Lloyd Green: ‘Democrats ought to start worrying’
On Wednesday night, Donald Trump demonstrated why he leads the 2024 Republican field. The audience was his from “hello”. The town hall was a prime-time infomercial. Kaitlan Collins, the moderator, was no match. For good measure, he called her a “nasty person” and questioned her intelligence.
Trump arrived amid a standing ovation and repeatedly tangled with CNN’s Collins. He directed congressional Republicans to go over the fiscal cliff and trigger a default but waffled over a federal abortion ban.
The 45th president repeated the lies that birthed the insurrection and repeatedly asserted the 2020 election was “rigged”. He expressed no remorse for Mike Pence almost winding up on makeshift gallows.
Trump beatified Ashli Babbitt, the Capitol rioter shot dead and committed to pardoning most of the January 6 rioters. For Trump and his minions, law and order hinges on “who” and “whom”. As for E Jean Carroll, Trump ridiculed her and the $5m verdict. She was a “whack job”, he said.
Immigration and energy remain Trump talking points, catnip for independents and working-class voters alike. The Democrats ought to start worrying. In 2020, Covid sapped Trump’s appeal while Biden possessed the luxury of a basement campaign. That’s gone. Trump is a natural counter-puncher. He shows no sign of letting up. 2024 is shaping up as 2016 redux.
Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice
Moira Donegan: ‘Trump better be afraid of women’
The laughter was uproarious. On stage at CNN’s disastrous town hall, former president Trump recounted the rape allegation of E Jean Carroll, the columnist who won her lawsuit against him for sexual abuse and defamation just yesterday. Trump spoke to the character of Carroll’s former husband, addressing the man in a kind of masculine camaraderie, saying he felt bad for him for having been married to Carroll. He claimed Carroll was promiscuous for going into a dressing room at a department store with him, and also that he never met her. He complained that he had not been allowed to introduce the name of her pet as evidence against her at trial. And he referred to her accusation of rape as “hanky-panky”. The crowd of Republican voters chuckled and cheered.
They laughed, too, when Trump referred to former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi as “crazy Nancy”. And they laughed when Trump got frustrated with the moderator, CNN’s 31-year-old Kaitlan Collins. “You’re a nasty person, I’ll tell ya,” he told her, and his fans in the audience erupted in delighted laughs. Collins, for her part, was badly outmatched, unable to fact-check the continuous stream of disinformation from Trump.
She failed to offer any correction whatsoever when Trump repeatedly told inflammatory lies about abortion, lies that have incited murderous violence against medical providers. Collins instead tried to pin Trump down on whether he would sign a federal abortion ban, but Trump demurred, refusing to commit. Reportedly, the former president has been alarmed at the political fallout from the Dobbs decision. All night, he derided women for contemptuous laughs, playing to his base. But there are evidently some women he’s quite afraid of: the ones who vote.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
Moustafa Bayoumi: ‘What was CNN thinking?’
The surprise from CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump wasn’t Trump. It was CNN. What could they have been thinking? Everything was wrong. If you’re going to host Trump, have him face a dogged questioner. That wasn’t Kaitlan Collins. Trump talked over her, insulted her (“You are a nasty person”) and simply ignored her, as CNN should have predicted. And why hold a town hall composed mostly of Republicans? Instead of a structure that would challenge a candidate on the issues, CNN chose a format that favors an audience receptive and primed to all of Trump’s lies (“It was a rigged election”), insults (on E Jean Carroll: “she’s a whack job”), and racism (“They don’t even speak English in that Chinatown”).
I also blame CNN for launching the nightmare of the next presidential election so early. What’s the rush? So what was behind it all? Not journalistic excellence. Ratings? An attempt to fill in a Trump void that currently exists on (post-Dominion Voting Systems) Fox? Whatever it was, it was the return of a bad memory. And it illustrated that particular convergence of mass-media authoritarianism and populist entertainment that defines the so-called charm of Donald Trump. Consider it a warning.
Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US contributing writer
Bhaskar Sunkara: ‘It will be hard for Trump to run as an outsider’
Donald Trump’s town hall told us, on the one hand, that the 76-year-old hasn’t grown up much. He continued to name-call, launching barbs at Nancy Pelosi, his former vice-president Mike Pence, and his new target of choice, Florida governor Ron “DeSanctimious” DeSantis.
He also dismissed sexual assault charges against him, repeated claims that the 2020 election was stolen, downplayed the 2021 Capitol riots, touted his brutal immigration policies, and more. By the standards of a recent Trump performance, it was perfectly normal.
But what was virtually absent was the economic populism that helped propel him to victory in 2016 and that once differentiated Trump from the rest of the Republican field.
Gone was the emphasis on protectionism. Instead of a strong defense of social security and Medicare, Trump sounded like a fiscal hawk when talking about the deficit and the looming debt ceiling. “If they don’t give you massive cuts,” he said, “you’re going to have to do a default” – referring to a potential sovereign debt default that could cause catastrophic economic harm to working-class Americans.
There were scant appeals to manufacturing workers, or other blue-collar votes. Trump’s record in office was closer to an establishment Republican than a firebrand, and, despite his unusual and abrasive style, it’ll be harder for him to run as an outsider after that failed experience of power.
That won’t matter much to his diehard supporters, but it leaves an opening for Biden to tout his administration’s (limited) gains for working people. The 2024 election will hinge on whether the president can take advantage of it.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, the founding editor Jacobin, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in An Era of Extreme Inequalities
