Election Day brought a big blue earthquake of anti-Trump sentiment that rumbled as far inland as Kansas and shook GOP ground in the Carolinas and Texas. By the time late victories rolled in on Tuesday night, there had been so many wins that subsequent Democratic pickups had begun to feel more like aftershocks, even in states that haven’t voted blue since Bill Clinton was in the White House.

Florida narrowly missed the quake, with Republicans winning all the major statewide races by the thinnest of margins. The one-time quintessential purple state, a so-goes-the-nation bellwether with a relatively even amount of registered Republicans and Democrats, turned remarkably red in the Trump era following Barack Obama’s back-to-back wins in 2008 and 2012. The state legislature redrew its maps to enshrine a supermajority, and a post-Covid influx of GOP transplants seeking lower taxes and lax regulations shifted the balance significantly. A Democrat hasn’t made a fight of the governor’s race this decade, and no Democratic Senate candidate has come close to winning since Bill Nelson lost his reelection bid in 2018.

Angie Nixon felt different. The Jacksonville organizer and bookstore owner ran a proudly democratic socialist campaign, advocating for universal healthcare in a state beset by multiple insurance crises and affordability issues. Her polls looked good up to Election Day, and on Tuesday night, victories across the country made her race in the Sunshine State look winnable. Ultimately though, Nixon could not replicate the victories of other rabble-rousers like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and James Talarico in Texas. She lost to incumbent Ashley Moody, who was appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to fill the seat left vacant by Marco Rubio’s confirmation as secretary of state, by less than two percentage points. Moody outspent Nixon by more than double to barely eke out a majority. 

The Florida Democratic Party deserves some blame for being woefully behind the times. After a 2019 squeaker between DeSantis and the progressive Andrew Gillum, the party moved as fast as it could from any candidate that might excite its base. They ran a former Republican for governor in each of the last two gubernatorial races, no doubt depressing turnout and enthusiasm among the Democratic base with their moderate picks. 

But a close look at the rest of the Florida races reveals the culprit in Nixon’s narrow loss. Despite a gerrymander meant to calcify Republican supermajorities in the state and a political stiff in the form of David Jolly at the top of the ballot for governor, the GOP lost seats in the state legislature. The energy in Florida and, remarkably, throughout the South, was with anyone running against Republicans. The blame for Nixon’s defeat lies almost solely with national Democrats and their stubborn refusal to back Nixon with either messaging or money. 

Since her shock primary win in August, Nixon has complained about Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recalcitrance to anyone who will listen. In September, she told MS NOW hosts Symone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was less than thrilled about her race.

---

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

“When I did speak with Sen. Schumer on the phone, it was basically a ‘we will see,’” she said. “He’s going to look into it. That’s what was said, that he’s going to look into it.”

Nixon went on to say that Democrats were wary of throwing in behind a Black woman in the South following Kamala Harris’ 2024 loss: “Folks are a little gun-shy because, unfortunately, Vice President Harris lost as a Black woman, and so people are being very hesitant in terms of funding Black women, especially in the South.”

In later interviews, she claimed that national Democrats wrote off Florida in advance, declining to put money behind her candidacy because they believe the state is “racist.” 

The pale blue dots on Florida’s election map tell the story. The democratic socialist was able to win in Miami-Dade County, despite a Cuban-American population that shudders at anything that sounds like revolution. On the other end of the state, typically Republican Jacksonville swung to the left. An enthusiastic push in the state’s timidly liberal cities could have narrowed the gap in favor of Nixon and added tens of thousands of votes to her final total. According to analysis by Wesleyan Media Project, the national party and affiliated PACs spent 10 advertising dollars in Iowa for every one they spent in Florida in the race’s final weeks, and it showed. The Hawkeye State now has a new Democratic governor-elect and senator-elect.

 

It was the same story throughout the South. Democrats overperformed in states where the national party bothered to fight. Blue Texas became a reality because of seemingly unlimited spending — it was the most expensive Senate race in history — and national messaging hits on behalf of Talarico. Louisiana and Mississippi offered two incredibly close Senate races in states long assumed to be GOP strongholds. In Louisiana, Democrat Jamie Davis lost to Republican Julia Letlow by only two points. As New York Times contributing opinion writer Steven Rattner pointed out, Davis kept the race close despite receiving zero advertising dollars from the national party in October, per the WMP’s analysis.

Mississippi, though, could turn out to be a miracle — in spite of the DSCC. With 96% of precincts reporting, Democrat Scott Colom, a district attorney, leads the incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by only 138 votes, with around 15,000 provisional ballots outstanding.

Speaking to Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, Mississippi state Rep. Cheikh Taylor, a Democrat, blamed the nail-biter on a lack of investment from the national party.

“Early money always helps. Monies have come to the state of Mississippi, just not through the traditional means, though the DNC. We all know that the Colom campaign was locked out of that $30 million contribution to U.S. Senate races,” he said. “Even though the money didn’t come, in Mississippi, we figure it out.”

Don’t get me wrong. Colom, Davis and Nixon all deserve praise for their stunning performances, even if at least two of them came up short. Tuesday night’s news offered a rare glimmer of hope in a bleak few years, but Democrats had a chance to permanently rebuke MAGA — and instead they squandered it based on their own misconceptions about the South.

Grabbing two more close races via some well-placed funding for the party’s nominees would have left them in a much better position to harry and harass the president and block his MAGA agenda over the next two years. All it would have taken was not capitulating in advance.

The post Angie Nixon could have won Florida. National Democrats failed her appeared first on Salon.com.

I had this fantasy as a kid that started with me giving an impressive performance on “Wheel of Fortune.” I’d smoke the other contestants under the watchful eye of a suitably wowed Pat Sajak, crucially solving the prize puzzle and winning the grand prize of seemingly every game show: a vacation package built around “a trip to sunny Florida.”

I’d ride the free plane ticket home and spend a few days with my family in Orlando, just a few hours away from where we actually lived, on a vacation that for once wasn’t spent in relatives’ living rooms. We’d hang out in the Goldilocks Zone, far enough away from home to avoid nagging responsibilities but close enough to sell to my overworked parents. Home was not far away when we needed to return, but why not take a few days off to lounge by the pool?

I never shared that half-baked dream with anyone, especially not with any Latin American authoritarians, but my strategy for stealing some time for poolside lounging seems to be the preferred second act for failed right-wing leaders from Central and South America. When defeated presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro fled Brazil for Miami earlier this week, he was taking part in a long tradition of conservative losers hopping a jet to the land of gun shows and foam parties. 

Thanks to its proximity to the Caribbean and South America, its significant immigrant population and Miami International Airport’s status as a hub for flights to and from points south, many a deposed leader has followed a route familiar to Super Bowl champions and snowbirds. When the rabble in the street gets too close to the presidential palace for comfort, they keep half an eye on Florida real estate, much like Northeast Corridor retirees. 

It isn’t surprising that the first notable leader to make the leap in modern memory came from Cuba, an island you can reach from Florida with a suitably kitted-out lawn chair. Facing the collapse of his government amid anti-democratic crackdowns and widespread labor unrest, Cuban President Gerardo Machado hightailed it to Florida in 1933. He would die in Miami just six years later. 

Cuban military dictator Fulgencio Batista spent the next several decades seemingly readying himself to follow Machado to the Sunshine State if and when he needed to make a quick exit. In fact, Batista purchased a home in Daytona Beach and lived there for several years following his initial ouster in the mid-1940s. He returned to power via a military coup in 1952, which in some ways lit the spark for Fidel Castro’s toppling of the Cuban government at the end of the decade. Forced out for the last time, Batista flew to Jacksonville and unsuccessfully requested asylum in the U.S. (He’d have done a lot better under our current president, no doubt.) He wound up fleeing to Spain, then in the grip of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, and spent the rest of his life in Iberian exile.

Anastasio Somoza was similarly denied safe harbor in the U.S. in 1979, after fleeing Nicaragua in a cargo plane headed for Miami. President Jimmy Carter declined to play host to the last member of a family dynasty that had ruled Nicaragua for 40 years. Somoza made it to Miami as his regime collapsed during the Sandinista revolution, then moved on to the Bahamas and ultimately to Paraguay, then under the rule of military dictator Alfredo Stroessner. It was no safe refuge: He was assassinated there by a Sandinista strike team just a year later.

The pitter-patter of Florsheim-shod feet heading for the Northern Caribbean hasn’t slowed in the 2000s. Deposed dictators, embezzlers and dissent-crushers have flooded into South Florida like the regular king tides. The Miami New Times published a morbid map of the stars in 2010, pointing out the addresses of various subtropical Mussolinis and disgraced generals and boasting that Miami makes “Casablanca look like a Daffy Duck cartoon.”

Former Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada ran to South Florida following revolts over his plans to export Bolivian natural gas to the U.S.. Notoriously corrupt Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli scarpered in similar fashion, though he was ultimately arrested by U.S. authorities in 2017 and sent back to serve a prison term.

With our own fash-flavored president making his official residence in Palm Beach, and his kids nearby in Jupiter, his Brazilian buddies were obvious candidates for taking their talents to South Beach. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro left for the southernmost red state after his defeat in the 2022 election, though he’s now back in Brazil serving a lengthy prison sentence on house arrest. His son Eduardo, also a former Brazilian elected official, landed Florida around the same time, but has now moved to Texas. Flávio Bolsonaro’s whereabouts since he deplaned at Opa Locka Executive Airport a few days ago are not entirely clear.  

---

Want more sharp takes on politics?
Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only by Amanda Marcotte, also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

Florida has long had a significant right-wing Latin American population, thanks in large part to the many Cuban refugees who fled there in the wake of Castro’s 1959 revolution. And for the Bolsonaros, Florida is likely to feel more like home than anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere. The state is home to more than a fifth of the Brazilian population in the U.S.

Though Flávio Bolsonaro initially boasted of being Brazil’s rightful president after landing in Florida, he seems to have ditched that line subsequently. Recent events have proven that we can never count out Brazil’s first family of fascism, but it isn’t likely they can use Florida as a base of operation for launching a reactionary coup. Outside of Batista’s complicated story, which didn’t end well for him, history has not been kind to those who hope to use an enforced vacation in the House of Mouse as a path back to the presidential palace. 

The post Flávio Bolsonaro follows a well-worn right-wing path: Exile in Florida appeared first on Salon.com.

Brazilian Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro fled his home country and arrived in the U.S. Tuesday, described by some on the right as a political refugee. After recently losing a presidential campaign against incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro’s passports were ordered seized by the government. Instead of turning them over, Bolsonaro took off with family members, traveling through Argentina, Ecuador and finally landing in Miami, Florida. The Trump administration was quick to issue a visa to Bolsonaro and members of his family, a senior State Department official told the Washington Post.

Bolsonaro ‌thanked Argentine President Javier Milei and President Donald Trump for helping him escape. He later posted on X, declaring himself “the elected president,” before that post was deleted and replaced with a letter saying he was the rightful “leader” of Brazil.

Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, is currently under investigation by Brazil’s Supreme Court for alleged money laundering, corruption and tax evasion in two cases, but has yet to be charged with a crime. If Bolsonaro is charged and convicted in the investigation, he could face extradition from the U.S.. His father is currently serving a 27 year prison sentence for trying to stage a coup in 2023, but for health reasons has been serving his sentence under house arrest. The elder Bolsonaro also traveled to Florida on the eve of Lula’s inauguration in December 2022 after losing the election.

---

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

Lula won reelection by over 4 million votes on Oct. 25, defeating Bolsonaro in the second round of an election that promises to have profound implications for Latin American politics. It also gives Trump, an ally of the Bolsonaro family, less influence in South America. 

“I regret that he left Brazil, because he could have stayed here and proven that the accusations are not true,” Lula told supporters outside the presidential residence in Brasilia. “This act of leaving Brazil is shameful.”

The post Trump admin embraces fleeing Bolsonaro, losing Brazilian presidential candidate appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Errin Haines of The 19th. Meet Errin and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

This column first appeared in The Amendment, a newsletter by Errin Haines, The 19th’s editor-at-large. Subscribe today to get early access to her analysis.

Most people had no idea who Angie Nixon was until a few months ago.

Maybe the three-term Florida state legislator came onto their radar in April, after her one-woman protest in a pink jumpsuit and matching bullhorn on the House floor against the special session to gerrymander the state just hours after the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act went viral. 

Perhaps it was Nixon’s stunning and decisive primary win in August that made a progressive Black woman the face of the Democratic Party’s political fortunes in Florida. Or maybe it was another viral moment, courtesy of Vice President JD Vance, who suggested at a rally earlier this month that she should “get the hell out of here” and that she doesn’t belong in America if she calls herself a socialist.

But Nixon, who now seems to be everywhere, did not come out of nowhere. Her improbable rise to become Florida’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is the result of a decade of preparation meeting political opportunity, challenging notions of electability in a state that’s increasingly moved toward Republicans. In the final weeks of the race, Nixon’s virality and scrappy approach are getting attention and may be paying off, as donors have given the campaign a much-needed boost.

“People are pissed. They’re struggling,” Nixon said in an interview. “They want to feel like they can talk to elected officials and they are listened to. But Donald Trump and Ashley Moody, they’re turning their back on folks. I believe the government should work for people, but right now it’s actively working against them. And so I am running because we need to send someone to Washington, D.C., that’s going to stand up to Donald Trump and make him listen and do right by everyday Floridians and Americans in this country.

If elected, Nixon would become Florida’s first Black senator and could be one of a record four Black women senators serving simultaneously. Her candidacy has expanded the political imagination of her state and country about who can win statewide — and who gets to claim Florida’s future.

---

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

There are a lot of variables that create an Angie Nixon moment, said Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights for America, a political action committee that works to put more Black women in office and has endorsed Nixon. 

“What makes her a compelling candidate is when she tells her personal why, and why that has driven her to be an advocate, an organizer and a legislator — that speaks to people,” Carr said. “She may be being outspent — Democrats are being outspent in most places, and Black women are always outspent. What she has said is people can’t outwork her.”

---

Nixon faces an uphill battle headed into November. Republicans have 1.5 million more registered voters in Florida, and President Donald Trump won the state in 2024 by 13 points. While Nixon remains competitive in the final weeks of the general election, most polls show her still trailing her opponent, Republican incumbent Sen. Ashley Moody, by several points. Only one Black woman, former Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, has ever won office statewide in Florida.

The odds are not lost on Nixon, who campaigned last week in Monticello, on the Georgia-Florida border, about 45 minutes outside of Tallahassee. When she took the stage, Nixon was met with a wave of enthusiasm whose energy she matched. She made her case to the Jefferson County audience of mostly older, White voters in a city with a 43 percent Black population and a county that Trump won by 19 points in 2024. 

“We’re working so hard and then they tell us, ‘You’re not working hard enough.’ Meanwhile, they’re working less and less and less and getting richer,” Nixon told the crowd as they nodded in agreement.” 

“We have the opportunity to do something different in these next 250 years,” she continued as the audience clapped and cheered. “We have the opportunity to build a new vision for our country, y’all. One where everyone can be healthy, prosperous and safe, and experience rest and joy.” 

Afterward, as volunteers broke down the room at the Monticello Opera House around her, Nixon stopped to chat and take pictures with the voters — old and young, moms and children, of different backgrounds and races. 

“My coalition needs to be diverse,” Nixon said in an interview. “I can’t just go have conversations with Democrats. I have to have conversations with independents, with Republicans, with members of any other third party. And we have to work hard on talking to them, cutting through the noise, and letting them know we hear them, we care about them, and we’re going to help provide some relief.”

On the stump, she has been focused on affordability, centered on issues that are popular among many voters. Her platform includes paid family and sick leave, a national rent freeze and moratorium on evictions, a universal jobs program and Medicare for All — some of the same policy priorities of the Democratic Socialists of America. Nixon is a member of the progressive group but has said she is not completely aligned with all of the group’s policies.

While Nixon is a progressive candidate, she knows it will take a broad coalition of Floridians — including some who may not have been open to voting for a Democrat, a Black woman or both — to win in November. Her message aims to appeal to voters’ interests and not just their ideology, a rejection of the idea that she’s someone who doesn’t belong in this country.

“Her biggest asset is her ability to be in front of voters,” Carr said. “She’s building a grassroots, final drive that is a blueprint. We’re going to see more candidates that look, talk, and believe in the values that Angie Nixon believes in. She’s not an anomaly.” 

---

Voters may be getting to know Nixon, but she has spent years getting to know them. 

For two decades, she has been an organizer in Florida, and she was first elected to the state legislature in 2020. On her campaign website, she touts her record as the former executive director of Florida for All, a statewide coalition of progressive groups that has helped register tens of thousands of voters. 

As a sitting state legislator who knows how to run local elections as an organizer and candidate, Nixon has a résumé that has prepared her for Washington, said Carr.

“That is certainly a skill set that should be welcomed in Washington. She’s going to hit the ground running and understand the process. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, here’s this woman who is inspiring, who people are interested in what she has to say, she wears pink, she has a bullhorn.’ She has all of that — and she also has the experience.”

What can look like a surprise candidacy to some is the culmination of years spent building relationships and registering voters. In the decade that Nixon has contemplated her run, the political landscape has also changed.

In 2016, Kamala Harris became only the second Black woman elected to serve in the U.S. Senate. Her election came 20 years after that of the first Black woman senator, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois. A decade after Harris’ election, there are two Black women senators — Democrats Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware  — making history as the first Black people elected as senators from their respective states and the first Black women to serve simultaneously in the Senate. In November, Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton is poised to join them, meaning at least three Black women would be serving in the Senate together. Nixon’s path is more challenging, but she could become the fourth.

“In a decade, that’s a lot of movement in the highest chamber,” Carr said. “And that Black women are starting to chip away at this thought that Black women can’t run statewide. She didn’t have permission. For all intents and purposes, she shouldn’t have even filed. It’s Florida; it’s a Black woman.”

For much of the race, Nixon’s campaign was strapped for cash and didn’t have much support from PACs or wealthy donors. She raised $975,000 during the primary, largely from small donors and social media, against an opponent who raised more than $16 million. But the latest campaign finance reports show that Nixon outraised Moody in the third quarter, with the candidates reporting fundraising totals of $7.6 million and $5.8 million, respectively. Moody holds the overall advantage, with a total haul of more than $14 million, and has so far outspent Nixon by 32 to 1. 

Nixon is among the increasing number of Black women who are running for statewide office up and down the ballot. They are expanding their ambition beyond what has already been proven — the mayor’s office, seats in Congress — and running difficult races in difficult states, courting voters and challenging the institutional status quo. Slowly, they are normalizing whose candidacies should be considered by claiming their right to contest their place and power in our democracy.

“I love my state, and so I’m going to fight for it, because it’s mine,” Nixon said. “It’s everyone’s here in the state. It’s our Florida.”

The post Angie Nixon has been working years for this moment appeared first on Salon.com.

The American presidency is one of the most stressful jobs there is. Presidents famously age during their terms, often starting off looking hale and hearty and, by the time they’re finished, appearing tired, more lined and a whole lot grayer than when they started. So it’s understandable they would need to recharge by getting away from Washington from time to time. 

Donald Trump has made a habit of this, regularly jetting to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for extended periods of time in lieu of Camp David, the famous presidential getaway nestled in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Now, according to a recent report by the Washington Post, he is seeking to create a permanent official presidential retreat in Florida at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.

This would be an unprecedented move, even though it isn’t unusual for presidents to crave time away from Washington. According to the White House Historical Association, many of the early presidents left the White House in the summer because they believed that the white fog that formed on the nearby marshes was a deadly white gas; they wanted to get away for their health. In fact, James K. Polk is the only president to have stayed in the White House for each of the three summers he was president, and since he died shortly after leaving office, his fate was attributed at the time to those white gases.

Presidents, of course, have to keep working wherever they are. Some have wanted to escape Washington’s notorious humid summers, while others longed to flee the cold and create a “winter White House” in warmer climes. Harry Truman reportedly liked his Key West winter home so much that he called it the “Little White House” and spent 175 days of his presidency there. Richard Nixon was also fond of Florida, but he also frequently jetted back to his native California, as did Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush spent as much time as possible at the West Texas ranch he bought just before assuming the presidency. 

The first official presidential retreat was the Old Soldiers Home, which was commandeered by President James Buchanan as a summer getaway since its location in leafy Northwest Washington was cooler and quieter than the White House. It was subsequently used by Abraham Lincoln and his family, and he was said to have written the Emancipation Proclamation there. Some subsequent presidents enjoyed the retreat as well, but it was soon out of fashion as they began to travel further afield for their vacations. 

---

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

From 1880 until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter sold off the last one, there was always a presidential yacht for the chief executive to unwind on and entertain guests, but there wasn’t another official presidential retreat until 1942, when President Franklin Roosevelt visited a Works Progress Administration project in Maryland called Camp Hi-Catoctin and selected it as the location for a future presidential retreat he dubbed Shangri-La. Roosevelt used the property to relax, but he also saw it as a perfect place for high-level diplomacy. His successor, Harry Truman, made it a permanent federal facility and then, after he took office in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David in honor of his young grandson. Since then, the property has been the site of many meetings with foreign leaders, including the diplomatic negotiations hosted in 1978 by Carter between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that culminated in the Camp David Accords. 

Its location — just a 30-minute helicopter ride but many spiritual miles away from the White House — makes it a convenient spot for important domestic matters to be dealt with outside the bustle of the White House. Richard Nixon famously fired his trusted aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman at Camp David in 1973, while 12 years earlier John F. Kennedy received counsel there from Eisenhower after the Bay of Pigs disaster. 

While some presidents have clearly enjoyed Camp David more than others, Trump has made no secret of his deep dislike of it. He has used it only rarely, and the one time he has been known to propose having any high-level talks there was in 2019 when he inexplicably invited Taliban leadership to join him there just days before the anniversary of Sept. 11, a meeting which was mercifully cancelled after the group killed an American in a car bomb attack in Kabul. 

Trump only wants to visit his own properties. According to the independent watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), as of June the president has spent 37% of his second term at his own properties, with Mar-a-Lago receiving the most visits. Even on his official trips, if he’s unable to return home Trump will sleep at one of his own hotels, a move that is always profitable for him personally since the government pays for much of the huge entourage trailing the president. In fact, one of the perks Trump has given himself is that his various winter and summer retreats are also his commercial properties, and his visits not only promote the properties, they also provide opportunities for paying customers to have access to the president. His behavior has become so commonplace that few even remark anymore that the president lives a good part of the time at clubs with members who pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend time in his presence. 

The grift will apparently continue even after he leaves office. Trump recently announced that his proposed presidential library in Miami will double as a hotel, making it yet another profit center for the family. (He is also being sued by various interested parties who are upset that he was given the valuable land, worth a reported $330 million, for only $10 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the understanding it would be used for a nonprofit organization.) Now he has big, unprecedented plans for the new Camp David.

According to the Washington Post, “a parcel” of his West Palm beach golf resort will “be designated a permanent, official sanctuary for foreign leaders and future U.S. presidents, designed to host international summits and house presidents when they take vacations in Florida.” Trump’s generosity is such that he also plans to throw in complimentary members for presidents. It’s obvious that there is a lot of money to be made, which will be accompanied by ongoing access to him and his family. If foreign dignitaries were there to meet with the president and take in some golf, you can imagine that Trump would be at the club next door waiting to hold court. As Rick Reilly, author of “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump,” told the Post, “I suppose he wants to make a power play with these people and show them who is the king of America.”

Trump claims there would be no cost to the government, since he plans to pay for the housing himself. But as we’ve seen with the rapidly increasing costs to American taxpayers for his ballroom money pit at the White House, that’s unlikely to be the case. Taxpayers will almost certainly be on the hook for many millions, if only for the enhanced security that would be necessary. After all, this is the golf course where a would-be assassin was caught last year hiding in the bushes.

Trump leases the land for the golf course from Palm Beach County, which is seriously considering his proposal. If it is approved, the only course of action for the administration that follows Trump is to offload it — just as the federal government did with Mar-a-Lago after the socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post left it to the government when she died in 1973 to serve as a winter White House. Eight years later, citing exorbitant annual maintenance costs, the government returned the property to the Post Foundation, which put it for sale in 1985 before it was bought by Trump.

No name has been chosen for the property. But I don’t think there’s any mystery about what it’s going to be, do you?

The post Trump’s “Camp Donald” grift is designed to outlast his presidency appeared first on Salon.com.

The big story coming out of the 2024 election was how Donald Trump orchestrated a realignment of American politics, bringing demographic groups that had long eschewed the Republican Party into the tent. Latinos, Black voters and young people, mostly males, had voted for him and the GOP in larger numbers than anyone could remember, and it was seen in some quarters as a sign that the party was embarking on a thousand-year reign. Conventional wisdom held that Trump was something of a magical figure who had defied the odds, defeated the majority of the legal and political efforts to hold him accountable, and triumphantly returned to power. 

Many attributed the president’s success to a new political power on the block — the so-called manosphere, consisting of male podcasters with millions of followers who had enthusiastically endorsed Trump. Many pundits said that Kamala Harris lost the race because she didn’t try hard enough to appeal to these influencers, even though many are heavily misogynistic and wouldn’t have been open to her candidacy in any case. Their juvenile humor and oppositional defiance also happened, incidentally, to be perfectly matched to Trump’s sophomoric style. 

However, like transgressive boys everywhere, they have a short attention span; Trump has not turned out to be as fun as they thought he would be. Although anecdotal evidence suggests they have been less fervent followers of the president for several months now, The Wall Street Journal analyzed nearly 70,000 hours of podcasts to see if it was true. What they found was revealing: “Mentions of Trump’s name per hour on conservative podcasts have fallen nearly 70% from their peak in the run-up to the 2024 election.” Many are publicly unhappy with the economy and the war, both of which are seen as broken promises and could account for the decline in mentions, but the hosts are mostly spending their time trashing Democrats like James Talarico, the Texas state representative who is running for the Senate and may just win. (Significantly, the king of the manosphere, podcaster Joe Rogan, is actually a fan of Talarico.) 

There are some other big names in the podcasting world, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who are now openly antagonistic toward Trump, mostly for opportunistic reasons. The pair are among the early crowd jostling for power within the post-Trump right-wing ecosystem. Kelly has railed against the Trump family’s alleged corruption, while Carlson appears to be positioning himself as a presidential candidate, with his iconoclastic takes on a number of issues and increasing talk of a third-party bid. He recently told NPR that Trump should be removed from office. 

But mainstream conservative media is still largely on board the Trump train, although Fox News’ firing of Maria Bartiromo for coordinating with the White House — hilarious as the network’s outrage is, considering the cozy relationships between the president and Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — and its decision to stand against Trump in support of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO has revealed a schism. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has also been pulling no punches throughout the second term. 

But what of the Republican establishment? Since Trump’s exultant victory in 2024, they have behaved as if he were ordained by God to be America’s reigning monarch, omnipotent and infallible. Republican governors have largely abdicated their own roles as one of the Constitution’s checks and balances, agreeing to give up their own sovereignty to serve his agenda, while the GOP majorities in Congress have proven to be nothing more than trained seals happily signing on to the president’s usurpation of their own power. 

But you can’t really blame them. Until quite recently, there was no shaking the hold Trump had on the GOP base. They were willing to believe that everything wrong in the country was the fault of former president Joe Biden, and that Trump was left with a massive disaster he had to clean up. The truth, of course, was the opposite. He actually inherited a recovering economy — dubbed “the envy of the world” in 2024 by The Economist — and newfound global respect. If Trump had done nothing and simply continued the policies that were already in place — and then taken credit for them, as he is wont to do — he would be in a different position today. But he surrounded himself with radicals and sycophants, and he believed his own hype. The results have been a disaster.

As Republicans prepare to face the voters in the November midterms, they are finding out that the “magical” Trump mystique was actually luck and hot air. Reality still exists, and it bites. Hard. 

As we head into the final month before the election, the polls appear very bad for Republicans. The House majority is almost certainly gone, and the Senate is increasingly in play, something that wasn’t seriously contemplated six months ago. The president’s approval ratings are in the low to mid-30s, and his ratings on the most important issues of the economy and the Iran war are even worse. Gasoline and diesel prices have turned the two big promises Trump made — to lower prices and keep the nation out of wars — into epic failures, and voters are livid. 

Suddenly, GOP candidates are running for the hills. Candidates in tight races in battleground and red states — including Mike Rogers, who is running for the Senate in Michigan against Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who faces Josh Turek, a Democrat, in Iowa — are saying the Iran war must end. (As the New York Times pointed out, Hinson was among seven House Republicans who recently supported a resolution calling on the president to stop or seek congressional approval for military action in Iran.) Others are scrubbing or downplaying endorsements by or mentions of the presidents on their campaign websites. According to The Washington Post, Mike Beltran, the Republican nominee running against Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., touted on his website earlier this year how he had “stood with President Trump every step of the way.” That language has now vanished, along with photos of Trump and references to “America First.” At least seven other GOP congressional candidates, reported the Post, are doing the same. One Florida Republican. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, has even publicly condemned the president for elements of his radical deportation policy.

---

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

---

Historically, this is common. Midterms are notoriously hard on the party in power, and presidents usually take the blame. Often, the approved strategy is for candidates to go ahead and distance themselves from the president, and try to win their races by portraying themselves as independent thinkers who will not rubber-stamp the unpopular majority’s agenda. Whether it’s Bush in 2006 or Obama in 2014, close midterm races almost always feature some version of that same sales pitch. The only exception in recent years I can think of is 1998, when the GOP’s threats to impeach President Bill Clinton over the findings of the Starr Report with regard to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky blew back on them, costing them seats and resulting in the resignation of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich in disgrace. 

But this time it is especially jarring considering the fealty Republicans have been required to show their leader — and have willingly given him — until now. That loyalty ended up not helping Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his primary just a few months ago when Trump endorsed his opponent in retribution after Cornyn waited too long to endorse him in 2024. As the midterm campaign has unfolded, it’s belatedly become clear to many Republicans that standing with Trump may be riskier, even among the party’s base, than standing against him.

But they have a problem. The president won’t shut up. To the chagrin of most of his own party, he is insisting on making the midterms all about him. A narcissist to the core, Trump believes that the only way Republicans win in November is if he is out there bragging and blaming and lying as he always does, because that has been the secret sauce that brings out MAGA voters. He has even released a taxpayer-funded propaganda ad — which is illegal — touting his alleged accomplishments. 

No one should mistake the Republican retreat from Trump as a full-scale rebellion. Instead, it’s a tepid, last-minute attempt on the part of some desperate candidates to show independence, knowing they may lose anyway — and that the president will say it’s because they didn’t support him enough anyway. The Republican Senate had a chance to take a stand on one of the biggest issues in the campaign, and the one that’s causing the most pain for average voters: Iran. On Thursday they voted down a resolution to end the war. The tally was 50-49. When it comes to putting their votes where their mouths are, it’s clear they will default to Trump as always. Voters, though, are finally seeing through them.

The post Republican candidates are running for the hills appeared first on Salon.com.