Stop pretending he’s wearing clothes!
Friday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case from Colorado that declared Donald J. Trump, Insurrectionist, ineligible to appear on that state’s 2024 primary ballot. And oh, the humanity!
The 14th Amendment, the Civil War, Maine, Colorado, a divided nation, MAGA death threats against lawmakers and judges, etc. Plus the kettles of limp-spaghetti arguments desperate Trump’s attorneys have thrown at courtroom walls hoping something, anything, will stick and save their client’s ass.
And then there’s the tarnished Roberts court itself (Washington Post):
The public already views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, with Democrats expressing little confidence in the court and Republicans saying the opposite — and the question of whether Trump should be kept off the ballot has the potential to further polarize those views.
“It throws them right into the political thicket,” Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell said of the court. “There is no way they can decide the case without having about half the country think they are being partisan hacks.”
Oh, but Team Trump thinks they have this in the bag:
“I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court; I have faith in them,” [Trump attorney Alina] Habba said on Fox News.“You know, people like Kavanaugh who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.”
[D]espite Habba’s cleanup effort, she was clearly pointing in the direction of Kavanaugh (and potentially others) being beholden to Trump; there is no other reason to invoke the supposed favors Trump did for Kavanaugh. This adds to a volume of evidence that indicates that Trump does indeed expect loyalty from judges and justices — along with plenty of others in positions where that shouldn’t be a consideration.
That was before SCOTUS decided to accept the case it must take no matter how much it does not want to.
Trump sent the judges a message himself at a Friday rally in Iowa:
“All I want is fair; I fought really hard to get three very, very good people in,” he said, referring to his appointees. He added, “And I just hope that they’re going to be fair because, you know, the other side plays the ref.”
Also sprach MAGAthustra.
Translation: You owe me.
Implied threat: You’d better come through. Or else.
Constitutional scholars are divided on whether it would be good for democracy to bar Trump from the ballot, or whether such a move, even if legally sound, is politically too dangerous. Many of them say theyexpect the justices to try to find a way to decide the case without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump engaged in an insurrection.
Listen. Listen closely. Trump did this. That is the context no one in the press has the guts to talk about. All this hand-ringing over the Court’s dilemma, over a democracy in peril, and no mention that our democratic republic stands at this crossroads because Donald Trump is a career criminal! We’re here because of him.
Oh, but he’s not been adjudicated! they cry. Like the dozens of indicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists still awaiting trial while their accomplices sit rotting in jail? Poor babies, all!
“There’s no confusion about who Trump is,” Biden said on Friday. We know who Trump is. You don’t have to be Maya Angelou or Robert Zimmerman to know which way the wind blows.
Look, I don’t agree with everything Dan Froomkin writes here, but I share his frustration that the mainstream press refuses, refuses, to address any elephant in any room:
Our top newsrooms are too timid to go there, however. Racism, especially when it comes to calling specific people or practices racist, has long been the third rail of journalism. Newsroom leaders don’t want to be accused of stoking racial resentment, don’t want to alienate racist readers, and don’t want to have to defend their own insufficient attempts to diversify their newsrooms and sources. They just don’t want to go there.
Sadly, the fact that racism may be the key to understanding the current political climate hasn’t changed that aversion.
By the same token, Trump is a criminal. By temperament and by habit if not by judicial decree.
But God forbid anyone should speak bluntly about the personality cult that accuses Democrats of being baby-blood-drinking pedophiles.
Trump is not the the genetic progenitor of this movement. As a natural-born predator, he just exploits it more efficiently than his wannabes.
But the flood of 14th Amendment odds-making just sickens me. Because Trumpism, with its not-so-subliminal threats of violence has turned press watchdogs into lapdogs. The expert analysis we’ll be expected to swallow as SCOTUS deliberates Trump’s questionable standing as a candidate for dictator will focus on every legal and political consideration except the behaviors of the man who misled us here.
I’m reminded of the kids’ nonseense song about the hole at the botton of the sea. It all comes back to Trump. He’s the hole.