What will you learn from Donald Trump? A friend and colleague of the editor of the New York Post, with whom she interviewed Donald Trump in the 1990s
Her forthcoming book is jam-packed with anecdotes and insights, just as she has reported on Donald Trump over the years. He told her that he was pleased with his time in the White House as many other rich men have small or missing public profiles, and their bank accounts are bloated. For him, the presidency was Page Six on the Potomac.
Their relationship says so much about Trump — some of it long obvious, some of it less so. It proves his awareness of the lies he tells: If he really believed, as he publicly claimed, that Maggie was a fabulist, he’d deem it pointless and potentially ruinous to talk with her. He’d stop. He respected her, even as he trashed her and confirmed the void that a moral person’s conscience resides in.
He will do anything to survive. He will do whatever he can to get an audience to like him. Maggie (a friend of mine) and the other journalists whom he publicly insulted but privately indulged were, to him, reserves of precious attention, their discerning gazes trained on him, their busy thoughts dedicated to the puzzle of him, their notepads and audio recordings and television cameras a conduit to ever greater fame. The alternatives were worse because there was danger in letting them in and danger in having them around. They could give prime space on the newscast to a circus act. They might write a novel about a clown.
For today’s newsletter, I spoke with Maggie about what she’s learned, about how much the media should cover Trump and about what’s likely next for him.
You spent more time interviewing Trump than any other reporter back in the 1990s, when you was a New York Post reporter. He lies a lot and you pointed that out. I am curious about how interviewing him helps you better capture reality when he is not restricted by reality.
The Rise of the Dark: Insights from Donald Trump’s Comeback Four Years after the 2020 Election, or How the Oath Keepers Killed and Charged Joe Biden
That recent history is loudly echoing amid a deepening sense that the country could be heading back to a dark political place as another Election Day looms. There is a chance of another violent eruption in this toxic age.
Everyone assumed these elections were the beginning of Mr. Trump’s comeback in four years. He put on a multistate rally tour to lead his chosen Republican candidates over the finish line and, by all accounts, to build anticipation for his own impending entry into the presidential race. The Republicans performed poorly in themiddels, with some of the Trumpiest figures going down in crushing defeats. The whole slate of would-be secretaries of state were erased out because they were running on the message of Joe Biden stealing the 2020 election. The figure who has come closest to challenging Mr. Trump for the party’s next presidential nomination, romped to victory.
The rancor that hurt the transfer of power less than two years ago is still in motion, as shown by the atmosphere five weeks before the election.
There are far from complete investigations into what happened after the 2020 election. On Monday, for instance, on the first day of the trial of five alleged members of the Oath Keepers militia charged with seditious conspiracy, jurors heard how senators cried as they hid from Trump’s mob.
Last week, the former President took to social media to accuse McConnell of having a ‘death wish’ and thrown racist comments at his wife, Elaine. Trump labeled FBI agents as “vicious monsters” over the search of his Florida home.
One of the ex-President’s top boosters, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, also played into Trump’s politics of fear at his weekend rally in Michigan, claiming that Democrats wanted Republicans dead.
A man was charged with trying to assassinate Supreme Court Justice. The same month, New York Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin, who’s running for governor, was attacked by a man at a campaign event. The alleged attacker did not have a political motive and it reminded me of the vulnerability of candidates on the stump.
Former Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was left with life-changing injuries by a gunman who attacked a constituency event in 2011, killing six people. Steve Scalise was wounded in a shooting at a congressional baseball practice. The man had professed support for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ progressive politics and hated conservatives and Trump, according to a CNN review of his Facebook profiles, public records and letters to his newspaper. After condemning the shooting as despicable and saying the attacker “probably” volunteered for the presidential campaign, then making clear violence of ANY kind was unacceptable, sanders made it clear that he had never employed the kind of Intimidation that Trump is known for.
The ex-president used brutal and aggressive rhetoric before the Capitol insurrection. Month by month, Trump built an impression that violence was a legitimate tool of expressing political grievances – a process that came to a head on January 6 – and further eroded the idea that Americans’ differences should be settled at the ballot box rather than through violent action.
In a nation with easy access to guns, with a recent history of political violence and where Trump and others use false claims of voter fraud as political rocket fuel, it is reasonable to wonder what dire consequences may haunt this election season.
Rep. Bennie Thompson: Trump’s social media assault on McConnell has caused a coarsening of the political culture in his own party
Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House select committee, on Monday condemned Trump’s social media assault on McConnell and told colleagues in both parties, “We need to be better than this.”
He stated that the former President knows his words are seen as marching orders by extremists and that Trump’s rhetoric could encourage political violence.
The death wish rhetoric is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards. Mr. Trump’s apologists claim he merely meant Mr. McConnell has a political death wish, but that isn’t what he wrote,” the paper said.
The former President appears to implicitly offer his supporters a kind of permission to emulate his incitement. As a consequence of his tendency to drag other down into the political gutter with him, he has caused a coarsening of the political culture among Republicans who have to choose between their political careers and publicly tolerate his extreme views.
The Republicans often seize upon the rhetoric of Democrats to suggest that their supporters are being targeted. This happened when Biden referred to the Trump supporters as fascists. Political rhetoric should always be condemned. But any objective viewing of Trump’s speeches and social media posts must conclude that he’s an incessant and deliberate offender.
Part of the reason he’s not condemned by his own party is because some brave lawmakers are not willing to condemn him. This was borne out by the uncomfortable dodging from Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chairman of the Senate GOP campaign committee, on Sunday shows when he was asked to condemn Trump’s post about McConnell.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/04/politics/trump-violent-rhetoric-analysis/index.html
What the President (and his friend) (Dana Bash) said about the president and the politics of a country with a nickname
The President likes to call people names. So you can ask him how he came up with a nickname. Scott told Dana Bash on CNN that he thinks he has a nickname for him, but was not able to reorient the discussion towards high inflation that Republicans think will hurt Democrats.
“I hope no one is racist. Scott is hoping that no one says anything that’s inappropriate, like Trump has done since announcing his first campaign.
A Democrat objected to the notion that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump, saying it seemed understandable to him. The friend with whom Mr Liggett traveled to jewelry shows for 20 years came as a surprise.
“I thought he was a good conservative Republican,” said Mr. Liggett, a Republican himself. “One day he says, ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ He says he doesn’t believe in the Republicans and uses a very strong expletive.
A new poll suggests that the increasing ideological divides in American politics have personal consequences. A poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College last week found that 19 percent of voters said politics had hurt their family relationships.
For all of the concern over violence in the United States, people with years of experience came to the conclusion that they didn’t have enough facts to have coherent arguments.
CNN political analyst and professor of history and public affairs at the University ofPrinceton, Julian Zelizer, is one of the analysts. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). He can be reached on the social media website, at@julianzizer. His views are his own, not those of this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
Remarks on the Comeback of Donald J. Trump in the House of DeSantis and Other Republican Embedded Party Candidates
There will be no golden escalator this time, but neither will there be mocking guffaws or can-you-believe-this eye-rolling. Since his first campaign, the world has changed quite a bit. Whatever else is thought of his attempted comeback, it will not be dismissed as an implausible joke.
A week like this might shatter that status quo. Now that there are more Republicans, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who could possibly do Trumpism in more effective fashion, the former president’s standing within the party inevitably becomes more precarious. There will be growing clamor to consider throwing the weight of the party, including the messages spread on conservative media, toward a viable alternative. The New York Post was not very nice about the next run of Trump.
In order to convince Republicans he’s an asset at the top of the ballot in 2024, Trump will have to convince them that he’s not a risk for vulnerable candidates. In the aftermath of the GOP’s dismal showing in the election, some Republicans think Trump’s involvement did more to hurt the party than help. It has been blamed on the party leaders for failing to articulate clear policy priorities, or faulted on the party money gap against Democrats in key races, as well as the squabbling that took place between two of the party’s biggest campaign committees.
If the midterm campaigns have shown the Democrats anything, it is that the Republicans remain a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. The “Never Trump” contingent didn’t get to become a dominant force after Trump left the White House. Indeed, officials such as Congresswoman Liz Cheney were purged from the party.
Even with flawed and unconventional candidates such as Herschel Walker and Dr. Mehmet Oz running for key Senate seats, polls show the GOP is in good shape going into the election on Tuesday. Even candidates in reliably blue states such as New York are at risk as Democrats scramble to protect several seats.
Ms. Stefanik’s reinvention has made her a case study in the collapse of the old Republican establishment and its willing absorption into the new, Trump-dominated one. Her rise to fame may also be a cautionary tale as Republicans prepare to take control of the House. The most potent force of the party and its biggest liability is blamed by many Republicans for their inability to win the Senate in November and for a House majority that, some believe, may be too narrow to govern effectively. Republican politicians and voters are at a loss over how the alliance with Mr. Trump will cost them. Mr. Ryan said it was crystal clear. If we continue with Trump, we will lose. We will start winning if we dump Trump.
A GOP victory would embolden Trump. At this point, he hasn’t been held accountable. Trump is still a viable political figure despite the ongoing criminal investigations.
And if Trump announces his candidacy, the Department of Justice is weighing the possibility of announcing a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. It’s not likely to stop Trump from attacking Robert Muller, the former special counsel who oversaw the Russia investigation. And once Trump is formally a candidate, it will make prosecuting him all the more difficult. Trump, a master of playing the victim, is sure to claim (as he has in the past) that any investigation is simply a politically motivated “witch hunt” intended to take him out of the running.
If Trump is acquitted, he would unleash a fierce assault on the President, who could be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his own party. If election deniers enter power after the election, and Trump gets a break, he will take advantage of the people who have helped him in the past to make sure his victory is his. This time, Trump will come to the race having been to a rodeo before, which will allow him to perfect his technique and rhetoric that put him into office. And now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, Trump could be reinstated – giving him a way to direct and shape the media conversation once again. Trump, who founded Truth Social, has not stated publicly that he will come back.
The Dems and Democrats of the 21st Century: A Post-Newtonian Viewpoint on the Challenges of Defending Reelection
The Democrats focus on the GOP and the dangers it poses to democracy aren’t good enough to get voters to caucus for them. There are dangers that have been discussed many times over, but the Democrats are struggling to maintain power.
Of course, the fact that Trump poses a very serious threat in 2024 doesn’t mean he will win. It is unclear if Trump can win over the support of the Republicans in swing states because he has turned off many independents and Republicans. And as we have seen with President Barack Obama’s run against Mitt Romney in 2012, presidents who have faced tough reelection campaigns can still find a path to victory.
A former CNN producer and correspondent is a world affairs columnist. She works as an opinion contributor to CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and has a column for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
The End of the 2016 Mid-term Presidential Campaign: The Trump-Republican Relationship Is Nearly Here: The Effects of the Partisanship
Things could start to look different now. The future of the Trump-Republican relationship could be at risk in the upcoming mid-term elections. In Republican politics the power of the partisans drives decision-making.
There was no red wave and not a red wave at all. Predictions of a huge Republican victory at the polls did not materialize. It was a deeply disappointing election for the GOP. It was a terrible day for the former President Donald Trump, who had dreamed that a Republican win would make him the party’s presidential candidate in four years.
The challenge to democracy isn’t over. Many election deniers won. But even those who emerged victorious, performed worse than the non-election-deniers. The voters who had voted for other Republicans were pushed away by the parroting of Trump’s lies.
In exit polls, more than a quarter of the voters said they voted to oppose Donald Trump. And just 37% said they had a favorable view of the former president, the presumed GOP front-runner, at least before this election. That should cause alarm to the party.
On election night, Trump told an interviewer, “I think if [Republicans] win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.” The evidence suggests he deserves a large part of the blame.
A Great Way to Save the American Dream: Kevin Biden’s Campaign for Elections in Florida and the Case for a Democratic Presidential Candidate
For the past 100 years, the average midterm gain in the House of Representatives for the opposition party is 29 seats. The GOP needed only five seats to win the election this year, a goal that most pollsters said was doable given the high inflation rate and Biden’s low approval. But Republicans are struggling to clear that low bar.
They may well do it. Kevin McCarthy may become House speaker even if Republicans don’t get the House, and the Democrats will still put on a great show. Biden presided over the best performance by the party in power since George W. Bush in 2002, the first election after 9/11.
Biden said he’d run for president in an effort to save US democracy. Even if his party does lose control of Congress, he can take solace in the fact that he has made progress in achieving that goal. These elections were a victory for democracy.
Josh Shapiro, the Attorney General of the state of Pennsylvania, defeated Doug Mastriano, the candidate who ran a campaign filled with antisemitic innuendo against his opponent. The far-right allies of Trump lost many contests, including Michigan and Massachusetts.
The football player Herschel Walker may win in December. It’s clear to anyone who heard he was on the ballot, he should never have been there. Trump thought fame would work the same way as it did for him. So, he also backed TV star Mehmet Oz for the Pennsylvania seat. Oz lost to John Fetterman, who after suffering a stroke struggled to regain his verbal prowess, a key skill for a political candidate.
Conservative commentator Scott Jennings wrote, “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent a clear message to every Republican voter Tuesday night: My way is the path to a national majority, and former President Donald Trump’s way is the path to future disappointments and continued suffering.”
The new book from the Florida governor explains how the GOP base changed, and that he’ll seek to harness it if he makes a run for president.
To block Kemp’s reelection, Trump persuaded former Sen. David Perdue to run against him in the primary. Perdue was humiliated by the primary vote for Trump.
It’s no secret that Trump has proven himself to be extremely resilient in the past at handling periods of adversity and his ability to command attention by making outrageous statements which draw the attention of the media. It’s not clear how many Republicans are willing to break with him in serious fashion and his supporters remain fervent. Every Republican alternative who looks good on paper might look more like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2012 and 2016, or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2016. Both GOP presidential candidates went from seemingly inevitable superstars to minor sideshows in primaries.
Donald W. DeSantis: Defending “wokeness” and his lawsuit against “fake” health advice in the U.S.
As soon as next year, Americans will have to endure another presidential campaign by a man who has shown contempt for the rule of law and has no intention of changing his mind. Facing that prospect, it’s good to know the country took a step toward sanity this week, and that democracy fared rather well.
A lot of polls show that Trump may have lost his hold on the Republican Party. A University of New Hampshire poll of the first-in-the-nation primary state released last week showed the Florida governor leading Trump 42% to 30% among likely GOP voters in the state. A CNN/SSRS poll in December found that about 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents wanted their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024.
As he seeks to shore up conservative support ahead of a highly anticipated campaign for president, Ron DeSantis seems to have overstepped his bounds in his fight against “wokeness” and the concerns are growing among GOP donors, leading conservative voices and even some supporters. A number of potential rivals for the GOP nomination have taken on the approach of DeSantis and his governing style to create contrast with the popular Republican.
He has married that political style with a strongman persona. As governor, he has targeted protestors, universities, public health workers and corporations for opposing his policies. He has sent police to round up voters with felony convictions who, confused by the state’s efforts to strip their voting rights after voters reinstated them a few years ago, mistakenly voted in recent elections. He has bent the Florida legislature to his will, whipping up support for anti-gay laws, a new redistricting map and punitive legislation targeting Disney after the company criticized the state’s infamous “don’t say gay” bill.
DeSantis did shut bars and nightclubs and urged people to follow federal government guidance on limiting gatherings on beaches in March 2020. He ignored federal government health officials and allowed them to open again. The former president is clearly seeking to get to the right of the Florida governor on this issue, despite DeSantis spending much of the last two years feuding with the Biden administration over the pandemic. But while challenging federal health advice could be a powerful litmus test for a GOP primary, the idea that Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic could be a vote winner in the general election is quite a leap.
Success in Florida or in theory can’t translate into success in the field of politics, as is shown by the candidacy of Sen. Marco Rubio. Part of that is due to the particulars of Florida. The electorate there has gone towards the conservative side, even as the country as a whole has gone to the left on a host of issues.
The Democratic Party in Florida is struggling to field and support candidates and to organize and mobilize voters, unlike the national party. Florida has a specific mix of Latino voters that is weighted mostly towards immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who are sympathetic to DeSantis’s attack on Democrats as socialists.
Then there is the issue of fellow Florida resident Donald Trump. The Dump Trump crowd, though bigger at the moment than at perhaps any time since 2016, does not seem to fully understand how deep and unquestioning the cult of personality around Trump still is within parts of the party.
What Will Young People Do to Vote? The Case of “Silver Blaze,” Investigated by CNN and Other News Sources
Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We look at the best, smartest opinions from CNN and other outlets.
In the story, “Silver Blaze,” a famous racehorse is missing and the murderer of its trainer is revealed. A police inspector asks the detective, “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
Republicans thought they were about to win a big race, and some Democrats blamed each other for what they had feared would be a disaster.
The New Yorker’s Benjamin Wallace-Wells reported November 4 that GOP campaign strategists said their candidates, including those in in competitive Senate races like Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, were “heading for a clean sweep.” Wallace-Wells wrote, “The word that kept coming up in these conversations was ‘bloodbath.’”
In her letter to the University of Missouri-Kansas City she wrote that people often wonder what it will take to get young people to vote. “Well, after the 2022 midterms, they no longer have to guess.”
“Place in front of us an existential issue that could determine our future. We will turn out in droves if we know that we can have a say about the issues that affect us with our votes. Hernandez and her fellow Gen Z friends saw abortion as that kind of existential issue.
At the University of Michigan, students waited over four hours for same day registration to vote, as reported by student activist Isabelle Schindler. There was a palpable sense of excitement and urgency around the election on campus. There was a motivating issue for many young people, especially young women, that was abortion rights.
No other age group was more supportive of Democrats than the 18 to 29 year olds, who supported the Democratic party by a big margin.
Some pundits believed that the anger of many voters at the Supreme Court was over, and that inflation would not be a problem. They argued that President Joe Biden was not paying enough attention to the potential danger that election deniers posing to democracy would pose. But both of those issues resonated.
“The abortion-rights side seemingly went a perfect five-for-five when it came to ballot initiatives, recognizing a state right to abortion in Michigan, California and Vermont,” wrote law professor Mary Ziegler. “Kentucky, a deep red state, turned away an attempt to say that the state constitution did not protect a right to abortion. Montana’s abortion measure, which threatened to impose criminal penalties on health care providers, was rejected by voters in Tuesday’s referendum.”
John Avlon saw the midterms as “a repudiation of former President Donald Trump’s election lies and at least many of the top-ticket candidates who parroted them.”
Roxanne Jones said she was a relief. It seems that a majority of voters want to re-center American politics away from the toxic, conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric we have seen over the past several years.
“Plenty of voters are worried about unchecked progressivism on the left, but they’re even more worried about unchecked extremism on the right,” observed Tim Alberta, in the Atlantic.
Extremism begins with deluding our elections system, endorsing the January 6 assault on the Capitol, cracking jokes, and spreading lies about the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Donald Trump is the embodiment of all of this Extremism, which many swing voters rejected on Tuesday.
Some careers were made – and others broken – in Tuesday’s election. The first Black governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, is a rising star according to Peniel Joseph. “A campaign based on championing equal opportunity, compassion for the incarcerated, education for all children, and hope in the future can not only win, but prove infectious enough to spread across the country,” observed Joseph. The victory of Moore has brought back some of the magic that was lost in our politics in the past few years. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.
It was a repeat of her defeat to Kemp four years ago, when the two tussled for what at the time was an open seat.
In Texas, O’Rourke lost to Abbott for governor. After his third huge loss, it is time for his to stop running for offices in Texas, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. We’ve had enough Beto. … His liberal policies are not welcome in Texas.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html
The Sexiest Man Alive: Rejoind the Doctor, or Are We Really The Same? The Fate of Putin and the Death of the Legend
His military machine is broken and his country’s economy has been scarred so badly that it will take years to recover. Putin-the-man may still cling to power for years, but Putin-the-legend is dead.”
The actor Chris Evans received an accolade that was first bestowed on Mel Gibson in 1985, “a candidate whose appeal, I think we can agree, has not aged well,” Sara Stewart observed.
This year the Sexiest Man Alive was announced by People magazine, and it is a good time to question if we should keep the tradition.
Think about how silly it is to claim that anyone is the prettiest person on the planet. Sexiness is a subjective thing. It’s a funny joke that People gives up their own tastes as if they are everyone’s. And by making their subject male, they’re tacitly saying: See, we’re not objectifying women, we’re so evolved. Men can be objects of lust too. Maybe that was (arguably) a subversive statement in the 1980s, when Playboy, Penthouse and other magazines imposed a misogynist ideal of sexiness at the newsstands. But now? Not so much, that’s all.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html
Five Lessons Midterms for Twitter: After a 12-Year Relationship With Twitter, Queen Elizabeth II Was Goodbye, And I Didn’t
The new season of “The Crown,” which Netflix dropped on Wednesday, “charts the royals’ course through the turbulent 1990s, including Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s agonizing divorce and Elizabeth’s ‘annus horribilis’ in 1992, when a fire destroyed much of Windsor Castle,” wrote Holly Thomas.
While details of the show’s storylines did the rounds earlier this fall, they drew ire and led John Major, a former UK Prime Minister, to describe the series as a barrel-load of nonsense. The nation is mourning Queen Elizabeth II who died two months ago and Dame Judi Dench warned that the series might blur the lines between historical accuracy and crude sensationalism.
Elon Musk is going to have to try to fix Twitter without the help of journalist Roxanne Jones. She’s had enough. “I deleted Twitter on the day Elon Musk became the platform’s new owner,” Jones wrote. “After a mostly dysfunctional 12-year relationship with Twitter that I admit brought some moments of joy, it was time to exercise my freedom of speech to say goodbye and good riddance.”
“That small act may not change much in the Twitter-verse of 237.8 million users. I quit social media to care for myself and my power. I was setting boundaries for what I will, and will not, allow in my life.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html
Five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant: How much is a $100 million prize?
Bill Carter and his wife don’t buy lottery tickets because it felt like burning a $10 bill and a $20 bill on a barbecue grill.
“What’s interesting is how many people, like us, ignore lotteries until they soar to staggering amounts. Even a $100 million prize now barely raises eyebrows. Is that toopiddling to care? Wouldn’t $100 million change most people’s lives forever?
What would we do with all that money? After helping the kids, donating to charities and buying several homes, what else should we do? Build a ‘money bin’ and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck? (Unwise. Money can make you rich, but it isn’t liquid.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html
The Man of Steel: When Donald Trump lost the Midterms to George W.M. Cuzminskii, Helen Louise Cohen, J. Shuster, and William Siegel
The Man of Steel’s origin story is a well-known one. As pop culture historian Roy Schwartz noted, “In 1934, at the age of 18, (Joseph) Shuster and classmate Jerome Siegel came up with a revolutionary idea: Superman. He was the first superhero, a concept so unprecedented that, as Siegel detailed in his unpublished memoir, every newspaper syndicate in the US rejected it for being too fantastic for children to relate to.”
Helen Louise Cohen, a fellow resident of Cleveland, Ohio, might have had a resemblance to Lois Lane because she had a relationship with the man who would later become the Man of Steel. Shuster sent her sketches of Superman along with at least one drawing of Cohen, and heartfelt letters in neat script.
Ultimately, she broke it off, choosing instead to marry “a dashing officer, later awarded the Legion of Merit and eventually becoming a colonel in the Army’s 88th Infantry Division.” He was too far off to join the military during World War II.
Shuler was too mild-mannered for Cohen, she would later tell her sons. His letters and sketches are now shared by the family with the world, Schwartz wrote.
Did Donald Trump lose in the midterms? Plenty of people declared that he did, from liberal pundits to the Murdoch newspapers — the latter delivering a double whammy from the front page of The New York Post (“TRUMPTY DUMPTY”) and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal (“Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser”).
It is tempting to see the strength of the MAGA forces waning, as the calendar leaf turns over on the Trump era. For a movement that builds around refusing to accept defeat, how do you say it’s over? It is impossible to separate Mr. Trump’s temperament from that of the Republican Party because he feeds off each other’s worst tendencies for so long.
Consider Dan Cox, the Trump loyalist who lost the governor’s race in Maryland by more than 25 points. Mr Cox said he had called Wes Moore to recognize him when he was declared the winner. The Trumpist version of concession was that the other side had been declared the winner, according to what someone else said. Mr. Cox wrote that there was a huge shift of swing voters and a huge turnout of Republicans, but no one has reported it.
The Donald Trump Fake Story: Why Donald Trump ain’t ANGRY about his job as a celebrity doctor in Pennsylvania, or why he didn’t Kneak
It is difficult to be married. The happiest people will bicker and wear on each other’s nerves. So consider just how bumpy things could get if someone’s thin-skinned, emotionally erratic, accountability-averse husband started criticizing her for his high-profile screw-ups.
This apparently has been happening at Mar-a-Lago, where, postelection, Donald Trump is flipping out over his key role in the Republicans’ face plant in the Pennsylvania Senate race. The celebrity doctor was beaten up by Mr. Trump and turned out to be a loser. The former president blamed everyone but himself for his poor choice of pick, including his wife, according to The Times. (Mr. Trump, of course, hopped on Truth Social to denounce the “Fake Story” and insist he “was not at all ANGRY.”)
Mrs. Trump must be used to her husband’s temper by now. Still, this round of ragey finger-pointing must be particularly galling, considering that Mr. Trump didn’t just undermine Republicans’ chances in an eminently winnable Senate race. He helped knees the party in Pennsylvania, giving Democrats one of their best polling days in years.
The Republican Party is reeling after seeing its hopes of controlling the Senate in 2023 dashed and finding itself in a nip-and-tuck battle for the House majority.
There are still several uncalled House races that will determine control. And while it won’t decide the Senate majority, the still-important runoff election between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia won’t take place until December 6.
Donald Trump is about something: What is he telling us about the first four terms? When Donald Trump does his third term in the House of Representatives?
There are many reasons that Trump is itching to launch his campaign for the White House in a little over a year. He probably wants to change the story he tells, so that he does not face much backlash for his role in the Midterms.
The Republican Party will be thrust directly into the 2024 race, because of Trump, with the former president demanding endorsements from elected officials who are still confused about what happened last week.
The point is that Trump is about something. He is the leader of the Republican Party but he doesn’t prioritize the good of the party over his own good.
Should Donald Trump announce his third presidential bid on Tuesday, as is widely expected, he will begin the next phase of his political career under siege.
Although few took Trump seriously back then, his core supporters and the critics now view him as an indispensable component of American democracy, and even more so, as a threat to it. The defeat of many of his allies in the recent elections and the failure of the Republicans to easily win the election have raised questions about whether he is at a point of weakness.
The party was on tenterhooks after CNN projected that Democrats would retain control of the Senate in the 118th Congress, an outcome that has splintered Republicans and left the party on tenterhooks as Trump readies his big announcement.
“I Endorsed him, did a very big Trump Rally for him telephonically, got MAGA to Vote for him – or he couldn’t have come close to winning,” Trump said of Youngkin in a Truth Social post last week.
A true leader knows when they have become a liability, as evidenced by the reply to repeated questions about the upcoming announcement by Trump. A true leader understands that it’s time to step off the stage, and the voters have given us that very clear message.”
Sears later declined to tell The Washington Post whether Youngkin knew prior to the interview that she planned to split from Trump, a detail that caught the former president’s attention, according to one of his aides.
“If Glenn Youngkin decides to run for president, that’s his choice. John Fredericks is a Virginia-based conservative radio host that chaired Trump’s campaigns in the state in 2016 and 2020.
One of the strongest areas of Ron DeSantis’ record for many conservative voters is his fight against federal Covid-19 restrictions and recommendations. But Trump accused the DeSantis team of trying to “rewrite history” over his pandemic record. Republican governors did not close their states, Trump told reporters. It was closed for a long time.
He thinks that there is no point in waiting because there’s a lot of criticism and people say to focus on Georgia. A current Trump adviser said if Herschel loses, he will be blamed for disrupting the race and not get any credit for energizing the base.
Nobody should be surprised. This is how Trump does primaries,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump administration official who remains close to the former president. It is up to you if this format can work for him again.
But later in 2022, Griffin touted DeSantis’ “tremendous record” in an interview with Politico and suggested he would back the Florida governor in the GOP primary for president.
“One of our biggest challenges will be the fundraising component but I do think [Trump] has proved that he doesn’t need deep-pocketed donors, per se,” said a person close to Trump, noting the enduring strength of his small-dollar operation.
Some of Trump’s supporters said the donor challenges and questions about his stature made it hard for seasoned campaign operatives to join his next campaign. The president has told his allies that he wants to keep his operation lean, but some seem to question whether it’s out of Preference or due to recruitment troubles. According to CNN, a group of additional aides and advisers with whom the former president already knows will likely be helping Donald Trump’s likely campaign. His apparatus is expected to dwarf what he had in his reelection campaign two years ago.
Even if Trump fails to win the presidency, his allies said they are ready for a final fight, as he tries to find his footing on the verge of a candidacy that could easily win the nomination and bring about unforeseen troubles.
Conservatives have shown they are more willing to criticize Trump, a sign that he has lost political clout. As my colleagues Lisa Lerer and Reid J. Epstein wrote, “there are signs of another Republican effort to inch the party away from the former president.” Republicans have flocked to television shows to declare that there is no single leader of the party anymore. Bill Cassidy said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that they are not a cult. Murdoch’s media outlets denounced Trump, branding him the Republican Party’s biggest loser.
The price of supporting Donald Trump to the Republican Party keeps getting higher. The most tumultuous weeks in the past few years is what the former president has gone through, with evidence of why the party is associated with him and could be problematic in the future.
Trump’s Troubles, His Disappearance, and His Role in the Ruling Down the Bounds of Public Integrity
A Manhattan jury found two of the companies in the Trump Organization guilty of criminal tax fraud and falsifying tax business records on Tuesday, though Trump and his family were not charged in the case.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that a team of investigators hired by the former president’s lawyers, under a federal judge’s order, found two documents with classified markings in a Florida storage unit.
Nor was this week some sort of one-off. For instance, it comes after his decision to dine with Kayne West soon after Ye, as he’s now known, made more antisemitic comments. Nick Fuentes was a Holocaust denier at the table that evening.
Commenting on everything that has happened, Republican strategist Scott Reed called this week, and the two that came before, “devastating for Trump’s future viability.” The New York Times quotes Reed as saying the writing on the wall seems clear. “Abandonment,” he said, “has begun.”
Why might all of this matter now? turmoil is the main currency of Trump. As businessman, reality television celebrity and president, he has always counted on generating controversy as his central strategy for garnering media attention. He has used the investigations and attacks that come his way as a basis to position himself as a perpetually anti-establishment figure who can sympathize with the “common” person.
Trump wants to weaponize the anger and rage that he brings, rather than trying to be loved. Despite Trump’s name-calling and personal drama, he twice won the GOP presidential nomination – and the 2016 election. The same dynamic held true throughout his one-term presidency.
While many speculate about whether Trump has “gone too far,” this has never proven to be a concern to Republican powerbrokers such as Sen. Mitch McConnell. This is not the issue that motivates them.
Almost nothing that happened in recent weeks is totally new to Trump, unless a person hasn’t been paying attention. He has been involved in scandal from the moment he set foot in politics. He repeatedly broke the limits of power as president. And he has a history of making remarks that invoke antisemitic tropes.
Over the past six years, Republican officials, and the rank and file, have learned how to live with Trump because they believe that he can win, and that his loyal base can help them be victorious. Whether it was out of fear or hope, Republicans showed that they would tolerate almost anything – even trying to overturn an election – to protect him.
Nonetheless, the frustration is mounting. Besides actual legal peril, of all the political problems facing Trump right now, it is the most recent elections that put him in genuine peril with the party. The GOP pays attention to the ways in which Trump and the candidates he endorsed cost their party the majority power, even though their tax fraud is less than that of the documents. McConnell might be forgiven of many things, but he isn’t a good minority leader.
In the wake of the 2018 midterms, the young congresswoman was sick of commuting to Washington from upstate New York and weary of dialing for campaign dollars. She was demoralized that Republican primary voters had spurned so many of the women she had helped persuade to run for Congress. She was annoyed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the democratic socialist who had displaced her that fall as the youngest woman ever elected to the House, had not shown her the respect she felt was her due.
It was bigger than that. For years, Ms. Stefanik had crafted her brand as a model moderate millennial — “the future of hopeful, aspirational politics in America,” as her mentor, Paul Ryan, would describe her in Time magazine. As her third term went on, it was becoming clear to friends and advisers that she was the future of the Republican Party. She once described Donald J. Trump as a ‘Whack job’ in a message obtained by The New York Times. She was accused by Fox hosts of not supporting Mr. Trump enough. Her friends criticized her for not opposing him more forcefully. She would tell them that you don’t understand. You don’t get how hard this is. Democrats were back in charge in the House. Mr. Ryan was put into early retirement. She told friends she was thinking of joining him.
Dean Obeidallah is a former lawyer and host of a daily radio show. Dean Obeidallah can be reached at Masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.
The Fail Florida Governor Who Phews Against Trump: In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Clubber Lang hasn’t
The failed GOP Arizona governor candidate said she pity the fool who runs against President Trump.
In a memorable scene from the film, ahead of an imminent fight with Rocky Balboa, Clubber Lang is asked by a reporter whether he hates the eponymous boxing legend, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone.
“I had governors that decided not to close a thing and that was up to them,” Trump said. He also took aim at DeSantis’ shifting position on vaccines, saying the Florida governor had “changed his tune a lot.”
In March 2020, in response to the rapidly spreading pandemic, the Florida governor issued an executive order closing bars and nightclubs, and urged people to follow US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines limiting gatherings on beaches to no more than 10 people.
But his recent remarks and pronouncements have veered sharply away from sensible, government-imposed Covid-19 protections in what appears to be a desperate bid to appeal to the GOP’s Covid-denying base voters ahead of an anticipated presidential run.
There is a debate among conservatives about whether the government shouldn’t interfere with businesses. If a business is accused of running afoul of his vision of freedom, he will often intervene. He started a confrontation with the cruise line industry, banned businesses from requiring masks, and championed a bill that made it harder for businesses to train their workers around topics like race and gender.
The Rocky III Moment: A Trump vs. DeSantis Story of a Rocky Nightmare and the Last Slepton
But any potential run inevitably means a face-off with Trump, who is, as yet, the only Republican to have formally announced in the race. “Rocky III” marked the 40th anniversary of its release last year, but the 2024 GOP nominating campaign might be Rocky vs. Clubber Lang all over again.
There’s another moment in the film that springs to mind as I consider a possible Trump vs. DeSantis showdown. That’s the scene where Clubber Lang, having lost his boxing title, trash-talks Rocky in an effort to goad him into a fight.
But if the former President is not exactly an underdog in the White House nomination contest, he certainly has been on the ropes of late, with polls showing a certain Trump fatigue among many voters in his party who would rather someone else be the GOP nominee.
Initially, Rubio didn’t attack Trump directly. That changed when Rubio faced a “do or die” moment, finding himself in third place behind Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the delegate count, with little time to make up ground ahead of a March 2016 primary in his home state of Florida.
When the time was right, he took the gloves off, calling Trump an embarrassment and a demagogue. It was too little, too late for Cruz, and he dropped out of the race the next day after losing the Florida GOP primary.
Wearing a flight suit and seated in the cockpit of a fighter jet as the “Top Gov,” DeSantis revealed his “rules of engagement,” declaring, “No. 1 — don’t fire unless fired upon, but when they fire, you fire back with overwhelming force.” He continued: “No. 2 — never, ever back down from a fight.”
But to prevail, you have to put up a fight. When the GOP believes that the refusal to defend himself and punch back is a sign of weakness, there could come a time.
The longer he is silent in the face of Trump’s barrage of punches, the more likely people will ask themselves, as Rocky’s nemesis did: If he ain’t no coward, why won’t he fight?
The Trump Resurrection Effort to Steal the Past and Kill the Future: A New Perspective on Trump’s Legacy, his Failure to Win, and the Future of America
There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.
There is a clear perception by Trump that he is owed the Republican nomination and that parts of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his tumultuous presidency.
Trump’s musings about loyalty also recall his attack on evangelical leaders earlier this month, whom he said showed “disloyalty” by refusing to support his 2024 bid so far despite his delivery of a generational conservative Supreme Court majority. It was a reminder of Trumps transactional views of politics and also that a man who Dumped aides and staff at a fearsome pace in office tends to view loyalty as a one-way allegiance.
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told Dana Bash on CNN that he believed Ron DeSantis would win the GOP primary in Granite State. Sununu said that he was considering a White House bid of his own and that he had taken a jab at Trump over his demeanor and the size of his event.
Judging by his remarks about DeSantis and evangelical leaders, Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality. He went to an ice cream parlor in South Carolina during the day in an attempt to engage with voters and also to promote retail politics.
Trump appeared Saturday to understand that his two years of fury over the 2020 election, which he still falsely says was stolen from him, may have turned off voters in 2022, when many of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost – potentially costing the GOP the Senate.
The campaign will be about the future. This campaign will be about issues. Trump said at an event Saturday that he would not allow Biden to go for four more years and that America would be ruined.
All of his rhetoric is the same. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for one on his favorite election-denying midterm candidates – failed Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who is still falsely insisting she won in November. And earlier on Saturday, in New Hampshire, the former president – who is facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – could not resist taking aim at institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.
“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. Trump said that investigation was the main thing. He pointed out that his resistance to probes was proof that many Republicans had embraced the quality that helped him get into the White House.
“There’s only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again and I will do it again,” he said Saturday.
The Fair Tax, Politics and Politics: Ron DeSantis in the Era of Social Security: Attacking Romney in the 2012 Florida Primaries
That strategy was previewed a bit recently by Joseph Zeballos-Roig and Shelby Talcott in Semafor. The so-called fair tax was the subject of interest to them. This would result in a dramatic tax increase for the middle class, which would yield certain advantages in economic efficiency.
In the heyday of the Tea Party, when implausible policy proposals were all the rage, the Fair Tax was endorsed by many of today’s 2024 hopefuls: by Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and, yes, by DeSantis himself. Which gives Trump a license to accuse all these potential rivals of supporting a middle-class tax hike — and the Semafor writers quote a Trumpworld source basically promising an attack along those lines, to force Trump’s rivals to “answer for what they supported and what they’ve advocated in the past.”
Many Republicans, including DeSantis, embraced the proposed entitlement changes in the same era, thanks to Paul Ryan’s budget blueprints. Those proposals were serious rather than crankish, if ill-timed for a moment when there was more fiscal space than deficit hawks believed. They were unpopular and crucial to Trump’s success, though they were also seriously unpopular. And having discarded them then, he’s well positioned to go after DeSantis and others now — in imitation of not only his prior campaign but also, as National Review’s Philip Klein points out, the strategy pursued by Mitt Romney in the 2012 primaries, when he sank Rick Perry’s candidacy in part by blasting Perry for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican leader, has made himself a calling card of freedom, but some conservatives think he is using too much power to impose his will.
New Hampshire’s Republican Governor Chris Sununu was a hit at the power grab by the Florida Legislature over Disney World.
Sununu said he was a principled free market conservative and was considering a bid for president. It isn’t very conservative for others to think that the government should be punishing businesses that disagree with them politically.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education fought for the right of white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on a Florida campus, and they have fought against diversity, equity and inclusion. Nevertheless, the group has continually criticized Florida’s heavy-handed approach to forcing conservative beliefs on universities and is suing the state over the Stop WOKE Act.
Will Crelly, the legal director at FIRE, said that you cannot censor your way to freedom of expression. “You cannot trade one orthodoxy for another. What we’ve seen recently in Florida is a troubling willingness to do just that.”
The Florida governor stated at the National Conservatism Conference thatcorporatism is not the same as free enterprise and that Republicans have wrongly viewed limited government as a way to do the economy. The best economic system is free enterprise, but that’s also a means to an end.
Socially Conservative Democrat Candidate Ron DeSantis Sensitively Goes Into The Presider’s First Presidential Campaign
“Being perceived as racially insensitive is not a good place for him to be in the long term,” a Republican supporter of DeSantis said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about an area of rising worry.
The supporter said that the governor could be alienating some voters who would otherwise be supportive if he had fought over an Advanced Placement course on African American studies.
Another Republican fundraiser close to the governor told CNN that there is concern DeSantis is going overboard with “anti-woke stuff” but added: “You’ve gotta win the primary first.”
Republicans are yet to get a glimpse of many possible candidates for the party nomination. Meanwhile, outside groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity have signaled they intend to get involved in the primary.
“I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl,” Levin told CNN. She said she has no problem with candidates espousing strongly held personal beliefs on social issues but said she objects to DeSantis “putting the power of his state behind his socially conservative views.”
The Republican governor of Maryland said that DeSantis told the cruise lines what they had to do in a speech last year. Hogan has been critical of the governor of Florida for entering the race for the Republican nomination.
While potential GOP contender South Dakota Gov. Pat Noem has compared her Covid19 record against Florida’s Ron DeSantis in ways that suggest they were too hands-on for ideological reasons. Noem said Friday it was her state which set an example of freedom by refusing to shut down. Florida, which DeSantis has called a Citadel of Freedom, closed schools, bars and theme parks and restricted other economic activity early in the pandemic.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/19/politics/ron-desantis-conservatives-florida-2024/index.html
The Case for Trump: How the Ex-President Meteorized Trump, His Party and the Establishment of the Rolling Stones
His approach has often included more government programs, a new program to conduct missions to surveil, house and transport migrants from border states to Democratic territories, or flexing government power in unprecedented manners.
DeSantis’ allies have pushed back against the growing chatter. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contended on Twitter recently that the governor was using his power as an elected leader – a job he was reelected to with a historical 19-point victory in November.
DeSantis last month appointed Rufo to the board of New College, a small liberal arts school that the governor has targeted for a drastic overhaul to become a more conservative university.
The idea of using state power to correct ideological corruption in public universities is ridiculous. It is said that the people can’t regulate the state.
“I don’t appreciate Gov. DeSantis going after Disney’s tax status,” Griffin said at the time. It can be portrayed or feel like an act of revenge. And I believe that the people who serve our nation need to rise above these moments in time in their conduct and behavior.”
But the ex-president’s entire political career, the modern Republican Party and a vast conservative media empire are based on the exact opposite premise of the Rolling Stones’ song: giving the party base exactly what it wants to hear – whether it is true or not.
The key to Trump’s appeal, however, is that he never did. The ex-president wanted to tell voters what they want to hear, and his version was tearing at democratic norms after the election in 2020. He allowed millions of Americans to believe that he had not lost to President Joe Biden and that the election was stained by widespread fraud – even though there was no basis for his claims. The Fox News opinion hosts who amplified his falsehoods were guilty of exactly the same transgression – not to protect political careers but apparently to save their lucrative livelihoods.
Key players on the right are willing to appease, satisfy and inflame the voters of whom their profits and hopes of political power depend.
Murdoch’s business model has evolved from feeding political anger in Australia to using television stations in his native country and tabloid newspapers in Britain. Murdoch switched sides when business demanded, for instance, when The Sun endorsed Tony Blair in the 1997 general election despite the fact that the Conservative Party was collapsing.
The New York Post ran a headline in November which said, “Have you been there, Don that?” implying that the billionaire publisher might be getting buyer’s remorse over Trump.
The Dominance of Red and Blue: How the Dominon Case Formed the Trump Rifle: From the White House to the House of Representatives
As he said in a deposition made public in a court filing on Monday in the Dominion case: “It is not red or blue, it is green,” referring to the color of a dollar.
The Republican politicians who appear on Fox are influenced by a similar calculation of what the political market will bear. Their adoption of the doctrine favored by the conservative grassroots extended American democracy to the limit.
Catering to that base helped fuel the rise of Trump in 2016, as he shattered the Republican establishment presidential field. Republicans who depended on not crossing Trump to have their hold on power ended up letting him do it. That helped fuel an unstoppable radical tide that lead to the US Capitol insurrection in 2021, as well as to Republicans acquitting him in two impeachment dramas.
The huge power of the Republican base was the secret sauce that forced new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to make concessions to the most radical representatives in the conference after 15 rounds of voting he needed to win his job. McCarthy had earlier watched as two predecessors, former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, tried to resist the GOP’s far right insurgency and lost their job. As McCarthy showed by handing Fox host Tucker Carlson access to hours of Capitol Hill security footage last week – despite Carlson’s conspiracy theories about January 6, 2021 – his speakership is a totally owned subsidiary of the GOP’s most extreme elements.
Murdoch was worried about driving away the same GOP base that McCarthy is the leader of so they decided to have a confrontation over the government borrowing limit.
The straddle between winning a party’s base voters and trying to court middle America has long tested Democratic and Republican nominees when they have to pivot to a general election. In 2024, this political leap may require supreme political skill from whoever emerges from what could be the GOP’s “America First” primary.
The theme of Republicans failing to represent the values of the people who elected them foretold the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016 according to the writings of Ronalis.
The chasm between the will of the GOP voter base and the actions of the party leaders in Washington would grow larger in the years to come.
DeSantis complains that politicians who go to Washington forget where they come from – and soon become instruments of a political system that works against their constituents’ interests. In some instances, questions like whether to raise the debt ceiling is in the best interests of the country, or whether US support for Ukrainians is in the interest of the nation, are more important than those at home.
Trump had foreshadowed this marriage of convenience between his presidency and the conservative media infrastructure in an appearance at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City in 2018.
Don’t abandon us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. He said what you’re seeing is not what’s happening.