Category Archives: Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill on Thursday to meet with House and Senate Republicans. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump held two separate meetings Thursday with GOP lawmakers in Washington. Trump used the events, each held blocks from the U.S. Capitol, to push for GOP members to unify behind him ahead of this year's presidential election.

Trump ended his visit with Senate Republicans with a brief press availability where he listed goals for a GOP-led government and described the current state of the country in bleak and dysfunctional terms.

"We have great unity, we have great common sense," he said. "A lot of very smart people in this room."

Trump did not take any questions.

The former president began the day with a closed-door meeting with House Republicans where he pledged to support members so they can win big in November, praised Speaker Mike Johnson and discussed a wide range of issues including inflation and abortion.

The meeting, which took place near the U.S. Capitol, was his first visit back since he left office and since hiscriminal convictions in the New York hush money trial. Trump is meeting with Senate Republicans this afternoon.

It is also the first time Trump has visited Capitol Hill since the January 6th riot at the Capitol. Trump was not present that day as his supporters stormed the building and he has not visited the Capitol building in the years that followed including President Bidens inauguration, which Trump skipped.

President Trump brought an extraordinary amount of energy, and excitement and enthusiasm this morning, Johnson said while flanked by other House leaders after their more than hour-long meeting.

The afternoon session with the Senate was also an opportunity for Trump to address skeptics within the party. In recent months, more Senate Republicans, including those initially resistant to weigh in, have said theyre supporting Trumps re-election run. Others, like Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., have refused to back him or continue to avoid discussing their support for the former president.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who was one of seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, said she wouldn't attending the meeting because of a longstanding conflict.

The meetings mark a high-stakes affair for Trump and Republicans heading into the contentious final months of the campaign. While many Congressional Republicans are firmly behind Trump, there remains a divide among some as the former president faces multiple legal battles.

Several members leaving the meeting highlighted Trump asking Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to be nice to Johnson. Greene responded with a hand motion that signaled, maybe.

President Trump was very much himself no teleprompter, no notecards, said Greene, who led the failed effort to oust Johnson last month. He joked with everybody.

Greene said there were no discussions about Trumps potential pick for vice president, and that Trump told members he feels a lot of states are in play with plans to spend money in New Jersey, New York, Minnesota and Virginia.

He did say theres a few of you in the room that might not be happy with me because Im supporting your opponent, but I will be doing tele-town halls for many of you, helping you get across the line, doing whatever it takes to win the House and win it big, she added.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. said Trump was casting a wide net.

Theres no state hes not going in, he said.

That includes includes races where he isnt backing the incumbent.

The former president endorsed GOP Virginia Rep. Bob Goods primary challenger, John Maguire, ahead of next weeks Republican primary. Good attended the meeting, but declined to discuss it with NPR on his way out.

Members said Trump did most of the talking in the meeting. Rep Ben Cline, R-Va., noted well over an hour into the session, it wasnt a discussion, Trumps just been talking, but he added Trump took some questions.

Trump also took a swipe at those House GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach him in 2021, noting there werent many left in Congress.

Later, several members said he appeared to signal support of California Rep. David Valadao, who voted to impeach, but without naming him.

He also took a jab at Taylor Swift, noting he signed a bill during his administration to help songwriters, and that he was surprised Swift wasnt supporting him.

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace said Trump devoted a significant portion of his remarks to speaking about abortion.

Ensuring that women know that we care and that were pro-woman and pro-life is a really important message for us going into November, Mace said. He talked about exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

Mace, one of Trumps former enemies, now has his endorsement, and was congratulated on her recent primary win.

Rep. Marc Molinaro, running for reelection in a competitive district in New York, told reporters on the abortion discussion, his point was obviously to speak from your heart. And I've embraced this in my own district for the people I represent, just we've got to be respectful of the very difficult choices women have to make.

Norman said the message from Trump on abortion was let the states decide. He told lawmakers hes not going to get into the details on specific restrictions and they shouldn't either, but if they weigh in on specific restrictions in terms of 8, 10, 12 week ban, use your heart.

Multiple Republicans told NPR that Trump talked about ramping up pressure on China, and touted his own policy as president imposing tariffs on China.

One House Republican who has not yet endorsed Trump, Rep. Dave Schweikert, R-Ariz., said about the discussion, I was actually pleased it was mostly on economy, on inflation. He told reporters he planned to endorse Trump after the GOP convention.

GOP lawmakers said Trump didnt weigh in on a specific tax strategy, or the speakers proposal to push through an aggressive package early in 2025 using expedited budget rules, but urged them to vote to cut taxes.

He talked about tax-free tips, which is a great opportunity for middle class workers, people who basically make a living on tips to not pay taxes on those things, a good thing, a popular thing with the middle class, Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said.

For their part, congressional Democrats said today marked a reminder of a dark moment in the countrys history, pointing to Trumps role in the Jan. 6 attack.

On January 6th, Donald Trump lit a match to democracy with an insurrection on Capitol Hill, and, today, he's arrived at the scene of the crime and continues to throw fuel on the flame, said California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who served on the former Jan. 6 committee.

NPRs Franco Ordoez contributed to this report.

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Trump met with GOP lawmakers in Washington to rally support, push for unity - NPR

WHEN DONALD TRUMP left office in January 2021 his political career seemed over. It was not just Democrats who thought so. We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights, wrote Tucker Carlson privately when he was still the host of Fox Newss most popular evening show. I truly cant wait. Mr Carlson did not get his wish. Our statistical forecast, which we launch this week, gives Mr Trump a two-in-three chance of winning in November. This is the same model, plus some refinements, that made Joe Biden a strong favourite to become president in 2020. Tested on election data from previous elections (with no knowledge of the outcome), the model gave Barack Obama about the same chance of winning in 2012 at this point in the race as it gives Mr Trump now. Like most pundits, it thought Hillary Clinton likelier to win in 2016a reminder that models, though they offer a rigorous way to think about the world, are not crystal balls.

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A second Trump term: from unthinkable to probable - The Economist

The 2024 presidential election starts out in our forecast as a toss-up. While former President Donald Trump has a lead in most key swing states, they are close enough that a small amount of movement or the polls being a little too favorable to Republicans could result in President Joe Bidens reelection. Right now, Biden is favored to win in XXX out of 1,000 simulations of how the election could go, while Trump wins in XXX of our simulations. In XXX simulations, no candidate wins a majority of Electoral College votes, which would throw the election to the House of Representatives.

Our forecast launches just a week and a half after Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to a scheme to pay hush money to a porn star during the 2016 election. Since May 30, he has lost ground in the polls, with his national margin in 538s polling average falling from +1.7 to +1.0 as of Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern. Our forecast today thinks there is more room for Biden to improve, with economic and political fundamentals indicators pulling his predicted margin in the national popular vote up from -1.0 to +2.3 points. But he still lags in the key swing states, with his margin at just 1 point in Pennsylvania, the likeliest state to tip the Electoral College to either candidate, well within our uncertainty interval. And with five months left until Election Day, there is still a lot of room for the polls to change, as indicated by the 3-in-10 chance of either Trump or Biden winning a landslide of more than 350 electoral votes come Nov. 5.

538s forecast is based on a combination of polls and campaign fundamentals, such as economic conditions, state partisanship and incumbency. Its not meant to call a winner, but rather to give you a sense of how likely each candidate is to win. Check out our methodology to learn exactly how we calculate these probabilities.

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Who Is Favored To Win The 2024 Presidential Election? - FiveThirtyEight

Donald Trump returned to Washington on Thursday to rally congressional Republicans behind his candidacy and remind lawmakers what they could achieve if voters return the White House and Senate to Republican hands and expand the slender House GOP majority.

In the morning, Trump met with House Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club, which is steps away from the U.S. Capitol. He is scheduled to meet with Senate Republicans shortly after noon.

According to sources in the room for the House GOP meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the gathering Trump delivered bullish remarks on the presidential race, Republicans messaging on abortion, lowering costs, his distaste for the Justice Department and his foreign agenda amid ongoing wars.

The former president who has repeatedly attacked the Justice Department and baselessly accused it of being weaponized against him called the DOJ dirty, no-good bastards during the gathering, according to two people in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. House Republicans have previously pledged to aggressively go after the weaponization of government following Trumps conviction in Manhattan criminal court and voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Wednesday.

House Republicans across the ideological spectrum filed out of the hour-long gathering describing Trump as cheerfully boastful and confident in the meeting, injecting the enthusiasm members had hoped he would bring to unite a historically fractious conference.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Trump spoke about opening the Keystone Pipeline again and getting inflation down, cutting taxes.

He hit everything, he said after the meeting. Thats the most energized Ive ever seen him.

Ahead of the gathering, many Republicans said they hoped Trump would offer clarity on his policy agenda ahead of the November election. As they left the meeting, a majority of them said Trump delivered.

The guy articulates what the average American feels, said Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro, who represents a New York swing district.

Trumps first visit to Capitol Hill since leaving the White House comes two weeks after he became the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime for falsifying business records in his New York hush money case.

It is also his first visit to Capitol Hill since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in which a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol complex to stop the certification of Joe Bidens 2020 victory. Though Trump was not at the Capitol that day and weeks later skipped Bidens inauguration his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results are at the heart of some of the federal charges against him.

Congressional Republicans expected warm reception for the former president is the latest example of them tying their fate to Trump once again, even though some lawmakers are privately unenthusiastic about the prospect of Trumps return to Washington. Not all House Republicans attended the gathering.

House Republicans welcomed Trump to the meeting with a rendition of the Boehner birthday song a short and snappy jingle that former speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) instituted during his time in office. The lawmakers also gave Trump a bat from the annual Congressional Baseball Game, which was held Wednesday night. Trump turns 78 on Friday.

Trump praised House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for his leadership, briefly name checking Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for trying to strip the gavel from him last month, an effort that ultimately resulted in a bipartisan vote to keep him as speaker.

Marjorie, be nice to him, Norman recounted Trump saying.

Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said Trump who has long falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him did not talk about potential election fraud but spoke about his poll numbers and insisted that Republicans must work hard to ensure they win in November.

According to the people in the room, Trump said Republicans need to do a better job messaging on abortion than they did in 2022 the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, an event that spurred a string of electoral wins and state referendums favoring Democrats. President Biden and his campaign have long warned that, if Trump is elected, abortion rights will be further stifled.

Molinaro said Trump specifically mentioned Republicans need to be very careful about showing respect for women and the choices that they have to make.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.)told reporters that the former president held a very serious discussion about how Republicans are going to talk about abortion in the upcoming election.

President Trump reiterated his perspective that this is a state issue. He thought that gave members who have different views on this issue in our conference, an ability to really localize it rather than having to talk about it in the broadest of national terms, he said.

On the presidential race, according to those in the room, Trump said his candidacy expands the map of battleground states to include New Mexico, New Jersey, Virginia and Minnesota all states considered favorable to Democrats in past election cycles.

Trump also said tariffs on imports from foreign nations would be a central part of his agenda if given a second term, noting his plans to use them as a national security tool. He also complained about the high cost of oil and claimed he was tougher on Russia and Nordstream 2 sanctions than President Biden. He also vowed to issue stricter tariffs on China and Venezuelan oil.

A handful of moderate Republicans representing swing districts skipped the gathering to attend committee hearings instead.

Trump at one point gleefully pointed out that a majority of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 insurrection retired or lost their reelection bids. Reps. David G. Valadao (Calif.) and Dan Newhouse (Wash.) are the only two House Republicans who voted to impeach who are still in office.

During the meeting, Trump made clear he recalled that he never loved a congressman from California for their impeachment vote, which Republicans understood to be a swipe against Valadao. Valadao did not attend the meeting, but Newhouse was present.

Of the 16 House Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020, five Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Young Kim (Calif.), David Schweikert (Ariz.), Michelle Steel (Calif.) and Valadao do not appear to have publicly endorsed Trump.

Schweikert attended the meeting, but repeatedly skipped the opportunity to endorse Trump, saying he has kept to the tradition of endorsing the GOP nominee for after the convention is held in July. He said he was actually pleased that Trump mainly spoke about issues like the economy and inflation and did not spend much time discussing his criminal investigations.

At one point in the meeting, Trump also complained that pop star Taylor Swift endorsed President Biden in the 2024 election, a falsehood that gained traction in far-right circles earlier this year. Swift has not endorsed either candidate.

The Biden campaign has latched onto Trumps first return to the Capitol since the insurrection, releasing a campaign ad running Thursday across battleground states reminding voters of the violence that day.

Today, the instigator of an insurrection is returning to the scene of the crime. January 6th was a crime against the Capitol, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the former House speaker, said in a statement on behalf of the Biden campaign. With his pledges to be a dictator on day one and seek revenge against his political opponents, Donald Trump comes to Capitol Hill today with the same mission of dismantling our democracy.

After rallying House Republicans, Trump will meet Senate Republicans on their turf. In a meeting invitation obtained by The Washington Post, Senate Republicans were told to expect to hear directly from President Trump about his plans for the summer and to also share our ideas for a strategic governing agenda for 2025.

A majority of Senate Republicans are expected to meet with Trump at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). McConnells attendance will mark the first time he and Trump have spoken since shortly after the 2020 election. McConnell broke with Trump over his refusal to accept the 2020 election results then and over the Jan. 6 riot, for which McConnell called Trump practically and morally responsible. But he did not vote to convict Trump after the impeachment trial.

Of the four GOP senators still in office who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, only Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) said he is likely to attend the meeting Thursday. Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) said he is not attending, while Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) said they had scheduling conflicts.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he doubted the meeting would get too in the weeds on policy, but instead focus more on politics, messaging and rallying together ahead of the election.

Its the first time weve all been together with him since he was president, certainly the first time a large group of us have been with him since the conviction, and I would expect hed receive a lot of unifying messages, he said. I would expect it will be a very encouraging day for him.

correction

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Trump was the first U.S. president convicted of a federal crime. He was convicted of state crimes. This story has been updated.

Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.

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Trump slams Justice Department in meeting with congressional Republicans - The Washington Post

Donald J. Trump flew into Washington last summer in a state of misery. He was there for his criminal arraignment, and he told associates afterward that the city was disgusting. He could feel Washingtons hostility, aides said.

On Thursday, three and a half years after a throng of his supporters whipped up by his false claims of a stolen election attacked the Capitol, Mr. Trump returned to the nations capital under much different circumstances to flex his dominance over a political and business establishment that has been forced to come to terms with him.

The former president is now the Republicans presumptive presidential nominee against President Biden, after vanquishing several primary rivals, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in recent months and rallying a wide range of Republicans behind him in denouncing his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan as evidence of a weaponized justice system.

Mr. Trumps meetings with lawmakers including Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader who denounced him on the Senate floor weeks after the violent attack on the Capitol by the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021 were the starkest examples of how an establishment that still hates him has accepted his potential return to office. After years of hoping that someone else could step up to lead its party, that establishment is gradually submitting to the reality of the 2024 campaign.

Theres high anticipation here and great excitement, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Wednesday before Mr. Trumps visit, which was his first appearance on Capitol Hill since the Jan. 6 attack.

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Trump Returns to Washington With Renewed Grip on the G.O.P. - The New York Times

In 2016, J.D. Vances best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, made him one of Americas leading interpreters of Trumpism, offering a personal narrative of populisms origins in working-class disarray.

In 2024, as a first-term United States senator from Ohio, Vance is arguably Americas leading Trumpist: a staunch ally of Donald Trump, a leading critic of the establishment consensus (or what remains of it) in both foreign and domestic politics, a potential vice-presidential candidate and a likely populist agenda-setter for a second Trump term.

The Vance of eight years ago was read with appreciation and gratitude by Trump opponents looking for a window into populism. The Vance of today is despised and feared by many of the same kind of people. His transformation is one of the most striking political stories of the Trump era, and one thats likely to influence Republican politics even after Trump is gone.

I've known Vance since before he assumed either of these identities. For this conversation, I spoke to him about how he sees his own evolution, his relationship to the American elite and to Trump himself, his views on populist economics and Americas support for Ukraine. He also offered a combative (and, to my mind, fundamentally unsupported and unpersuasive) defense of Trumps conduct after the 2020 election. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

J.D., the first time I realized that your book, Hillbilly Elegy, was going to be a phenomenon was August of 2016. I was in Rockland, Maine, in a cozy little tourist bookstore. I tried to buy the book for my wife, and they said, Oh, we had four or five copies and they all sold out in the last week.

Looking back, almost certainly most of the people who bought the book in that little bookstore were educated liberals baffled by the Donald Trump phenomenon, who liked your book not just for its literary merits, but also because they felt like here was a guy who was sympathetic to people voting for Trump, but who was also at that time vehemently opposed to him.

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Opinion | J.D. Vance on Where Hed Take the Republican Party - The New York Times

We want to try something a little different this week and delve into a single motion filed in Donald Trumps classified documents case in Florida. We thought it might be useful to explore how it informs the larger legal and political strategies Trump has used trin all of the criminal matters he is facing.

The motion, filed on Monday night, makes a weighty accusation.

It claims that prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, who brought the indictment, failed to properly preserve the evidence at the heart of the case: the 45 boxes of documents the F.B.I. seized two years ago during a search of Mar-a-Lago, Trumps private club and residence in Florida.

Trumps lawyers also made a big request of Judge Aileen Cannon, who is handling the case. They asked her to dismiss the charges altogether or, barring that, to do something that would have the same effect: toss out the evidence found during the Mar-a-Lago search, including the trove of 32 classified documents that Trump has been charged with removing from the White House.

In the broadest sense, the motion takes aim not at the strength of the charges Trump is facing, but rather at the integrity of the underlying inquiry.

Its an effort to knock out the foundations of the case and, as such, is part of a barrage of similar motions that his lawyers have launched against the investigation and the investigators.

Trump has for decades conflated legal problems with public relations fights. And that approach is one his entire legal apparatus appears to have embraced since he was first indicted in New York in March 2023.

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How One Move Illustrates Trump's Tactics - The New York Times

When former President Donald J. Trump was convicted in his New York criminal trial, it took Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois about 19 minutes to fire off a statement calling him a felon, a racist, a homophobe and a grifter.

Only one other Democratic governor issued a statement that night about Mr. Trumps conviction, and the Biden campaigns response which came one minute after Mr. Pritzkers focused on what Mr. Trump would do as president rather than on the verdict.

Since then, as the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign have wrestled with how to wield the conviction to their advantage, Mr. Pritzker has emerged as the chief amplifier of Mr. Trumps felon status.

Unlike other top surrogates who have followed Mr. Bidens lead and kept the focus on Mr. Trumps policies rather than his conviction, Mr. Pritzker has blazed his own trail of Trump insults to great cheers from fellow Democrats who are hungry to attack.

I cant mince words when it comes to talking about who Donald Trump is, Mr. Pritzker said in an interview on Wednesday. Its important, I think, for people to really refocus on the idea that: Do they really want a president who is a felon who faces jail time?

Mr. Pritzkers aggressive approach comes with a warning for his fellow Democrats. In a fiery keynote speech last weekend at the Wisconsin Democratic Partys convention in Milwaukee, he compared the party to the proverbial frog that does not realize the pot of slowly boiling water it sits in will soon be deadly.

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JB Pritzker, the Democrat Who Isnt Afraid to Call Trump a Felon - The New York Times

Just a couple of weeks ago, Democrats were wringing their hands, worried that the Biden-Harris campaign would not do enough to highlight former president Donald Trumps conviction on 34 felony counts. They need not have worried. Nearly every day, the campaign sends out a flurry of statements, ads and social media postings repeating the catchy phrase convicted felon. President Biden, on the day after Trumps conviction, deplored MAGA attacks on the courts. But the most pointed, and arguably effective, denunciations have come from Vice President Harris.

Perhaps we should have anticipated that the former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general (who took delight in grilling Trumps Supreme Court nominees from her perch on the Senate Judiciary Committee) would lead the onslaught. But the ease with which she twists the knife is still eye-opening.

Harris has been making her case in a variety of settings. A jury of 12 people, peers, over the course of six weeks, deliberated on the evidence and facts and unanimously determined guilt on 34 felony counts, she told Jimmy Kimmel last Tuesday. There was a defense attorney who actively participated in selecting that jury, who actively made decisions about witnesses to call, witnesses to cross-examine. And the jury made their decision and you know, I think that the reality is, cheaters dont like getting caught and being held accountable. Her delivery was brisk, businesslike and brutally candid.

She did not stop there. On Saturday, she told donors at a fundraiser in Detroit, Donald Trump openly tried to overturn the last election, and now he openly attacks the foundations of our justice system. Following his conviction in New York last month, Trump has been claiming the whole trial was rigged. False. After reiterating her cheaters dont like getting caught riff, she continued, Since the verdict, he attacks the judge and the witnesses. He suggests the case could be a, quote, breaking point for his supporters, hinting at violence. ... And he says that he will use a second term for revenge. Then she added a twist: Donald Trump really thinks hes above the law. He really does. And this should be disqualifying for anyone who wants to be president of the United States.

The Supreme Court declined to apply the letter of the law to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. But Harris is making the persuasive case that voters should not consider him to be a legitimate candidate. How can a convict who tries to tear down the legal system assume the presidency, which requires an oath to enforce the laws? It boggles the mind.

The Biden-Harris campaign seems to have figured it out: Someone with contempt for the legal system, a mission to tear it down and to employ it without any legal basis against his enemies threatens the core of American democracy. And if there were any doubt about Trumps nefarious schemes, he now routinely threatens to prosecute his opponents. Former Trump attorney Ty Cobb and a fleet of legal scholars and former prosecutors have warned that his rhetoric erodes support for the legal system and risks inciting violence.

And after weeks of Trumps threats and smears, all amplified by MAGA sycophants, even taciturn Attorney General Merrick Garland deplored the escalation of attacks in an op-ed for The Post. They come in the form of conspiracy theories crafted and spread for the purpose of undermining public trust in the judicial process itself. Those include false claims that a case brought by a local district attorney and resolved by a jury verdict in a state trial was somehow controlled by the Justice Department, he said, in obvious reference to Trump and his followers.

Given the ongoing, albeit stalled, federal prosecutions against Trump, Garland was in no position to call out Trump by name or to directly suggest someone threatening and maligning law enforcement has no business in the White House. Thats where Harris comes in.

Biden spent five days in France commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. In Normandy, he hammered home the need to defend democracy in our lifetime. Its no mystery who is threatening our democracy. Biden extols the virtues of democracy, freedom, the rule of law and decency with the obvious implication that Trump has none of these. But the campaign needs Harris to challenge Trump and MAGA followers attacks on the rule of law and make the case that these attacks in and of themselves should be disqualifying. So far, she is delivering.

Harris in the weeks and months ahead will have plenty of material as Trump threatens vengeance. She cannot be explicit enough: This is what dictators do. If you dont follow Dear Leader, you, too, will feel his wrath. That message might even be potent enough to force the media to contextualize Trump in the long line of authoritarians who twist the justice system for political ends.

And if she is really effective, she might just rouse the I dont like his Gaza policy set threatening to stay home after all, the latter are just the sort of people Trump would persecute. In fact, he has already promised to deport them. It might be worth their while to vote for the only candidate who can stop him.

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Opinion | In calling out Trump, Harris finds her mission - The Washington Post

The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed, President Biden said after former President Donald J. Trump was convicted last month of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.

No one in this country is above the law, David Weiss, the special counsel who prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun charges, said after Mr. Biden was convicted this week. Everyone must be accountable for their actions.

So, we get it. No one not even the presidents son or an ex-president is above the law. The expression has been used by plenty of political figures in recent weeks, including Vice President Kamala Harris (Donald Trump thinks he is above the law, she said at a recent campaign event). The phrase above the law has appeared in The New York Times 100 times this year alone.

The specific origin of the phrase is not clear, with several people getting credit for pushing it forward.

But as popular as the expression has become, it has been a fundamental principle of democracy for hundreds of years, a history with cameo appearances by King John of England, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and a mysterious individual known only as Z.

For a term used by lawyers, no one is above the law seems refreshingly straightforward. Still, it is not so simple as saying everyone gets treated equally.

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A Brief History of the Phrase 'No One Is Above the Law' - The New York Times