MSNBC host Joy Reid said Wednesday that "there's a great amount of racism and anti-blackness" in the United States, as made evident by the close presidential race, which she called “disappointing.”"I think partly because we knew the red wave was a thing, the red mirage, I should say, we all knew it was coming," Reid told host Rachel Maddow. "In the moment, it’s aggravating. And I think partly, and I said this last night, I do think it’s because we’ve been reporting for five years, Rachel, about Russia … undermining our national security, the impeachment, the racism, the Nazis, all of it and then COVID laying on top of it, [it] felt like a repudiation was coming.”“I think even though we intellectually understand what America is at its base, right?" she said. "That there is a great amount of racism, anti-blackness, anti-wokeness, this idea that political correctness is some scheme to destroy white America, right?”She continued: "We know what this country is, but still part of you, I think part of your heart says, you know what, maybe the country’s going to pay off all of this pain, the children that were stolen with a repudiation. And as the night wore on and I realized and it sunk in, okay, that’s not happening, we are still who we thought, unfortunately.”“It’s disappointing. And I emerged from this disappointed,” she added.Reid's diagnosis of the election is contradicted by exit poll figures, which show that Trump garnered a larger share of the non-white vote than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960. Trump expanded his margins relative to 2016 with black males and females, latino males and females, and gay voters; the only demographic in which he lost voters was white males.Reid’s comments came late Wednesday after she had landed in hot water earlier in the day for calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “Uncle Clarence,” repurposing the “Uncle Tom” slur in reference to the justice.With votes still being counted in Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia, Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads Trump in electoral votes 264-214, needing only Nevada’s six electoral votes to capture the presidency.Democrats have been disappointed as Trump has put up a stronger-than-expected fight, compared to what polls had shown ahead of Election Day. FiveThirtyEight, a website run by polling analyst Nate Silver, had heavily favored Biden, giving Trump just a 1-in-10 chance of holding the presidency. The president would need a bigger-than-normal polling error in his favor to win, Silver explained ahead of Election Day, “but the real possibility that polls are underestimating Trump’s support is why he still has a path to win reelection."

WASHINGTON -- If President Donald Trump loses his bid for reelection, as looked increasingly likely Wednesday, it would be the first defeat of an incumbent president in 28 years. But one thing seemed certain: Win or lose, he will not go quietly away.Trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump spent the day trying to discredit the election based on invented fraud claims, hoping either to hang onto power or explain away a loss. He could find a narrow path to reelection among states still counting, but he has made clear that he would not shrink from the scene should he lose.Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York TimesAt the very least, he has 76 days left in office to use his power as he sees fit and to seek revenge on some of his perceived adversaries. Angry at a defeat, he may fire or sideline a variety of senior officials who failed to carry out his wishes as he saw it, including Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases specialist in the middle of a pandemic.And if he is forced to vacate the White House on Jan. 20, Trump is likely to prove more resilient than expected and almost surely will remain a powerful and disruptive force in American life. He received at least 68 million votes, or 5 million more votes than he did in 2016 and commanded about 48% of the popular vote, meaning he retained the support of nearly half of the public despite four years of scandal, setbacks, impeachment and the brutal coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 233,000 Americans.That gives him a power base to play a role that other defeated one-term presidents like Jimmy Carter and George Bush have not played. Trump has long toyed with starting his own television network to compete with Fox News, and in private lately he has broached the idea of running again in 2024, although he would be 78 by then. Even if his own days as a candidate are over, his 88-million-strong Twitter following gives him a bullhorn to be an influential voice on the right, potentially making him a kingmaker among rising Republicans."If anything is clear from the election results, it is that the president has a huge following, and he doesn't intend to exit the stage anytime soon," said former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, one of the few Republican officeholders to break with Trump over the past four years.That following may yet enable Trump to eke out a second term and four years to try to rebuild the economy and reshape the Republican Party in his image. But even from out of office, he could try to pressure Republican senators who preserved their majority to resist Biden at every turn, forcing them to choose between conciliation or crossing his political base.Until a new generation of Republicans steps forward, Trump could position himself as the de facto leader of the party, wielding an extraordinary database of information about his supporters that future candidates would love to rent or otherwise access. Allies imagined other Republicans making a pilgrimage to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, seeking his blessing."It isn't like his Twitter account or his ability to control a news cycle will stop," said Brad Parscale, the president's first campaign manager in this election cycle. "President Trump also has the largest amount of data ever collected by a politician. This will impact races and policies for years to come."Exit polls showed that regardless of prominent Republican defectors like Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and the Never Trumpers of the Lincoln Project, Trump enjoyed strong support within his own party, winning 93% of Republican voters. He also did somewhat better with Black voters (12%) and Hispanic voters (32%) than he did four years ago despite his often racist rhetoric. And after his high-energy blitz across battleground states, late-deciding voters broke his way.Some of Trump's arguments carried considerable weight with members of his party. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the related economic toll, 41% of voters said they were doing better than when he took office, compared with only 20% who described themselves as worse off. Adopting his priorities, 35% of voters named the economy as the most important issue, twice as many who cited the pandemic. Fully 49% said the economy was good or excellent, and 48% approved of his government's handling of the virus."If he is defeated, the president will retain the undying loyalty of the party's voters and the new voters he brought into the party," said Sam Nunberg, who was a strategist on Trump's 2016 campaign. "President Trump will remain a hero within the Republican electorate. The winner of the 2024 Republican presidential primary will either be President Trump or the candidate who most closely resembles him."Not all Republicans share that view. While Trump will no doubt continue to speak out and assert himself on the public stage, they said the party would be happy to try to move beyond him if he loses and he would be remembered as an aberration."There will never be another Trump," said former Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida. "Copycats will fail. He will gradually fade, but the scars from this tumultuous period in American history will never disappear."Indeed, Trump failed to reproduce his fluky 2016 success when he secured an Electoral College victory even while losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. For all of the tools of incumbency, he failed to pick up a single state that he did not win last time, and as of Wednesday, he had lost two or three, with a couple of others still on the edge.Other presidents evicted after a single term or less -- like Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980 and Bush in 1992 -- tended to fade back into the political shadows. Ford briefly contemplated a comeback, Carter occasionally criticized his successors, and Bush campaigned for his sons, but none of them remained major political forces within their party for long. Politically, at least, each of them was seen to various degrees as a spent force.The last defeated president to try to play a power-broker role after leaving office was Herbert Hoover, who positioned himself to run again after his loss in 1932 to Franklin D. Roosevelt and became an outspoken leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. While he wielded significant influence for years, it did not regain him the nomination nor change the verdict of history.For Trump, who cares about "winning, winning, winning" more than almost anything, being known as a loser would be intolerable. On Election Day, during a visit to his campaign headquarters, he mused aloud about that. "Winning is easy," he told reporters and staff members. "Losing is never easy. Not for me it's not."To avoid such a fate, the president sought Wednesday to convince supporters that the election was being stolen simply because state and local authorities were counting legally cast ballots. The fact that it was not true evidently mattered little to him. He was setting up a narrative to justify legal challenges that even Republican lawyers called groundless and, should those fail, to set himself up as a martyr who was not repudiated by the voters but somehow robbed by unseen nefarious forces.Trump himself has a long history on the other end of fraud allegations. His sister asserted that he got someone else to take his college-entrance exam. The daughters of a Queens, New York, foot doctor claimed that their late father gave Trump a diagnosis of bone spurs to protect him from the draft for the Vietnam War as a favor to Fred Trump, his father. And his business dealings have often ensnared him in allegations and law suits.The younger Trump paid $25 million to students of his Trump University to settle fraud accusations. His charitable foundation was shut down after authorities found a "shocking pattern of illegality." He participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, according to a New York Times investigation. And Michael Cohen, his estranged lawyer and fixer, wrote in a recent book that he rigged two online polls on Trump's behalf.The president has survived all of that and a string of bankruptcies and other failures through a life of celebrity and populist appeals that gave him the aura of a winner that he nurtured. From his time in real estate and reality television, he has been part of the country's pop culture firmament for 30 years, a recurring figure in movies, television shows and his own books.He has been, for millions, a symbol of gold-gilded aspiration and wealth. He was the star of a popular television series for 14 seasons, one that introduced him to the country long before he ran for office. And once he did, his boisterous rallies bonded his supporters to him in a way that underscored how much of a cultural phenomenon he is.For months, as his chances of being reelected dwindled, Trump told advisers -- sometimes joking, sometimes not -- that should he lose he would promptly announce that he was running again in 2024. Two advisers said they anticipate he will make good on that declaration if his legal challenges fail and is defeated, a move that if nothing else would allow him to raise money to finance the rallies that sustain him.When he appeared likely to lose his original campaign in 2016, he and some of his family members talked about starting a media property, loosely conceived of as "Trump TV." Some of those discussions have continued into this year, according to people familiar with them."There's no question that he is one of the greatest polarizing political figures of modern history," said Tony Fabrizio, one of Trump's pollsters. "His supporters adore him, and his opponents revile him. There is no middle ground on Donald Trump."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Disappointed Democrats drove Wednesday toward extending their control of the House for two more years but with a potentially shrunken majority as they lost at least seven incumbents and failed to oust any Republican lawmakers in initial returns. After decades of trying, Republicans defeated 15-term Rep. Collin Peterson from a rural Minnesota district that backed President Donald Trump in 2016 by 31 percentage points, Trump's biggest margin in any Democratic-held district. Peterson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, opposed Trump's impeachment and is one of the House's most conservative Democrats.

All eyes are on the Senate this Election Day as Republicans look to maintain control of the legislative body where they currently hold a 53-seat majority.Shortly after polls closed on Tuesday, the Associated Press had called 12 Senate races: seven in favor of Democrats and five in favor of Republicans, including the reelection of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.). McConnell held off Democratic challenger Amy McGrath, a retired Marine combat pilot, to win a seventh term in the Senate.Republican Bill Hagerty has won an open seat in Tennessee, while Shelley Moore Capito becomes the first Republican in West Virginia to be reelected to the Senate in more than a century, according to the AP. Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.) are projected to win as well.In the House, the AP has called 22 races in favor of Democrats and 22 in favor of Republicans.Twenty-three Republican-controlled seats and 12 Democrat-controlled seats are up for election: seven of the posts, all of which are currently Republican-held, have been rated a “toss-up” by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan outlet dedicated to analyzing and predicting elections.The “toss-up” seats are those held by Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (Ga.), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Susan Collins (Maine), and Steve Daines (Mont.). Elections featuring two Republican incumbents — Martha McSally (Ariz.) and Cory Gardner (Colo.) — are listed as leaning Democrat.Democrats would need a net gain of three seats to control the Senate in the event that Joe Biden wins, as the vice president can act as a tie-breaker on Senate votes. Should Trump and Vice President Mike Pence win, Democrats would need a net gain of four seats to wrest control from the current Republican majority. There are two independent senators who caucus with Democrats.McConnell warned recently that Democrats had a “50-50” chance of winning a majority in the Senate.“It’s a 50-50 proposition,” McConnell said. “We have a lot of exposure. This is a huge Republican class….There are dogfights all over the country.”In Georgia, both Senate seats are up for grabs and may be subject to a runoff race held on January 5 if a candidate cannot pass 50 percent of the vote by Election Day. If one or both Georgia seats go into a runoff, that could leave the fate of the Senate unknown for weeks after November 3.Graham is neck and neck with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison, a marked change from earlier this year when the South Carolina senator enjoyed a double-digit lead. The Democrat smashed Senate fundraising records by hauling in $57 million during the third quarter — twice as much as Graham has raised in the previous six quarters combined.Graham has breezed to victory by double-digit margins in each of his reelection races since he first won his seat in 2002. In 2016, President Trump won the state by more than 14 points. But Harrison has proven a formidable opponent to Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been scorned by Democratic donors for leading the push to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court ahead of Election Day. If elected, Harrison would be the first Democratic senator to represent South Carolina in over two decades. The race between Tillis and Democratic opponent Cal Cunningham in North Carolina has also attracted a great deal of national attention. In early October it was revealed that Cunningham, who had run on a campaign of "truth" and "honor," had allegedly had an extramarital relationship. The U.S. Army Reserve is investigating Cunningham, who is a Reserve officer, over reports that he had an affair this year with Arlene Guzman Todd, whose husband has served in the Army.However, the affair allegations don't seem to have impacted Cunningham much: a Friday poll from Marist College found the Democrat up by 10 points, 53 percent to 43 percent. A New York Times poll showed him up by three points, 46 percent to 43 percent.In Iowa, Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield leads Ernst by three points, according to a recent Des Moines Register poll. While both Iowa senators are Republicans, Ernst’s seat was previously held by a Democrat, Tom Harkin, who held his seat for 30 years before his retirement in 2014. Ernst is a Trump ally in a state where support for the president has waned since 2016.In Maine, Collins is in danger of losing the seat she has held since 1997 to challenger Sara Gideon after mounting criticism for her decision to support the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and to vote to acquit President Trump in his Senate impeachment trial earlier this year. Gideon, who serves as state House speaker, leads in the polls. In Montana, Daines, the incumbent, will take on Steve Bullock, the outgoing governor of Montana. Similarly, in Colorado, Republican incumbent Gardner is up against the state's former governor, John Hickenlooper, who also made a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. However, Michigan's Democrat-held seat may be in danger of flipping, as incumbent Senator Gary Peters holds a single-digit lead over Republican Army veteran John James. The incumbent's slight lead has largely remained within the margin of error in recent polls. RealClearPolitics rates the race a "toss-up."In the House, Democrats will look to maintain or grow their majority, which currently stands at 232 seats to Republicans’ 198. The Cook Political Report lists 25 House seat races as “toss-up,” 16 of which are Republican seats in danger of flipping.While six of those seats are open, the rest are currently held by Republicans: Representatives David Schweikert (Ariz.), Mike Garcia (Calif.), Rodney Davis (Ill.), Jim Hagedorn (Minn.), Ann Wagner (Mo.), Don Bacon (Neb.), Jeff Van Drew (N.J.), John Katko (N.Y.), Steve Chabot (Ohio), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Chip Roy (Texas).Assuming there are no vacancies and no members from a third party, Democrats or Republicans need a minimum of 218 seats to ensure control of the House of Representatives. As Democrats currently hold 232 seats, they would need a net loss no greater than 15 seats to remain in control. Republicans have 198 seats.

In July 2019, all eyes were on Jeffrey Epstein as he entered a Manhattan federal courtroom in prison blues and orange sneakers. The reclusive multimillionaire, used to luxurious jaunts around the globe with powerful friends, appeared disheveled as he was charged with sexually abusing dozens of underage girls.Police had arrested the 66-year-old financier two days before, and a packed crowd of journalists, lawyers, and victims now watched him plead not guilty to child sex-trafficking charges—more than a decade after he avoided serious prison time for molesting scores of teenage victims at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.But while the press focused on Epstein, one high-profile spectator apparently went unnoticed—at least, unnoticed by most. Two eyewitnesses say former White House lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler was at Epstein’s court appearance that day in his support, The Daily Beast has learned.Epstein Victim Claims He Showed Her Off to Trump When She Was 14Two people who separately attended the hearing said Ruemmler—who served as White House counsel during the Clinton and Obama administrations—had a “professional relationship” with Epstein and was seated behind his defense team.At the time, Ruemmler was a partner at Latham & Watkins and global co-chair of the law firm’s white-collar defense and investigations practice.“Epstein knew her,” one source with knowledge told The Daily Beast of her appearance in court in July 2019. “He had a professional relationship with her. I think he may have reached out to her to be involved in the case.” The source said Ruemmler’s appearance was “probably just a show of support.”“She worked for a large, prominent firm,” the person said. “There was some exploration of her joining the [defense] team, but it wasn’t going to happen.”Ruemmler did not return messages seeking comment. A spokeswoman for Latham & Watkins said neither the law firm nor Ruemmler represented Epstein; she did not return follow-up emails from The Daily Beast.Martin Weinberg, a lawyer for Epstein since 2008, said Ruemmler didn’t represent the financier and wasn’t a member of the defense team led by himself and Reid Weingarten. “I can state with certainty that Kathy Ruemmler did not represent Mr. Epstein and did not appear at any hearing at any time on his behalf,” Weinberg said in an email.Ruemmler has previously represented the Clinton Foundation and George Nader, a key witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation who was sentenced to 10 years behind bars for child sex trafficking.She left Latham & Watkins in April to become global head of regulatory affairs at Goldman Sachs. After the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month, Fox News reported Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden possibly put Ruemmler on the short list of nominees to fill a future SCOTUS seat.Indeed, Ruemmler and other Obama-era officials hosted a D.C. event for Biden last November as his fundraising waned before the primaries. According to the Washington Examiner, Ruemmler told the crowd the 2020 election came down to “character,” and “there is no one who has the strength and the quality of character, no one like Joe Biden.”Ruemmler has long traveled the revolving door between public service and Latham & Watkins, whose phalanx of former high-ranking government lawyers inspired a Wall Street Journal blog to call the firm “the DOJ’s home away from home.”At Latham, Ruemmler defended companies in high-stakes litigation, led internal probes into misconduct, and averted indictments through Department of Justice “declinations,” or decisions not to prosecute which are similar to non-prosecution agreements. (She did, however, secure a non-prosecution agreement for Microsoft Hungary, which last year paid $8.7 million in penalties to resolve a foreign bribery case.)Jeffrey Epstein Visited Clinton White House Multiple Times in Early ’90sHer career began with a clerkship under a federal appeals judge, followed by a job at litigation boutique Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington, D.C., before she was hired as a lawyer for President Clinton from 2000 to 2001.She then moved to the Department of Justice, where she made headlines as a lead prosecutor in the Enron financial fraud trial. (Weingarten, one of Epstein’s D.C.-based legal eagles, faced off with Ruemmler when he represented Richard Causey, Enron’s former chief accounting officer who pleaded guilty to securities fraud.)In 2007, she left government for Latham & Watkins. She joined the Obama administration two years later as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ. Ruemmler replaced her mentor, Bob Bauer, as White House counsel in 2011 and became one of President Obama’s closest confidantes. When she announced her resignation in 2014, Obama said, “Kathy has become one of my most trusted advisers over the past few years. I deeply value her smarts, her judgment, and her wit—but most importantly her uncanny ability to see around the corners that nobody else anticipates.”Later asked in an interview how she’d like to be remembered, Ruemmler paraphrased Bauer: “She told it like it was; she never put even light icing on the cake.”After the Obama White House, Ruemmler returned to Latham but was soon in the running to replace Attorney General Eric Holder. But she withdrew her name from consideration—reportedly because she feared her closeness to Obama, and her handling of matters including the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and the Secret Service prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, would make for a difficult confirmation process.“She felt very strongly that it would not serve the department well, and that it certainly wouldn’t serve the president well, to have the confirmation process be a series of partisan attacks on the president rather than a reasoned approach to what the Department of Justice really needs right now,” one source told Politico.Under the Clinton administration, Ruemmler defended the White House in congressional investigations and “independent counsel issues, including those related to former Pentagon worker Linda Tripp, who famously taped colleague Monica Lewinsky,” according to one Washington Post profile on Enron prosecutors.But Ruemmler’s ties to the Clintons didn’t end with Bill's presidency. She’s mentioned in emails published on WikiLeaks, including those belonging to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair John Podesta. One email attachment listed Ruemmler under a March 2016 list of possible campaign “vetters,” while several other emails indicated Ruemmler was a participant in more than one “Biweekly Hill Strategy Call.”In August 2016, Ruemmler was identified as “the Clinton Foundation’s principal lawyer” when Reuters, as well as the New York Post, reported the organization hired a security firm in the wake of suspected hacking. It’s unclear how long she represented the Clinton family charity or what other work she’s done for them.Ruemmler also recently defended the Democratic National Committee and Perkins Coie—the law firm representing Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign—in a defamation suit filed by Carter Page, a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump.Page claimed the parties developed the Steele dossier, which was “replete with falsehoods about numerous individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” leading the feds to “wrongfully and covertly” surveil Page as an agent of Russia. (A federal judge in Chicago tossed Page’s suit in August, saying the court lacked jurisdiction; Page filed a similar suit in Oklahoma in 2018 but it was dismissed for the same reason.)Ruemmler’s alleged ties to Epstein raise further questions on the financier’s high-powered connections, including Bill Clinton. Clinton’s name has surfaced repeatedly in court filings related to Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and he took international trips with the perverted pair on Epstein’s private jet. The former president denies knowing anything about Epstein’s abuse of young women and girls and denies one victim’s claim that he visited Epstein’s Virgin Islands compound.Several Clinton staffers are listed in Epstein’s infamous rolodex, including Cheryl Mills, who was deputy White House counsel for Clinton during his 1999 impeachment trial. Mills was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential run and chief of staff when Clinton became Secretary of State. Along with Podesta, Mills oversaw Clinton’s search for a running mate in 2016 and was included in emails with Ruemmler.In years past, both Epstein and Maxwell donated thousands to the Clinton Foundation and “Clinton Library.” When Epstein’s lawyers secretly negotiated a plea deal for his abuse of minors in Florida in 2007, they plugged his friendship with former President Clinton and claimed he helped to create the Clinton Global Initiative.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

When two prominent Georgia Republicans decided to run for the same U.S. Senate seat this year, Republicans didn’t expect a kind, gentle contest.But many also didn’t anticipate what the race ultimately became: a bitterly personal, scorched-earth brawl between Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins that has frayed friendships, scrambled delicate political loyalties in Georgia, and split high-profile Washington Republicans, including President Donald Trump himself. Even worse for the Georgia GOP, the infighting has potentially cleared a path for a Democrat to beat them both.The two have attacked each other on every possible front. Loeffler has painted Collins as a self-interested swamp creature who secretly loves liberals and is squishy on the things conservatives care about. Collins has done the exact same thing, adding in a dash of corruption, owing to revelations of Loeffler’s stock sell-offs around private COVID-19 briefings.Collins’ friendships with Democratic lawmakers have been an issue. Loeffler’s ownership of an Andy Warhol print of Mao Zedong has been an issue. Each has sought to outdo each other in professing their love and loyalty to Trump. And each has accused the other of being a secret ally of Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee turned U.S. Senator from Utah, and the sole Republican vote to convict Trump during his impeachment trial.Amid all the intra-party sniping, Collins and Loeffler, and the various deep-pocketed outside groups backing their respective candidacies, have largely ignored the Democrat in the race, Raphael Warnock. That’s left him with months to define himself for voters free from the sort of scorched-earth campaigning on the other side of the aisle. And it’s made Warnock not just a contender but, for some political prognosticators, the outright favorite to win the seat.The GOP has seen many nasty primaries before and considered them a normal, even healthy, part of the process. But the structure of this Georgia contest has changed the usual calculus. Loeffler and Collins aren’t only running against each other: they’re just two of two dozen candidates competing in the so-called “jungle primary,” where the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to a January runoff election if no candidate cracks 50 percent on Nov. 3.Once upon a time, Republicans thought that both their candidates could be strong enough to nab the top two spots amid a divided Democratic field, ensuring the seat remains in GOP hands no matter what. But Democrats have consolidated around Warnock, a reverend and activist, as their preferred candidate in the race.The effect has been dramatic, according to public polling of the race. Just three months ago, Monmouth University’s poll found Loeffler and Collins neck-and-neck, with Warnock at 9 percent, a distant third. But on Wednesday, Monmouth found a seismic shift: Warnock had jumped to 41 percent, with Loeffler at 21 percent and Collins at 18 percent.It’s universally accepted now that only one Republican will make it into the runoff. And there’s growing concern within the party that whoever does may be too defined by their race-to-the-right bloodbath in the jungle primary to credibly appeal to the political center of this purple state. This may especially be the case for Loeffler, whose heavily self-funded campaign has blanketed airwaves with ads touting her supposedly hard-right politics. Last month, she ran an ad claiming she was more conservative than Attila the Hun, the bloodthirsty fourth century European warchief known less for his conservative ideals and more as the “scourge of all lands,” as a contemporary historian put it.“Loeffler’s ads to win this primary within the special have defined her in a way that will be hard to walk back in two months,” said one Georgia Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the race candidly.“People will remember the Attila the Hun ads,” the Republican continued. “Transitioning to ‘Atlanta businessperson who will help rebuild the economy’ becomes a lot harder, because Collins hasn’t had nearly as much money, he hasn’t defined himself into a corner.”Pro-Kelly Loeffler Super PAC Bankrolled by Her HusbandJason Shepherd, the chairman of the GOP in Cobb County—a bastion of Republican votes in the state—is, like many party officials, publicly neutral on the race, and told The Daily Beast he likes both Loeffler and Collins. “It’s like any kind of inter-party fight, it’s becoming nasty on both sides,” Shepherd said. “There is a lot of time to heal.”Republicans in Washington generally agree with this assessment, and believe that, like in times past, the party will ultimately unify when faced with a binary choice versus a Democrat.For other prominent Georgia Republicans, however, this race has been too brutal for there to be a prospect of healing. Debbie Dooley, who co-founded the Atlanta Tea Party, is an outspoken Collins supporter, and frames the race as a choice between the conservative grassroots, represented by her candidate, and the corrupt Republican elite, represented by Loeffler.Anyone who thinks that there’ll be an easy consolidation in Georgia after Nov. 3, said Dooley, is “smoking crack.”“I’m a lifelong Republican activist since 1976, and I just cannot support Kelly Loeffler. I’ll have the red flu and sit at home if she’s the nominee,” she said. “If you’re voting with lesser of two evils, you’re still voting for evil.”That sort of intense intra-party acrimony has split Georgia Republicans just as Democrats captured enough momentum to give them a shot at their first U.S. Senate victory in the state in 20 years. This week, political forecasters at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics moved both U.S. Senate contests from “lean Republican” to “toss up.”A relative political unknown outside of Georgia, Warnock’s rise in the polls has produced a steady stream of cash and a string of high-profile endorsements, including famous Georgia politicians such as former president Jimmy Carter, the late Rep. John Lewis, and Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic leader in the state house of representatives who narrowly lost a gubernatorial election in 2018.After posting modest fundraising totals for much of the year, the Democratic small-dollar donation engine has revved up for Warnock: in the first two weeks of October alone, he raised $4.6 million dollars, bringing him to nearly $22 million for the cycle, according to federal campaign finance reports.“There’s no doubt Warnock has benefited from raising big bucks, having the luxury of telling his story and having no one lay a glove on him,” said Brian Robinson, a longtime GOP strategist for Georgia politicians. “It has given him an artificially high favorability rating.”What gives some Georgia Republicans hope is that the stakes of the runoff could be so dramatic that all Republicans would have to consolidate behind whichever candidate ends up in the runoff. That’s because control of the Senate could come down to Georgia: if neither party has a clear majority after Nov. 3, Georgia’s two Senate races—both likely to head to runoffs scheduled for January 5—would decide control of the chamber.“Republicans will be motivated to turn back out for either candidate in January because so much is on the line,” said Robinson. “There will be a reset the day after the election. There has to be.” He also warned that the eventual winner should immediately begin redefining themselves to appeal to a broader electorate—a process that “must be accompanied by outside Republican groups beginning to pour molten lava on Warnock and begin to chip away at his favorability ratings,” he said.The outside cavalry will come, even if top GOP groups in Washington have spent the last year torching Collins. But a post-Nov. 3 reset for either candidate could be hard. The Attila ads are one thing. But each has courted support from the fringe: Loeffler was endorsed this month by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a likely congressmember-to-be from Georgia whose violent rhetoric and QAnon flirtations have made her radioactive in GOP circles from Georgia to D.C. The two appeared together at a rally this month by riding onto a suburban lawn in a military-style Humvee.Always a staunch conservative during his time in the U.S. House, Collins, meanwhile, all but celebrated the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month as a win for the anti-abortion cause, and has broadcast his endorsements from open QAnon supporters.The right turn is particularly ironic for Loeffler, whose appointment to the seat by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp in late 2019 was seen as a sign that the party wanted to compete in an increasingly diverse, purple Georgia. The owner of Atlanta’s pro women’s basketball team and a fixture in wealthy, moderate Republican circles, Loeffler was not intended to run as a hard-right fire-breather.Or, as the Collins campaign put it, “she was a quiet little corporate liberal who was fine with flag protests and diversity slogans until she fell behind in her Senate race. Now she’s trying to be Attila the Hun.”What Loeffler did indisputably bring to the table was money. Gobs of it. When Kemp appointed her to the seat, she immediately became the Senate’s wealthiest member. Loeffler initially said she would put as much as $20 million of her own funds into her reelection contest. It turned out that wasn’t enough; as of mid-October, Loeffler had lent her campaign $23 million. Her husband, New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey Sprecher, dumped another $5.5 million into a super PAC devoted solely to her reelection.But their personal fortune, seen as an obvious political asset when Loeffler was appointed to the seat, also became a major liability. In March, The Daily Beast reported that she and Sprecher had sold of millions of dollars in stock in the wake of a closed-door Senate briefing on the coronavirus. The FBI and Senate ethics officials both investigated, but did not determine that she had violated laws barring federal officeholders from trading on non-public information.The scandal nonetheless dogged Loeffler’s campaign, as both Collins and Warnock accused her of profiteering off of the pandemic and resulting economic turmoil. A pro-Collins outside group, Georgia’s Not For Sale, sustained the line of attack throughout the campaign.The Collins-Loeffler blood feud has put their mutual lodestar, Trump, in a tough position. The president has dutifully backed up the new senator who has hugged him tightly and suggested he should win multiple Nobel Peace Prizes. But Trump also has a longstanding affinity for Collins, his chief defender during the House impeachment inquiry.It’s unclear which candidate has an edge among the hardcore GOP base, but if the Monmouth poll released on Wednesday is any indication, it could be Loeffler. Asked which candidate is “more supportive” of the president, respondents said Loeffler, by a nearly three-to-one margin.But many believe that there are quiet Collins supporters who don’t want to publicly broadcast their support for him so as not to run afoul of Kemp and the GOP establishment. “Reticence about getting on the other side of the governor has frozen a lot of fundraising for Collins,” the anonymous Georgia Republican told The Daily Beast.During a Trump rally in Macon, Georgia, two weeks ago, both Collins and Loeffler were present. The president praised them both publicly from the stage—and the reaction was telling, for close observers of the race: Loeffler got enthusiastic applause from the crowd when Trump mentioned her, but Collins got an unmistakable roar from the crowd. Shepherd, the Cobb County GOP chair, said he turned to a friend after hearing the responses. “I said, ‘uh oh,’” he told The Daily Beast.“Boy, am I in a lousy position,” sighed an exasperated Trump at the rally. “I love ‘em both.” But he suggested there could be at least one person who comes out ahead in this nasty feud.“You know who the biggest winner is gonna be? Trump,” he said. “Everybody who votes for both is gonna vote for me.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Glenn Greenwald on Thursday announced that he had resigned from The Intercept—the digital outlet he founded in 2013 with fellow journalists Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, and with funding from First Look Media—claiming “repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity” at the publication. In response, the outlet disputed his claims of censorship and suggested his exit was essentially “a grown man throwing a tantrum.”In a post published to Substack, the long-time reporter claimed that “The final, precipitating cause” of his exit was that “The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.”He continued: “The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.”The long-time writer, whose reporting on the NSA’s surveillance operations helped The Guardian win a Pulitzer Prize in 2014, noted that he will publish the allegedly censored article in full on his Substack page.The Intercept’s editor in chief Betsy Klein responded in a scathing statement that “Greenwald’s decision to resign from The Intercept stems from a fundamental disagreement over the role of editors in the production of journalism and the nature of censorship. Glenn demands the absolute right to determine what he will publish. He believes that anyone who disagrees with him is corrupt, and anyone who presumes to edit his words is a censor. Thus the preposterous charge that The Intercept’s editors and reporters, with the lone noble exception of Glenn Greenwald, have betrayed our mission to engage in fearless investigative journalism because we have been seduced by the lure of a Joe Biden presidency. A brief glance at the stories The Intercept has published on Joe Biden will suffice to refute those claims.”She continued: “The narrative he presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies—all of them designed to make him appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum. It would take too long to point them all out here, but we intend to correct the record in time. For now, it is important to make clear that our goal in editing his work was to ensure that it would be accurate and fair. While he accuses us of political bias, it was he who was attempting to recycle a political campaign’s—the Trump campaign’s—dubious claims and launder them as journalism.”Klein concluded: “We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years. It is Glenn who has strayed from his original journalism roots, not the Intercept.”Prior to the Trump presidency, Greenwald’s reporting and commentary was influential on the left—especially among civil-liberties and anti-war groups—but since 2016, his frequent Fox News appearances and increasingly Fox-friendly columns have been a source of tension at The Intercept. In recent years, Greenwald’s view of Russian interference in the U.S. election mirrored that of pro-Trump Republicans, leading to an increased presence on Fox News—especially on Tucker Carlson’s primetime program—as a non-conservative skeptic of the scandals that led to President Trump’s impeachment and as a critic of liberal “resistance” politics.“The Intercept published some of the most credulous and false affirmations of maximalist Russiagate madness, and, horrifyingly, took the lead in falsely branding the Hunter Biden archive as ‘Russian disinformation’ by mindlessly and uncritically citing—of all things—a letter by former CIA officials that contained this baseless insinuation,” he wrote in his resignation announcement.Greenwald’s appeared to hint at his criticism of his own outlet over coverage of the Hunter Biden emails during an Oct. 21 appearance on Carlson’s show, in which he insisted that editors at many publications were outright ordering their reporters to lay off the story.“There are newsrooms all throughout New York and Washington, D.C., where top editors are explicitly saying they do not want this story investigated and they are being clear that the reason they don't want to investigate it is because they think even if there is corruption that's exposed here,” Greenwald claimed. “In their view, Trump is worse and therefore it would be malfeasance on the part of the media to report corruption on the part of Biden when Trump is so much more corrupt.”“If what they are saying is, they see their role as journalists not as informing the public to let the public decide which candidate is better and which is worse, they see journalism, the function of it is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden,” he added.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Ex-Trump adviser ridiculed TV anchor as ‘a television reporter who wants answers that last 30 seconds’

There have been few high-profile Republican politicians more publicly and slavishly devoted to President Trump over the last few years than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Words like "toady" and "lapdog" have frequently been used to describe the senator's subservience. Apparently that near-total fealty hasn't been enough for Graham to earn a little loyalty in return.The Trumpiest corners of the conservative ecosphere have made it plain in recent weeks that they're ready to abandon Graham — who is locked in a tight re-election race with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison — even if it means losing his Senate seat. "I don't know why anyone in the great state of South Carolina would ever vote for Lindsey Graham. It's just outrageous," Fox Business host Lou Dobbs said last week."It's about time" for Graham to be defeated, added a writer at the right-wing American Greatness website.Graham has never been particularly popular among hardcore conservatives, but it is still shocking to see them turn on a fellow Republican candidate in a close general election race. For right-wing activists, the senator's problem is that he is only about 97 percent steadfast in serving Trump's wishes, instead of a full 100 percent. Dobbs, for example, pointed out that Graham — in his role as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — had failed to pursue evidence of the fake "Obamagate" scandal that Trump has tried — and failed — to get going. It's the same reason Trump has talked about getting rid of FBI Director Christopher Wray after the election."He's done absolutely nothing to investigate Obamagate except to tell everyone, 'Stay tuned,' time and time again. Stay tuned," Dobbs said. "Senator Graham needs to be tuned out in South Carolina."The rhetoric could endanger Graham's campaign: If even a small portion of South Carolina conservatives decide to withhold their support, he could lose his seat. Trump could possibly discourage the attacks on Graham if he wanted to, but so far, he hasn't. One has to wonder if the president had Graham in mind last week when he told GOP donors there were some Republican senators he just couldn't support for re-election."There are a couple senators I can't really get involved in," Trump reportedly said. "I just can't do it. You lose your soul if you do. I can't help some of them. I don't want to help some of them."Trump's worried about his soul? This is the same man who endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate back in 2017 while Moore was under a cloud of allegations of pursuing relationships with teen girls when he was in his 30s. More recently, Trump endorsed QAnon conspiracy devotee Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling her a "future Republican star." It's difficult to determine the boundaries of Trump's conscience.But Trump's silence on Graham — and his willingness to savage other GOP candidates of dubious loyalty, like Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) — suggests the president either doesn't understand or doesn't care how important a GOP-controlled Senate might be to governing in his own possible second term in office.Republicans in the Senate have already saved Trump from conviction on impeachment charges; the president presumably liked having that security blanket. If Trump should win re-election and Democrats take the Senate, though, he will probably face more investigations and scrutiny of both his personal affairs and his operation of government. His biggest achievement, stacking the judiciary with conservative judges, would probably come to a halt. Trump wouldn't be totally powerless in such a scenario — he could speed up the pace of deregulation and continue to misuse the Justice Department — but his life would probably be a lot more difficult.Other presidents have recognized that their power depends on their relationships with the House and Senate, of course, which is why they usually grin and bear it when taking criticism from elected members of their party. Usually, they see the bigger picture of exercising power effectively, and they know not to take it personally if a senator or member of congress expresses a bit of independence. But Trump has shown little regard for the legislative branch of government, and there isn't evidence he cares about much beyond his own ego and well-being.Thus, it seems Lindsey Graham is being left to twist in the wind. And Republicans are in greater danger of losing their Senate majority.It's hard to feel sorry for Graham. Any reasonable observer has seen that for Trump, loyalty is a one-way street. Yet Graham gave it, and demanded it of others. "To every Republican, if you don't stand behind this president, we're not going to stand behind you," Graham told a South Carolina crowd last year. Which raises the question: Who is standing behind Lindsey Graham now?Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement

First lady Melania Trump had nothing but praise for her husband on Tuesday, telling a crowd in Atglen, Pennsylvania, that President Trump is "tough, successful, and fair" and "sees potential in everyone he meets, no matter their gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation."Trump, she continued, is "a man who has a very big heart and a great sense of humor. Donald loves helping people, and he loves seeing those around him, and his country, succeed."This was the first lady's first solo campaign event for 2020, and she was joined by former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. The event was held in a converted barn usually used for wedding receptions, USA Today reports, with several hundred people in attendance. There was little social distancing, but most people did have on masks.Trump applauded the president for working "hard to keep people informed and calm" and said his impeachment was "a sham." She also accused Democrats and the media of working together to "all but destroy our traditional values," and claimed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will push a "socialist agenda."More stories from theweek.com How to make an election crisis 64 things President Trump has said about women Republicans are on the verge of a spectacular upside-down achievement