the job, which happened to be January 6, when I was inside the Capitol.”The book became Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. It is a detailed account of Republican dynamics since 2020, but it opens with visceral reportage from the scene of what Draper calls the “seismic travesty” of the Capitol attack.Draper says: “I still get chills, thinking about that day. It’s a Rashomon kind of experience, right? There were a lot of people in the Capitol and they all have different viewpoints that are equally valid.“Mine was that of someone who just showed up figuring I would cover this routine ceremony of certification, ended up not being able to get into the press gallery, wandered around to the west side of the building and suddenly saw all of these police officers under siege, getting maced and beaten. After being there for a while, I escaped through the tunnels and went to the east side of the Capitol, and watched people push their way in.”In their book The Steal, Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague observe that those who attacked the Capitol had no more chance of overturning the election than the hippies of 1967 had of seeing the Pentagon levitate. Draper’s term “seismic travesty” points in the same direction. But he does not diminish the enormity of the attempt, of Trump’s rejection of democracy and the threat posed by those who support him.His book joins a flock on January 6. One point of difference is that each chapter starts with an image by the Canadian photographer Louie Palu, of January 6 and the days after it. Rioters surge. Politicians stalk the corridors of power.Draper says: “There’s a reason why the subtitle isn’t how the Republican party lost its mind, but instead when the Republican party did. It is about a snapshot in time. I happen to think it is an incredibly momentous snapshot, but this is not a dry historical recitation of how the Republican party over decades moved from one mode of thought to another.”“It’s important for me to impress upon readers that this is a discrete moment worth considering, a moment when the Republican party … rather than decide, ‘Wow, we’ve been co-conspirators, intended or not, to a horrific event, and we’ve got to do better,’ instead went in a different direction.“And that to me is a moment when democracy is now shuttered and therefore has to be contemplated.”Draper interviewed most major players, among them Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader with his eye on the speaker’s gavel after next month’s midterms. Asked if the man who courted Trump with red and pink Starbursts and genuflections at Mar-a-Lago is the leader Republicans deserve, Draper answers carefully.“So two operative words there are ‘leader’ and ‘deserves’. It depends on how you define either. He would be the leader in the sense of that they’ll probably vote for him for speaker … but it’s an open question as to whether he really will lead or whether he really has ever led.“The important word is ‘deserves’. And obviously, that requires a judgment on my part. But I do think that what Kevin McCarthy embodies to me is the human refutation to the argument that Donald Trump hijacked the Republican party, because to imagine that metaphor, you imagine the Republican party as an airplane seized by force, without any complicity, and that the plane was a perfectly well-functioning plane before then. McCarthy is here to disprove all of that.“McCarthy has been an absolute enabler of Donald Trump. He has never refuted the kinds of lies his party has embraced. He has winked and nodded along. People have told me that he’s offered to create for Marjorie Taylor Greene a new leadership position. At minimum, she’s likely to get plum committee assignments.”Greene, a far-right, conspiracy-spouting congresswoman from Georgia, was elected as Draper began work.“I thought she would be just kind of marginalised, sitting at the Star Wars bar of Republican politics, kind of a member of Congress who would be ousted after one term. But in a lot of ways, tracing her trajectory was a way of tracing the trajectory of the post– Trump presidency Republican party after January 6. Now, Trump is without question the dominant party leader, and more to the point, Trumpism is the straw that stirs the drink.”Some in the media say Greene should not be covered. Some say strenuously otherwise. Draper spent time with her.“This is the advantage of doing a book as opposed to daily journalism. It took me a year to get my first interview with her. You have to understand, to her, the mainstream media is, as Trump has delicately put it, the enemy of the American people. She thinks we habitually lie. We merit nothing but disgust, minimum, and contempt, maximum.“And so to get her to kind of cross that psychological Rubicon and be willing to talk to me was a real process. But I do find in journalism and anthropology that people generally speaking want to let the rest of the world know why they are the way they are. They want to reveal themselves. And if you place them in a comfortable zone, where they feel like they can do that, and trust that they will not be made to pay for it immediately, then they often will, if only in increments, begin to reveal themselves. And that’s what happened with Greene and me.”Democracy on the vergeLiz Cheney is in some ways Greene’s opposite. The daughter of Dick Cheney, vice-president under George W Bush, she is an establishment figure who broke from Trump only over the Capitol attack. Ejected from party leadership, she is one of two Republicans on the House January 6 committee but lost her seat in Wyoming to a Trump-backed challenger.To Draper, it is “remarkable that we’re talking about those two female Republicans in the same breath, implicitly recognising these improbable opposite trajectories.“In December 2020, if you and I were talking about Liz Cheney and saying, ‘What’s going to happen to her next,’ we wouldn’t say she’s going to be exiled from the party. And if we said, ‘What’s going to happen to Marjorie Taylor Greene next,’ we wouldn’t say she would basically be a more influential figure in the Republican party than Liz Cheney. It would seem a nutso proposition and yet that’s exactly what happened.“Cheney stood almost alone in her view that not only did the party need to move on from Trump, but that it needed to see to it that Trump would no longer be a powerful force within the GOP. That put her on an island along with Adam Kinzinger and precious few others. She’s paid a heavy political price.”Draper’s previous book, To Start a War, showed how Cheney’s father and his boss sold the Iraq war, citing weapons of mass destruction which did not exist. How did Cheney feel about that?“She said, ‘You and I probably disagree on whether or not it was the right thing to do to go into Iraq.’ I remember saying to her, ‘You mean, I’m not a warmonger like you are?’ And she laughed, but she happens still to believe that was a viable proposition. And I think my book reaches the inexorable conclusion that [it] was a very foolish proposition.“But it’s worth bringing that up, because … the subject at hand was not just Donald Trump, but also the Republican party and its tenuous grip on the truth. And it has been an eye-opener, I think, for a lot of us that Liz Cheney … stands for other things beyond ideology, and among them are the preservation of democracy.”Before the Capitol was attacked, Cheney read Lincoln on the Verge, Ted Widmer’s account of Abraham Lincoln’s perilous rail journey to Washington in 1861.Draper writes: “As the nation teetered on the brink of civil war, Lincoln avoided two assassination attempts on the journey, while the counting of electoral college votes in the Capitol was preceded by fears that someone might seize the mahogany box containing the ballots and thereby undo Abe Lincoln’s presidency before its inception.“Cheney had shuddered to think what would have happened had the mob gotten their hands on the mahogany boxes on January 6, 2021.”Unchecked review: how Trump dodged two impeachments … and the January 6 committee?Read moreWidmer is a historian but plenty of books have suggested that with America deeply polarised and Trumpism rampant, we could be close to a second civil war. To Draper, “tragically it is not out of the question”.“It’s certainly clear to me that when you’ve got a third of the voting public in America that believes that the election was stolen … [that’s] not something that you take with a grain of salt.“America really is beset by fractures that could metastasize into something violent. I hope to hell that’s not the case. But but I’m not gonna look at you and say there’s no way it’ll happen.”
      Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind is published in the US by Penguin Press
      TopicsBooksRepublicansUS politicsThe far rightDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The Envoy review: Gordon Sondland’s Trump tale fails to strike many sparks

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      The Envoy review: Gordon Sondland’s Trump tale fails to strike many sparks The ex-ambassador was caught up in the first impeachment, over approaches to Ukraine. He offers scattershot justificationGordon Sondland arrived late to Donald Trump’s party but still snagged an ambassador’s post.Maggie Haberman on Trump: ‘He’s become a Charles Foster Kane character’Read moreAccording to the Federal Elections Commission, Sondland, an Oregon hotelier, never donated to Trump’s candidacy. Rather, in 2015 he gave $25,000 to a political action committee aligned with Jeb Bush and $2,500 directly the former Florida governor’s campaign. After Bush dropped out of the Republican primary, Sondland cut checks to a host of candidates but stopped short of Trump.A spokesperson decried Trump’s beliefs and values but eventually ambition got the better of Sondland. With the 2016 election done, Sondland ponied up $1m to Trump’s inaugural committee via four limited-liability companies. Opacity mattered. Trump posted Sondland to Brussels, as US ambassador to the European Union.Fame found Sondland there – with a vengeance. He emerged as a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment, enmeshed with Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden in investigations of approaches to Ukraine for political dirt. After Trump’s Senate acquittal, the president and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, cut Sondland loose.Now comes Sondland’s attempt at image restoration. In his memoir, he criticises Trump and his family but tries to stay close to the fold. With the exception of Steve Bannon, no one has managed that. Then again, Bannon has continuously demonstrated his value to Trump.Sondland brands Trump as a “dick” and a narcissist and lashes into his psyche, calling him “a man with a fragile ego who wants more than anything to feed that ego the way an addict would feed a habit”.In the next breath, however, Sondland contends that Trump was “essentially right about many things, including how out of whack our relationship with Europe has become”.On matters diplomatic, Sondland also skips consideration of Trump’s abiding admiration for Vladimir Putin. Last February, the former president lavished praise on his Russian idol and derided Nato as “not so smart”. In September, Trump went full Tucker Carlson. At a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, he contrasted Putin and Xi Jinping of China with Joe Biden, the man who kicked Trump out of the White House.“I’ve got to know a lot of the foreign leaders, and let me tell you, unlike our leader, they’re at the top of their game,” Trump said.Authoritarianism makes him swoon. Xi “rules with an iron fist, 1.5 billion people, yeah I’d say he’s smart”. From Sondland? Crickets, except to say that while in office, Trump “hated” Ukraine but hoped he would like Volodymyr Zelenskiy.Sondland tries to lay part of the blame for the war in Ukraine on Biden. No doubt, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was ugly. But Sondland expresses his belief that “the practical, no-nonsense approach pursued by Trump, which I also pursued while ambassador in Europe, could have kept Putin in check”.Jared Kushner also receives ambivalent treatment. Early on, Sondland heaps praise: “Jared is very smart, highly effective, and highly criticized because of envy.” He “quietly but effectively used his leverage in the family across the interagency writ large.” Few would dispute Kushner’s clout in the Trump White House.Later, though, Sondland says his relationship with Kushner “cooled” over impeachment. He points fingers: “In retrospect, Kushner likely knew that Pompeo was going to can me … maybe Kushner was the one to tell the president to get rid of me.”Sondland dumps on the libs, trashes the “deep state” and sings the praises of Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s treasury secretary. Hardcore Trumpers despise Mnuchin, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker they deride as a “globalist”. Just ask Bannon or Peter Navarro. Then again, Bannon has been sentenced for contempt of Congress and is under indictment for fraud and Navarro goes to trial in weeks. Like Bannon, he defied the 6 January committee.Sondland lauds the Abraham Accords; calls David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, a “stud”; but stays mum over Charlottesville and Trump’s compliments for neo-Nazis. White supremacists and Kanye West have a home in the Republican party. The party of Lincoln is no more.At times, Sondland’s praise is unalloyed. He voices his respect and admiration for Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted US ambassador to Ukraine; William Taylor, her deputy; and Kurt Volker, the former ambassador to Nato who became Trump’s troubleshooter on Ukraine and Crimea.There is also unstinting criticism of Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene.“They’re sycophants who built careers on dissembling and playing roles that aren’t authentic,” Sondland opines. Unmentioned is that those four reflect the Republican base and its anger far better than Sondland.He also has jabs for the Ukraine whistleblower, Alexander Vindman, and two former Trump advisers, Fiona Hill and John Bolton. In her impeachment testimony, Hill said Bolton, then national security adviser, described Sondland helping to “cook up” a “drug deal” on Ukraine. Sondland’s disdain is understandable.Pompeo also earns rebuke. According to Sondland, the secretary of state reneged on a promise to reimburse him for impeachment legal fees. In May 2021, Sondland commenced a lawsuit in US district court, seeking to recover $1.8m from Pompeo and the government. Pompeo was dropped as a defendant on jurisdictional grounds, the case transferred. Discovery will run into May next year, Pompeo a possible witness.In the here and now, Sondland could have used a sharper proofreader. He writes that Mitt Romney lost the 2011 presidential election and that Trump assumed office in January 2016. The dates are 2012 and 2017, respectively.The book concludes with this admission: “I’m a touch arrogant, a bit showy, and yes, I like attention.”
      The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World is published in the US by Post Hill Press
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump impeachment (2019)US politicsUS foreign policyTrump administrationUkrainereviewsReuse this content More

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      Steve Bannon given four months in prison for contempt of Congress

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      Steve Bannon given four months in prison for contempt of CongressFormer Trump strategist also fined $6,500 for refusing to comply with subpoena issued by Capitol attack committee01:33Donald Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon was sentenced Friday to four months in federal prison and $6,500 in fines after he was convicted of criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply last year with a subpoena issued by the House January 6 select committee.Steve Bannon sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress conviction – liveRead moreThe punishment – suspended pending appeal – makes Bannon the first person to be incarcerated for contempt of Congress in more than half a century and sets a stringent standard for future contempt cases referred to the justice department by the select committee investigating the Capitol attack.The sentence handed down by the US district court judge Carl Nichols in Washington was lighter than recommended by prosecutors, who sought six months in jail and the maximum $200,000 in fines because Bannon refused to cooperate with court officials’ pre-sentencing inquiries.“Others must be deterred from committing similar crimes,” Nichols said as he handed down the sentence, adding that a failure to adequately punish the flouting of congressional subpoenas would enshrine a lack of respect to the legislative branch.Bannon, 68, had asked the court for leniency and requested in court filings for his sentence to either be halted pending the appeal his lawyers filed briefs with the DC circuit court on Thursday or otherwise have the jail term reduced to home-confinement.But Nichols denied Bannon’s requests, saying he agreed with the justice department about the seriousness of his offense and noting that he had failed to show any remorse and was yet to demonstrate that he had any intention to comply with the subpoena.The judge noted in issuing the sentence that he weighed how some factors cut in Bannon’s favor: while he did not comply with the subpoena, he did engage with the select committee and emails appeared to show he had been acting on the advice of his then-lawyer, Robert Costello.Those mitigating factors suggested that Bannon perhaps did not act in the most contemptuous manner that he could have against the subpoena, and so warranted a lighter sentence than the justice department had recommended, Nichols said.Nichols also ruled he would stay the sentence as long as Bannon filed his anticipated appeal “timely”. With his second defense lawyer, Evan Corcoran, understood to have largely finalized the brief, according to sources familiar with the matter, Bannon should meet deadlines.The far-right provocateur now faces a battle to overturn the conviction on appeal, which, the Guardian first reported, will contend the precedent that prevented his lawyers from disputing the definition of “wilful default” of a subpoena, and arguing he had acted on the advice of his lawyers, was inapplicable.After walking out of the courthouse with his lawyers into a melee of reporters and television cameras, Bannon, dressed in a military-style jacket over several navy-colored shirts, vowed that Democrats would face their “judgment day” with an appeal that would prove “bulletproof”.The former Trump White House official then climbed into a waiting SUV and returned to his nearby Washington townhouse to immediately host a victorious episode of his War Room show. A person close to Bannon described him as feeling triumphant and unrepentant.Bannon was charged with two counts of contempt Congress after his refusal to comply at all with the select committee’s subpoena demanding documents and testimony last year triggered the House of Representatives to refer him to the justice department for prosecution.The select committee had sought Bannon’s cooperation after it identified him early on in the investigation as a key player in the run-up to the Capitol attack, who appeared to have advance knowledge of Trump’s efforts to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win on January 6.Among other moments of interest, the Guardian has previously reported, Bannon received a call from Trump the night before the Capitol attack while he was at a Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel and was told of then-vice president Mike Pence’s resistance to decertifying Biden’s win.The close contacts with Trump in the days and hours leading up to the Capitol attack meant Bannon was among the first targets of the investigation, and his refusal to comply with the subpoena galvanised the panel’s resolve to make an example of him with a contempt referral.During the five-day trial in July, Bannon’s legal team ultimately declined to present evidence after Nichols excluded the “advice of counsel” argument because the case law at the DC Circuit level, Licavoli v United States 1961, held that was not a valid defense for defying a subpoena.The justice department, according to Licavoli, had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bannon’s refusal to comply was deliberate and intentional, and the assistant US attorney Amanda Vaughn told the jury in closing arguments they should find the case straightforward.“The defense wants to make this hard, difficult and confusing,” Vaughn said in federal court in Washington. “This is not difficult. This is not hard. There were only two witnesses because it’s as simple as it seems.”That meant the only arguments left available to Bannon were either that he was somehow confused about the deadlines indicated on the subpoena, or that he did not realize the deadlines were concrete and failing to comply with those dates would mean he was in default.TopicsSteve BannonDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ocasio-Cortez to Pence: ‘No one wants to hear your plan for their uterus’

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      Ocasio-Cortez to Pence: ‘No one wants to hear your plan for their uterus’Congresswoman makes remark after former vice-president says there will be ‘pro-life majorities’ in House and Senate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a simple message for Mike Pence on abortion, after the former vice-president predicted “pro-life majorities” in both houses of Congress after the midterm elections.“I’ve got news for you,” the Democratic New York congresswoman wrote. “Absolutely no one wants to hear what your plan is for their uterus.”The ‘election-denier trifecta’: alarm over Trumpists’ efforts to win key postsRead morePence was speaking in response to Joe Biden, after the president announced that if Democrats hold Congress in the midterm elections next month, he will seek to establish the right to abortion in law.The right was removed in June by the conservative-dominated supreme court, when it struck down Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal.Pence, once a conservative congressman and governor of Indiana, is maneuvering for a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked this week if he would support his old boss, Donald Trump, should he mount a third White House campaign, Pence said: “Well, there might be somebody else I prefer more.”He added: “All my focus has been on the midterm elections and it’ll stay that way for the next 20 days. But after that, we’ll be thinking about the future, ours and the nation’s. And I’ll keep you posted, OK?”The tweet that stoked the ire of Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent House progressive, said: “I’ve got news for President Biden. Come January 22nd, we will have Pro-Life majorities in the House and Senate and we’ll be taking the cause of the right to Life to every state house in America!”According to most polling, Republicans are well placed to take the House and possibly the Senate.Boosted by results in special elections and ballot measures earlier this year, Democrats hope turnout among women angered by the supreme court decision on abortion can help them keep control of Congress and important state posts.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022Alexandria Ocasio-CortezMike PenceUS politicsAbortionDemocratsUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Maggie Haberman on Trump: ‘He’s become a Charles Foster Kane character’

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      Maggie Haberman on Trump: ‘He’s become a Charles Foster Kane character’ The author of a new book on the former president reflects on his tumultuous tenure, and getting inside his head“The word ‘Rosebud’ is maybe the most significant word in film, and what we all watch. The wealth, the sorrow, the unhappiness, the happiness just struck lots of different notes. Citizen Kane was really about accumulation and, at the end of the accumulation, you see what happens and it’s not necessarily all positive.”Confidence Man review: Maggie Haberman takes down TrumpRead moreThese words were spoken in 2008 by an unlikely film critic named Donald Trump. Perhaps he glimpsed himself as if in a mirror. Like Kane in Orson Welles’s masterpiece, Trump was a swaggering capitalist and media star who forayed into politics, was brought down by hubris, and now rattles around a gilded cage in Florida.“He’s become something of a Charles Foster Kane-like character down in Mar-a-Lago these days,” observes Maggie Haberman, a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the New York Times, political analyst for CNN and author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which has a black-and-white photo of Trump on its cover.Her analogy raises the question: what is Trump’s Rosebud, the childhood sled that symbolised Kane’s lost innocence? “His father is Rosebud, and I don’t think it’s one particular moment,” Haberman replies. “There’s no single childhood memory that is the key. It’s a series of moments that interlock and they point back to his father.”Fred Trump was a property mogul who had been disappointed by his eldest son Fred Jr’s lack of commitment to the family business. Donald Trump, by contrast, impressed his father by cultivating a brash “killer” persona and became heir apparent. Decades later, in the first weeks of his presidency, Trump had one photo on the credenza behind him in the Oval Office: his father, still watching.Speaking by phone from her car in midtown Manhattan, Haberman reflects: “His father basically created this endless competition between Trump and his older brother Freddie ,and pitted them against each other. Donald Trump spent a lot of time seeking his father’s approval and that became a style of dealing with people, which was certainly better suited for a business than for a household.”“But it became one that Trump recreated in all aspects of his life. It became how he dealt with his own children. It became how he dealt with people who worked for him and then, in the White House, you read a number of stories about these battles that his aides would have. A lot of it was was predetermined by lessons from his father.”But if Trump is Kane, who is Haberman? Is a series of media interviews to promote the book, she has resisted making herself the story. When Trevor Noah of Comedy Central’s the Daily Show likened her relationship with Trump to that between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, she demurred that the former president is “uniquely focused” on the New York Times “and I’m just the person who has covered him more often than not”.Even so, during Haberman’s three interviews with Trump for the book – two at Mar-a-Lago and one at Bedminster, New Jersey – he remarked to his staff: “I love being with her. She’s like my psychiatrist. I’ve never seen a psychiatrist, but if I did, I’m sure it would not be as good as this, right?”There are echoes of fictional mafia boss Tony Soprano and his psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi, but Haberman again sticks to humility: “I think he just said something that he didn’t really mean, and that was intended to flatter. It’s the kind of thing that he says about his Twitter feed or other interviews. He treats everybody like they’re his psychiatrist.”But is there anything that Haberman can see in person that the rest of us cannot on TV? “He uses his personality and he uses his physicality in ways that I’ve just never seen anybody do and so he can be very charming and and disarming when you meet him, particularly at first. But inevitably he shows displeasure or anger.”What is beyond dispute is that Haberman, who turns 49 later this month, was better prepared than almost any other reporter for the Trump presidency. She was born in New York to parents who met while working at the New York Post, a tabloid newspaper that he long courted, and lived most of her adult life in the borough where Trump learned the mechanics of political power.With printers’ ink in her veins, the workaholic Haberman started her own career at the New York Post, moved to the Politico website and then, in 2015, joined the New York Times, where reporting on Trump became her full-time job. She did not follow him to Washington yet, seldom without a phone to her ear, still “owned” the Trump beat from New York.Her book distinguishes itself from the many others in the Trump canon by delving into this shared history and telling his back story. To fully reckon with Trump, his presidency and political future, she writes, people need to know where she comes from. American carnage in embryo.She explains: “Everything about this presidency was foretold. The past is prologue with lots of people, but particularly with him. He ended up having this set of behaviors of his own that were augmented by the world he came from, the climate he came from in New York, the industry he came from and the industries he dealt with in terms of politics, of media.”This was the shady world of Roy Cohn, a mafia lawyer and political fixer best known for his involvement in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign of the 1950s. Cohn was a mentor and personal lawyer to Trump early in his business career and schooled him in the dark arts of attacking your accuser, playing the victim, never apologising and taking a transactional approach to human relations.Trump was perversely attracted to authoritarianism and violence even then. In 1990, engulfed in personal crises, he praised China for its deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. His narcissistic fixation on the media was there too. Trump planted stories about himself in New York gossip columns and could be both thick skinned and thin skinned at the same time.Under the influence of his father and of Cohn, Trump’s racism was baked in early. In one anecdote, Haberman writes that, after his second marriage, he dated a model, Kara Young, who had a Black mother and white father. He asked an associate: “Do you think she looks Black?” Weeks after meeting Young’s parents, Trump told her that she got her beauty from her mother and her intelligence “from her dad, the white side”.Trump’s and attitudes towards race have barely shifted since the New York of the 1980s. Haberman comments: “His pop culture references tended to be from the 1980s and certainly his view of racial strife and crime was frozen in time in 1980s New York when the murder rate at various points hovered near near 2,000 [per year].”“New York’s racial politics, not entirely, but to some extent have evolved and certainly the crime rate has gone down. But Trump still describes this apocalyptic life that is clearly resonant with him but doesn’t necessarily reflect where things are. ”Haberman’s long familiarity with Trump meant she was less surprised than many by his political ambitions. She covered his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011, noting for Politico that “he was by far the best-received speaker”. He did not run then but took the plunge in 2015, trundling down an escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy.“The timing was right. He was bored with his company. He was much older and he was running out of opportunities but I don’t believe he expected to win. He was very surprised.”Did he actually want to win? “I asked somebody close to him in April 2015, does he actually want to be president or does he just want to win? And their response was, that’s a really good question, which I took as my answer.”Trump shook the political world by beating Democrat Hillary Clinton to become the first person elected to the White House with no previous political or military experience. Step back for a moment and it is still astounding, jaw-dropping. How on earth did it happen?Part of it, Haberman says, was Trump’s ability to capitalise on leftover energy from the Tea Party, a rightwing populist movement with roots in the racial backlash against Obama’s election. Part was Trump’s fame as host of The Apprentice – voters refused to hear facts that contradicted beliefs shaped by the reality TV show.And for a swath of the country that felt alienated from Washington, there was appeal in a political outsider telling them they were right to be mistrustful. She comments: “Our politics are broken. They’ve been broken for a while. I don’t think he created that but he fueled it and exacerbated it and benefited from it.”The 45th president lived down to her expectations. She was on the receiving end of both his insatiable desire for attention and his poison-pen responses to critical coverage. A month after taking office, Trump, while developing a symbiotic relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel, branded the New York Times and other outlets “the enemy of the American people”.Haberman comments: “He has endangered journalists with that language and that language has been used by authoritarians in other countries to legitimise anti-press crackdowns. I don’t think Donald Trump has any sense of what the role of the free press is in a democracy. None.”Was there anything, amid the four-year madness of all caps tweets, hirings and firings, insults and lies that shocked even her? Haberman picks the day that Trump stood on the White House podium floating the idea that coronavirus patients might inject themselves with bleach. “He was feeling competitive with the doctors because he gets competitive with everybody. That was a pretty striking moment.”As Trump mused on the utility of disinfectants as a miracle cure, the then coronavirus response coordinator, Deborah Birx, infamously sat silent. It was one incident among many that shone a light on the White House officials and aides who enabled Trump – or at least failed to make a stand until it was too late.But Haberman takes a more charitable view: “There were a lot of people there who really were trying to do the right thing. There were people who were worried about the country. There were people who realised that this was a guy who didn’t understand government and had no idea what he himself stood for.”Some White House alumni have been condemned for cashing in by writing memoirs. Haberman herself has been accused of holding back pearls of news for her book rather than publishing them in the Times immediately. Critics seized on its revelation that, following his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump told an aide: “I’m just not going to leave.” His state of denial culminated in a deadly insurrection by a mob of his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6.Political consultant Steve Schmidt tweeted: “Was it important information for the public to know Trump said he wasn’t leaving after losing an election? Yes. Was this information deliberately concealed for an economic reason that took higher precedence than the truth and the public right to know? YES.”Haberman flatly denies the charge, saying that she would have published the story if she could have confirmed it at the time but she only nailed it down long after Trump left office. When, during research for the book, she did land a scoop about Trump apparently trying to flush documents down a White House toilet, she alerted the Times and printed it right away.“Books take time. They’re a process of going back and interviewing people again and revisiting scenes that have happened. I turned to this project in earnest after February 2021 and the second impeachment trial. My goal was to get confirmed, reportable information in print as quick as possible and, if I had known these things in real time, and had them confirmed, I would have published them.”For Confidence Man she spoke to 250 people, some of whom were more willing to speak for a book than a here-today-gone-tomorrow news story. There are two questions she did not ask Trump but now wishes she had. Did he ever consider a White House taping system? (he is a fan of former president Richard Nixon) Did he ever worry for Vice President Mike Pence’s safety? (There were chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” on January 6).She may never get the chance. Haberman and Trump have not spoken since the book’s publication. Does she worry that its deeply reported 508-page narrative, a damning verdict for posterity, has severed the relationship? She says firmly: “It’s not a relationship. He’s someone I cover, and I will cover him whether he’s talking to me or not talking to me.”Or it may prove that he needs her more than she needs him. If Trump can survive an array of federal, state and congressional investigations to run for president again in 2024, Haberman would surely be the lead reporter. “I don’t know. Maybe. Right now I just want to get some sleep.”So it was that Haberman told Politico last month that her work is both her curse and her salvation – a comment that hinted at, if not her own Rosebud, a realisation that she is not yet untethered from the man she understands better than anyone. “I love work and I love what I do, but I also don’t have an off switch. When you’re covering someone who also doesn’t have an off switch, that can be a problem.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      US says Iranian troops ‘directly engaged’ in Crimea supporting Russian drone strikes – as it happened

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      Iranian troops are “directly engaged on the ground” in Crimea supporting Russian drone strikes against Ukrainian forces, the White House said this afternoon.“The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” said John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.According to Kirby, a “relatively small number” of Iran’s troops are helping Russian forces launch the Iranian-made drones. The US said over the summer that Iran was selling its drones to Russia, but Tehran has denied the charge. That’s all from the US politics live blog today. Here’s how the day unfolded in Washington and across the pond:
      The White House said Iranian troops are assisting Russia’s drone operations against Ukraine. According to John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, a “relatively small number” of Iran’s troops are helping Russian forces launch the Iranian-made drones. The US said over the summer that Iran was selling its drones to Russia, but Tehran has denied the charge.
      Republican leaders are clashing over sending additional military aid to Ukraine. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become speaker after the midterm elections next month, has expressed skepticism about approving more funding to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But Mike Pence, former vice-president to Donald Trump, said yesterday, “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin.”
      Lawmakers of both parties are reportedly considering passing another Ukraine aid package during the lame-duck session. According to NBC News, the lawmakers are discussing passing a very substantial funding bill – potentially in the neighborhood of $50bn – to keep Ukraine well supplied even if Republicans refuse to approve more aid after January.
      British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after just 45 days in office. Becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history, Truss was forced to step down after proposing (and then scrapping) a widely unpopular budget plan and losing the confidence of many fellow Tories.
      Joe Biden thanked Truss for her service and her partnership in helping to hold Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine. “We will continue our close cooperation with the UK government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face,” Biden said in a statement.
      Biden traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to tout the enactment of the bipartisan infrastructure law. The president spoke at the site of the Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed into a ravine earlier this year. A new section of the bridge is now being constructed, and Biden credited infrastructure law with helping to make the project possible. “For too long, we talked about building the best economy in the world and the best infrastructure in the world,” Biden said. “We’re finally getting to it.”
      The US politics blog will return tomorrow with more updates from Washington and the campaign trail, so make sure to tune back in.Lawmakers of both parties are considering trying to pass another Ukraine aid package during the lame-duck session, according to a new report from NBC News.The report comes days after House minority leader Kevin McCarthy suggested he would block additional military aid to Ukraine if Republicans regain control of the lower chamber in the midterm elections next month, as they are favored to do.NBC reports:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}With that threat to Ukraine aid looming, the bipartisan idea under consideration would use a government funding bill during the lame-duck session after the midterms to secure a much higher level of military and other assistance than prior aid packages for Ukraine, according to [one] lawmaker and [congressional] aides.
      Congress last month approved $12 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine, but the package being contemplated would be dramatically larger, the sources said.
      The amount would be enough ‘to make sure [Ukraine] can get through the year,’ a Republican senator with knowledge of the matter told NBC News. ‘It’ll make the $12 billion look like pocket change.’
      The new aid package, which most likely would be part of an omnibus spending bill, could be within the range of roughly $50 billion, congressional aides and a source close to the Ukraine government said.Some Republicans have signaled they would be open to approving additional funds for Ukraine, and Mike Pence, the former vice-president to Donald Trump, called on his party to stand up against Russia in a speech yesterday.“As Russia continues its unconscionable war of aggression to Ukraine, I believe that conservatives must make it clear that Putin must stop and Putin will pay,” Pence said. “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin.”Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the defense department, said the drones that Iran is allegedly providing to Russia are being deployed as “psychological weapons used to create fear” in Ukraine.Ryder emphasized that Ukrainian forces are still notching some important victories against Russian troops, which “continue to lose territory or at best hold ground” in the war.The Pentagon spokesperson reiterated that Russia appears to be reaching out to countries like Iran and North Korea as its own munitions stockpile gets depleted because of the war in Ukraine.Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the defense department, was asked what role Iranian troops are playing in Crimea as they assist Russia’s drone operations against Ukraine.“My understanding is, it’s the Russians who are flying the drones, and yes, [Iranians] are assisting the Russians in those operations,” Ryder said.Ryder declined to comment on press reports that US intelligence officials have assessed photos of drone strike sites in Ukraine to determine that Russia has been using Iranian-produced weapons in their attacks. The US said over the summer that Iran was providing Russia with drones, but Tehran has denied that allegation.The Pentagon echoed the White House’s assessment that Iranian troops have been on the ground in Crimea to assist Russia’s drone operations against Ukraine.“We continue to see Iran be complicit in terms of exporting terror, not only in the Middle East region, but now also to Ukraine. And so I think that speaks for itself,” Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesperson for the defense department.When asked about potential sanctions against Iran for working with Russia, Ryder deferred those questions to the state department, but he reiterated America’s commitment to providing all available support to Ukrainians as they seek to defend their country.Iranian troops are “directly engaged on the ground” in Crimea supporting Russian drone strikes against Ukrainian forces, the White House said this afternoon.“The information we have is that the Iranians have put trainers and tech support in Crimea, but it’s the Russians who are doing the piloting,” said John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council.According to Kirby, a “relatively small number” of Iran’s troops are helping Russian forces launch the Iranian-made drones. The US said over the summer that Iran was selling its drones to Russia, but Tehran has denied the charge. Joe Biden closed his infrastructure remarks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his standard message of optimism about the future of the nation.“For most of the last century, we led the world by a significant margin because we invested in our people. We invested in ourselves, we invested in our land. But along the way, we stopped doing that – but not anymore. We’re back on track,” Biden said.“We’re proving our best days are ahead of us, not behind us. We just have to keep going, and we know we can. I have never been more optimistic about America’s future.”With that, Biden wrapped up his speech. He will soon start his trip to Philadelphia, where he will participate in a fundraiser with Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman.Joe Biden expressed pride that the bipartisan infrastructure bill he signed into law last year is helping to improve the roads and bridges of Pennsylvania, where the president was born in 1942.Biden said his staff informed him that he has visited Pittsburgh 19 times since he launched his presidential campaign there in 2019. After securing the Democratic nomination in 2020, Biden’s first campaign stop was in Pittsburgh.“Let me tell you, I’m a proud Delawarean, but Pennsylvania is my native state. It’s in my heart,” Biden said. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be part of rebuilding this beautiful state.”Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on strengthening America’s infrastructure in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the president seeks to tout Democrats’ legislative accomplishments ahead of the midterm elections next month.The president chose to speak at the site of the Fern Hollow Bridge, which collapsed into a ravine earlier this year. Democrats have cited the bridge collapse, which thankfully resulted in no deaths, as an alarming example of the country’s crumbling infrastructure.A new section of the bridge is now being constructed, and Biden credited the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law last year with helping to make the project possible.“For too long, we talked about building the best economy in the world and the best infrastructure in the world,” Biden said. “We’re finally getting to it.”A portion of the bridge is expected to be completed by December, and Biden joked in his speech, “I’m coming back to walk over this sucker.”Congressional Republicans introduced a measure Tuesday that would prohibit federal money from being used to teach children under 10 about LGBTQ issues.The bill would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach children about “sexually-oriented material” as well as “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.” The effects of such a law, if enacted, would be far-reaching since a range of institutions – schools, libraries, among them – receive public money.The bill also gives parents the ability to sue in federal court if their child is exposed to the barred material that is funded “in whole or in part” by federal funds.The bill was introduced by Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and 32 other GOP members of Congress.Read the Guardian’s full report:Republicans aim to pass national ‘don’t say gay’ law Read moreHere’s where the day stands so far:
      Republican leaders are clashing over sending additional military aid to Ukraine. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become speaker after the midterm elections next month, has expressed skepticism about approving more funding to assist Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But Mike Pence, former vice-president to Donald Trump, said yesterday, “There can be no room in the conservative movement for apologists to Putin.”
      British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after just 45 days in office. Becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in UK history, Truss was forced to step down after proposing (and then scrapping) a widely unpopular budget plan and losing the confidence of many fellow Tories.
      Joe Biden thanked Truss for her service and her partnership in helping to hold Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine. “We will continue our close cooperation with the UK government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face,” Biden said in a statement.
      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.More Americans are getting the latest Covid-19 booster shot, but the White House warns that vaccination rates are still too low headed into the winter months when cases could surge again.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One moments ago, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said 4.5 million Americans received booster shots in the past week.A White House official told CNN that about 20 million Americans in total have now gotten their booster shots, but that number represents less than 10% of the country’s eligible population.“The work we’re doing to reach Americans through on the ground work with trusted organizations in communities across the country and paid media is helping drive the urgency for all Americans to get the protection they need ahead of the winter,” White House Covid-19 coordinator, Dr Ashish Jha, said in a statement to CNN.“But to be very clear: it’s going to take everyone talking to their family and friends to ensure the country is as protected as possible. Our message is simple: do not wait to get your updated vaccine.” More

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      Republicans aim to pass national ‘don’t say gay’ law

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      Republicans aim to pass national ‘don’t say gay’ law Measure introduced in Congress would prohibit federal money from being used to teach children under 10 about LGBTQ issues Congressional Republicans introduced a measure Tuesday that would prohibit federal money from being used to teach children under 10 about LGBTQ issues.The bill would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach children about “sexually-oriented material” as well as “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects”. The effects of such a law, if enacted, would be far-reaching since a range of institutions – schools, libraries, among them – receive public money.Universities, public schools, hospitals, medical clinics, etc. could all be defunded if they host any event discussing LGBTQ people and children could be present. The way they define “sexually oriented material” simply includes anything about LGBTQ people.— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) October 18, 2022
      The bill also gives parents the ability to sue in federal court if their child is exposed to the barred material that is funded “in whole or in part” by federal funds.I can’t overstate how radical the private right of action portion is. The bill is so broadly defined that a pediatric hospital could be sued for having a pride flag or a medical pamphlet about gender dysphoria. It deputizes anti-LGBTQ bigots to engage in bounty lawsuits.— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) October 18, 2022
      The bill was introduced by Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and 32 other GOP members of Congress.“The Democrat party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology,” he said in a statement. “This commonsense bill is straightforward. No federal tax dollars should go to any federal, state, or local government agencies, or private organizations that intentionally expose children under 10 years of age to sexually explicit material.”The bill is unlikely to become law while Democrats control the US senate and White House, but it underscores how Republicans have zeroed in on anti-LGBTQ issues as a way of rallying their base.Earlier this year Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law that barred schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity until third grade, “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards”.More than a dozen states introduced so-called “don’t say gay” bills this year.Republicans have also targeted drag shows as part of this anti-LGBTQ effort. Idaho lawmakers will reportedly consider a measure to ban drag shows in public.TopicsRepublicansLGBTQ+ rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden implores US oil companies to pass on record profits to consumers

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      Biden implores US oil companies to pass on record profits to consumersPresident announces release of 15m barrels of oil from strategic reserve as he fights to keep gas prices in check before midterms Joe Biden has called on oil companies to pass on their massive profits to consumers as he announced the release of 15m barrels of oil from the US strategic petroleum reserve.Biden is fighting to keep gas prices in check ahead of November’s midterms. He blamed Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for the global spike in oil prices and said his administration was doing all it could to keep prices in check.“Gas prices have fallen every day in the last week,” said Biden. “That’s progress, but they’re not falling fast enough. Gas prices are felt in almost every family in this country. That’s why I’ve been doing everything in my power to reduce gas prices.”He called on US oil companies to help. In the second quarter of 2022, the six largest US oil companies reported profits of $70bn, said Biden.“So far, American oil companies are using that windfall to buy back their own stock, passing that money on to shareholders, not consumers,” he said. “My message to all companies is this: you’re sitting on record profits. And we’re giving you more certainty. You can act now to increase oil production. You should not be using your profits to buy back stock or for dividends – not while the war is raging.”The announcement of the latest oil release speeds up the sale of the last of the 180m barrels that Biden announced in March would be sold. The announcement comes after the oil-producing Opec+ nations said they would cut oil production, driving up prices, in a move that angered White House officials.Established in 1975 to help mitigate shocks in US oil supply, the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) is thought to be the largest emergency supply in the world. Stored in underground tanks in Louisiana and Texas, the SPR has capacity for 714m barrels of oil and is currently at its lowest level since 1984.The reserve now contains roughly 400m barrels of oil and Biden said more oil could be released if the situation does not improve. The administration has called the situation a “bridge” until domestic production can be increased and said the US will restock the strategic reserve when oil prices are at or lower than $67 to $72 a barrel.Biden faces political headwinds because of gas prices. AAA reports that gas is averaging $3.87 a gallon, down slightly over the past week, but up from a month ago. The recent increase in prices stalled the momentum that the president and his fellow Democrats had been seeing in the polls ahead of the November elections.An analysis Monday by ClearView Energy Partners, an independent energy research firm in Washington, suggested that two states that could decide control of the evenly split Senate, Nevada and Pennsylvania, are sensitive to energy prices. The analysis noted that gas prices over the past month rose above the national average in 18 states, which are home to 29 potentially “at risk” House seats.The hard math for Biden is that oil production has yet to return to its pre-pandemic level of roughly 13m barrels a day. It’s about a million barrels a day shy of that level. The 15m-barrel release would not cover even one full day’s use of oil in the US, according to the Energy Information Administration.The oil industry would like the administration to open up more federal lands for drilling, approve pipeline construction and reverse its recent changes to raise corporate taxes. The administration counters that the oil industry is sitting on thousands of unused federal leases and says new permits would take years to produce oil with no impact on current gas prices.Environmental groups, meanwhile, have asked Biden to keep a campaign promise to block new drilling on federal lands.Because fossil fuels lead to carbon emissions, Biden has sought to move away from them entirely with a commitment to zero emissions by 2050. When discussing that commitment nearly a year ago after the G20 leading rich and developing nations met in Rome, the president said he still wanted to also lower gas prices because at “$3.35 a gallon, it has a profound impact on working-class families just to get back and forth to work”.The Associated Press contributed to this storyTopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationOilOpecCommoditiesUS midterm elections 2022US politicsnewsReuse this content More