Trump’s rhetoric in final campaign sprint goes to new dark extremes
Zachary B. Wolf, CNN –December 17, 2023
Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s rhetoric dropped to a spine-tingling new low this weekend with less than a month before the Iowa caucuses.
The GOP primary front-runner said migrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US and quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin about the “rottenness” of American democracy.
Whipping up thousands of supporters at a New Hampshire hockey rink on Saturday, the former president again drew comparisons to the language of Nazi Germany with the comments about migrants from mostly Africa, Asia and South America “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The language “parrots Adolf Hitler,” President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign alleged. Experts pointed to passages in Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf” in which the future dictator called for racial purity and said German blood was being “poisoned” by Jews.
Trump has used the line previously, in an interview with a conservative news outlet, and bringing it out for a rally suggests he could be adding it to his routine.
He drew criticism last month for describing his political rivals as “vermin,” another term that has antisemitic connotations and was employed in Nazi rhetoric.
It’s the repetition of these lines, after their fascist roots are called out, that is more chilling than their first utterance. The former president — who leads Biden in some swing-state polling of a hypothetical rematch — has a long history with language that plays on racial prejudice and excites the right wing.
His recently repeated claim that he wants to be “dictator” for one day to build his border wall and stop immigration could be laughed off as a joke if he didn’t keep saying it.
On Sunday night, at rally in Reno, Nevada — the third GOP-nominating state — Trump claimed, without evidence, that migrants are largely coming from prisons and mental institutions. And he wondered, again without evidence, if Chinese migrants crossing the border are meant to be part of an invading army. Trump promised to reorient the US government to purge migrants. Claiming the US is now a “haven for bloodthirsty criminals,” he said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law, to remove migrants from the country. The former president also promised to divert the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration to border actions.
Invoking authoritarian leaders is no longer a surprise
“He’s a populist, authoritarian narcissist,” the Republican former House Speaker Paul Ryan said last week, before Trump’s most recent comments. “So, historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good at any given moment.”
Dictators erase freedoms, but Trump — who tried to overturn the 2020 election after he lost — needs an electoral victory to get there. On Saturday, he called his campaign a “righteous campaign to liberate this nation” and said, to cheers, “we are not a free nation.”
It is no longer even jarring when Trump speaks highly of authoritarian leaders, such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un or Hungary’s Viktor Orban, as he did again Saturday in New Hampshire.
But Trump went a step further, twisting around the idea put forward by his rivals, including Biden and former Rep. Liz Cheney, that he is a threat to democracy for trying to overturn the last election.
Instead, Trump now argues, it is Biden who is a “threat to democracy.”
As a way of proving the claim, Trump cited Putin, who said in September that Trump’s legal problems are “politically motivated persecution” that is good for Russia. “‘It shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,’” Trump went on, quoting the Russian president.
The truth is that Putin knows about rotten systems and putting political enemies in jail; supporters of Putin’s chief rival, Alexey Navalny, can’t locate the dissident leader who is serving a 19-year prison sentence.
Trump is facing multiple criminal trials. But he will have to be convicted by unanimous juries, assuming he is tried at all. The US Supreme Court, on which three of his appointees sit, has been asked by prosecutors to weigh in on whether Trump, as a former president, is immune from prosecution.
One of Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, said the pending trials are contributing to Trump’s increasingly intense rhetoric.
“Donald Trump realizes the walls are closing in,” Christie told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “He’s becoming crazier. And now he’s citing Vladimir Putin as a character witness, a guy who is a murderous thug all around the world.”
Trump-supporting Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina don’t seem to care much what the former president says.
“We’re talking about language. I could care less what language people use as long as we get it right,” Graham said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” although he also made clear he doesn’t agree with the poisoned blood analogy. “I believe in legal immigration. I have no animosity toward people trying to come to our country. I have animosity against terrorists and against drug dealers.”
Trump uses warnings about him to attack opponents
Twisting a warning about him and turning it into a rallying cry for his supporters is a classic Trump tactic.
He didn’t use the term “Fake News” to describe the mainstream media until after Hillary Clinton warned about an epidemic of misinformation, which she called “fake news.” Trump first used the term in a tweet the next day, on December 10, 2016, according to The Washington Post. He’s repeated it so often, including at the New Hampshire event, that now he claims to have invented it.
Similarly, he has frequently and falsely referred to the idea that he lost the 2020 election as a “big lie,” coopting it from warnings — citing the strategy of Nazi propagandists — that his repeated claims that the election results were false would ultimately convince his followers. The term “big lie” also appears in “Mein Kampf.” Most Republicans and GOP-leaners — nearly 70% in a CNN poll in August — don’t think Biden’s win was legitimate.
Tapper also played for Christie video of Trump’s comments about migrants “poisoning the blood of the country.”
“He’s disgusting,” Christie said. “And what he’s doing is dog whistling to Americans who feel absolutely under stress and strain from the economy and from the conflicts around the world, and he’s dog whistling to blame it on people from areas that don’t look like us.”
Christie, however, argued Republicans might still vote for Trump despite the comments and not because of it.
In New Hampshire, Trump takes 44% support among likely GOP primary voters, with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley moving into second place at 29%, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (11%), Christie (10%), entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (5%) and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (1%).
In Iowa, Trump has majority 58% support among likely Republican caucusgoers, followed by DeSantis (22%), Haley (13%), Ramaswamy (4%), Christie (3%) and Hutchinson (less than 1%).
As CBS notes, there are some major differences between the potential electorates in each state. In New Hampshire, 57% of likely GOP primary voters say abortion should generally be legal in their state, a view shared by just 26% of likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa. Nearly half of likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa (48%) say they consider themselves part of the MAGA movement, compared with 33% of likely New Hampshire primary voters.
Trump’s power in the party means that, unlike Christie, most Republican candidates are not calling him out.
In an interview with ABC News to publicize her endorsement by the anti-Trump Republican governor of New Hampshire, Haley said Trump was the right president at the right time, but he will have to answer in court for his actions on January 6, 2021. She said the country needs to move beyond that kind of chaos.
“My approach is different,” said Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Trump. “No drama, no vendettas, no whining.”
She has a month left to sell that approach before the first Republicans start making their voices heard in the American process that Trump quoted Putin as saying is rotten.
CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy contributed to this report.
Trump quotes Putin to call Biden ‘threat to democracy,’ reiterates anti-immigrant rhetoric at New Hampshire rally
Aaron Pellish and Steve Contorno, CNN – December 16, 2023
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack President Joe Biden as a “threat to democracy” and doubled down on language condemned for its ties to White supremacist rhetoric, saying at a campaign event in New Hampshire that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
“Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s a threat,” he told supporters at a rally in Durham, New Hampshire. “Even Vladimir Putin … says that Biden’s — and this is a quote – ‘politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.’”
Trump also praised two other authoritarian foreign leaders, calling Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban “highly respected” and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “very nice.”
Trump’s comments align with a pattern of expressing fondness for foreign leaders who use anti-democratic measures to maintain power. They also come after the former president attempted to sidestep questions in a Fox News town hall about whether he would act as a dictator if reelected, saying he would not act as a dictator “except for Day 1.” Trump faces federal and state charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump also told the crowd on Saturday that immigrants “from all over the world” are “pouring into the country,” reiterating a phrase he used previously that sparked outcry from the Anti-Defamation League.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” Trump said. “They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America … but all over the world. They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
The comments mark another instance of Trump using increasingly violent rhetoric in his campaign messaging. At his most recent campaign event in New Hampshire prior to his appearance Saturday, Trump used the word “vermin” to describe his political rivals, drawing broad condemnation, including from President Joe Biden, who likened his comments to “language you heard in Nazi Germany.”
Following Trump’s use of the phrase in October, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt linked his language to ethnically motivated massacres in Pittsburgh in 2018 and El Paso, Texas, in 2019.
“Insinuating that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ echoes nativist talking points and has the potential to cause real danger and violence. We have seen this kind of toxic rhetoric inspire real-world violence before in places like Pittsburgh and El Paso. It should have no place in our politics, period,” Greenblatt said in October.
The former president is planning a widespread expansion of his first administration’s hardline immigration policies if he is elected to a second term in 2024, including rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the US and placing them in detention camps to await deportation, a source familiar with the plans told CNN last month.
Trump on Saturday reiterated his proposal to “restore and expand” the travel bans he first implemented toward some countries in 2017 and pledged to “implement strong ideological screening for all illegal immigrants.” The travel ban targeted many Muslim-majority countries and African nations, leading critics to argue they were racially motivated.
In a statement released Saturday night, Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said Trump “parroted Adolf Hitler” in his New Hampshire remarks.
“Tonight Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy,” Moussa said. “He is betting he can win this election by scaring and dividing this country. He’s wrong. In 2020, Americans chose President Biden’s vision of hope and unity over Trump’s vision of fear and division — and they’ll do the same next November.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of the former president’s GOP rivals, said later Saturday that he hadn’t heard Trump’s comments in New Hampshire about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” instead reiterating the “huge risk” that people who cross the border illegally pose to Americans, especially “military-aged males.”
“We have to be smart about what we’re doing in this country,” DeSantis said at a news conference in Corydon, Iowa, when asked whether he believes this type of rhetoric should be used by someone who wants to lead the United States.
“We’re going to be very tough on who’s able to come into this country, because I think that what’s going on now, at the border in particular, has been a total train wreck,” he added.
Trump traveled to New Hampshire to lock down support as he tries to solidify his status as the 2024 Republican front-runner in the final weeks before the state’s first-in-the-nation GOP presidential primary.
In his first trip to the Granite State in over a month, Trump held a rally in the college town of Durham in one of the state’s most liberal counties. He’ll follow that up with an event in Reno, Nevada, on Sunday and then Waterloo, Iowa, on Tuesday – his second visit to the Hawkeye State in a week.
The burst of campaigning underscores an aggressive effort by Trump’s team to maintain his dominating lead when polls give way to actual voting. His advisers have privately voiced concerns that Trump supporters could simply assume he has a comfortable advantage in the race and is not reliant on their votes.
“We are leading by a lot, but you have to go out and vote,” Trump told supporters Wednesday night in Coralville, Iowa.
Trump’s visit to New Hampshire comes a day after rival DeSantis wrapped up his own one-day sojourn in the Granite State. It also comes as another opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, appears to be gaining momentum there, punctuated by a recent endorsement by the state’s popular governor, Chris Sununu, who has long made clear his opposition to Trump’s candidacy.
Sununu told reporters Tuesday that he believed the Republican primary in New Hampshire was a two-person race.
“This is a race between two people. Nikki Haley and Donald Trump. That’s it … with all due respect to the other candidates,” Sununu said.
Trump has bashed Sununu following the endorsement, saying at his Saturday rally, “He’s endorsed somebody that can’t win, has no chance of winning.”
“He’s a selfish guy who can’t get elected anything right now,” Trump said of Sununu.
It’s unclear what impact Sununu’s endorsement will have on the primary. A recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll in Iowa suggested DeSantis’ support there grew only nominally from an endorsement by another popular governor, Kim Reynolds.
A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll of likely voters in New Hampshire’s Republican primary released last month showed Trump with 42% support. Haley, his closest challenger, was at 20%.
Trump is even more dominant in national polls. A Pew Research Center survey released Thursday found 52% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters name the former president as their top choice in the primary. His nearest challenger was DeSantis, at 14%.
This story and headline have been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, Alison Main, Kit Maher and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
Putin Critic Alexei Navalny Has Gone Missing From Prison
Nikki McCann Ramirez – December 11, 2023
Allies of Alexei Navalny say the imprisoned Russian opposition leader has been missing for days.
On Monday, Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “the lawyers tried to get to IK-6 and IK-7 — two [prison] colonies in the Vladimir region where Alexey
[Navalny] might be. They have just been informed simultaneously in both colonies that he is not there. We still don’t know where Alexey is.”
Yarmysh added in a separate post that Russian authorities had refused to disclose where Navalny had been transferred.
Last year, Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on what are widely regarded as fabricated charges of corruption intended to silence his criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In August, an additional 19 years were added to his sentence. Prior to his imprisonment, Navalny survived at least two documented assassination attempts, once in 2017, and again in 2020.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
‘Putin is vulnerable’: Navalny camp to tap voter concerns on war and economy
Mark Trevelyan – December 11, 2023
A view shows a billboard in Moscow
LONDON (Reuters) -With his hands on all the levers of power in Russia, Vladimir Putin cannot be beaten in a presidential election, top aides to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny say.
But they see the 100-day campaign as a chance to expose him as vulnerable on the issues that most matter to Russians: the war in Ukraine and the state of the economy.
Putin declared his candidacy for another six-year term last Friday and there is no serious rival to challenge him, with Navalny serving more than 30 years in prison and other critics also jailed or in exile. On Monday Navalny’s supporters said he had been moved from his previous penal colony and his current whereabouts were unclear.
With the Kremlin in full control of state media and able to decide who can and cannot run, the Navalny camp says this is not a real election. But it sees the campaign window as a rare opportunity to draw Russians into a political conversation and convince them that Russia’s main problems are of Putin’s making.
“Of course it’s impossible to beat Putin in the ‘elections’,” Navalny aide Leonid Volkov told Reuters. “The aim of our campaign is to change the political agenda in Russia.”
During an election campaign when people are focused on politics and expecting promises and solutions, it will be harder for the Kremlin to avoid difficult topics, he said.
“Putin is vulnerable because he does not have answers today to the questions that really worry people. These are the questions of an exit strategy for the war – when and how it should end and when the soldiers will return home – and the questions of destitution, poverty, corruption, financial credits and all the rest.”
The Kremlin says Putin will win another six-year term because he commands overwhelming support across Russian society, with opinion poll ratings of around 80%.
So far only three people have declared their intention to run against him. Two are low-profile figures, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, who may struggle to gather the 300,000 signatures required to run. The third, nationalist Igor Girkin, is in jail awaiting trial on a charge of inciting extremist activity.
Other possible candidates who have yet to declare include Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and liberal Grigory Yavlinsky, both political veterans and serial election losers.
‘NOT PUTIN’
Undaunted, the Navalny camp has launched its campaign by simply urging Russians to vote against the incumbent.
“We don’t have our own candidate. We had a candidate, Navalny, and they refused to register him, tried to kill him and put him in prison. Now we have, so to speak, a collective candidate ‘against Putin’,” said Lyubov Sobol, a close Navalny associate who, like Volkov, is on an official list of “terrorists and extremists” and is now based outside Russia.
Navalny’s supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela who will one day be freed from jail to lead the country.
Russian authorities view Navalny and his supporters as extremists with links to Western intelligence agencies intent on trying to destabilise Russia. Putin has warned the West that any meddling inside Russia will be considered an act of aggression.
The opposition is seeking volunteers from among the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled Russia since the start of the war and asking them to cold-call voters – ideally as many as 100 each, Sobol said in a telephone interview.
Many people would be scared and put the phone down, but others could be persuaded to talk, she said.
On its website NePutin (NotPutin).org, the Navalny team also calls for volunteers to spread videos and campaign messages online, and to stick up leaflets and scrawl graffiti in the streets – what Sobol described as “partisan” tactics.
“Putin’s task is to make sure these elections go as smoothly and calmly as possible, without any strain on the nerves. Our task is the opposite,” she said.
Within hours of parliament announcing the March 17 election last week, the Navalny camp had fired its first campaign shot. It posted photos on social media of giant blue billboards it had placed in major cities, with an innocent-looking new year greeting to Russians. Underneath was a QR code leading to the NotPutin website.
The stunt showed the ingenuity of Navalny’s tech-savvy team. But the impact was brief, as authorities took down the billboards and blocked access to the site.
‘POINTS OF TENSION’
The opposition has struggled in the past to present a united front between the Navalny camp and other prominent Putin opponents such as former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
Volkov denied any split, saying all of them were appealing to the same audience.
But from outside Russia, they face a huge task to mobilise people in a country where nearly 20,000 have been detained since Moscow’s February 2022 invasion for protesting against the war in Ukraine.
Sobol said opposition polling showed many people were dissatisfied with Putin but were afraid to speak out. She said it was precisely the degree of repression in Russia that showed that the authorities are worried.
“We on the side of the opposition must create more points of tension for him,” she said. “We must make problems for him and his regime, and agitate, put out counter-propaganda and tell the truth.”
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan. Editing by Jane Merriman and Gareth Jones)
Retribution Campaign: Trump again defends infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ comments and warns Biden, ‘Be very careful’
Lalee Ibssa, Soo Rin Kim and Kendall Ross – December 10, 2023
Former President Donald Trump spoke on Saturday night to some of his most staunch conservative supporters, filling a speech at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala with praise for his political allies on the far right and doubling down on his controversial comment that he’d only be a “dictator” if reelected on “Day 1.”
He also bragged about his ability to win the 2016 election after the release of a video from behind the scenes of “Access Hollywood” years earlier, where he was seen making lewd and vulgar statements about women.
Trump spotlighting the “Access Hollywood” tape — an infamous episode late in his 2016 campaign that fueled widespread condemnation and calls for him end his campaign — started out on Saturday as a seemingly off-the-cuff remark.
In his speech, he mentioned “the biggest inescapable” situation he endured in politics and then shared more details, making it clear he was talking about the “Access Hollywood” video.
In that notorious clip, he had said, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women] — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. … And when you’re a star they let you do it.”
“Grab them by the p—-,” Trump said in the video. “You can do anything.”
He later tried to play that down as “locker room talk,” including during one of the 2016 debates, but his defense only fueled some other notable Republicans to call for him to step aside.
Trump on Saturday described how all of his political advisers, except Steve Bannon, encouraged him to drop out of the 2016 race after the video surfaced. Trump claimed that an unnamed general told him the “locker room talk” explanation he gave was the “bravest thing I’ve ever seen” over witnessing people die on the battlefield.
“It was an incredible campaign and we won and nobody thought we could win,” Trump said.
The unusual rehashing of the “Access Hollywood” video — which has not been in the headlines for years — is the latest example of how Trump continues to brush aside scandal while remaining popular with the Republican base.
PHOTO: Former President Donald Trump speaks during a Commit to Caucus rally, Dec. 2, 2023, in Ankeny, Iowa. (Matthew Putney/AP)
Trump is campaigning for the White House for a third time while facing numerous legal battles, including four sets of criminal charges. He denies all wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to all of his charges.
In Saturday’s speech, he claimed it was another example of his opponents attempting to stop his political rise — an accusation prosecutors have rejected.
“Our mission in this race is to win a historic and powerful mandate to take back our nation from the shadow government of corrupt alliances,” he said.
He also continued focusing on a theme of retribution and retaliation, seemingly threatening President Joe Biden.
He has said that as president, he would appoint a special prosecutor “to go after” Biden and Biden’s family, whom he blamed for the destruction of the country.
“They’ve opened up a Pandora’s box and I only can say to Joe is: Be very careful what you wish for,” Trump said Saturday.
In front of a friendly crowd, he joked about his comments from a town hall with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last week where he said he wasn’t going to be a dictator if reelected “other than Day 1,” when he would focus on the border and drilling.
That statement raised new alarms about whether Trump would abuse his power as president, something he did not rule out when questioned by Hannity.
“You know why I wanted to be a dictator, because I want a wall. Right? I want a wall and I want to drill, drill, drill,” Trump said on Saturday to “build the wall” chants.
PHOTO: Formers Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump (L) and Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stand on stage during the town hall debate at Washington University on Oct. 9, 2016 in St Louis, Mo. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images, FILE)
The club’s gala is known for making headlines with its speeches and a room full of guests with their own controversies.
Saturday’s event honored figures like Bannon, who was sentenced last year after being convicted of contempt of Congress.
Bannon has had an off-and-on relationship with Trump, including serving briefly as a senior White House strategist in 2017. Trump pardoned him in early 2021 after Bannon was accused of money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud by federal prosecutors. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to similar charges filed by prosecutors in New York City.
Other guests on Saturday included former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is charged with Trump in a Georgia election subversion indictment (Giuliani has pleaded not guilty); and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who was previously censured and removed from committees after posting a graphic anime clip featuring violence against New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
At one point during the gala, host Alex Stein tried to make a punchline out of stereotyping the Black and Hispanic community as criminals and gang members, saying it would be “good if Donald Trump went to jail” because it would help him earn the support from those communities.
Stein then repeated the joke later in the night when Trump was in the room.
“Once President Trump is back in office, we won’t be playing nice anymore. It will be a time for retribution,” the club’s president, Gavin Wax, said in his own remarks. “After baseless years of investigations and government lies and media lies against this man, now it is time to turn the tables on these actual crooks and lock them up for a change.”
Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First
Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman– December 4, 2023
The extreme policy plans and ideas of Donald J. Trump and his advisers would have a greater prospect of becoming reality if he were to win a second term. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Donald Trump has long exhibited authoritarian impulses, but his policy operation is now more sophisticated, and the buffers to check him are weaker.
In the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party used tanks and troops to crush a pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Most of the West, across traditional partisan lines, was aghast at the crackdown that killed at least hundreds of student activists. But one prominent American was impressed.
“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Donald J. Trump said in an interview with Playboy magazine the year after the massacre. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
It was a throwaway line in a wide-ranging interview, delivered to a journalist profiling a 43-year-old celebrity businessman who was not then a player in nationalpolitics or world affairs. But in light of what Mr. Trump has gone on to become, his exaltation of the ruthless crushing of democratic protesters is steeped in foreshadowing.
As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.
Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., brought one of the sets of indictments that Mr. Trump faces. Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times
What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.
A Radical Agenda
To be sure, some of what Mr. Trump and his allies are planning is in line with what any standard-issue Republican president would most likely do. For example, Mr. Trump would very likely roll back many of President Biden’s policies to curb carbon emissions and hasten the transition to electric cars. Such a reversal of various rules and policies would significantly weaken environmental protections, but much of the changes reflect routine and longstanding conservative skepticism of environmental regulations.
Other parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, however, are aberrational. No U.S. president before him had toyed with withdrawing from NATO, the United States’ military alliance with Western democracies. He has said he would fundamentally re-evaluate “NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission” in a second term.
He has said he would order the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, which would violate international law unless its government consented. It most likely would not.
He would also use the military on domestic soil. While it is generally illegal to use troops for domestic law enforcement, the Insurrection Act allows exceptions. After some demonstrations against police violence in 2020 became riots, Mr. Trump had an order drafted to use troops to crack down on protesters in Washington, D.C., but didn’t sign it. He suggested at a rally in Iowa this year that he intends to unilaterally send troops into Democratic-run cities to enforce public order in general.
“You look at any Democrat-run state, and it’s just not the same — it doesn’t work,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, calling cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco crime dens. “We cannot let it happen any longer. And one of the other things I’ll do — because you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting.”
Mr. Trump’s plans to purge undocumented immigrants include sweeping raids, huge detention camps, deportations on the scale of millions per year, stopping asylum, trying to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents and invoking the Insurrection Act near the southern border to also use troops as immigration agents.
Mr. Trump has sweeping plans to deal with undocumented immigrants. Credit…Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York Times
Mr. Trump would seek to expand presidential power in myriad ways — concentrating greater authority over the executive branch in the White House, ending the independence of agencies Congress set up to operate outside of presidential control and reducing civil service protections to make it easier to fire and replace tens of thousands of government workers.
More than anything else, Mr. Trump’s vow to use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance against his adversaries is a naked challenge to democratic values. Building on how he tried to get prosecutors to go after his enemies while in office, it would end the post-Watergate norm of investigative independence from White House political control.
In all these efforts, Mr. Trump would be backed in a second term by a well-funded outside infrastructure. In 2016, conservative think tanks were bastions of George W. Bush-style Republicanism. But new ones run by Trump administration veterans have sprung up, and the venerable Heritage Foundation has refashioned itself to stay in step with Trumpism.
A coalition has been drawing up America First-style policy plans, nicknamed Project 2025. (Mr. Trump’s campaign has expressed appreciation but said only plans announced by him or his campaign count.) While some proposals under development in such places would advance longstanding Republican megadonor goals, such as curbing regulations on businesses, others are more tuned to Mr. Trump’s personal interests.
The Center for Renewing America, for example, has published a paper titled “The U.S. Justice Department Is Not Independent.” The paper was written by Jeffrey Clark, whom Mr. Trump nearly made acting attorney general to aid his attempt to subvert the election and is facing criminal charges in Georgia in connection with that effort.
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not address specifics but instead criticized The New York Times while calling Mr. Trump “strong on crime.”
Weakened Guardrails
Even running in 2016, Mr. Trump flouted democratic norms.
He falsely portrayed his loss in the Iowa caucuses as fraud and suggested he would treat the results of the general election as legitimate only if he won. He threatened to imprison Hillary Clinton, smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists and promised to bar Muslims from entering the United States. He offered to pay the legal bills of any supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies and stoked hatred against reporters covering his events.
Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received White House posts despite an anti-nepotism law. Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times
But some of the most potentially serious of his violations of norms fell short of fruition.
And neither effort for which he was impeached succeeded. Mr. Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into opening a criminal investigation into Mr. Biden by withholding military aid, but it did not cooperate. Mr. Trump sought to subvert his 2020 election loss and stoked the Capitol riot, but Vice President Mike Pence and congressional majorities rejected his attempt to stay in power.
There is reason to believe various obstacles and bulwarks that limited Mr. Trump in his first term would be absent in a second one.
Some of what Mr. Trump tried to do was thwarted by incompetence and dysfunction among his initial team. But over four years, those who stayed with him learned to wield power more effectively. After courts blocked his first, haphazardly crafted travel ban, for example, his team developed a version that the Supreme Court allowed to take effect.
Four years of his appointments created an entrenched Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court that most likely would now side with him on some cases that he lost, such as the 5-to-4 decision in June 2020 that blocked him from ending a program that shields from deportation certain undocumented people who had been brought as children and grew up as Americans.
Republicans in Congress were often partners and enablers — working with him to confirm judges and cut corporate taxes, while performing scant oversight. But a few key congressional Republicans occasionally denounced his rhetoric or checked his more disruptive proposals.
In 2017, then-Senator Bob Corker rebuked Mr. Trump for making reckless threats toward North Korea on Twitter, and then-Senator John McCain provided the decisive vote against Mr. Trump’s push to rescind, with no replacement plan, a law that makes health insurance coverage widely available.
It is likely that Republicans in Congress would be even more pliable in any second Trump term. The party has become more inured to and even enthusiastic about Mr. Trump’s willingness to cross lines. And Mr. Trump has worn down, outlasted, intimidated into submission or driven out leading Republican lawmakers who have independent standing and demonstrated occasional willingness to oppose him.
Mr. McCain, who was the 2008 G.O.P. presidential nominee, died in 2018. Former Representative Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and helped lead the committee that investigated those events, lost her seat to a pro-Trump primary challenger. Senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and the only G.O.P. senator who voted to convict Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial, is retiring.
Representative Liz Cheney, center right, helped lead the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and later lost a primary challenge to a pro-Trump candidate. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Fear of violence by Trump supporters also enforces control. In recent books, both Mr. Romney and Ms. Cheney said that Republican colleagues, whom they did not name, told them they wanted to vote against Mr. Trump in the Jan. 6-related impeachment proceedings but did not do so out of fear for their and their families’ safety.
Personnel Is Policy
Perhaps the most important check on Mr. Trump’s presidency was internal administration resistance to some of his more extreme demands. A parade of his own former high-level appointees has since warned that he is unfit to be president, including a former White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly; former defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper; the former national security adviser John R. Bolton; former Attorney General William P. Barr; and others.
Mr. Trump in turn has denounced them all as weak, stupid and disloyal. He has privately told those close to him that his biggest mistakes concerned the people he appointed, in particular his choices for attorney general. The advisers who have stuck with him are determined that if he wins a new term, there will be no officials who intentionally stymie his agenda.
In addition to developing policy papers, the coalition of think tanks run by people aligned with Mr. Trump has been compiling a database of thousands of vetted potential recruits to hand to a transition team if he wins the election. Similar efforts are underway by former senior Trump administration officials to prepare to stock the government with lawyers likely to find ways to bless radical White House ideas rather than raising legal objections.
Such staffing efforts would build on a shift in his final year as president. In 2020, Mr. Trump replaced advisers who had sought to check him and installed a young aide, John McEntee, to root out further officials deemed insufficiently loyal.
Depending on Senate elections, confirming particularly contentious nominees to important positions might be challenging. But another norm violation Mr. Trump gradually developed was making aggressive use of his power to temporarily fill vacancies with “acting” heads for positions that are supposed to undergo Senate confirmation.
Richard Grenell was one of the acting heads named by Mr. Trump for positions that are supposed to undergo Senate confirmation. He became acting director of national intelligence. Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times
After Mr. Trump left office, there were manyproposals to codify into law democratic norms he violated. Ideas included tightening limits on presidents’ use of emergency powers, requiring disclosure of their taxes, giving teeth to a constitutional ban on outside payments and making it harder to abuse their pardon power and authority over prosecutors.
The debate on the House floor largely played out on a premise that reduced its urgency: Mr. Trump was gone. Democrats argued for viewing the reforms as being about future presidents, while Republicans dismissed it as an unnecessary swipe at Mr. Trump.
“Donald Trump is — unfortunately — no longer president,” said Representative Rick Crawford, Republican of Arkansas. “Time to stop living in the past.”
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy. An individual winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting about presidential power, he is also the author of the books “Takeover” and “Power Wars.”
Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for “overall excellence in White House coverage” in 2022.
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia.
If you haven’t heard much about Russia’s war in Ukraine lately, it’s not because no news is good news. In fact, the war in Ukraine may be tipping in exactly the direction Russian President Vladimir Putin wants.
Ukraine failed to make major breakthroughs in its much-touted 2023 offensive, intended to break Russian lines in eastern and southern Ukraine and push Russian forces back toward the Crimean peninsula. Billions of dollars’ worth of American and European military hardware arrived too late, giving Russian forces months to build stout defenses Ukraine proved unable to penetrate, except for small breakthroughs. Exhaustion and winter mud have now effectively ended that offensive.
Isolationist Republicans who now control the US House of Representatives have so far scotched $61 billion in additional aid President Biden wants for Ukraine, and some weaponry designated for Ukraine is now instead headed to Israel as it wages war with the Hamas terrorist group. Nobody’s going soft in Russia, however, where Putin is boosting defense spending from 4% of GDP to 10%.
Despite devastating losses, Russia’s posture in Ukraine is getting stronger, with some analysts saying it is Ukraine that now needs to shift to defense. “Russia will be materially advantaged in 2024,” military analyst Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said on a recent podcast. “If the West just assumes it’s a stalemate and can reduce its commitment to Ukraine, Russian advantages will compound because Russia doesn’t accept the stalemate.”
A slim majority of Americans still support robust US aid for Ukraine, but opposition has grown during the last six months. Most Republicans now say the United States is doing too much for Ukraine, while only 44% of Independents and 14% of Democrats feel that way. A chief complaint among Ukraine objectors is that President Biden should be focusing more on homegrown problems such as inflation and the influx of undocumented migrants.
Plus, the stakes in Ukraine could be far higher than many Americans appreciate. If Putin reverses his losses in Ukraine and ends up victorious, it would validate his view that the West doesn’t have the stomach for an ugly, drawn-out war, even if its own troops aren’t involved. Putin has ambitions beyond Ukraine, and if the West gives up on Ukraine it could meet Putin in Poland or the Baltic states, all members of the NATO military alliance.
Ambitions beyond Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin (Sputnik/Valery Sharifulin/Pool via REUTERS) (Sputnik Photo Agency / reuters)
Also watching closely is Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has ordered his nation’s military to be capable of invading and conquering Taiwan by 2027. A key factor in Xi’s decision to invade will undoubtedly be his estimate of US and allied resolve in their vows to help defend the breakaway democratic island. If the US-led alliance fails Ukraine, it would be rational for Xi to conclude they’d bail on Taiwan, too. And a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an economic earthquake that makes Putin’s energy war, waged in parallel with his military war in Ukraine, seem tame.
Ukraine isn’t losing. Early in the war, it repelled invading Russia forces from northern Ukraine, and later in 2022, from key strongholds in the northeast and southeast. Ingenious naval drones have chased Russian warships away from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and allowed the export of grain and other products, an astonishing feat for a country that basically lacks a navy. Russia still controls 18% of the Ukraine, but has gained basically no ground all year.
Two Western assumptions about the war have collapsed, however. The first is that Western training, intelligence, and equipment would tilt the war in Ukraine’s favor. It hasn’t. The second is that Russia would continue the shambolic battlefield performance of the invasion’s early days, when poorly prepared units expecting a cakewalk instead met determined resistance that sent them reeling. But the Russians have learned to plug holes, adapt to Ukrainian innovations, and keep their war machine rumbling along.
Some analysts snickered when Russia made a deal to buy ammunition from hermetic North Korea, but that deal may provide Russia with more artillery shells in 2024 than Ukraine will get from its own allies. That’s a key edge in a war where artillery is one of the most important weapons. Russia showed another weakness by buying relatively low-tech attack drones from Iran. But now Russia is building those drones on its own, by the hundreds, and using them in attempts to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses in a likely effort to wreck the country’s energy infrastructure again this winter, as it tried to do last year.
Ukraine pioneered some of the early innovations using armed drones to penetrate enemy lines. But Russia’s state machinery is now cranking out more drones than Ukraine can produce, and using them to deadly effect. As for battle tactics, Russia continues to expend soldiers in appalling human-wave attacks in which commanders seem to treat bodies as receptacles for bullets. There are sporadic protests in Russia of long deployments for troops and other concerns, but nothing approaching mass discontent with the war, suggesting Putin sees no constraint on sacrificing his own troops — another advantage over Ukraine, which husbands its human resources much more carefully.
Meanwhile, some Ukraine backers are beginning to say it’s time for Ukraine and its allies to change strategies.
“Kyiv’s war aims — the expulsion of Russian forces from Ukrainian land and the full restoration of its territorial integrity, including Crimea — remain legally and politically unassailable,” Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan wrote in Foreign Affairs recently. “But strategically they are out of reach, certainly for the near future and quite possibly beyond. [Ukraine’s] near-term priorities need to shift from attempting to liberate more territory to defending and repairing the more than 80 percent of the country that is still under its control.”
Haass and Kupchan argue that Ukraine should dig its own defensive fortifications, similar to Russia’s, and push for an enforceable cease-fire, while letting Russia worry about further territorial gains.
Since Russia invaded in February 2022, the Biden administration has armed Ukraine incrementally, first withholding and then providing key equipment such as armor, air defenses, and missiles that can reach far behind enemy lines. Biden has been careful not to push a nuclear-armed Russia over some perceived red line that would trigger a disproportionate Russian response. Europe has broadly followed the same pattern. But Russia never responded as more and more advanced Western weaponry arrived in Ukraine, prompting complaints that Washington has been too timid, and is not in it to win it.
So, the weapon tease continues. In October, the United States provided Ukraine with a small number of long-range ATACMS missiles capable of reaching Russian targets more than 100 miles away, threatening airfields, headquarters, and other crucial nodes. In the first strike using the new missiles, Ukraine reportedly destroyed more than a dozen Russian helicopters used to strafe Ukraine’s front-line troops. But there has been only one other known ATACMS firing since then. “This is a sign that the Biden Administration never wanted to give them in the first place, and is still strictly limiting what they will give Ukraine,” O’Brien wrote.
The next 12 months are likely to be momentous. Putin faces reelection in March, and while there’s no doubt he’ll win, Putin wants high turnout and a lopsided victory, so he may keep the war on simmer until then. Once the election’s over, Russia seems likely to mount a new mobilization effort to funnel more troops into Ukraine and press its manpower advantage. Sanctions are stifling the Russian economy, yet Russia is still selling plenty of oil, its main source of revenue, and finding most of the components it needs to boost defense production.
Putin also has a keen interest in next year’s US presidential election.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump is broadly viewed as a Putin patsy who would end the war in one day, as he says, by suspending US aid to Ukraine and giving Putin much or all of what he wants. “The event most likely to bring US backing for Ukraine to a juddering halt would be a victory by Donald Trump,” historian Lawrence Freedman of King’s College wrote on Nov. 23. “Putin might assume this to be such a positive possibility that it is one worth waiting for.”
No outcome is preordained.
Ukraine’s allies might yet rally and overcome the war fatigue that seems to settle more easily on allies far from the fighting than on those in the midst of it. In Washington, the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says he’s “confident” that Congress will provide more aid for Ukraine, though it may be far less than the $61 billion Biden wants. In Europe, several nations are ramping up weapons production to fill gaps the United States might leave. At some point in 2024, Ukraine seems likely to get Western fighter jets and finally be able to provide consistent air cover for infantry, a condition so fundamental to American military doctrine that the Pentagon would never consider fighting as the Ukrainians have been doing.
The Carnegie Endowment’s Kofman argues that the biggest American shortcoming in Ukraine isn’t some miracle weapon system, but the lack of advisers in-country who can understand how the plucky Ukrainians fight and tailor American aid to that. There’s a good reason Americans aren’t doing that: It conjures the specter of Vietnam, when advisers morphed into combatants and a slippery slope became a mudslide. It would be more fraught still if Americans ended up in direct combat with Russians.
But something needs to change if American resolves means anything, and it may start with America determining if it has that resolve in the first place.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance.
‘Just have 7 or 8’ – Putin calls on Russian women to become baby factories – video
The New Voice of Ukraine – November 29, 2023
Putin did not specify how much money the Russians have to support so many children
Russian society continues to gravitate towards a patriarchal system where women are expected to bear as many children as possible, while men are called upon to sacrifice their lives for their “tsar” in his wars.
One of the primary advocates of this regression in Russia is an FSB agent that currently heads the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), Vladimir Gundyaev, better known as Kirill.
Among other measures to tackle the demographic crisis and ensure a sufficient number of recruits for the military, he advocates for a complete ban on abortions, and the Russian State Duma is already preparing various restrictions to support this stance.
In turn, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin demands that citizens, despite the hardships prevailing in the country, have “seven or eight children.”
“In many of our nations, thank God, the tradition of a strong, multi-generational family is preserved, where four, five, or more children are raised,” Putin said.
“Let’s remember that in Russian families, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven, eight, or more people. Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions.”
Putin did not specify how such large families should be supported in a country facing significant economic and social challenges.
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Putin ready to sacrifice his people in Ukraine war, says retired Marine Corps Gen. Jones
The New Voice of Ukraine – November 28, 2023
Russian dictator Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to sacrifice his people in the war against Ukraine, but the Russians are not capable of achieving his goals, former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe James L. Jones said in an interview with Radio Liberty on Nov. 26.
“I think one thing that was always clear is that the Russian leader was willing to commit whatever manpower he needed because they outnumber the Ukrainians in terms of population,” Jones said.
The ability of the Russians “to launch a major offensive (by drafting) young men and (throwing) them into the Russian Army, even though they’re fairly poorly trained” cannot be discounted, General Jones argued.
It is clear that the lessons of the first year of the war have taken root in both Russia and Ukraine, as both sides now know each other better – and know where their strengths and weaknesses are, the general said.
“It’s not surprising that both sides are trying to exploit that advantage,” Jones said.
Russia is preparing a ‘loyalty agreement’ requirement for foreigners
Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly – November 29, 2023
Steam rises from chimneys of a heating power plan over the skyline of central Moscow
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s interior ministry has prepared draft legislation that would force foreigners to sign a “loyalty agreement” forbidding them from criticising official policy, discrediting Soviet military history, or contravening traditional family values.
Since President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has introduced a slew of tough laws that outlaw discrediting the military, and courts have handed down long jail sentences to opposition activists.
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, Putin has cast the war as part of an existential battle with the West, saying he will defend Russia’s “sacred” civilisation from what he portrays as the West’s decadence.
The TASS state news agency reported on Wednesday that the draft legislation had been prepared by the interior ministry and would force all foreigners entering Russia to sign an agreement that essentially restricts what they can say in public.
A foreigner entering Russia would be prohibited from “interfering with the activities of public authorities of the Russian Federation, discrediting in any form the foreign and domestic state policy of the Russian Federation, public authorities and their officials”, TASS said.
The proposed agreement would include clauses about morality, family, “propaganda about non-traditional sexual relations” and history.
In particular, foreigners would be barred from “distorting the historical truth about the feat of the Soviet people in the defence of the Fatherland and its contribution to the victory over fascism”.
The Soviet Union is estimated to have lost at least 27 million people in World War Two and eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin. Governments loyal to Moscow then took power across swathes of eastern Europe.
It was not clear from Russian media reports which foreigners the draft legislation – if it becomes law – would apply to or what the punishment would be for not adhering to the “agreement” which foreigners would have to sign upon entry to Russia.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the initiative.
‘LOYALTY AGREEMENT’
Opposition activists and foreign diplomats in Moscow have for months been warning that the authorities are toughening their stance on any dissent ahead of the presidential election.
The Kremlin said earlier this month that some measure of censorship was needed as Russian troops were fighting in Ukraine, and cautioned those who wanted to criticise the military to think carefully before they did.
For the draft to become law, it has to be introduced to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, and to go through committee review and several readings before being submitted to Putin for signing.
The chairman of the Duma’s CIS Affairs Committee said that the draft law was well advanced and was being worked on by the interior ministry, the government, the presidential administration as well as his committee.
“The draft law on the so-called ‘loyalty agreement’ with migrants entering the Russian Federation is in a high degree of readiness,” Leonid Kalashnikov told Interfax.
Kalashnikov said some details of the proposed law were still to be worked out. The interior ministry did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.
The law has not yet been introduced formally in parliament, according to Reuters searches of the Duma’s database.
Since the start of its war in Ukraine, Russia has imposed a number of restrictions on foreigners from what it calls “unfriendly countries” – meaning those that have imposed sanctions on it over its war in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Nick Macfie)
