Anytime a glass-half-empty progressive launches into how they refuse to vote for “the lesser of two evils,” don’t even argue the point. Reject the false premise. It’s not an invitation to debate anyway. The framing is intended to shut down debate.
Want to see how it’s done? Behold AOC:
What a smart and succinct answer. She’s not getting enough credit for forcefully articulating the progressive case for Biden. Such an important message and messenger. https://t.co/8QqfRpVlyH
Actually, she didn’t articulate a progressive case for Biden in that clip, exactly. She advocated for a progressive perspective larger than the presidential race and the war in Gaza.
Here’s where AOC understates the point. It’s not just hundreds of elections at issue in November, it’s tens of thousands in 50 states and the territories. There are 914 elections in North Carolina alone, and that number doesn’t include hundreds of municipal races. That’s one state. And the entire NCGOP council of state slate is a horrorshow.
Polling seems to be swinging President Joe Biden’s way, for what that’s worth. While he’s out in the field promoting his accomplishments, Donald Trump is stuck in a New York courtroom. The problem for Biden is that Trump’s courtroom antics are getting the headlines. Trump is the living embodiment of conservative disrespect for the rule of law when applied to them: “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”
Trump models himself after mobsterJohn Gotti, says Tim O’Brien, Senior Executive Editor at Bloomberg Opinion, and has compared himself to Al Capone. The would-be tough guy believes it’s appropriate to stare down jurors and look at the judge, as Gotti did, “with a big FU on his face.” His attempts to (successfully, it seems) intimdate jurors and to repeatedly violate the gag order imposed by the court should land him, finally, in jail, Andrew Weissmann, former Department of Justice official, told “Deadline White House.”
The judge cannot tolerate Trump’s behavior lest the message it sends to his MAGA base that they too can violate the law with impunity. “The road to hell in this country is going to be thinking that you should not apply the exact same rules to Donald Trump as wou would to any other defendant,” Weissman said on Thursday.
Ian Bassin struck me to the core with his observations about certain people rejecting a rules-based society for a state of nature where might makes right.
“If you’re strong enough to go punch another kid in the schoolyard and take their milk money, you go ahead,” says Bassin, Executive Director of Protect Democracy. “Some people have no compunction that way. They have no scruples. For the rest of us, we don’t want to live in that state of nature where we’re constantly fighting everybody for a scrap of food. We would like a system in which we are protected, our property is protected, our safety is protected. We would like there to be a system of rules. Those are the two fundamental different ways that we can organize society.”
Guess what MAGAstan looks like? Trump operates in that world. He sees it in his interest to attack every set of rules the rest of us depend on to protect us, even as he dupes his followers into believing they can count on him to protect them in a world of no rules he wants to create.
What Trump is engaged in at his trial in lower Manhattan, Bassin continues, is “an attack on the rules, an attack on courts, an attack on judges, an attack on jurors, an attack on witnesses, because they all represent contraints on what a bully can get away with. And it’s woe to all of us if he is able to succeed in undermining the system that protects us all to be secure and free.”
The International Criminal Court may be considering issuing international arrest warrants in the relatively near future against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials for alleged war crimes, N12 reported Thursday night.
Around 125 countries are members of the ICC, including essentially all of Europe, and are bound by treaty law to honor the ICC’s arrest warrants, though there have been examples of countries protesting such warrants and refusing to honor them.
Underminers Union spokesman, Tom Cotton, is displeased.
They're scared.
(The ICC has an arrest warrant out for Putin, and I am 110% sure the Prosecutor will seek warrants against Hamas leaders along with Israeli leaders) pic.twitter.com/2WpVKur6Cq
Republicans deserve everything that’s coming to them
Democrats have plenty of experience with snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Israeli war on Hamas in Gaza is not helping President Biden. There are panicked missives in my in-box this morning about how him signing the TikTok bill if it passes will further erode his support among younger voters. Plus, as Dan Pfeiffer acknowledges, the Donald Trump campaign is much better run than it was in 2016 and 2020.
That said, Pfeiffer believes Biden has advantages the increasingly addled Trump wishes he had. For starters, incumbent advantage and non-stop offense:
1. The Incumbent Advantage
There’s a reason why incumbents win more often than not. Incumbency is an advantage. Of course, convincing the electorate to fire a president presents a challenge, but the ability to plan, raise money, and build campaign infrastructure while your opponent is campaigning for the nomination is a huge advantage. Because Trump’s primary opponents never landed a blow on him and he was able to avoid the diminishing campaign rituals, including debates, there was a sense that he negated Biden’s incumbent advantage. But that is not the case.
The Biden Campaign viewed the State of the Union as the starting gun. From the moment the President walked off the dais, the campaign has been fully engaged — dropping new ads, opening offices, and pushing its message aggressively in the battleground states.
They spent the last year quietly building an operation, doing plenty of research, and sketching out a plan to defeat Donald Trump.
2. Biden’s Offense
The Trump Campaign exited the GOP primary largely broke despite facing no real opposition. And his campaign has struggled to pivot to the general election. Since Nikki Haley dropped out, Trump has rarely campaigned, and avoids battleground states or even using media to reach voters. The campaign has no ads of consequence on the air and Trump is spending most of his time spinning records at Mar-a-Lago or attending legal proceedings related to his various criminal trials.
The Biden operation has been on non-stop offense. Since the State of the Union, the President remains omnipresent in the battleground states. His messaging is strategically designed to shore up the President’s coalition; and he is currently in the midst of a three-day tour of Pennsylvania to talk about the economy. Since the State of the Union, the President made major announcements on climate change, student loan debt cancellation, gun safety reform and prescription drug costs. All of these issues are critical to the struggling segments of his coalition.
The Biden Campaign continues to draw contrasts with Trump at every opportunity, launching new ads and videos on a near daily basis to define Trump and his agenda like this ad released immediately after the Arizona Supreme Court enacted a near-total ban on abortion in the state:
This week, President Biden is barnstorming Pennsylvania to drive and amplify an economic contrast message with this new ad.
Trump, on the other hand, has been on defense in recent weeks. He is scrambling to unwind his proposals to cut Social Security and repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump is also utterly flummoxed by how to talk about abortion. One day he says to leave it to the states, and the next day he opposes Arizona’s state law banning abortion. For the next six to eight weeks, he is trapped in a Manhattan courtroom instead of campaigning in the states that will decide the election.
Based on the first month of the general election, Biden has a clear strategy to win and Trump is still figuring it out.
Yes, the country’s mood is a wild card. But if all politics is local (is that still true?), then the sideshow candidates Republicans are fielding in North Carolina may persuade voters to vote and vote D even if they are put off by national politics.
On Nov. 5, North Carolina will determine whether a slate of Republican candidates who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, who dismiss Donald Trump’s 88 felony charges and who are eager to be led by the most prodigiousliar in the history of the presidency can win in a battleground state.
Pope McCorkle, a Democratic consultant and professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, argued in an email that the results of this year’s Republican primary elections on March 5 demonstrate that “the North Carolina G.O.P. is now a MAGA party. With the gubernatorial nomination of Mark Robinson, the N.C. G.O.P. is clearly in the running for the most MAGA party in the nation.”
For those who grew up watching the Tonight Show, “How MAGA are they?”
Robinson has pledged that “Christian patriots of this nation will own this nation and rule this nation,” and he’ll will stop only when his political enemies “run past me laying on the ground, choking on my own blood.” He’s racking up a greatest hits list that’s not to be believed.
On May 13, 2020, Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee for North Carolina superintendent of public schools, responded on X to a suggestion that Barack Obama be sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp on charges of treason. Morrow’s counterproposal?
I prefer a Pay Per View of him in front of the firing squad. I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death.
In Morrow’s world, Obama would be unlikely to die alone. Her treason execution list, according to a report on CNN, includes Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Representative Ilhan Omar, Hillary Clinton, Senator Chuck Schumer, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and President Biden.
I could go on about the N.C. G.O.P.’s entire council of state slate, but you get the idea. A canvasser here over the weekend encountered a woman completely put out with Joe Biden, so she pivoted to asking about those state races. The voter was shocked, shocked (and not in a Claude Rains way) to hear how bizarre the state Republican slate is. North Carolina Democrats have fielded a solidly non-insane set of diverse candidates.
McCorkle tells Edsall, “the N.C. G.O.P. is testing the outer limits of MAGAism.” I agree with Ezra Levin, Republicans deserve everything that’s coming to them.
These assholes deserve everything that's coming to them electorally. https://t.co/OaJemfQD3G
Read that Washington Post headline again. Is there anything you’ve read lately that encapsulates the ultraviolence the MAGA cult is committing against the United States of America (land of the free, and all) than “Red states threaten librarians with prison”?
Who knew “A Clockwork Orange” (1962) was to be so prescient? Anthony Burgess published Clockwork during the Cold War, in the year the U.S. and the Soviets came closest to nuking each other. Laced with Nadsat, the Russian-based teen slang Burgess invented and put into the mouth of his thuggish protagonist, the book itself was designed as a subtle form of conditioning.
Burgess wrote in 1980, “The novel was to be an exercise in linguistic programming, with the exoticisms gradually clarified by context: I would resist to the limit any publisher’s demand that a glossary be provided. A glossary would disrupt the programme and nullify the brainwashing.”
Two senior Republican lawmakers, the chairs of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, say their colleagues are echoing Russian state propaganda against Ukraine.
Researchers who study disinformation say Reps. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, are merely acknowledging what has been clear for some time: Russian propaganda aimed at undermining U.S. and European support for Ukraine has steadily seeped into America’s political conversation over the past decade, taking on a life of its own.
In the 1960s, it was the hippie counterculture that coined “Better Red Than Dead” in reaction to the threat of nuclear war. These days, MAGA Republicans show off T-shirts celebrating their negative partisanship: “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”
Demonizing political rivals, banning books, threatening librarians with prison, spouting Russian propaganda aimed at destroying the United States is what the Party of Trump considers ultranationalist ultrapatriotism.
The Post explains that while Democrats are attempting to pass measures to “prohibit book bans or forbid the harassment of school and public librarians,” their “library-friendly measures are being outpaced by bills in mostly red states that aim to restrict which books libraries can offer and threaten librarians with prison or thousands in fines for handing out ‘obscene’ or ‘harmful’ titles.” Republicans claim their laws are about pornography:
But other lawmakers say [the bills] are ideologically driven censorship dressed up as concern for children. They note that, as book challenges spiked to historic highs over the past two years, the majority of objections targeted books by and about LGBTQ people and people of color.
The bans are a Republican reverse-Ludovico Technique aimed not at forcing children to read but Brezhnev Era censorship designed by right-thinking “patriots” hoping to prevent children’s exposure to ideas they deem wrong-thinking.
Imagine Stephen Miller back in the White House next year. Then get busy working to elect Democrats up and down the ticket.
What Alan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind” left me with most, beside his “these kids today” tone, was how, in our congenital hubris, many Americans believe their thoughts are their own. With no real schooling in the evolution of ideas or in critical thinking, Americans may ignore what they’ve absorbed from their cultural melieu as having no real bearing except perhaps on their sartorial and musical preferences. Fundamentalists, of course, receive an upbringing not only in what to think but in what not to, and to distrust ideas not handed down by the patriarchs, the apostles and megachurch prosperity peddlers.
A habit of not interrogating one’s own thoughts make a mind fertile ground for those deliberately sowing weeds. The Washington Post has obtained a Russian document describing its government’s efforts at just that:
In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States.
“We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.”
The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.
Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.” The document says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order,” a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability — and that of other authoritarian nations — to impose its will globally.
It’s hard to imagine more fertile ground for sowing such weeds than the minds of a nihilist, anti-democratic movement led by a malignant narcissist with dictatorial ambitions, unless it is social media that rewards anger, divisiveness, and conspiratorial content with engagement. The Mueller Report documented in detail how the Russian Internet Research Agency skillfully played Americans for suckers in 2016. They watched as seeds of disinformation sprouted and choked reality until Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway could proudly speak her alternative truths on Meet The Press.
Ecumenical extremism
Yes, they mean it:
The academic, Vladimir Zharikhin, called for Russia to “continue to facilitate the coming to power of isolationist right-wing forces in America,” “enable the destabilization of Latin American countries and the rise to power of extremist forces on the far left and far right there,” as well as facilitate “the restoration of European countries’ sovereignty by supporting parties dissatisfied with economic pressure from the U.S.”
Read: Undermine NATO.
For Mikhail Khodorkovsky — the longtime Putin critic who was once Russia’s richest man until a clash with the Kremlin landed him 10 years in prison — it is not surprising that Russia is seeking to do everything it can to undermine the United States. “For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.,” he said. “The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn’t mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn’t defending them.”
The long congressional standoff on providing more weapons to Ukraine was only making it easier for Russia to challenge Washington’s global power, he said.
Moscow has plenty of help on Capitol Hill. Some MAGA types may be bought. Others willingly volunteer. Other volunteers may not even know it:
“I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Puck’s Julia Ioffe last week. Representative Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, went further, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper a few days later, “We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”
It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
MAGA House Republicans on Tuesday peformed “The Impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Act 2.”
You wonder why Republicans get nothing done? So does Chip Roy.
“One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing—one—that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” Texas Rep. Chip Roy thundered on the floor of the House in November.
Roy: One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me, one meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done pic.twitter.com/RGc4FTAelt
Roy got no takers. They were too busy performing for the Fox News audience and Donald Trump. The play’s the thing, they thought, wherein we’ll win approval from the MAGA king.
“What’s especially striking about Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment is how little effort Republicans are investing in keeping up appearances,” Maddowblog observes:
And then, nothing happened. The idea that this was an urgent matter of great national importance was quickly contradicted by the fact that Republicans didn’t do anything with the articles of impeachment for weeks.
Ah, but wait. They did. For Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan to begin. They delivered the impeachment articles to the Senate on Tuesday. And who did they select for that solemn duty?
“The group of GOP impeachment managers included some of the party’s most right-wing extremists, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, and Andy Biggs of Arizona,” writes Steve Benen:
These aren’t the kind of managers party officials would choose to make a credible case to the Senate; these are the kind of managers party officials would choose as part of a partisan, election-year stunt.
And that’s because this entire process is clearly a partisan, election-year stunt.
Evidence? Pishposh. Unserious impeachment managers? Step outside and we’ll show you serious.
The party that won’t raise the minumum wage or support Ukraine against the Russians won’t give their voters bread but will give them a circus in hopes that somehow it will either a) fuel their base’s simmering anger, and/or b) distract attention from Donald Trump’s legal peril.
“We’ve taken impeachment, and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept,” former Colorado Rep. Ken Buck declared before resigning in disgust last month.
Benen adds:
GOP officials are barely even trying to prove him wrong. Republicans might as well be wearing t-shirts that read, “Yep, we’re engaged in a partisan, election-year stunt.”
NBC News’ report added, “It’s expected that Senate Democrats, who control the chamber, will band together and vote to dismiss or table the issue, then move on to other business, including the chamber’s need to renew a critical spy tool before it expires Friday. None of the Senate’s 51 Democrats have said they support the Mayorkas impeachment, and even a handful of GOP senators have said the impeachment is meritless.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will swear in senators as jurors in five hours. Watch this space.
The Lincoln Project set “The Procession of the Impeachment Managers” to appropriate music.
Firefighters respond to conflagration caused by Russia’s overnight strike on Kharkiv. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
If it feels odd advocating for U.S. aid to Ukraine to fight Vladimir Putin’s Russian invaders, join the club. Those of us who opposed Cold War proxy battles and geopolitical gamesmanship in remote corners of the planet half a century ago now find ourselves living in a more connected world. When a ship stuck in the Suez Canal can disrupt our lives here, what happens on NATO’s doorstep is equally of concern. Just as much as what happens between Israel, Gaza, and Iran.
What’s confounding (or not) is how the formerly hawkish Republican Party that once feared commies in woodpiles have truned into Putin’s lapdogs. Perhaps it’s not surprising. Their positions have always been more performance than principle.
Two stories from the New York Times concerning the fate of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s top military commander has issued a bleak assessment of the army’s positions on the eastern front, saying they have “worsened significantly in recent days.”
Russian forces were pushing hard to exploit their growing advantage in manpower and ammunition to break through Ukrainian lines, the commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement over the weekend.
“Despite significant losses, the enemy is increasing his efforts by using new units on armored vehicles, thanks to which he periodically achieves tactical gains,” the general said.
At the same time, Ukraine’s energy ministry told millions of civilians to charge their power banks, get their generators out of storage and “be ready for any scenario” as Ukrainian power plants are damaged or destroyed in devastating Russian airstrikes.
“The Russians fire five times as many artillery shells at the Ukrainians than the Ukrainians are able to fire back,” US European Command head Gen. Christopher Cavoli told a recent House Armed Services Committee meeting.
Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday said he planned this week to advance a long-stalled national security spending package to aid Israel, Ukraine and other American allies, along with a separate bill aimed at mollifying conservatives who have been vehemently opposed to backing Kyiv.
Mr. Johnson’s announcement, coming after he has agonized for weeks over whether and how to advance an infusion of critical aid to Ukraine amid stiff Republican resistance, was the first concrete indication that he had settled on a path forward. It came days after Iran launched a large aerial attack on Israel, amplifying calls for Congress to move quickly to approve the pending aid bill.
Yeah, well, good luck, Mike. Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin and given the chance would follow him around like a puppy. If Putin wants Ukraine, that’s fine by The Donald.
Anne Applebaum relfects on how swiftly the U.S. came to Israel’s aid over the weekend while Republicans leave Ukraine’s democracy and perhaps its people to another slow death. People there still recall the Holodomor.
Why the difference in reaction? Why did American and European jets scramble to help Israel, but not Ukraine? Why doesn’t Ukraine have enough matériel to defend itself? One difference is the balance of nuclear power. Russia has nuclear weapons, and its propagandists periodically threaten to use them. That has made the U.S. and Europe reluctant to enter the skies over Ukraine. Israel also has nuclear weapons, but that affects the calculus in a different way: It means that the U.S., Europe, and even some Arab states are eager to make sure that Israel is never provoked enough to use them, or indeed to use any serious conventional weapons, against Iran.
A second difference between the two conflicts is that the Republican Party remains staunchly resistant to propaganda coming from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Leading Republicans do not sympathize with the mullahs, do not repeat their talking points, and do not seek to appease them when they make outrageous claims about other countries. That enables the Biden administration to rush to the aid of Israel, because no serious opposition will follow.
But?
By contrast, a part of the Republican Party, including its presidential candidate, does sympathize with the Russian dictatorship, does repeat its talking points, and does seek to appease Russia when it invades and occupies other countries. The absence of bipartisan solidarity around Ukraine means that the Republican congressional leadership has prevented the Biden administration from sending even defensive weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. The Biden administration appears to feel constrained and unable to provide Ukraine with the spontaneous assistance that it just provided to Israel.
Open sympathy for the war aims of the Russian state is rarely stated out loud. Instead, some leading Republicans have begun, in the past few months, to argue that Ukraine should “shift to a defensive war,” to give up any hope of retaining its occupied territory, or else stop fighting altogether. Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, in a New York Timesessay written in what can only be described as extraordinary bad faith, made exactly this argument just last week. So too, for example, did Republican Representative Eli Crane of Arizona, who has said that military aid for Ukraine “should be totally off the table and replaced with a push for peace talks.”
But Ukraine is fighting a defensive war. Clearly. Once quick to invoke Neville Chamberlain while rattling sabers about foreign tyrants, MAGA Republicans eagerly hope to elect one themselves. Finding common cause with Putin is them being consistent, at least in their fecklessness.
Applebaum notes one of the conclusions the rest of the world will draw:
A part of the Republican Party—one large enough to matter—can be co-opted, lobbied, or purchased outright. Not only can you get it to repeat your propaganda; you can get it to act directly in your interests. This probably doesn’t cost even a fraction of the price of tanks and artillery, and it can be far more effective.
If only we could harness their bad faith as an energy source.
For most on the right, pitching a hissy fit is a ploy to control the political narrative. A little phony sanctimony here, some faux outrage there, and plenty of echo-chamber volume, and Democrats run for cover. Maybe even beg forgiveness for something they did not do. But for Donald Trump, pitching a hissy fit is a way of life to which that Marvelous he is entitled. How dare any lesser being deprive him of his birthright?
Yet, here Trump sits facing justice for falsifying business records and defrauding voters, a mere pleb in an ungilded New York City courtroom where hissy-fitting is not permitted. On Monday, Justice Juan Merchan explained to Trump just how things work in his domain (New York Times):
As part of the pretrial housekeeping, Justice Juan Merchan delivered the so-called Parker warnings on courtroom behavior directly to the defendant, reminding him that he could be jailed if he disrupted the proceedings.
Trump, who earlier seemed to be dozing, muttered, “I do,” when asked if he understood this and the other elements of the warning, which Merchan was delivering to Trump for a second time — now orally — just to make sure it sank in.
Not likely. Before this trial even gets rolling, Merchan must rule on whether Trump should “be held in contempt of court and possibly jailed for three Truth Social posts attacking Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels” in violation of a gag order against Trump intimidating witnesses. Attacking adversaries is something Trump ponders each morning even before spatula-ing on his bronzer and spraying his hair until it hides his baldness. Clearly, his rights are being violated.
Being a criminal defendant cramps Trump’s style like it’s never been cramped before (The New Republic):
The weeks-long proceeding will require Trump to be in court for every session—something Trump himself has challenged as “election interference” on the basis that it will keep him away from the campaign trail—even though he’ll be permitted to campaign every weekend, evening, and Wednesday during the process. If he fails to appear in court, he could face an arrest warrant.
Trump won’t be able to golf on fine spring days. He faces another uncomfortable reality as a criminal defendant (Politico):
Donald Trump is learning a hard lesson: Criminal defendants don’t get to set their own schedules.
Three times on Monday the former president asked Justice Juan Merchan to cut him loose from his hush money trial to attend to other matters — some personal, some political and some legal. Three times the judge responded with, essentially, “eh, we’ll see.”
Could he attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17? I’ll get back to you, Merchan said.
May he skip the trial on April 25 to attend Supreme Court arguments about whether he’s immune from special counsel Jack Smith’s charges for trying to subvert the 2020 election? Not likely, said Merchan.
Can he be exempted from any proceedings that may arise on Wednesdays — when Merchan’s court is typically dark — so he can campaign? Not if the jury is in, the judge told him.
Naturally, Trump reacted badly. The moment he exited the courtroom on Monday, he lied.
“It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son who’s worked very, very hard and he is a great student,” Trump told reporters. “It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial.”
His worshippers were just as naturally faux-outraged, condemning the restrictions as “banana republic tactics.”
As we’ve seen, Trump’s supporters consider the potential that their presidential candidate could be a convicted felon irrelevant. Nothing is disqualifying to their would-be king. And how dare anyone treat him like a commoner?
A pair of pranksters gave fans of Donald Trump a look at what a bible true to the former president might really contain.
“Thou shalt put no other person above Trump,” Davram Stiefler of The Good Liars read to MAGA fans waiting outside a recent Trump event.
“Thou shalt commit adultery,” read Jason Selvig, the other half other comedic duo.
Trump last month began hawking a “God Bless The USA Bible” ― which includes the Bible, lyrics to “God Bless The USA,” and copies of documents such as the Declaration of Independence ― to fans for $59.99.
“It’s a grift, right?” Stiefler said as he attempted to sell their version of the book for a much-reduced price of $10.
Lee’s surrender 1865. ‘Peace in Union.’ The surrender of General Lee to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, 9 April 1865. Reproduction of a painting by Thomas Nast, which was completed thirty years after the surrender. (Public Domain.)
Hush. It’s not about money. The Donald Trump trial that begins jury selection in Manhattan today is about what elevates payments funneled to a porn star through a shall company to the level of felony.
A once-skeptical Mark Joseph Stern explains at Slate, “The falsification of business records is, by itself, a misdemeanor under New York law, but it’s a felony when it’s done with the ‘intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.’” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s pretrial briefing erased Stern’s doubts left over from the initial indictment.
Bragg has argued, convincingly, that the former president intended to violate at least two election laws—one state, one federal. First, Bragg asserted that Trump and Cohen ran afoul of the Federal Election Campaign Act by making unlawful campaign contributions (in the form of a payoff) at the direction of a candidate (that is, Trump). Cohen already pleaded guilty for this very act in federal court, so it is hardly a stretch to accuse Trump of intending to break the law by participating in the crime. Second, Bragg argued that Trump ran afoul of a New York election law that forbids any conspiracy “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.” The district attorney claimed that Trump intended to violate this statute by committing fraud in order to secure his own victory in 2016.
There is nothing especially creative about these theories; they are not an example of prosecutors stretching the law to its breaking point so it can fit over the facts of a questionable case. The application of both federal and state election codes, and their interplay with the underlying violation of New York’s business records law, is straightforward. Really, the only half-plausible argument that Trump could mount in opposition was that the Federal Election Campaign Act somehow preempted the use of New York’s own statutes to punish election-related record-keeping fraud, meaning he would be liable only for misdemeanor record-keeping violations. Two different judges rejected this claim: Juan Merchan, who’s overseeing the state trial, and Alvin K. Hellerstein, who shot down Trump’s short-lived play to remove the whole case to federal court.
Stern had hoped one of the other cases about the election would reach court first, and before this fall’s elections. But this case “is about the election—albeit the one in 2016, not 2020.” The other three cases against the slippery Mr. Trump have been delayed by “a corrupt judge, a foot-dragging Supreme Court, and a district attorney’s questionable conduct in an already complex case,” Stern explains, leaving this one to start this morning in a New York court “less susceptible to political interference than the federal courts” have proved.
Bragg’s prosecution stands for the simple proposition that a rich and powerful man like Trump cannot disregard his legal obligations as a candidate for office in a constitutional democracy. He cannot avoid consequences by asserting, under the thin guise of various legal doctrines, that he is forever immune from his day of judgment because he was once president, and he is rich.
Finding jurors capable of judging without bias a former president, the first ever in this country to face a criminal trial, begins this morning. Each prospect will have to answer 42 questions Justice Juan Merchan has prepared.
Politico explains the process and systematically walks readers through what deeper beliefs hope to tease out of prospective jurors:
A starting point is identifying prospective jurors with strong feelings about Trump, his presidency and the criminal cases he faces. Each side wants to figure out whether any potential jurors actually know Trump, worked for his businesses or have a direct relationship with him or his family members. But mainly, the lawyers are trying to suss out any inherently strong feelings — positive or negative — about Trump.
Merchan, on the other hand, says he wants to limit efforts to determine whether prospective jurors like or dislike Trump.
“Such questions are irrelevant because they do not go to the issue of the prospective juror’s qualifications,” he wrote in an order last week finalizing the questionnaire. “The ultimate issue is whether the prospective juror can assure us that they will set aside any personal feelings or biases and render a decision that is based on the evidence and the law.”
This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. Anything might happen. A jury might exonerate him. “But most experts don’t think it will,” Michael Tomasky writes at The New Republic.
But faith in the jury system is high. That may well be especially so in a case like this one, which until this week has been, to your disinterested observer, a partisan circus. But a jury’s verdict has an authority and finality for these Americans that a Sean Hannity rant or a New York Times editorial lacks.
“So, with any luck, by Memorial Day or so,” Tomasky adds, “we’ll be able to write the phrase that has been crying to be written for about 35 years: ‘Convicted felon Donald Trump.’”
Trump himself is terrified, say those who know him. Even if he’s elected president — and it’s clear one of his major motivations for running is to keep from living out the rest of his life behind bars — presidential pardon power does not extend to state law. His base is already shaky. If he’s a convicted felon going into November, multiplepolls show Trump’s support will erode further, and he knows it. Half the country already believes him guilty in the Manhattan case. Trump and his closest allies are already working up plans to declare the election stolen and seize power no matter how badly he loses.
Americans face a choice this fall not between two old men, but between two futures for our “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” They must decide whether or not it shall “perish from the earth.” Lincoln presented that choice at Gettysburg amidst a civil war for the preservation of the union. That conflict was between a new people dedicated to the theory (still unrealized today) that all are created equal and a faction of rump royalists unwilling to see feudalism die finally and for good.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Just to sum up. You support Trump for president even if he's convicted in the classified documents case. You support him for president even though you believe he contributed to an insurrection. You support him for president even though you believe he's lying about… pic.twitter.com/RMXfOOkVBv
The irony in the wake of Trump’s disjointed reflections on Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg over the weekend is that that civil war is still engaged. Trump’s “forces” on Jan. 6, 2021, fought a pitched battle on the steps of and inside the U.S. Capitol to undo what the Confederates conceded at Appomattox in 1865. Trump’s allies have surrendered any legitimacy as moral actors in this democracy, yet fight on to replace it with an older system of government by hereditary royalty and landed gentry. Or simply by a dictatorship.
They’re fine with dictatorship. Even if the dictator is in prison.
