Connect with us

Published

on

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.

Lets say youre a politician in a close race and your opponent suffers a stroke. What do you do?

If you are Mehmet Oz running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, what you do is mock your opponents affliction. In August, the Oz campaign released a list of concessions it would offer to the Democrat John Fetterman in a candidates debate, including:

We will allow John to have all of his notes in front of him along with an earpiece so he can have the answers given to him by his staff, in real time. And: We will pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.

Ozs derision of his opponents medical condition continued right up until Oz lost the race by more than 250,000 votes. Ozs defeat flipped the Pennsylvania seat from Republican to Democrat, dooming GOP hopes of a Senate majority in 2023.

A growing number of Republicans are now pointing their finger at Donald Trump for the partys disappointments in the 2022 elections, with good reason. Trump elevated election denial as an issue and burdened his party with a lot of election-denying candidatesand voters decisively repudiated them.

But not all of Trumps picks were obviously bad. Oz was for years a successful TV pitchman, trusted by millions of Americans for health advice. The first Muslim nominated for a Senate run by a major party, he advanced Republican claims to represent 21st-century America. Oz got himself tangled up between competing positions on abortion, sometimes in consecutive sentences, precisely because he hoped to position himself as moderate on such issues.

But Ozs decision to campaign as a jerk hurt him. When his opponent got sick, Oz could have drawn on his own medical background for compassion and understanding. Before he succumbed to the allure of TV, Oz was an acclaimed doctor whose innovations transformed the treatment of heart disease. He could have reminded voters of his best human qualities rather than displaying his worst.

The choice to do the opposite was his, not Trumps.

Adam Serwer: The cruelty is the point

And Oz was not unique. Many of the unsuccessful Republican candidates in 2022 offered voters weird, extreme, or obnoxious personas. Among the worst was Blake Masters, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. He released photos and campaign videos of himself playing with guns, looking like a sociopath. He lost by nearly five points. Trump endorsed Masters in the end, but Trump wasnt the one who initially selected or funded him. That unsavory distinction belongs to the tech billionaire and Republican donor Peter Thiel, who invested big and early in the campaign of his former university student.Trump-led Republicans have now endured four bad elections in a row.

Performative trolling did not always lead to failure. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis indulged in obnoxious stunts in 2022. He promoted anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists. He used the power of government to punish corporations that dissented from his culture-war policies. He spent $1.5 million of taxpayer money to send asylum seekers to Marthas Vineyard.

But DeSantis was an incumbent executive with a record of accomplishment. Antics intended to enrapture the national Fox News audience could be offset by actions to satisfy his local electorate: restoring the Everglades, raising teacher pay, and reopening public schools early despite COVID risks.

DeSantiss many Republican supporters must now ponder: What happens when and if the governor takes his show on the road? Pragmatic on state concerns, divisive on national issues! plays a little differently in a presidential race than it does at the state level. But the early indications are that hes sticking with divisiveness: A month after his reelection, DeSantis is bidding for the anti-vax vote by promoting extremist allegations from the far fringes that modern vaccines threaten public health.

A generation ago, politicians invested great effort in appearing agreeable: Ronald Reagans warm chuckle, Bill Clintons down-home charm, George W. Bushs smiling affability. By contrast, Donald Trump delighted in name-calling, rudeness, and open disdain. Not even his supporters would have described Trump as an agreeable person. Yet he made it to the White House all the samein part because of this trollish style of politics, which has encouraged others to emulate him.

Ilana E. Strauss: How science explains why some politicians are jerks

Has our hyper-polarized era changed the old rules of politics? James Poniewoziks 2019 book, Audience of One, argues that Trumps ascendancy was the product of a huge shift in media culture. The three big television networks of yore had sought to create the least objectionable program; they aimed to make shows that would offend the fewest viewers. As audiences fractured, however, the marketplace rewarded content that excited ever narrower segments of American society. Reagan and Clinton were replaced by Trump for much the same reason Walter Cronkite was replaced by Sean Hannity.

Its an ingenious theory. But, as Poniewozik acknowledges, democratic politics in a two-party system remains an inescapably broadcast business. Trumps material sold well enough in 2016 to win (with help from FBI Director James Comeys intervention against Hillary Clinton, Russian hackers amplified by the Trump campaign, and the mechanics of the Electoral College). But in 2020, Trump met the political incarnation of the Least Objectionable Program: Joe Biden, who is to politics what Jay Leno was to late-night entertainment.

Trump-led Republicans have now endured four bad elections in a row. In 2018, they lost the House. In 2020, they lost the presidency. In 2021, they lost the Senate. In 2022, they won back the Housebarelybut otherwise failed to score the gains one expects of the opposition party in a midterm. They suffered a net loss of one Senate seat and two governorships. They failed to flip a single chamber in any state legislature. In fact, the Democrats gained control of four: one each in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and both in Michigan.

Plausible theories about why Republicans fared so badly in 2022 abound. The economy? Gas prices fell in the second half of 2022, while the economy continued to grow. Abortion? The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June, and Republican officeholders began musing almost immediately about a national ban, while draconian restrictions began spreading through the states. Attacks on democracy? In contest after contest, Republicans expressed their contempt for free elections, and independent voters responded by rejecting them.America is a huge country full of decent people who are offended by bullying and cruelty.

All of these factors clearly played a role. But dont under-?weight the impact of the performative obnoxiousness that now pervades Republican messaging. Conservatives have built career paths for young people that start on extremist message boards and lead to jobs on Republican campaigns, then jobs in state and federal offices, and then jobs in conservative media.

Former top Trump-administration officials set up a well-funded dark-money group, Citizens for Sanity, that spent millions to post trolling messages on local TV in battleground states, intended to annoy viewers into voting Republican, such as Protect pregnant men from climate discrimination. The effect was just to make the Republicans seem juvenile.

In 2021, thenHouse Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy posted a video of himself reading aloud from Dr. Seuss to protest the Seuss estates withdrawing some works for being racially insensitive (although he took care to read Green Eggs and Ham, not one of the withdrawn books).

Trump himself often seemed to borrow his scripts from a Borscht Belt insult comicfor instance, performing imagined dialogues making fun of his opponents adult children during the 2020 campaign.

This is not a both sides story. Democatic candidates dont try to energize their base by owning the conservatives; thats just not a phrase you hear. The Democratic coalition is bigger and looser than the Republican coalition, and its not clear that Democrats even have an obvious base the way that Republicans do. The people who heeded Representative Jim Clyburns endorsement of Joe Biden in South Carolina do not necessarily have much in common with those who knocked on doors for Senator Elizabeth Warrens presidential campaign. Trying to energize all of the Democratic Partys many different bases with deliberate offensiveness against perceived cultural adversaries would likely fizzle at best, and backfire at worst. On the Republican side, however, the politics of performance can beor seemrewarding, at least in the short run.

This pattern of behavior bids fair to repeat itself in 2024. As I write these words at the beginning of 2023, the conservative world is most excited not by the prospect of big legislative action from a Republican House majority, and not by Trumps declared candidacy for president in 2024 or by DeSantiss as-yet-undeclared one, but by the chance to repeat its 2020 attacks on the personal misconduct of President Bidens son Hunter.

In the summer of 2019, the Trump administration put enormous pressure on the newly elected Zelensky administration in Ukraine to announce some kind of criminal investigation of the Biden family. This first round of Trumps project to manufacture an anti-Biden scandal exploded into Trumps first impeachment.

The failure of round one did not deter the Trump campaign. It tried again in 2020. This time, the scandal project was based on sexually explicit photographs and putatively compromising emails featuring Hunter Biden. The story the Trump campaign told about how it obtained these materials sounded dubious: Hunter Biden himself supposedly delivered his computer to a legally blind repairman in Delaware but never returned to retrieve itso the repairman tracked down Rudy Giuliani and handed over a copy of the hard drive. The repairman had also previously given the laptop itself to the FBI. Far-fetched stories can sometimes prove true, and so might this one.

Whatever the origin of the Hunter Biden materials, the authenticity of at least some of which has been confirmed by reputable media outlets, theres no dispute about their impact on the 2020 election. They flopped.

Pro-Trump Republicans could never accept that their go-to tactic had this time failed. Somebody or something else had to be to blame. They decided that this somebody or something was Twitter, which had briefly blocked links to the initial New York Post story on the laptop and its contents.

So now the new Twitterand Elon Musk allies who have been offered privileged access to the companys internal workingsis trying again to elevate the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, and to allege a cover-up involving the press, tech companies, and the national-security establishment. Its all very exciting to the tiny minority of Americans who closely follow political schemes. And its all pushing conservatives and Republicans back onto the same doomed path they followed in the Trump years: stunts and memes and insults and fabricated controversies in place of practical solutions to the real problems everyday people face. The party has lost contact with the sensibility of mainstream America, a huge country full of decent people who are offended by bullying and cruelty.

Theres talk of some kind of review by the Republican National Committee of what went wrong in 2022. If it happens, it will likely focus on organization, fundraising, and technology. For any political operation, there is always room to improve in these areas. But if the party is to thrive in the post-Trump era, it needs to start with something more basic: at least pretend to be nice.

* Lead image source credits: Chris Graythen / Getty; Ed Jones / AFP / Getty; Drew Angerer / Getty; Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty; Michael M. Santiago / Getty; Brandon Bell / Getty; Win McNamee / Getty; Al Drago / Bloomberg / Getty; Alex Wong / Getty

This article appears in the March 2023 print edition with the headline Party of Trolls. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Continue Reading

Business

Food inflation highest in almost a year – more to come, industry warns

Published

on

By

Food inflation highest in almost a year - more to come, industry warns

Food inflation has hit its highest level in almost a year and could continue to go up, according to an industry body.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported a 2.6% annual lift in food costs during April – the highest level since May last year and up from a 2.4% rate the previous month.

The body said there was a clear risk of further increases ahead due to rising costs, with the sector facing £7bn of tax increases this year due to the budget last October.

Money latest: Can we hide my wife’s redundancy from mortgage provider?

It warned that shoppers risked paying a higher price – but separate industry figures suggested any immediate blows were being cushioned by the effects of a continuing supermarket price war.

Kantar Worldpanel, which tracks trends and prices, said spending on promotions reached its highest level this year at almost 30% of total sales over the four weeks to 20 April.

It said that price cuts, mainly through loyalty cards, helped people to make the most of the Easter holiday with almost 20% of items sold at respective market leaders Tesco and Sainsbury’s on a price match.

More on Inflation

Its measure of wider grocery inflation rose to 3.8%, however.

Wider BRC data showed overall shop price inflation at -0.1% over the 12 months to April, with discounting largely responsible for weaker non-food goods.

But its chief executive, Helen Dickinson, said retailers were “unable to absorb” the surge in costs they were facing.

“The days of shop price deflation look numbered,” she said, as food inflation rose to its highest in 11 months, and non-food deflation eased significantly.

“Everyday essentials including bread, meat, and fish, all increased prices on the month. This comes in the same month retailers face a mountain of new employment costs in the form of higher employer National Insurance Contributions and increased NLW [national living wage],” she added.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Five hacks to beat rising bills

While retail sales growth has proved somewhat resilient this year, it is believed big rises to household bills in April – from things like inflation-busting water, energy and council tax bills – will bite and continue to keep a lid on major purchases.

Also pressing on both consumer and business sentiment is Donald Trump’s trade war – threatening further costs and hits to economic growth ahead.

Read more from Sky News:
UK-US trade talks ‘moving in positive way’, says White House
M&S tells agency workers to stay at home after cyberattack

A further BRC survey, also published on Tuesday, showed more than half of human resources directors expect to reduce hiring due to the government’s planned Employment Rights Bill.

The bill, which proposes protections for millions of workers including guaranteed minimum hours, greater hurdles for sacking new staff and increased sick pay, is currently being debated in parliament.

The BRC said one of the biggest concerns was that guaranteed minimum hours rules would hit part-time roles.

Continue Reading

Business

Inside the Vietnamese factory preparing for the worst since Trump’s tariff threat

Published

on

By

Inside the Vietnamese factory preparing for the worst since Trump's tariff threat

On the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City, factory workers at Dony Garment have been working overtime for weeks.

Ever since Donald Trump announced a whopping 46% trade tariff on Vietnam, they’ve been preparing for the worst.

They’re rushing through orders to clients in three separate states in America.

Sewing machines buzz with the sound of frantic efforts to do whatever they can before Mr Trump’s big decision day. He may have put his “Liberation Day” tariffs on pause for 90 days, but no one in this factory is taking anything for granted.

Staff have been working overtime
Image:
Staff have been working overtime

Workers like Do Thi Anh are feeling the pressure.

“I have two children to raise. If the tariffs are too high, the US will buy fewer things. I’ll earn less money and I won’t be able to support my children either. Luckily here our boss has a good vision,” she tells me.

Do Thi Anh
Image:
Do Thi Anh

That vision was crafted back in 2021. When COVID struck, they started to look at diversifying their market.

Previously they used to export 40% of their garments to America. Now it’s closer to 20%.

The cheery-looking owner of the firm, Pham Quang Anh, tells me with a resilient smile: “We see it as dangerous to depend on one or two markets. So, we had to lose profit and spend on marketing for other markets.”

You asked, we listened, the Trump 100 podcast is continuing every weekday at 6am
Image:
You asked, we listened, the Trump 100 podcast is continuing every weekday at 6am

That foresight could pay off in the months to come. But others are in a far more vulnerable state.

Some of Mr Pham’s colleagues in the industry export all their garments to America. If the 46% tariff is enforced, it could destroy their businesses.

Read more from Sky News:
The world and America have changed irreversibly under Trump

Trump’s first 100 days in 100 words
How Trump’s immigration crackdown has changed lives

Doubts US will start making what Vietnam delivers

Down by the Saigon River, young couples watch on as sunset falls between the glimmering skyscrapers that stand as a testament to Vietnam’s miracle growth.

Cuong works in finance
Image:
Cuong works in finance

Cuong, an affluent-looking man who works in finance, questions the logic and likelihood that America will start making what Vietnam has spent years developing the labour, skills and supply chains to reliably deliver.

“The United States’ GDP is so high. It’s the largest in the world right now. What’s the point in trying to get jobs from developing countries like Vietnam and other Asian nations? It’s unnecessary,” he tells me.

But the Trump administration claims China is using Vietnam to illegally circumvent tariffs, putting “Made in Vietnam” labels on Chinese products.

There’s no easy way to assess that claim. But market watchers believe Vietnam does need to signal its willingness to crack down on so-called “trans-shipments” if it wants to cut a deal with Washington.

👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈

Vietnam can’t afford to alienate China

The US may also demand a major cutback in Chinese manufacturing in Vietnam.

That will be a much harder deal to strike. Vietnam can’t afford to alienate its big brother.

Luke Treloar, head of strategy at KPMG in Vietnam
Image:
Luke Treloar, head of strategy at KPMG in Vietnam

Luke Treloar, head of strategy at KPMG in Vietnam, is however cautiously optimistic.

“If Vietnam goes into these trade talks saying we will be a reliable manufacturer of the core products you need and the core products America wants to sell, the outcome could be good,” he says.

But the key question is just how much influence China will have on Vietnamese negotiators.

Anything above 10-20% tariffs would be intensively challenging

This moment is a huge test of Vietnam’s resilience.

Anything like 46% tariffs would be ruinous. Analysts say 10-20% would be survivable. Anything above, intensely challenging.

But this looming threat is also an opportunity for Vietnam to negotiate and grow. Not, though, without some very testing concessions.

Continue Reading

Politics

US DOJ requests 20-year sentence for Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky

Published

on

By

US DOJ requests 20-year sentence for Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky

US DOJ requests 20-year sentence for Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of the now-defunct cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius, faces a 20-year prison sentence as the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a severe penalty for his fraudulent activity.

The US DOJ on April 28 filed the government’s sentencing memorandum against Mashinsky, recommending a 20-year prison sentence due to his fraudulent actions leading to multibillion-dollar losses by Celsius customers.

The 97-page memo mentioned that Celsius users were unable to access approximately $4.7 billion in crypto assets after the platform halted withdrawals on June 12, 2022.

“The Court should sentence Alexander Mashinsky to twenty years’ imprisonment as just punishment for his years-long campaign of lies and self-dealing that left in its wake billions in losses and thousands of victimized customers,” the DOJ stated.

Mashinsky’s personal benefit was $48 million

In addition to listing massive investor losses resulting from the Celsius fraud, the DOJ mentioned that Mashinsky has personally profited from the fraudulent schemes in his role.

As part of his plea in December 2024, Mashinsky admitted that he was the leader of the criminal activity at Celsius, that his crimes resulted in losses in excess of $550 million, and that he personally benefited more than $48 million, the authority said.

US DOJ requests 20-year sentence for Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky
An excerpt from the government’s sentencing memorandum against Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky. Source: CourtListener

The DOJ emphasized that Mashinsky’s guilty plea showed that his crimes were “not the product of negligence, naivete, or bad luck,” but rather the result of “deliberate, calculated decisions to lie, deceive, and steal in pursuit of personal fortune.”

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

Magazine: Bitcoin $100K hopes on ice, SBF’s mysterious prison move: Hodler’s Digest, April 20 – 26

Continue Reading

Trending