Right around the time that Donald Trump was arriving at the U.S. Capitol to address a joint session of Congress—the longest such speech, it would turn out, in the history of the presidency—Elissa Slotkin, the newly elected Michigan senator tasked with delivering the Democratic Party’s rebuttal, was telling me all the things she wouldn’t be talking about.
On the evening of Super Tuesday, March 5, shortly before Donald Trump effectively ended the Republican primary and earned a general-election rematch with President Joe Biden, I asked the co-managers of Trump’s presidential campaign what they feared most about Biden.
“Honestly, it’s less him,” Chris LaCivita told me. “And more—”
“Institutional Democrats,” Susie Wiles said, finishing her partner’s thought.
It was a revealing exchange, and a theme we would revisit frequently.
So much for the big reveal. When Republican delegates from across the country walked into the Fiserv Forum this morning, all the buzz was about the pending selection of Donald Trump’s running mate—an announcement they believed would come tonight, in prime time, a climactic conclusion to the first day of the GOP convention.
Photographs by Roger Kisby
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The outcome of the presidential campaign, Republicans believed, was a fait accompli. “Donald Trump was well on his way to a 320-electoral-vote win,” Chris LaCivita told me this past Sunday as Democrats questioned, ever more frantically, whether President Joe Biden should remain the party’s nominee in November. “That’s pre-debate.”
LaCivita paused to repeat himself: “Pre-debate.
This Christmas season, I have been reflecting on the words of my favorite author, C. S. Lewis, who once observed: “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.”Speaking about American evangelicalism was never my intention.
If Donald Trump committed crimes on his way out of the White House, he should be subject to the same treatment as any other alleged criminal. The reason for this is simple: Ours is a government of laws, not of men, as John Adams once observed. Nobody, not even a president, is above those laws.
Lauren Tamaki
Once the limousine door closed, a dozen of Nate Bargatze’s closest friends and family members began reciting their favorite jokes from the sold-out show he’d just finished in Reno, Nevada. There was the one about never asking a fitness junkie for advice on losing weight, lest they warn you about eating too much fruit. (“Let’s get to that point, all right?” Bargatze had said.
VULCAN, Michigan—Right around the time Donald Trump was flexing his conspiratorial muscles on Saturday night, recycling old ruses and inventing new boogeymen in his first public speech since inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol in January, a dairy farmer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sat down to supper. It had been a trying day.