Month: August 2023

Politico/Ipsos polls asked whether the public is taking these indictments seriously:

The survey results suggest Americans are taking the cases seriously — particularly the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — and that most people are skeptical of Trump’s claim to be the victim of a legally baseless witch hunt or an elaborate, multi-jurisdictional effort to “weaponize” law enforcement authorities against him.

Furthermore, public sentiment in certain areas — including how quickly to hold a trial and whether to incarcerate Trump if he’s convicted — is moving against the former president when compared to a previous POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll conducted in June. This latest poll was conducted from Aug. 18 to Aug. 21, roughly two-and-a-half weeks after Trump’s second federal indictment and several days after Trump was criminally charged in Fulton County. The poll had a sample of 1,032 adults, age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents.

Here are some of the most notable findings from our latest survey.

— Most Americans believe Trump should stand trial before the 2024 election

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers will face off against federal prosecutors before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan over when to schedule his trial in the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — a high-stakes dispute that could have dramatic implications for the 2024 election. Federal prosecutors have proposed that the trial begin on Jan. 2, 2024, while Trump’s lawyers have countered that the trial should take place in April 2026. If Trump gets his way, that would, perhaps not coincidentally, leave him plenty of time to complete his reelection bid and, if successful, shut the case down after retaking the White House.

Americans are far closer to the Justice Department’s position than to Trump’s. Fifty-nine percent of respondents in the poll said that the federal trial in Trump’s 2020 election subversion case should take place before the 2024 Republican primaries begin early next year. A slightly higher number — 61 percent of all respondents — said that the trial should take place before the general election next November.

There was a predictable partisan split among Democrats and Republicans, with nearly 90 percent of Democratic respondents seeking an early trial date androughly a third of Republican respondents agreeing.

It was the reaction of independents, however, that may prove most ominous for Trump. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of independents said that Trump should stand trial before next November — a figure that suggests particular interest in and attentiveness to a case that effectively alleges that Trump tried to steal the last election. By way of a rough comparison, when we asked a similar question in June following Trump’s indictment by the Justice Department in Florida concerning his retention of classified documents, fewer than half of independent respondents (48 percent) said that the trial in that case should take place before next November.

About half believe he’s guilty:

I think everyone agrees that he did what they are accusing him of doing. Trump’s people think it was just politics and fully justified. Everyone else thinks it was an assault on the law and the constitution. That’s what’s going to be decided in these cases. I’m not sure people fully realize that.

This is the big problem for Trump:

— A conviction in DOJ’s 2020 election case would hurt Trump in the general election

Our latest poll also makes clear that it would be unhelpful for Trump’s presidential bid if he is federally convicted of a criminal scheme to steal the last election at the same time that he is asking the American people to send him back to the White House.

A plurality of respondents (44 percent) said that a conviction in the case would have no impact on their likelihood of supporting Trump, but the numbers tipped decisively against Trump among those who said that the result would inform their vote. Nearly one-third of respondents (32 percent) said that a conviction in the case would make them less likely to support Trump, including about one-third of independents (34 percent).

Only 13 percent of respondents said that a conviction would make them more likely to support Trump, and that figure was comprised mostly of Republicans.

I must say that’s kind of a relief. If we are so polarized that even a felony conviction (or many) wouldn’t change anyone’s mind then this country is in even worse shape than I thought.

And then there’s this:

I love how 43% of Republicans think there should be no penalty if he’s convicted. That’s not how this works I’m afraid.

Personally, I would be happy with strict house arrest for the full prison term with no right to personally communicate with the public or profit from his crimes. As much as I think he deserves to be in jail as he has so often called for other people (some of whom were innocent of the crimes and he didn’t care) it seems to me that exiling him to Mar-a-Lago without any ability to play golf or tweet or hold court or ever be involved in politics again would be enough. Jail would be a very difficult undertaking unless they build one specifically for him and his secret service detail, which is constitutionally required to protect him for the rest of his life.

Your mileage may vary on that, I understand. I might not even really believe it.

— Trump and the GOP’s ‘weaponization’ defense appears to be having limited traction

For months, Trump and his Republican allies have claimed that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” against him by President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland. We asked a series of questions in order to try to get some understanding of what Americans make of this claim. The results were decidedly mixed for team Trump.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents — including nearly two-thirds of independents — said that the Justice Department’s decision to indict Trump in the 2020 election case was based on a fair evaluation of the evidence and the law. At the same time, however, 44 percent of respondents — including 20 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of independents — said that the decision was based on trying to gain a political advantage for Biden.

In fact, more people believe Trump is guilty of weaponizing the legal system than Biden. Fifty-three percent of respondents — including 56 percent of independents — said that the Trump administration actively used the Justice Department to investigate political enemies with little or no evidence of actual wrongdoing. The comparable number for the Biden administration was 45 percent across all respondents, including 43 percent of independents.

What’s with the 20% of Democrats who think this was about gaining political advantage for Biden? This is the DOJ and the FBI we’re talking about here. They aren’t liberals, no matter what Trump says! Even Merrick Garland isn’t really a liberal. The best you can hope for is that they are apolitical.

This is kind of a killer:

— Trump is the prevailing villain in the story of his indictments

To further test whether the indictments are helping Trump, we asked respondents if they had favorable or unfavorable opinions of the actions, statements and behavior of key players in the federal cases — including not just Trump, but Biden, Garland, special counsel Jack Smith and the Justice Department more generally.

I’m not sure why only 36% see Biden’s actions as favorable since he hasn’t said a word about any of it. Maybe some Democrats want him to be more vocal? I dunno.

All in all, this is a very interesting poll. It shows that for all of Trump’s bellowing about how this is helping him, it isn’t actually true.

These guys showed us this week they don’t have a clue about the power of women.

They are about to find out. pic.twitter.com/RKHQHRwv6h

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 25, 2023

Everything is tribal and the election may be as close as always these days. But my money’s on the blue team.

Once in a while, as I peruse the morning headlines, I can’t help but ask myself: What would I have thought if I’d seen these stories 10 years ago? I’m always shaken by what it looks like from that perspective. It’s not as if shocking events hadn’t taken place in the decade before that. The 9/11 attacks came as a total shock and the financial crisis of 2008 was as close as I’d ever come to experiencing cataclysmic economic dislocation. But those, at least, were on par with historical world events like Pearl Harbor and the Great Depression, so there was a sense that they were not entirely unprecedented.

On Thursday I read headlines that former President Donald Trump was turning himself in to be arrested for the fourth time, two of those arrests stemming from his attempt to overturn the election in 2020, another for stealing classified documents and yet another for illegally paying hush money to a porn star with whom he’d had an affair. Other headlines tell me that the first Republican presidential primary debate was held without the frontrunner in attendance — that frontrunner being Donald Trump, the man with the four felony indictments. Today that seems like just another day in American politics. In 2013, I would have laughed at the sheer absurdity of the entire premise. But ever since Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, nothing has ever been normal in American politics — and it’s getting weirder every day.

Wednesday night’s GOP debate looked, on the surface, like relatively normal political spectacle. Eight candidates qualified for the stage, some familiar faces along with others who are new to national politics. The production was standard issue campaign-season material. But the fact is that Donald Trump leads this entire pack by north of 40 points, so he didn’t consider it necessary to show up. Although the candidates on stage largely acted as if he didn’t exist, Trump hung over the event like a giant orange specter, and must have laughed uproariously as all but two of the other contenders pledged to vote for him even if he is convicted on any of the criminal charges he now faces. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis yelled and grimaced throughout the debate, presumably because he’d been coached to be aggressive and to “smile” as much as possible, lot and that was as close as he was able to come. As usual, DeSantis said chilling things about invading Mexico and summarily executing people “stone cold dead” along the border. Then he told the most bizarre abortion anecdote I’ve ever heard:

I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to a different hospital.

At first I thought DeSantis was claiming that a woman named Penny had been forced to have an abortion and then was left “in a pan,” which made no sense. Then I realized that this Penny was actually supposed to be an aborted fetus who made it to another hospital and somehow lived to tell the tale. Jezebel reports that this is an oft-repeated but unverifiable story told by a woman from Michigan (not Florida) named Penny Hopper, who claims she was born alive in 1955 after a botched 23-week abortion and whose legend has fueled “a whole string of so-called ‘Born Alive’ bills in state legislatures and Congress.”

But DeSantis didn’t leave much of an impression anyway. He was upstaged by the newcomer, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who understands that the Republican base loves anyone who owns the libs with a bit of style. Trump may not have been there in the flesh but Ramaswamy channeled him effectively enough, getting the rest of the pack to gasp like anxious old ladies at every outrageous thing he said. The MAGA base won’t make him president, of course. He’s just a bit too … exotic. But they liked his performance a lot.

As I perused all those crazy headlines on Thursday morning, I noticed something curious. There was almost no mention of Trump’s “counterprogramming” initiative, his interview with Tucker Carlson on the platform formerly called Twitter, now X. It was set up as a big slap in the face to Fox News by Trump, Carlson and Elon Musk. The idea was that people would be more excited to see the two political stars together than a bunch of wannabes who haven’t got a chance. Maybe they were, but that’s an unproven premise. 

Trump claims that his interview broke all records and that more than 100 million people watched it. He posted a right-wing article on Truth Social claiming that his chat with Carlson was the most watched interview ever, “beating Oprah and Michael Jackson.” That was a lie, of course. It clocked more than 180 million views on X, which only describes how many times it showed up in someone’s feed — including multiple views by the same users — and says nothing about how many people actually watched it. Engagement numbers offer a somewhat more useful clue. Yahoo News reports:

As of this writing, Carlson’s interview with Trump has been reposted (formerly “retweeted”) 171,800 times, quote-posted (formerly “quote-tweeted”) 14,500 times, liked 578,100 times, bookmarked 46,500 times, and has been replied to around 47,000 times. Not especially low numbers. It’s undeniable that Trump has a lot of supporters, many of whom swarm on Twitter.

Well, those aren’t especially high numbers either. Many celebrities generate much bigger numbers than that when they promote a new album or movie. Fox News reports that the Republican debate garnered 12.8 million viewers, which is perfectly respectable considering that the frontrunner wasn’t even there.

Did Trump say anything particularly notable in his interview with Carlson? Not by his standards. The former Fox News superstar kept pushing the ex-president to endorse political violence, asking if he thought the U.S. was moving toward civil war. When Carlson asked whether “the left” might try to kill Trump, the latter described his opponents as “savage animals” and turned to the subject of Jan. 6, 2021: 

[P]eople in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they’ve ever experienced. There was love in that crowd, there was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love, and I’ve also never seen simultaneously, and from the same people, such hatred of what they’ve done to our country.

I assume “they” in that last sentence refers to the “savage animals” of the left. And yes, he’s right: His supporters really do hate them. That much is obvious by the violence being perpetrated by Trump’s followers against perceived foes on a regular basis.

As Trump rhetoric goes, that’s nothing. He’s said much worse things than that many times over. But once again I have to refer back to myself in 2013, when I would have been stunned to see those two men casually discussing possible civil war and heightened political violence the way Republicans once talked about tort reform or capital gains taxes. Like a lot of Americans, I’ve grown numb to that now. I don’t even want to think about what I might see if I could look 10 years further down the road from here. 

Call me skeptical

At a mixer last night, a friend mentioned the Democratic Data Exchange referenced recently at Axios:

The database, run by an independent firm called Democratic Data Exchange (DDx), allows Democrats and allied groups — campaigns, state parties, super PACs and hundreds more — to bridge a longtime inability to share information.

It’s a legal workaround. DDx allows 501(c) nonprofit groups to pool data with campaigns and the party that their nonprofit status otherwise prohibits. They cannot formally coordinate. Here groups just dump data into a pool that other allied groups can draw out of. The GOP has one too.

How it works: DDx doesn’t hold any information that identifies voters by name, Democratic officials say.

• Instead, it uses a numbering system that’s attached to names in public voting files and organizations’ databases that typically include people’s names, addresses, phone numbers and preferences.
• Democratic campaigns and allied groups such as House Majority PAC and Everytown for Gun Safety pay a membership fee to join the exchange and earn credits by contributing data.
• They can then take out as much data as their credits allow. The more data they contribute, the more they can harvest.
• Campaigns and organizations receive data associated with ID numbers that they can then match with individuals with the same ID numbers in voter files.

Efficiency, huh?

Back in the corporate world, when buzzwords like “efficiency” and “shareholder value” began circulating in the office it was time to update your resume.

What they’re saying: Becca Siegel, a senior adviser who led the Biden campaign’s analytics team in 2020, said access to DDx data allows the campaign to be more efficient with their resources — zeroing in on voters who seem persuadable voters and spending less energy on those who don’t.

• “When we’re talking about billions of dollars of voter outreach, a little more efficient is very meaningful … and may be the difference between winning and losing an election,” she said.

Listen, I do a lot of voting data analysis. Enough that I regularly hear Darth Vader in my head insisting, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed.”

Not that this DDx effort is not worthwhile, but it’s doubling down on microtargeting. What it’s not about is Democrats growing their voter pool.

Again:

Michah L. Sifry commented on the recent “The Experience of Grassroots Leaders Working with the Democratic Party.” One complaint that jumped out at me involves our targeting being too narrow (something I’d already concluded about independent voters):

Most volunteer leaders see their state Democratic party’s efforts to organize outreach as “too little, too late.” One in four call their party unresponsive. A majority of respondents said the party does a terrible job targeting voters, saying that its lists are far too narrow.

In Murray Waas’ “Rule of Law” newsletter this morning he writes, “Unaffiliated voters in Colorado are currently the state’s largest voting bloc— a sizable plurality of about 46%—and their numbers are growing.” It’s the same in North Carolina where they are 36%. Party registration and past voting history are principal factors that make a voter “seem persuadable” to campaigns.

I’ve identified hundreds of precincts across North Carolina where unaffiliated voters who do get to the polls vote 60, 70, 80-90% for Democrats. Except they turn out at 12% below their Democratic neighbors. Those who stayed home bothered to register but are not regular voters.

Are they not turning out like their neighbors in these already heavily Democratic precincts because they are unengaged, or because they are not being engaged? Because our technological terror does not see them as low-hanging fruit? I’m talking about tens of thousands of Democratic votes left on the table in blue, blue neighborhoods because efficiency means these voters are, in Seinfeld terms, not “sponge-worthy.”

Efficiency was the sprite behind corporate consolidation, massive layoffs, and sending jobs overseas. Be careful about putting too much faith in it:

The pilot made the following announcement over the plane’s intercom: “Ladies and gentlemen I have two announcements to make. One is good news and the other is bad news. First I’ll give you the bad news—we’re lost! Now I’ll give you the good news — we’re making very good time.”

It’s not real, but nicely done.

TRUMP MUGSHOT JUST DROPPED #TrumpMugshot pic.twitter.com/vnbhxA8Amh

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 25, 2023

Thursday was a busy night for memes.

Also….

Mark Meadows’ booking height/weight: 6′-1″, 240 lbs.
Donald Trump’s booking height/weight: 6′-3″, 215 lbs.

LMAO 215 lbs 😂 pic.twitter.com/Yz1GZ1k6J3

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) August 25, 2023

I’m 6’3 215. pic.twitter.com/YZixEm3ZBu

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) August 25, 2023

And I was so looking forward to “THE SCALE WAS RIGGED. IT WAS A DISGUSTING DEMOCRATIC SCALE. FAKE NEWS!”

The “ratings” are a little bit tepid

Trump is bragging about his unprecedented numbers on Tucker’s Xitter show last night saying that it got over a hundred million viewers. That’s not true. “Views” on the platform are recorded as anyone who may have scrolled past it , not how many people actually saw it much less watched it. Here are the more pertinent numbers:

As of this writing, Carlson’s interview with Trump has been reposted (formerly “retweeted”) 171,800 times, quote-posted (formerly “quote-tweeted”) 14,500 times, liked 578,100 times, bookmarked 46,500 times, and has been replied to around 47,000 times. Not especially low numbers. It’s undeniable that Trump has a lot of supporters, many of whom swarm on Twitter.

But these days, Fox averages about 1.7 million viewers during its primetime broadcast. And notice the specificity of the word “viewers.” Because none of the numbers tracking engagement on a X post tell you if someone actually watched the video.

We have no idea how many people sat through the whole 45-minute interview between the former president who has been indicted four times, and the man who used to host what the New York Times declared to be “the most racist show in the history of cable news.” It’s impossible to draw any conclusion whatsoever. But if we assume engagement is a likelier means of getting an accurate count than passive “views,” the interview almost certainly did not end up “overshadowing all of Television programming on Wednesday night,” even if ratings were halved by Trump’s absence, as Brian Stelter predicted.

There are plenty of posts that get far more engagement than that. Look any big celebrity for instance. I’m sure a lot more people watched the debate. Luckily for Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy represented.

Here’s an article about how Trump mini-me Vivek Ramaswamy made his fortune. He’s a familiar type:

On the campaign trail, as he lays out why he is a different kind of presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy calls himself a Harvard-trained “scientist” from the lifesaving world of biotechnology.

“I developed a number of medicines,” Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and conservative writer, told a gathering at a construction firm this month in Davenport, Iowa. “The one I’m most proud of is a therapy for kids, 40 of them a year, born with a genetic condition who, without treatment, die by the age of 3.”

The reality of Mr. Ramaswamy’s business career is more complex, the story of a financier more than a scientist, and a prospector who went bargain hunting, hyped his vision, drew investment and then cashed out in two huge payouts — totaling more than $200 million — before his 35th birthday.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s enterprise is best known for a spectacular failure. As a 29-year-old with a bold idea and Ivy League connections, he engineered what was at the time the largest initial public offering in the biotechnology industry’s history — only to see the Alzheimer’s drug at its center fail two years later and the company’s value tank.

But Mr. Ramaswamy, now 37, made a fortune anyway. He took his first payout in 2015 after stirring investor excitement about his growing pharmaceutical empire. He reaped a second five years later when he sold off its most promising pieces to a Japanese conglomerate.

The core company Mr. Ramaswamy built has since had a hand in bringing five drugs to market, including treatments for uterine fibroids, prostate cancer and the rare genetic condition he mentioned on the stump in Iowa. The company says the last 10 late-stage clinical trials of its drugs have all succeeded, an impressive streak in a business where drugs commonly fail.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s resilience was in part a result of the savvy way he structured his web of biotechnology companies. But it also highlights his particular skills in generating hype, hope and risky speculation in an industry that feeds on all three.

“A lot of it had substance. Some of it did not. He’s a sort of a Music Man,” said Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat and former health secretary during the Obama administration who advised two of Mr. Ramaswamy’s companies.

For his part, Mr. Ramaswamy said that criticism that he overpromised was missing the point. Although he promoted the potential of the doomed Alzheimer’s drug, he now says he was actually selling investors on a business model.

“The business model was to develop these medicines for the long run. That’s the punchline, that’s the most important point,” he said.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s wealth is now underwriting a long-shot run for the Republican nomination that includes a campaign jet, plush bus and $10.3 million of his own money and counting. On the campaign trial, he sells what he calls “anti-woke” capitalism, skewering environmental, social and corporate governance programs and dismissing debates about racial privilege.

He is the child of Indian immigrants, and “privilege,” he said recently in Iowa, “was two parents in the house with a focus on education, achievement and actual values. That gave me the foundation to then go on to places like Harvard and Yale and become a scientist.”

With an undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard, Mr. Ramaswamy isn’t really a scientist; he made his name in the world of hedge funds and his graduate work was a law degree from Yale.

Along the way, he invested in biotech and became enamored with an idea for developing high-risk prescription drugs: scour the patents held by pharmaceutical giants, searching for drugs that had been abandoned for business reasons, not necessarily for lack of promise. Buy the patents for a song, and bring them to market.

Like Elon Musk’s phony reputation as a visionary inventor, Ramaswamy is selling himself as a visionary scientist and it’s just as phony. He’s a smart hustler who made a bundle by buying and selling.

He got out of from under his failed Alzheimers drug (after hyping it to the moon) leaving other investors to shoulder the loss. Trump would call that smart.

Mr. Ramaswamy has expressed regret for years about the failure of his drug for Alzheimer’s, a disease that has long bedeviled researchers. And the criticism that he profited while his investors lost angers him, he said.

“On a personal level, it grates on me a little bit,” he said. “The business model of Roivant was to see these drugs through the market, and we could have cashed out big, and employees could have cashed up big, but that was not the business model.”

But Mr. Ramaswamy did eventually cash out on Roivant.

In 2019, Roivant sold off its stake in five of its most promising spinoff companies to Sumitomo, a giant Japanese conglomerate.

That proved to be Mr. Ramaswamy’s biggest payday. His 2020 tax return included nearly $175 million in capital gains.

In recent years, Mr. Ramaswamy has stepped back from Roivant, leaving his roles as chief executive in 2021 and chairman in February. He remains the sixth largest shareholder in the company, with a stake currently valued at more than $500 million. (He has yet to file personal financial disclosures for his presidential run, but he has released 20 years of tax returns, which were provided to The Times by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, two Yale business school academics who have studied Mr. Ramaswamy’s business record. The candidate has also called for his competitors in the Republican race to do the same.)

Mr. Ramaswamy’s pitch that his business model would lead to affordable drug prices has not come to pass. One example is the product for which he has said he is most proud, a one-time implant for children with a rare and devastating immune ailment. When Enzyvant, the Roivant spinoff company by then controlled by Sumitomo, won regulatory approval in 2021, it set a sticker price of $2.7 million.

He sounds like the felon Martin Shkreli, whom he coincidentally helped substantially when he was starting out.

The guy is a clever hustler who made a bundle in the world of pharmaceuticals with business savvy. But a scientist? Uhm, no. He called climate change a hoax in the debate last night. He knows better. But he knows his marks.

It’s so awful in so many ways. But since people are taking it seriously as some sort of political manifesto. (They talked about it in the debate last night.) I think it’s worthwhile to point this out:

Reminder: The “Rich Men North of Richmond” policy agenda is utterly incoherent. Anthony says government spends too much money, but also isn’t helping people enough. Miners (who earn 20 percent above the average national wage) are somehow in trouble. Skinny people are dying in the streets from drugs and suicide. But fat welfare queens are bringing home the bacon.

The entire thing is an evasion of personal responsibility and an exercise in special pleading: The government should spend more money on the people I like and less money on the people I do not like. And also: Everything that’s wrong in my life is someone else’s fault.

Finally: Oliver Anthony seems unaware that the places he romanticizes are actually the ones sucking the most off the government teat and contributing the least to our economy. We are indeed a nation of makers and takers. And the takers are Oliver Anthony and his friends.

Thank you JV Last. He is 100% right. All that bullshit has been swirling in our politics for 150 years and it’s probably never going to change. But the rest of us aren’t obligated to defend it. It’s crap.

Donald Trump keeps exhorting Republicans in congress, both publicly and privately, to step up and use their power to go after the prosecutors who are indicting him for his many crimes. And like the good little MAGA soldiers they are, they’re following his orders:

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

“I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

They used to be big “states’ rights” boosters but they’ve always been against it when it suits them. The new federal authoritarianism seems to suit them quite well.

This will come to nothing. Maybe they can get some spectacle out of it but I kind of doubt it. This is basically what a Republican majority does now: put on a show for King Donald. They’re nothing but court jesters.

The great Alexandra Petri on the debate last night.

If you said, “Would you like to watch Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie talk to each other for two hours? FYI, the place where they’ll do so is hotter than Beelzebub’s armpit!,” I would have said, “No, thank you.” But if you said, “The alternative is watching Donald Trump talk to Tucker Carlson on the website formerly known as Twitter,” I would say, “I can’t wait to hear what Ron, Vivek, Nikki, Tim, Doug, Mike, Asa and Chris have to say!”

Wednesday night’s debate on Fox News raised all kinds of questions. Like: “Why is this happening?” and “Where is Donald Trump?” and “Is it technically a primary debate or more of a secondary debate given the levels where these people are polling?”

Here is approximately how it went.

Bret Baier: Hello. We have brought a bell just because we enjoy the sound of a bell.

Martha MacCallum: Feel free to speak over it; it will give the evening a fun, musical vibe.

Baier: Yes, and speaking of music, candidates, the number one song in America is something called “Rich Men North of Richmond”! Governor DeSantis, introduce yourself by providing a close reading of the subtle lyrics of this song.

DeSantis: Hang on, first I have some prepared remarks! Joe Biden’s basement! Hunter Biden’s paintings! “Rich Men North of Richmond”! Taxes! Florida!

Baier: Chris Christie, why would you be better as president?

Christie: Bret, I have spent the last four years sailing around sharpening my traffic-cone harpoon for my hated foe (from hell’s heart I spit my last breath at him!), and the one question I did not expect was about a scenario where I could actually become president. Uh, I was governor of New Jersey? So, take that for what it’s worth.

Scott: I have come to this debate with some specific numbers at my fingertips! I was told everyone would be excited about specific numbers! If not, I would really like those hours back.

Ramaswamy: Hello! You may be wondering, who is this skinny guy with a funny name? I’m not a politician who is going to offer you a series of prepared, meaningless platitudes. I’m a businessman with no political experience who is going to offer you a series of prepared, meaningless platitudes. Isn’t it time we stopped running away from things and started running toward things? I am not running for president so much as I am running for the title of Favorite Grandson of your Fox News grandmother. Have you ever considered that people don’t love God anymore?

Pence: I have never once considered it.

Baier: Governor Haley, when polled about you, people say, “Who?” and “Huh?” and “The comet?”

Haley: I don’t care about polls! I care about the truth! The truth is that we are spending too much, and our children will never forgive us! I am pretty sure the reason is the debt thing and none of the other things I have ever said, for instance about keeping trans girls out of sports.

Pence: Hello! I am here to recite scripture and keep referring to the Trump-Pence administration, and I’m all out of scripture. That was some Mike Pence humor; I will never be out of scripture! I am unquestionably the best-prepared person in this race, the single individual with the experience that is closest to being the president, with no exceptions that spring to mind. I have been in the hallway. I have been in the White House. Do you like what my administration did with the Supreme Court?

Ramaswamy: Now that we’ve gotten everyone’s prepared remarks out of the way, we can have a real debate.

Pence: Was that one of yours?

Ramaswamy: You think now is the time for incremental reform. I think it is the time for actual revolution.

Pence: Good Lord, no thank you. I do not have any revolutionary proposals. I believe in mild, small, incremental change. Except for a nationwide 15-week ban on abortion, which I want to implement because I promised it to God.

Haley: Let’s be realistic! Women hate hearing this. Let’s just admit that it will never happen. But we’re all going to say we want it to happen! But, ladies, it’s not going to happen.

Pence: I disagree. I will make it happen.

Haley: I know we all have to say that, but, like, we have to admit it won’t happen or no one will ever vote for us again.

Pence: Hmm.

Baier: Wait! I just remembered we have two more people here!

Burgum: Hi! I just hurt my leg, which you can’t really see on TV but was a big deal for me. I’m from a small town, and I’m so excited to be with all these people!

Hutchinson: It’s fine, I also forgot that I was here!

Baier: Climate change. Here is a young person.

Young Person: Please tell me that anyone on this stage believes in climate change, the only issue I care about because I anticipate living on this planet for at least 60 years. I am starting to get worried. Can we have a show of hands?

DeSantis: No! We are not schoolchildren! We will not raise our hands or acknowledge the existence of science!

Ramaswamy: As the only one on this stage who is not bought and paid for, I have a thought.

Christie: I have had enough of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT and stole his opening gambit from Barack Obama.

I came here to bludgeon Donald Trump verbally, but Trump is not here and I have a lot of verbal bludgeoning built up.

Baier: Governor Haley, are you bought and paid for?

Haley: What an odd question. I will answer it by quoting Margaret Thatcher favorably.

Baier: Why do we have homelessness, drugs and crime?

Pence: Because Democrats talked about defunding the police, and everyone knows that if you say “Defund the police!” into a mirror three times, crime appears. It’s just science, or, as Governor DeSantis and I prefer, religion.

Christie: I disagree. Crime went up because Hunter Biden did it.

Ramaswamy: That is a good point, but in fact crime went up because we have forgotten to have enough hard work and family and faith. We are having a national identity crisis, and I say to this nation what I would say to anyone going through a mental health crisis: THIS IS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT PATRIOTIC ENOUGH!

Pence: Hush. I despise you. Never say that we are not patriotic enough. During the Trump-Pence administration, I hugged the flag every night, with my wife’s approval. There is an eagle that would be very sad to hear you say that, as would Ronald Reagan, who is an angel now.

Ramaswamy: We live in a dark moment of internal cultural civil war.

Pence: No, we don’t. It is morning again in America, as it never was not.

DeSantis: I fixed all crime in Florida.

Baier: No, you didn’t.

DeSantis: That’s just according to your numbers.

Burgum: No one ever asks about the crime in small towns.

Hutchinson: We should have respect for the rule of law, and that starts at the top. With that fellow, Name.

[Audience gasps! Petals fall from a rose under a glass globe on the debate stage.]

Baier: You did it. You mentioned him. The elephant not in the room. If he’s convicted, would you still support him? Raise your hand.

[Christie gestures.]

MacCallum: Christie, were you raising your hand?

Christie: To OBJECT!

MacCallum: I don’t think anyone on this stage understands the concept of answering questions via a show of hands.

Christie: I’m Chris Christie, and I’m here to say: The time to stop Donald Trump is now! Not any of the other times! Now! This is what passes for courage in the Republican Party!

[Commingled cheers and boos from the audience.]

Ramaswamy: Enough pandering. I’m going to be completely honest and speak from the heart. Donald Trump was the best president of the 21st century.

Christie: You make me laugh.

DeSantis: You would make me laugh, but I have been instructed by my consultants not to laugh because it’s “off-putting” and “gives nightmares.”

MacCallum: Do you believe that Mike Pence did the right thing?

DeSantis: I think we need to end the weaponization of the Justice Department. It’s about Jan. 20, 2025 — I was once Navy SEAL-adjacent, and I learned in my adjacency that you must focus on the mission.

Baier: This is not an answer to the question.

DeSantis: Can we go back to piling on Ramaswamy? Pretend I didn’t say anything.

Ramaswamy: I would pardon Donald Trump.

Pence: May I speak? I was kind of involved. I think Mike Pence did the right thing. I think Mike Pence was a hero. Mike Pence kept the promise he made on Ronald Reagan’s Bible. Ronald Reagan is proud of Mike Pence.

Baier: Should we support Ukraine with more military aid?

Ramaswamy: Absolutely not. I am raising my hand!

Haley: You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.

Ramaswamy: Have fun on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.

Haley: A president must possess the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. I am not saying you lack that, but I’m also not not saying that.

Christie and Pence (cheering, banging their lecterns): Yeah, get him! Take him out!

Christie: Before you get too up on me, I would like to deport every undocumented person.

Baier: Uh, let’s talk about education.

DeSantis: In Florida, we did a good job with education. I’ve learned so many facts! According to something that’s probably a textbook, because I have approved it for classroom use, Ron DeSantis is not only the best governor we’ve ever had, but also the first and the tallest!

Baier: Now for the lightning round, or as we like to call it, the point in the debate when we entirely lose control.

Pence: I hear a bell ringing, but I don’t know why.

MacCallum: Governor Christie, will you level with the American people about UFOs?

Christie: Huh? Sure. Yeah. Why not?

Baier: Well, thanks for a normal evening.

DeSantis: Thank you for not making me talk!

Pence: This was far from the worst time I’ve had at a gathering of Republicans!

That’s closer than you think…