Donald Trump is supposedly writing a book on how presidency was stolen from him
As the 6 January committee prepares for a summer of what promise to be shocking and disturbing hearings about the Capitol riot, the panel is reportedly in talks with Donald Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, who is said to be considering co-operating with the investigation.
Mr Barr left the Trump administration after the 2020 election but before the riot over his refusal to endorse the baseless claim that the election was stolen. In a memoir published earlier this year, he described how Mr Trump “went off the rails” after the election and concluded that “the absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill”.
On another front, the select committee has written to a Republican member of Congress seeking answers about a Capitol tour he allegedly gave the day before a horde of Trump supporters stormed the building.
The congressman in question, Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk, has previously denied that he or any other members gave so-called “reconnaissance tours” before the riot, but in their letter to him, panel leaders Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney wrote that their “review of evidence directly contradicts that denial”.
Opinion: How Trump and Putin have oxygenated the “great replacement” theory
As Republicans try to triangulate their positions on the “great replacement”, a racist conspiracy theory believed by many racist extremists – including the suspected gunman in last weekend’s mass shooting in Buffalo – Eric Lewis writes that the notion has been around longer than some seem to realise, and that the post-truth era ushered in by the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has provided exactly the right climate for the idea to take hold.
Andrew Naughtie20 May 2022 15:35
McConnell explains he planned Kyiv visit as stand against Trumpist “isolationism”
The US Senate yesterday finally passed a $40bn package of aid for Ukraine, and in the end, only 11 Republicans voted against it – a number much lower than minority leader Mitch McConnell was initially worried about.
In an interview with the New York Times, the Kentucky senator said that he visited Kyiv last weekend in part to set an example, and to undercut the power of “isolationist” thinking that has increasingly attracted support from Trump voters:
Andrew Naughtie20 May 2022 14:55
CPAC chair says abortion ban could avert racial “replacement”
As some members of the Republican Party and broader right-wing movement try and distance themselves from the racist “great replacement” theory in light of last weekend’s gun massacre in Buffalo, the head of the influential Conservative Political Action Conference has gone in the other direction – and linked the theory to another issue that some mainstream GOPers are worried about overplaying.
Speaking to reporters outside CPAC’s closed-door Budapest conference, Matt Schlapp remarked that overturning Roe v Wade is a “first step” in protecting the US’s demographic makeup.
“If you say there is a population problem in a country, but you’re killing millions of your own people through legalized abortion every year, if…