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Insults, fake news, royalty, golfing
So Donald Trump barrelled off to Europe this week, a particularly unwelcome bull in a china shop. In the UK, protesters were there to welcome him.
In a country still divided by views on Brexit and with a government teetering like a Jenga tower, Trump’s presence at least brought people together – hundreds of thousands of them in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast and beyond.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, criticized May for “rolling out the red carpet” for Trump. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband went so far as to draft a script for May to use in her joint press conference with the American president.
Suggested press conference words “He and I do disagree on some things: his tearing of babies from their parents, his racist attacks on the London mayor, his lies, his admiration for dictators, and I tend to think his combover is an absurdity.”
— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) July 12, 2018
Suffice to say May did not use those words, and after humiliating the prime minister, Trump, 72, trotted off to meet the Queen.
Very few people are this oblivious to the Actual Queen (images from @itvnews) pic.twitter.com/Rixing1JHt
— Janine Gibson (@janinegibson) July 13, 2018
The president, a former builder, is off to play golf in Scotland this weekend. Plenty of people are protesting there too. Maybe they’ll cause as much of a stir as comedian Janey Godley did two years ago.
A perfect day to share this gem again #Trump @JaneyGodley - we salute you. pic.twitter.com/O9xAjtEhVd
— Richard Dhillon (@richarddhillon) July 12, 2018
Getting out the (progressive) vote
In news closer to home, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a $1m-plus campaign – “ACLU Voter” – to mobilize voters in the 2018 midterm elections. According to the ACLU, the campaign will mean its 1.8 million members “will receive a steady drumbeat of voter information, including where and when to register to vote, key election dates, candidate scorecards, details on how races up and down the ticket will impact civil rights, and ways to take action in the 2018 election cycle”.
The effort to encourage members to vote en masse is inspired in part by the National Rifle Association, ACLU national political director Faiz Shakir told BuzzFeed:
We talk about the NRA often here [...] Not because we agree with them, but because they have effectively created an organizational model around the single issue they care deeply about. They make their members and volunteers feel like they have a duty to vote.
... as Democrats raise record amounts
Also encouraging for Democrats is the news that “at least 13” of the party’s candidates for the House of Representatives raised more than $1m in the second quarter of 2018.
Those candidates include progressives Randy “Iron Stache” Bryce, running in Wisconsin, and MJ Hegar, the Texas hopeful whose campaign video, Doors, garnered national attention on its release. (It’s well worth checking out.)
“There is no historical parallel to this class of seven-figure fundraisers. In the second quarter of 2016, only two House challengers raised over $1m without self-funding,” according to Politico. Where’s the money coming from? “The simple answer is huge energy in the Democratic base,” Politico says.
Tune in to Bernie – in association with the Guardian (and others)
Senator Bernie Sanders is hosting a “CEOs v workers” town hall on Monday night, in partnership with Act.tv, the Guardian, NowThis, the Young Turks, the Nation, Free Speech TV, Credo Mobile, Good Jobs Nation and MoveOn.
He will “address the enormous disparity between the wealth of corporate executives and the wages and treatment of the companies’ workers”, joined by workers from Amazon, Disney, McDonald’s, American Airlines and Walmart.
It will be broadcast on Sanders’ YouTube and Facebook pages as well.
What we’re reading
“Thanks in part to the supreme court’s disastrous Citizens United ruling, which removed the caps on political spending by lobbyists, US politics is dominated by billionaires and corporations, buying the candidates and policies they want,” writes George Monbiot.
But while the rich people and companies can’t be outspent, “they can be outmanoeuvred, by recruiting incorruptible people who can speak past the money”, Monbiot says: people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democrat who won in New York City.
- This article was updated on 16 July 2018 to clarify that Randy Bryce is running for Congress in Wisconsin, not Michigan, as we originally said.
