Category Archives: Donald Trump

On Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump delivered a pugnacious speech at the "Save America Rally" that became central to his second impeachment, based on accusations that he had incited a crowd to storm the U.S. Capitol with calls to "fight like hell."

But watching the speech itself, Trump could be mistaken for attempting to put on a stand-up comedy show, seeking to elicit laughter as much as he attempted to whip up rage. Gazing at his fans gathered in the Ellipse, Trump mused that Biden had 80 million computer votes and sarcastically panned the president-elect for campaigning brilliantly from his basement. In the manner of a comic, Trump made constant references to the crowd and expressed concern about whether theyd get bored. He reprised recurring bits (Wheres Hunter?); did snarky impressions of party officials; satirized the ballot process (If you signed your name as Santa Claus, it would go through.); and roasted people he disliked, surmising that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was too small to have played high school football.

I say sometimes jokingly, but theres no joke about it, Ive been in two elections, I won em both, and the second one, I won much bigger than the first, said Trump, admitting to the crowd that perhaps even the very reason they had gathered could be a gag.

Was Trump putting on a final show for his rowdy diehard fans, or was he shepherding an insurrection?

While the outward purpose of the gathering was to draw attention to something of grave importance to the nation an allegedly stolen election Trumps instinct was to do what he always does: entertain his followers and couch many of his most extreme ideas in humor. Was Trump putting on a final show for his rowdy diehard fans, or was he shepherding an insurrection?

Jan. 6 marked the culmination of how Trump has profited from operating in a comedic register: It might sound counterintuitive, but the fact that Trump made people laugh both intentionally and unintentionally is key to understanding both his trajectory and potency.

That quality shaped the riot itself. As demonstrators dressed like vikings, patriotic ducks and Captain America began to surround and enter the Capitol, many commentators were struck by the absurdity of the unfolding crisis, calling it a clown show. One political analyst described the invasion as circus performers acting out a dark comedy. Another tweeted, Its like the Storming of the Bastille as recreated by the cast of National Lampoons Animal House. But as news of increasing violence trickled out, it soon became clear that the situation was not funny anymore and not a joke; the volume of quips on Twitter began to dwindle. The clowns were mounting a coup.

Trump, too, has long embraced his own clown costume, even if he's not always been in control of whether people laugh with him or at him. His oratorical identity as an insult comic who was willing to blurt out what no politician could or should say out loud seduced his devoted fan base, who saw his derision of the establishment and taboo-breaking as a badge of authenticity. At the same time, his status as fool both made his critics underestimate him and provided him an escape hatch of plausible deniability: He could always say he was just joking when he crossed one too many lines.

Jan. 6 distilled how Trump's political career always involved disarming and confusing the public by taking reality as a joke. Shrouded in the haze of the question of whether he should be taken seriously or literally, Trump spoke the unspeakable, ridiculing principles essential to the maintenance of multicultural democracy while offering himself as the figure to replace it. In other words, he sought to be both jester and king. And he left behind a world reshaped by his "lol nothing matters" ethos.

Trump framed breaking social taboos a key imperative of the comedian as a requisite for reviving the nation.

Perhaps the pithiest summary of Trumps appeal can be found during his Family Leadership Summit appearance in 2015, not too long after his campaign kickoff speech where he infamously warned of an invasion of Mexican rapists. Interviewed by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, Trump constantly cracked jokes and looked to the audience for validation and he almost always seemed to get it.

At one point, Trump turned his attention to dunking on Sen. John McCain. He elicited chuckles as he said he didnt like McCain as much after his 2008 presidential loss to Barack Obama, before declaring that McCain was only a war hero because he was captured. The laughter mixed with gasps. He then said it was totally fair to mock McCain for his poor academic record:

[McCain] was upset; I said why, for telling the truth? See, you're not supposed to say that somebody graduated last or second to last in their class because you're supposed to be, like Frank says, very nice. Folks, I want to make America great again. We want to get down to brass tacks. We don't want to listen to this stuff with being politically correct. We have a lot of work to do.

Here Trump presented truth-telling and sensitivity as a binary choice. In the process, he framed questioning and breaking social taboos a key imperative of the comedian as a requisite for reviving the nation. And the crowd roared in response.

As we all now know, Trumps instinct for leaning into controversy with relentless and often bigoted put-downs helped him a great deal more than it hurt him. But pundits at the time predicted that Trumps irreverence and disrespect for a beloved veteran would sink him. Mainstream media outlets treated Trumps early presidential campaign as something of a joke. Reporters described his campy campaign kickoff as goofy, absurd and comical.

But the line between laughing at Trump and laughing with him grew blurry over time: Cable news channels across the political spectrum gave Trump campaign rallies wall-to-wall coverage, in part because Trumps ability to entertain and shock was good for ratings. (CNN President Jeff Zucker later expressed regret for his networks volume of Trump coverage.)

The moneys rolling in, and this is fun, Leslie Moonves, then-chairman of CBS, said of Trumps campaign in 2016. Its a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.

What made Trump fun? The man liked to stand behind a podium and make people laugh. He slogged through policy talk at his rallies; it was only when he started mocking and ridiculing enemies that he and his crowds came alive. He wore makeup, did impressions, danced and engaged in crowd work. His scripted remarks were often just a backdrop for casual ad-libbing about topical issues or something irritating he saw on TV the night before. He liked dunking on opponents on Twitter and, in Republican primary debates, tagging rivals with belittling monikers that stuck, like low-energy Jeb Bush.

A New York Times study found that Trump earned roughly $2 billion worth of free media attention during the 2016 campaign six times as much as his closest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz, and 2 1/2 times as much as Hillary Clinton. The media worlds addiction to the Trump show something it found amusing and profitable but unlikely to alter a presumed-to-be-doomed GOP bid helped him win the White House.

Trump's right-wing populist and white nationalist worldview was embedded in the objects of his mockery. And his humor often sugarcoated an extremism that may not have animated his base in the same way had he presented as an unsmiling, self-serious authoritarian.

Robert Rowland, a scholar of presidential rhetoric at the University of Kansas, pointed out to me last year that Trump had two sets of targets dangerous others and elites and that he used negative humor as a way of protecting status for his core base of working-class whites. Trumps humor was mostly expressed in insults and derision, and often he was punching down: making racist jokes, joking about shooting undocumented immigrants, doing vile impressions of people with disabilities, trafficking in grotesque misogynistic innuendo.

But he also punched sideways when he put down members of American political dynasties, like the Bushes and the Clintons, or made quips about a lawmaker who couldve conceivably replaced him as president. (He also could punch both down and sideways at the same time: for example, deploying sexist attacks against a powerful Fox News host.) Rowland emphasized that the way Trump insulted elites was not policy-centric in the way Sen. Bernie Sanders diatribes against the 1 percent are. Rather, he attacked elites on the basis that they disrespect ordinary Americans i.e., the white working class. Trump's jokes offered no solutions; instead he identified feelings of disenfranchisement among a reactionary set and helped them let off steam.

So Trumps use of humor not only entertained, it created solidarity and the sensation of community with his followers, affirming their worldview, the sense that things were coming apart and that they were the victims of a world changing too quickly. Simultaneously, it constantly allowed him and his followers to circumvent responsibility for his most extreme remarks, often by claiming they were mere jokes.

This is not to suggest that everyone was always fooled by Trumps routine of course his rhetoric and policies caused alarm and received pushback throughout his time in office. But Trumps mode of speaking in caricature and exaggeration complicated the ability of political observers to detect his true intentions, his true goals and precisely how much of a threat he presented throughout his tenure. In the final chapter of his presidency, as journalists and scholars debated how seriously to take Trumps rejection of the 2020 election results, his buffoonishness made a coup attempt seem improbable in the eyes of some.

On Jan. 6, this all played out on a micro scale. Trump sprinkled jokes between blatant election fraud lies to rile up his supporters. He wasnt trying to convince them with data; he was trying to convince them that their feelings that something that belonged to them was slipping away was right, and that the system was a joke. As his army of prankster white nationalists stormed the Capitol, it was unclear to many what was really going on until it was too late.

Ultimately one never needed to choose between Trump as aspiring strongman and Trump as joker these identities were not only not at odds with one another, they were intertwined and fed off each other within his persona. While Trump lacked the competence, resources and institutional environment required to actually disrupt a peaceful transfer of power, the process by which he tried to do it pairing will-to-power politics with nihilistic flippancy has left an irrevocable mark on our polity, and changed the contours of American conservatism.

Trump has created a model, and already we see other Trump-wing Republicans like Rep. Lauren Boebert using jokes about Rep. Ilhan Omar being a terrorist to dodge accountability for mainstreaming Islamophobia. But what may be even more disturbing is the rise of activists and lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who are true believers, parroting Trump's ludicrous vision completely earnestly.

Go here to see the original:

January 6 Capitol riot a reminder that Trump used humor as a weapon - MSNBC

Rep. David CicillinePhoto: Shutterstock

Out Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) discussed with The Hill what it was like working in Congress during the Capitol Insurrection and how the violence inspired him to help lead the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

Cicilline said that his colleague Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) came into my office because he had been evacuated from his office building, and asked whether he could stay in our office, and we of course said yes.

Related: Will the American government apologize for discriminating against LGBTQ people for decades?

And as we were watching the events unfold [on TV] and as the day went on and there were reports of injuries and a death, it was very clear to me that there was no way that we could just sort of say, Well, OK, [Trump] is about to leave, just let it go.

He said that he and Lieu started writing what the article of impeachment would actually look like that day, and they developed the idea of incitement of insurrection.

Cicilline would go on to introduce the articles of impeachment in the House, which led to the successful second impeachment of Trump. After that, he was named one of the impeachment managers, bringing the case to remove Trump from office to the Senate.

Weve seen this back-sliding of democracy and attempted coups in places all over the world, but never imagined it could ever happen in the United States of America, he said. And we were watching it unfold before our very eyes. So it was really clear to me from that very first moment that we had to do something to hold the president at the time accountable for his incitement of this violence.

The president of the United States sided with the insurrectionists, he said during the impeachment proceedings. He celebrated their cause. He validated their attack.

Cicilline was voted LGBTQ Nations 2021 Hero Defending Democracy by the sites readers due to his leadership role in seeking accountability for the attempt to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election.

Link:

Out Congressman started working on impeaching Donald Trump during Capitol Insurrection - LGBTQ Nation

WASHINGTON Republicans were nowhere to be found at the Capitol on Thursday as President Biden and Democratic members of Congress commemorated the deadliest attack on the building in centuries, reflecting the Republican Partys reluctance to acknowledge the Jan. 6 riot or confront its own role in stoking it.

There are currently more than 250 Republican members of Congress 212 in the House and 50 in the Senate. Not a single one of those senators appeared on the Senate floor to speak about how rioters laid siege to their workplace in the name of former President Donald J. Trump, sending them fleeing for their lives.

And when lawmakers gathered in the House chamber for a moment of silence to commemorate the riot, only two Republicans joined: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized and marginalized by her party for speaking out against Mr. Trump and his election lies, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The only Republican-led event on Thursday to commemorate Jan. 6 was hosted by two lawmakers on the fringes of the party, Representatives Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Seeking to deflect blame from Mr. Trump, they held a news conference to elevate unproven conspiracy theories about the origins of the assault on the Capitol.

I think its a reflection of where our party is, Ms. Cheney told reporters. Very concerning.

Some Republicans cited a scheduling conflict. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, was in Atlanta attending the funeral of former Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, along with at least a dozen other senators from both parties.

In a statement, Mr. McConnell called Jan. 6 a dark day for Congress and our country in which the Capitol was stormed by criminals who brutalized police officers and used force to try to stop Congress from doing its job.

But he also made clear that he thought Democrats were playing politics with the day, accusing them of trying to exploit this anniversary to advance partisan policy goals that long predated this event. He was referring to plans by Democratic leaders to try to abolish or weaken the legislative filibuster to push through voting rights protections that Republicans have blocked.

Mr. McConnell did not refer to Mr. Trump in his statement.

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, took the same strategy in an interview on Fox News, calling Jan. 6 a day that nobody wanted to see happen and noting that he had swiftly denounced the rioters. But he quickly pivoted to blaming Democrats, saying they had made the anniversary a politicized day.

Most of America wants Washington focused on their problems like inflation, high gas prices, the Covid resurgence, the border crisis, which President Biden and Speaker Pelosi continue to just let go unanswered, Mr. Scalise said, because they want every day to be about Jan. 6.

Scores of other Republicans said little or nothing one year after they evacuated the Capitol as throngs of Mr. Trumps supporters poured into the building, disrupting the counting of electoral votes to confirm Mr. Biden as the winner of the presidential election.

It was unclear on Thursday how Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, spent the day. Mr. McCarthy invoked the former presidents wrath when he said hours after the Jan. 6 attack that Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the riot; he has since walked back those remarks.

Its not a leadership that resembles any of the folks I knew when I was here for 10 years, said Mr. Cheney, a former House member who served as the Republican whip.

In a separate statement later on Thursday, Mr. Cheney added, I am deeply disappointed at the failure of many members of my party to recognize the grave nature of the Jan. 6 attacks and the ongoing threat to our nation.

Mr. McCarthys tortured attempt at responding to Jan. 6 illustrates why many Republicans have preferred to say as little as possible about the attack, focusing on the valiant efforts by law enforcement officers to protect the Capitol rather than the leader of their party who egged on the rioters.

Representative Tom Rice of South Carolina, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting an insurrection, was one of the few Republicans who spoke out on Thursday to lay responsibility for the attack at the former presidents feet.

In an unusually blistering statement, Mr. Rice called Jan. 6 the day we nearly lost the country our founders fought for.

Any reasonable person could have seen the potential for violence that day, he said. Yet, our president did nothing to protect our country and stop the violence. The actions of the president on Jan. 6 were nothing short of reprehensible.

In the hours and days immediately following the storming of the Capitol, many congressional Republicans and their aides, who were left to barricade themselves behind desks and doors during the attack, were openly furious. Some appeared to believe or hope that their party would at last break away from Mr. Trump.

Trump and I, weve had a hell of a journey, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close ally of Mr. Trump, said at the time. He added: All I can say is, count me out. Enough is enough.

In a speech on the Senate floor in February, Mr. McConnell said, Theres no question none that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.

But seeing that their voters still revered Mr. Trump, most of those Republicans have since gone silent, preferring to avoid opining on the events of Jan. 6 and leaving those not in elected office to take up efforts of resistance. The few Republican lawmakers who have not followed that approach, including those who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting an insurrection, have become pariahs in their party.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trumps chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his rolein the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Fox News anchors. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade texted Mr. Meadowsduring the Jan. 6 riot urging him to persuade Mr. Trump to makean effort to stop it. The texts were part of the material that Mr. Meadows had turned over to the panel.

Michael Flynn. Mr. Trumps former national security adviser attended an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 18 in which participants discussed seizing voting machines and invoking certain national security emergency powers. Mr. Flynn has filed a lawsuitto block the panels subpoenas.

John Eastman. The lawyer has been the subject of intense scrutinysince writing a memothat laid out how Mr. Trump could stay in power. Mr. Eastman was present at a meeting of Trump allies at the Willard Hotelthat has becomea prime focus of the panel.

Karl Rove, a top Republican strategist and architect of the modern conservative establishment, used a Wall Street Journal opinion column on Wednesday to rebuke those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupted Congress as it received the Electoral Colleges results and violently attempted to overturn the election.

There can be no soft-pedaling what happened and no absolution for those who planned, encouraged and aided the attempt to overthrow our democracy, Mr. Rove wrote. Love of country demands nothing less. Thats true patriotism.

Stephanie Grisham, who served as White House press secretary for Mr. Trump, said on CNN on Thursday that a group of former Trump administration officials were planning to meet next week in a long-shot effort to try and stop the former president.

But for the most part, Republican lawmakers and operatives at odds with Mr. Trump have found themselves pushed to the margins of todays Republican Party.

Instead, figures like Mr. Gaetz and Ms. Greene have basked in the spotlight and won the approval of Mr. Trumps most ardent supporters, lionizing the rioters and claiming that the former president bears no responsibility for the violence that took place on Jan. 6.

At their news conference at the Capitol on Thursday, Mr. Gaetz and Ms. Greene proposed that if Republicans take control of the House in the midterm elections, they should use the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to look into whether federal agents stoked the violence against Congress.

There is no evidence that federal agents played any role in the assault, which occurred when supporters of Mr. Trump, who falsely claimed that the election had been stolen from him, stormed the Capitol.

Astead W. Herndon contributed reporting from New York, and Richard Fausset from Atlanta.

Visit link:

Republicans Avoid Jan. 6 Observances at the Capitol - The New York Times

The American carnage Donald Trump railed against in his 2017 Inaugural Address was the product of specific policies and a specific mode of economic governance. The symptoms of the carnage: stagnant real wages; pervasive health and job insecurity; the disappearance into thin air of Americas industrial base; ruthless labor, tax and regulatory arbitrage by corporations, in the form of offshoring and open borders; the corollary decline in union power in the private economy; the ravages of fentanyl; and, at the level of cultural and ideological production, the rise of Big Tech, with its power to discipline not just what workers do and earn but also what they can say and think.

To reverse the carnage would have required reform and a sturdy willingness to govern. On those counts, the Trumpians came up short, beholden as they were to American populisms irrepressible libertarian spirit.

The template should be familiar enough to students of history. Andrew Jacksons epic battle with the Second Bank of the United States provides an early example. President Jackson, the candidate of Western farmers and small business owners, was determined to throttle the Eastern money power that menaced his constituents. In the 1820s, that power was embodied by the national bank, an institution that had earned its reputation as a vehicle for the entrenched and well connected.

But the crises of engineers and shopkeepers went far beyond the national bank. They were the result of an economy promising equal opportunity and exchange among smallholders but gripped in reality by the brutal topsy-turvy of the market and by monopoly and privilege. In many cases, the bank actually helped mitigate the problems, for example, by disciplining the flow of credit and stabilizing national finances.

Nevertheless, Jackson smashed the bank by withdrawing U.S. government funds. A result: a depression followed by severe inflation, with privilege and market crises no less restrained than before. The Jacksonian impulse just get rid of government-linked privilege and leave me alone couldnt tame the complex crises, and private tyrannies, of the emerging market system.

What was needed was better governance of market forces. Needed and unfulfilled. Jackson, in this case, walloped where he needed to exert institutional control.

A similar story could be told about William Jennings Bryan and agrarian populism in the closing decades of the 19th century. The crises of the American farmer came about because he too often sought to make a quick buck off land values rather than his produce, leaving him vulnerable to the predatory creditor, and because the American agricultural system was increasingly vulnerable to global fluctuations.

More here:

Opinion | Jan. 6 Looks Different Through the Lens of American Carnage - The New York Times

Donald Trump Jr made a bleak joke on Instagram about convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, even after his fathers name came up multiple times at her trial.

Ghislaine Maxwell, 1961 - next week or so, Mr Trump captioned a photo of Maxwell, in the style of an in memorial image.

Maxwell was convicted on Wednesday of multiple charges related to grooming underage girls for her former boyfriend, sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, to abuse. Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell while awaiting his trial in 2019, but conspiracy theorists have insisted for years that his death was not a suicide.

Many such theorists believe without evidence that someone murdered Epstein to keep him quiet about powerful friends of his who may have participated in his crimes. This appeared to be the crux of Mr Trumps attempt at humour, which implied that Maxwell will meet a similar fate.

Too soon? the former presidents son asked, apparently anticipating accusations of bad taste. Nah, its never too soon for a pedos [sic] or their enablers.

In his post, Mr Trump neglected to mention that his father was friendly with both Epstein and Maxwell, and was photographed many times with both of them. During Maxwells trial, flight logs from Epsteins private plane showed that the elder Donald Trump was on the aircraft at least seven times.

The former president has not been accused of or charged with any wrongdoing. But such history does put his son in an awkward position from which to criticise Maxwell, let alone to joke about her death or at least others might see it that way.

When Maxwell was first arrested in July 2020, then-president Trump did not distance himself from her.

I just wish her well, frankly, Mr Trump said at a White House press conference. Ive met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.

Maxwell, 60, was convicted of sex trafficking of minors and four other related charges. If the maximum sentence is imposed for each count, she could face up to 65 years in prison.

The Independent has reached out to both former president Trump and Donald Trump Jr for comment.

Read more here:

Donald Trump Jr jokes that Ghislaine Maxwell could die ...

Former President Donald Trump will hold a press conference at Mar-A-Lago on the anniversary of the Capitol riot.

Alyssa Farah, who worked for the former president, told CNN that this shows he is getting "terrible advice."

It would be a "wise day" for him to stay silent, Farah added.

Former President Donald Trump, who plans to hold a press conference on the anniversary of the Capitol riot, is getting "terrible advice" from his inner circle, said a former aide.

Trump would be better off remaining silent on January 6, said Alyssa Farah, who worked for the former president as the White House's director of strategic communications.

"The former president has also announced he'll be hosting a press conference that day which, I think if anything proves he's still getting terrible advice from folks around him," said Farah, during an interview with CNN's Kaitlin Collins, per a report by the Independent.

"This would be a wise day for him to stay silent, to let those who were victims on Capitol Hill talk about that very important and solemn day," Farah continued.

Trump is likely to use the press conference to push election fraud conspiracies, Farah added. "I think instead you'll hear a very sort of, you know, the tone from him that this was reiterating the lies that the election was stolen, saying that those who are being tried for the insurrection are political prisoners," she said.

U.S. President Donald Trump is seen on a screen as his supporters cheer during a rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.Samuel Corum/Getty Images

The former president will hold the press conference from his Mar-a-Lago resort on January 6 one year after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol. In a statement announcing the event, The Hill reported that he baselessly described Election Day as the "insurrection" and inaccurately referred to January 6 as "a completely unarmed protest of the rigged election."

NPR notes that Capitol rioters came armed, bringing stun guns, pepper spray, and baseball bats with them.

While Trump speaks from Mar-a-Lago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that her office instead intends to hold a "prayerful vigil" among other reflective events.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Continue reading here:

Trump's plan to hold a news conference on the Capitol riot anniversary shows he is getting 'terrible' advice, ex-aide says - Yahoo News

Its become almost a religion in the Republican Party, said Jason Shepherd, the former Cobb County, Ga., GOP chair, who resigned from his local party after it voted to censure Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, one of Trumps political enemies. You have your believers, and you have your heretics, and anyone who isnt willing to follow Trump 100 percent, or wants to question Trump, thats now the new definition of a RINO (Republican in Name Only).

One year after the riot at the Capitol, nearly three-quarters of Republicans still believe Trumps baseless claim that Joe Biden won the presidency due to voter fraud, according to a Monmouth University poll. Rank-and-file Republicans interest in litigating the events of Jan. 6 has faded. And according to a Quinnipiac University survey, nearly 8 in 10 Republicans want Trump to run for president again in 2024.

Its extraordinary, said Ralph Reed, the Republican strategist and founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. You could make the argument that hes in a stronger position within the Republican Party today than he perhaps ever has been.

In many ways, Reed continued, with Republican candidates across the country all clamoring for Trumps endorsement, the party may be moving in a more conservative, more populist and more Trumpian direction with him out of office than if he had been reelected.

For a split-second last year, it seemed that Trumps grip on the GOP had broken. Following the riot at the Capitol, Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, said Trump was effectively tarnished for all time and incapable of running in 2024. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who worked on Trumps 2016 campaign, said Trumps legacy had been wiped out. Republicans who had previously supported Trump were urging him not to run again.

He is not the leader of any Republican Party I recognize, Scott Jennings, who worked for President George W. Bush, said at the time.

Yet a year later, Trumps leadership of the party is indisputable. His political committees have amassed more than $100 million. His allies have expanded their reach throughout the partys infrastructure in the states. And together with Trump, they are methodically running Trump-critical Republicans from the fold.

Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the riot at the Capitol, have already announced they will not seek reelection this year. In Wyoming, state Republican Party leaders voted in November not even to recognize Rep. Liz Cheney, another impeachment backer and a fierce Trump critic, as a member of their party. Trump is intervening in Senate and gubernatorial primaries across the midterm map.

Look, if youre a Senate candidate or a House candidate, what you dont want is Trump endorsing against you, said Bob Heckman, a Republican consultant who has worked on nine presidential campaigns, including Sen. Lindsey Grahams in 2016.

One longtime Republican strategist said, He will torture everyone, and campaigns will have to have a segment of their strategy based on Trump, and how hes going to react.

In part, Trump is capitalizing on the same midterm election dynamic that is lifting all Republicans this year, as the out-party historically performs well in a presidents first midterm. But Trump is also benefiting from a unique, one-to-one comparison with his Democratic successor. Bidens public standing took a hit following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last summer, including the deaths of 13 U.S. service members in a terrorist attack, and his public approval ratings have also suffered amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and legislative impasses in Washington.

Shelley Kais, chair of the Republican Party in Pima County, Ariz., described Trump, with his frequent broadsides against Biden that set the tone in conservative media, as leading the way doing the compare and contrast. And in public opinion, there is little daylight between them. Trumps favorability rating, at about 43 percent, is not strong in normal political terms but its nearly identical to Bidens job approval rating, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average.

What has helped President Trump more than anything is President Biden, said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer who served as Trumps ambassador to Luxembourg. He continued: Its Bidens bad year that has literally re-energized the Trump base.

Early last year, Republicans enthusiasm for Trump appeared at least tempered by the events of Jan. 6. But evidence is everywhere that no longer is the case. In March, 79 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said it was important to prosecute people who rioted at the Capitol, according to a Pew Research Center poll. But by September, that percentage had fallen more than 20 percentage points, to 57 percent, and a majority of Republicans say too much attention is paid to the riot.

And among Republicans, the rear view of the riot has only gotten better for Trump. In a Quinnipiac University poll last fall, two-thirds of Republicans said they dont view the riot at the Capitol as an attack on government, and 77 percent of Republicans say Trump bears no responsibility or not much responsibility for the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Indeed, in a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, more Republicans said congressional Democrats were responsible for the events of Jan. 6 than said Trump was responsible for it.)

Nor is Trump shying away from that day. In announcing his news conference last month, he wrote, remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th.

Trumps brand is fighting back on political correctness, and when youre fighting like that, everything you do is on brand, said a Jeff Roe, a Republican strategist who managed Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential campaign in 2016. So its kind of hard to screw it up, because hes always fighting.

Of Trumps ability to maintain support and generate crowds while out of office, Roe said, Its insane what he can do. Crazy. Its almost like weve gotten used to it, but you stand back from it, its insane.

Donald Trump speaks during a rally protesting the electoral college certification of Joe Biden as president in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Trump may still fade or decide not to seek the White House again in 2024. He will be 78 by the time of the general election, and though he is now widely expected to run again, a weak performance in the midterms could damage him. His preferred Senate candidates in a handful of states have already stumbled.

On top of that, the Jan. 6 select committee investigating Trumps effort to overturn the result of the 2020 election is still working, with the potential that its findings will spark criminal prosecutions. In mid-December, the committee released a series of text messages from lawmakers and Fox News hosts urging Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to press Trump to do more to end the violence.

This Jan. 6 committee is going to have an impact on how everybody sees what happened that day, and how everybody sees Trump, said Heckman, the Republican consultant. Some of the stuff weve seen the emails and texts that were going to Trump have rattled a lot of people on the Republican side.

But Trump has rattled Republicans so often before and with no significant long-term effect that few are confident anything could displace him in the party.

After Jan. 6, there was a two- to three-day window where his most hardcore supporters where even they were a little blown away, surprised by what happened, said former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020. But by the end of that first week, theyd regrouped.

A year later, Walsh said, Trump is by far more influential in the GOP than he was in the final month of his presidency.

He survived that, Walsh said. Hes stronger than ever."

Continue reading here:

At time of Capitol prayer service Jan. 6, Trump will deliver remarks doubling down on the Big Lie - POLITICO

Donald Trump was met with cheers are chants at the "Save America" rally on Jan. 6. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

Donald Trump was met with cheers are chants at the "Save America" rally on Jan. 6.

Editor's note: This story contains language that may be offensive.

"I was standing amid thousands of Trump supporters on the lawn rising up to the Washington Monument," says NPR's Tom Bowman. "Then Trump came on stage to raucous applause."

Bowman was reporting from the "Save America" rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. Up until the point when former President Trump began speaking, the rally held a festive air, almost like a football game, he said. "Some Trump supporters were singing YMCA but using the letters M-A-G-A."

But things were different at the Capitol building, where I was standing with Hannah Allam, NPR's extremism reporter. The far-right group the Proud Boys had just shown up and were organizing a crowd to head for the rally. We had quietly embedded ourselves with them as they began to walk west on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Then suddenly, they stopped. And turned around. The rally was on its way to us.

Moments earlier, Trump had claimed election fraud, called the results "bull****" and told the crowd to meet him at the Capitol. Thousands complied, many not even waiting for Trump to finish his speech.

What happened next is still a bit of a blur. Hannah and I saw a roaring sea of people and flags moving toward us. I barely had time to change the batteries in my recording equipment before we were surrounded.

And everyone knows what happened next.

Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following the rally. Samuel Corum/Getty Images hide caption

Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following the rally.

It's been a year since that pro-Trump mob broke through the Capitol doors and windows, attacked law enforcement and media and vandalized the building as lawmakers were rushed to secure locations. Five people died in or as a result of the attack and 140 police officers were assaulted, along with members of the media.

As it was unfolding, we asked one of the rioters, who called himself "Joe from Ohio," what the goal was.

"The people in this house, who stole this election from us, hanging from a gallows out here in this lawn for the whole world to see, so it never happens again," he said. "That's what needs to happen. Four by four by four, hanging from a rope out here for treason."

A makeshift gallows with a noose was actually built on the Capitol grounds that day but was never used.

A noose was seen on makeshift gallows as Trump supporters gathered on the west side of the U.S. Capitol. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A noose was seen on makeshift gallows as Trump supporters gathered on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.

On another side of the Capitol, Tom Bowman was talking to Natalie O'Brien and Chris Scalcucci, a couple from Detroit. He asked them why they were doing this.

"The Republic falling," O'Brien said. "And becoming corrupt and unmanageable. And our vote not mattering at all whatsoever."

This was my view as the crowd surged to the Capitol. Lauren Hodges hide caption

This was my view as the crowd surged to the Capitol.

"Because we love our country," Scalcucci added. "And we don't want it to fall in the hands of these evil people. The stuff that they do, it's unforgivable."

"Our tax dollars pay for this monument. This is kind of our property," O'Brien said.

For many who participated in the siege, it felt like a patriotic act. They were loyal Americans protesting what they had been told was a stolen election.

But as arrests continue and jail sentences begin, how have the consequences reshaped the narrative?

Last month, news broke that Mark Meadows, Trump's then-chief of staff, texted with Fox News hosts on Jan. 6. They were asking Trump to make a public statement to his supporters and call off the riot. But by that evening, the same hosts had a different story.

"There are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd," Laura Ingraham said on her show that night.

And that narrative spread.

A protester holds a Trump flag inside the U.S. Capitol near the Senate Chamber. Win McNamee/Getty Images hide caption

A protester holds a Trump flag inside the U.S. Capitol near the Senate Chamber.

Months later, Tom Bowman and I went back to the Capitol grounds in Sept. for the "Justice for J6" rally. A lot of the people we spoke to had also been there on Jan. 6. And yet, they were echoing the story they had heard on Fox News.

"Those weren't Trump supporters," said a man named Phil from Kentucky, claiming the only people breaking in were dressed all in black.

"So they were black helmets, black clothes, black backpacks who started busting the windows first," said Janie, a nurse from South Carolina, who said she saw members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter committing the violence. She also claimed the Trump supporters were actually trying to fight them off. But when we mentioned we were on site that day, she admitted that she never actually came close enough to the Capitol to see any violence.

We let her know that the Proud Boys were dressed in all black that day, having planned to forego their usual colors of black and yellow in order to be "incognito."

"I didn't know that," she said.

Protesters who claim to be members of the Proud Boys gather outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Protesters who claim to be members of the Proud Boys gather outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

But the thread attempting to blame Antifa and Black Lives Matter was repeated by former President Trump himself as recently as two weeks ago. In an interview with Candace Owens on Dec. 21, he also said it was FBI informants instigating the crowd.

But we know who was there.

So far, more than 700 people have been charged. The defendants are largely white, and 13% of them have ties to the military or law enforcement. More than 100 of them have alleged ties to known extremist or fringe organizations, like the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters, a part of the anti-government militia movement. But the bulk had no ties to extremist groups.

Supporters of those charged in the Jan. 6 attack attend the 'Justice for J6' rally near the U.S. Capitol on September 18. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

Supporters of those charged in the Jan. 6 attack attend the 'Justice for J6' rally near the U.S. Capitol on September 18.

Tampa Bay attorney Bjorn Brunvand represents several people who were at the Capitol that day, including Robert Scott Palmer, who was recently sentenced to five years in prison for assaulting law enforcement officers with a fire extinguisher, a wood plank and a flagpole. His is the longest such term yet.

"He believed in the lies that were being professed by former President Trump and his accomplices," Brunvand said.

But he said his client has had a major change of heart since his arrest.

"It went from 100% support for President Trump and the idea that the election was fraudulent at the beginning ... to the recognition that he was misled. He's sitting in a detention facility here in Washington, D.C. and this big powerful former president who said 'meet me at the Capitol', he's too busy playing golf and has no interest in any of the guys that have been arrested," Brunvand said.

Donald Trump at the "Save America" rally on Jan. 6. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images hide caption

Donald Trump at the "Save America" rally on Jan. 6.

He said Palmer took President Trump's words that day as a directive. That he did it for him. And now he feels abandoned.

"Not only did he not show up, he's not there for anyone who were there and supposedly were there to save democracy and save the country. When in fact, they were doing quite the opposite," Brunvand said.

But the idea of Jan. 6 did not die with the day. The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats has been tracking insurrectionist sentiment in the U.S. for a year now. It found that 21 million share the same beliefs that motivated rioters that day.

In other words, millions of Americans support the idea of political violence. Researchers call it "an American insurrectionist movement" that, a year after the attack on the Capitol, is still alive and well.

See the article here:

Trump still says his supporters weren't behind the Jan. 6 attack but I was there - NPR

The Republican National Committee is paying for former President Donald Trumps personal legal bills, which is legal, politically savvy and deeply informative about the future of the Republican Party. The RNC is not spending this up to $1.6 million on competitive federal or state races. It is not spending this money to push policy proposals. It is spending this money to pay for lawyers that Trump had to hire to defend himself in criminal and civil fraud investigations that do not relate to his time as president.

Members of the RNC executive committee overwhelmingly voted to foot the legal bills of a self-proclaimed billionaire whose company is being investigated for possible fraud.

Why would the RNC do this? Because the former president who lost the last presidential election, was impeached twice and appears to have incited an attempted "self-coup" is the favored cause of the RNC. Members of the RNC executive committee, who The Washington Post reported overwhelmingly voted to foot the legal bills of a self-proclaimed billionaire whose company is being investigated for possible fraud, believe this is where their money is best spent. (Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing.)

In the movie All the Presidents Men, the man known as Deep Throat whispers to reporter Bob Woodward, Follow the money. Woodward and his fellow Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein then investigate the Watergate scandal and in so doing bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Over more than four decades, this phrase has become a useful shorthand to explain that if people really want to know what is going on in politics, and even uncover political corruption, they should look at money flowing to, and around, politicians.

But sometimes that money flows out in the open, right before our eyes, and it is easy to track and draw lines between politicians, those they owe and those who owe them. The RNC paying Trumps bill is an example.

The promised payments represent the continuation of the RNCs strategy to be the party of Trump, nothing more and nothing less. In 2020, the GOP opted not to introduce a new party platform. Instead, its focus was to re-elect Trump. That desire to put Trump back in the Oval Office explains this decision, as well. Trump, of course, is not a candidate, yet. But that does not matter for this unconventional relationship.

The RNCs decision to help Trumps bottom line didnt begin with payments to Trumps lawyers. Thanks, in part, to RNC patronage, Trump-owned properties raked in millions. Do you have a meeting, retreat or fundraising event? Are you a member of the RNC? You may, as a matter of pure coincidence, choose to hold that event at a Trump property.

The RNCs decision to spend its money for Trumps benefit is, naturally, driven by money. Trump is a fundraising boon for the RNC. He brings with him money the party will need not just in 2024, when it may attempt to put Trump back in the White House, but money it will need ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

The current Supreme Court is plenty hostile to campaign finance restrictions.

So what is the solution to all this? One option is to add restrictions to the federal election laws. Federal law prohibits candidates from spending campaign money on personal expenses, including legal expenses such as these. Should the law also prohibit political parties from paying for the personal expenses of candidates, or even noncandidates, as Trump is now? This brings up plenty of legal and administrative hurdles. Lets remember that the current Supreme Court is plenty hostile to campaign finance restrictions. Even if Congress could craft and pass the proper law, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would let it stand.

Perhaps the better solution is to do nothing. Maybe it is better to see, out in the open, who is paying for what. With the current arrangement, investigative reporters dont need to find a confidential source to whisper information and implore them to follow the money. We dont even need investigative reporters. As long as these funds are disclosed, the public can draw its own conclusions.

JessicaLevinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, is the host of the "Passing Judgment" podcast. She is also the director of the Public Service Institute at Loyola Law School, co-director of Loyola's Journalist Law School and former president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission.

Read more here:

Republican Party paying Donald Trump's legal bills is more proof he owns the GOP - MSNBC

Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this article incorrectly listed the date for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which will be celebrated on Jan. 17, 2022.

Former President Donald J. Trump will hold a rally in Arizona inJanuary, a political action committee called Save America that is affiliated with the 45th president announced Thursday.

Trump will speak at 7 p.m. on Jan. 15 in Florence at the same location where theCountry Thunder music festival is held. It will be his firstrally appearance of 2022.

Trump's last visit to Arizona was July 24ata two-hour rally where he repeated his false claimthat he lost the Grand Canyon State to Joe Biden due to massive voter fraud. He came to the state seven times in 2020 prior to the election.

Kari Lake, one of several Republican candidates for governor in Arizona, announced her attendance for the upcoming rally on Twitter. She was endorsed by the former president in late September.

Trump's rally is not the only political action Arizona will see that Saturday.

Arizona also is scheduled to host another rally Jan. 15:one to ensure that the vote is accessible to all eligible participants.

The date marks what would have beenMartin Luther King Jr.'s 93rdbirthday, and Martin Luther King III, the son of the slaincivil rights leader,is coming to Phoenix with members of his immediate family to rally Congress to pass national voting standards.

Phoenix is the launching point for rallies across the country in the lead-up to the national holiday Jan.17, culminatingin Washington, D.C.

Tara Kavaler is a politics reporter at The Arizona Republic. She can be reached by email at tara.kavaler@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter @kavalertara.

More here:

Trump headed back to Arizona: Former president to hold rally in Florence Jan. 15 - The Arizona Republic