Politics

The effort to bankrupt, disgrace and banish Donald J. Trump to a jail cell in Riker’s Island has instead helped pave his road right back to the Oval Office. The unprecedented abuse of the American legal system fueled plenty of cable news coverage, but it also alienated the electorate. As with President Joe Biden’s mental decline, voters trusted their own eyes over the tale being told on their screens and delivered a decisive verdict against an eight-year politically-motivated lawfare campaign — exit polls showed that Trump voters were more likely to say democracy was under threat.

Jose Ibarra, the “sick, twisted and evil coward” who was accused of murdering Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, was convicted on all counts and sentenced to two life sentences without the possibility of parole, with an additional twenty-seven years tacked on.“She fought for her life in dignity, and to save herself from being brutally raped,” Riley’s mother said. Ibarra, who is reported to be a member of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang, “showed no regard for Laken and human life. We’re asking the same be done to him.”Riley’s high-profile murder inspired the Laken Riley Act, a bipartisan measure that “directly addresses one of the federal policy issues related to Laken Riley’s murder,” according to Congressman Mike Collins’s office.

You better watch out, you better not cry... President-elect Donald Trump is coming to town. And according to a recent Associated Press report, he’s making a list and checking it twice — that's to say, he’s looking to enforce laws. It’s only November, but officials in DC are already preparing for the so-called disastrous effects of Trump’s reign come January. “We have been discussing and planning for many months in the case that the District has to defend itself and its values,” said Mayor Muriel Bowser in a briefing.  Who knows what disasters will befall us on January 6 when Congress convenes to count the electoral votes — but Bowser is prepared to request the support of the DC National Guard on that day.

President Joe Biden delighted Kyiv officials and war hawks — and infuriated the incoming Trump administration (and, separately, the Kremlin) — on Sunday by authorizing Ukraine to send long-range missiles into Russia. Ukraine had been begging for approval to conduct strikes deep into Russia with Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) for years, only to receive the go-ahead in the final months of Biden’s lame-duck presidency. The decision is being reported as a response to Russia importing 10,000 North Korean troops a few weeks ago, but the timing feels curious.

“Dave McCormick won. Bob Casey lost. Dems can’t handle it. Don’t let them get away with this scheme…”I got this text a few hours ago, and before texting back, “Stop,” as I’ve done about a thousand times over the course of the last month, I tapped the Senate GOP’s link to learn Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democratic senator, “Punxsutawney Bob” Casey (so-called because of allegations he only comes out of hiding when it’s re-election time), is not going back into his hole quietly.The Associated Press declared Republican candidate Dave McCormick the winner many days ago, as he “was leading by more than 30,000 votes when AP called the race...

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump were all smiles at the White House on Wednesday as the two met to discuss efforts to transition to a new presidential administration. The duo appeared in front of reporters this afternoon as Biden emphatically shook Trump’s hand and congratulated him on his victory before promising a “smooth transition.“We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated with what you need,” Biden said. “We’re going to get to talk about some of that today.”  “Thank you very much. Politics is tough and is in many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today,” Trump replied. “I very much appreciate it.

What on earth is Donald Trump thinking? That’s what many realists and restrainers inside and out of Washington are asking themselves after news broke late last night that Marco Rubio, the senior senator from Florida, is set to be tapped as secretary of state in the next administration.  The reactions haven’t been uniformly bad, mind you. Other candidates rumored to be under consideration, such as Vivek Ramaswamy, caused many in the US foreign policy elite to wretch in fear. Others, like former national security advisor Robert O’Brien and Senator Bill Hagerty, who served as US ambassador to Japan during Trump’s first term, would have been predictable choices with whom most could live.  Rubio, however, is one of the most hawkish options Trump could have picked.

President-elect Donald Trump is slowly revealing who will — and who will not — be a part of his second administration come 2025. As a reminder, last week Trump announced campaign co-manager Susie Wiles as his chief-of-staff.Over the weekend, Trump rebuffed Nikki Haley, who previously served as Trump’s UN ambassador, and Mike Pompeo, who was Trump’s secretary of state. “I will not be inviting former ambassador Nikki Haley, or former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump administration, which is currently in formation,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our country.

Donald Trump has successfully won his second term, which means it’s time for him and his allies to buckle down and fervently start hiring for the incoming administration. Prior to his election, Trump announced that his transition would be chaired by former head of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon and billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, with assists from Trump’s sons as well as former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.The president-elect made his first pick for his administration on Thursday, announcing that his campaign co-manager Susie Wiles would be his chief of staff. She will be the first ever woman to hold this key White House post.

Welcome to Thunderdome. I have been part of the television coverage of election nights going back twenty years. I have stories from all of them that are of note. Election nights bring out the craziness in people: they lose their minds, lose the plot and react with a jittery manic mindset based on disabused assumptions about the world they inhabit. This happens often. I even made Jamelle Bouie so mad he left the CBS bureau in 2016 to take a walk. That’s how much of a jerk I can be on election nights when people are desperately holding on to hope for their candidates... Since my candidates always lose, I don’t care about their feelings, and that’s very freeing. Oh, your hopes for the future have been irrevocably dashed? This must be something new for you.

President Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States after a historic political comeback and complete annihilation of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris called Trump to concede this afternoon after failing to appear at the campaign’s planned victory party at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, DC. Instead, she delivered her concession speech there this afternoon. More on that below the fold. Biden is also said to have called Trump to congratulate him and express his desire for a smooth transition. It was a relatively short night compared to most predictions, with Trump sealing victory a couple of hours after midnight (although the result seemed obvious by that point).

Welcome, DC Diary readers, to the last edition of this newsletter before Tuesday night’s election. Most polls still have the presidential race at a dead heat between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. Pennsylvania remains the lynchpin, as the paths for the respective candidates appears to be the Rust Belt and Pennsylvania for Harris, and the Sun Belt and Pennsylvania for Trump. Each campaign is pointing to data that they think gives them an advantage tomorrow.Trump’s team published a memo Monday, for example, pointing out that early vote numbers suggest turnout among urban voters and women is down significantly in the seven swing states compared to 2020.

Former president Donald Trump slammed former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has been campaigning on behalf of Vice President Kamala Harris, for her war-hawk tendencies and quickly found himself in a media feeding frenzy. Trump said during a town hall with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, “She’s a radical war hawk... Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”He added, “Look, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘Oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right in the mouth of the enemy.

Welcome to Thunderdome and Happy Halloween — where this scary, chaotic, insane election season is finally coming to a close. You can hear my take on where things stand here. Election Day should come as a moment of relief to finally have some resolution. Instead, many voters worried about what comes next resemble nothing so much as Douglas Adams’s infamous bowl of petunias, falling rapidly out of the sky: “Oh no, not again.”Why do they feel that way?