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What Ever Happened To Rudy?

Published by digby on March 26, 2024

He’s got problems. Big ones.

Rudy Giuliani is trapped in a living “nightmare,” and the former New York City Mayor can’t believe it’s real, he was overheard telling pals at Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago last week.

Source exclusively tell Page Six that Giuliani was spotted at the Palm Beach club as he’s facing bankruptcy stemming from a spate of debts.

An attendee told us they heard the former Trump attorney saying he’s in a “nightmare world,” and “he wakes up everyday and can’t believe it’s real.”

The onetime pol was hit with a whopping $148 million claim after being found guilty by a Georgia court of falsely accusing two poll workers of committing voter in Fulton County during the 2020 election.

Feds are also reportedly targeting Giuliani’s own $3.5 million Florida condominium, as Giuliani contends he lacks the finances to settle his debts.

Giuliani was at Mar-a-Lago attending an event in support of Arizona Republican congressional hopeful Abe Hamadeh, we hear.

[…]

Giuliani has told supporters recently in a frantically worded message via his Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund: “Friend, There’s no other way to say this… You may truly be my only hope. The Biden Regime is sending a top ally of President Trump to PRISON!”

The appeal added that, “The Deep State is hellbent on indicting, arresting, bankrupting, and imprisoning President Trump and his top allies for daring to challenge the corrupt forces that have hijacked our once Free Republic. And as the lawyer who successfully defended President Trump from impeachment, I am at the top of their list.”

Giuliani is still attending fundraisers for other people? He’s still speaking to Trump despite the fact that Trump supposedly owes him millions? Huh.

I’m not sure what he’s doing but if he thinks Trump is going to lift a finger to help him, he’s crazy. I suppose he may hope that Trump wins in November and somehow that saves him but it’s hard to see how they finesse his large civil fine. Maybe he figures some incredibly rich sugar daddy will rescue him?

He probably just plans to ride it out until he passes into the Mar-a-Lago Beach Club in the sky. It might just work.

Impunity: When You’re A Star They Let You Do It

Published by digby on March 26, 2024

Following up on a previous post, here’s Jamelle Bouie on Trump’s impunity”

At no point during his long career as a celebrity real estate mogul and businessman has Trump faced any meaningful consequences for his fraudulent, even criminal, behavior. He has operated, for decades, with a shield of impunity crafted from his shamelessness, his celebrity and his craven willingness to intimidate critics with litigation or even just the threat of litigation.

What is striking is the extent to which this shield of impunity has only been strengthened by the political and legal institutions of the United States. First and foremost among these is the Republican Party, which has never wasted a chance to thrust itself between Trump and the consequences of his actions. When it was the “Access Hollywood” tape, Republicans were there for Trump. They were there for Trump when it was his callous reaction to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. They were there for him when he was impeached for trying to coerce the government of Ukraine into supporting his political prospects, and they were there for him when he was impeached for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The much-vaunted guardrails of the Constitution have not done much to stop Trump, either. As I’ve discussed many times, we have the antiquated rules of the Constitution to thank for his elevation to the White House. And those same rules facilitated his effort to deny the will of the voters and retain his grasp on power.

The law has not been much better.

If you helped Trump try to overturn the results of the previous election, up to and including the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, then there’s a good chance you’ve had to face your day in court. One of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, was ordered to pay nearly $150 million in damages relating to efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, while another Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges relating to the effort to manufacture evidence of voter fraud in the same state. And this is to say nothing of the hundreds of rioters who have been charged and sentenced in federal criminal court.

So far, however, Trump has gotten away scot free. Yes, he has been indicted in federal cases related to Jan. 6 and his handling of classified documents. But the Supreme Court has in effect delayed his trial until the fall as it considers the absurd (but no less serious) question of absolute presidential immunity for criminal conduct in office. The judge in the documents case, Aileen Cannon, can’t claim to be tackling a serious constitutional issue. She seems, instead, to be looking for any avenue that allows her to dismiss the charges against the former president, who nominated her to the federal bench in 2020.

[…]

Over the weekend, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz issued a warning to Letitia James that seizing Trump’s properties would put him back in office. “If the New York attorney general starts to take his homes away, starts to seize his assets, it’s all going to be on camera,” he said on CNN. “Pundits are going to sit there and scream about this, ‘This man cannot be elected.’ You’re going to create the greatest victimhood of 2024, and you’re going to elect Donald Trump.”

This is exactly backward. It is the refusal to enforce the rules — enforce the law — against Trump that has put him in a position to win the White House a second time. It is the impunity, as much as if not more than the cultivated sense of victimhood, that anchors his political appeal.

Yes, indeed. Trump has never had to pay a price for any of his corrupt misdeeds and I don’t have a lot of optimism that he will despite attempting a coup, inciting an insurrection, stealing classified secrets and presiding over the most flagrantly corrupt administration in US history. And in the end, he may end up keeping all his money as well…

It’s the shamelessness that makes this possible and we need to figure out how to deal with that. To the extent that we had a social contract it has completely imploded.

Poor Little Donnie Rich Kid

Published by digby on March 26, 2024

Amanda Marcotte on the whiner-in-chief:

As anyone who listens to him can attest, Donald Trump may be the most self-pitying person on planet Earth. Pretty much all the man does is whine and cry about how he’s the victim of an imaginary “witch hunt.” In reality, his list of transgressions is staggering. If he were any other person, he would have been sentenced to prison many times over with no real hope of release: Sexual assault. Decades of fraud. Attempted extortation of a foreign leader. Stealing classified documents. Flagrant acceptance of what very much looks like bribes. Attempting to overthrow democracy. Inciting a violent riot that got people killed. I’m sure readers can list a dozen more, but let’s get to the point: It’s absolutely bananas that Trump isn’t in prison yet.

On Monday, right before Trump finally got the tiniest taste of the justice he deserves for committing decades of criminal fraud in New York, he got bailed out by the state’s appeals court.

The concept of “privilege” is treated with great skepticism in conservative circles, and regarded by MAGA types like a made-up hoax. But no one alive proves the truth of the concept more than Donald Trump. He’s proudly ignorant. The only talent he bothered to learn is cheating the system so that you “win” without ever having to be good at stuff. The only real skill he’s developed in his 77 years is utter shamelessness, and frankly, it seems that might be more of a genetic defect than anything he’s worked at. The man can’t even bother to get good at golf, a sport he does seem to like, because he prefers to lie about it instead. 

And yet, simply because he was born a white guy with inherited wealth, the world conspires to endlessly provide Trump with all the breaks. Not only is this spoiled brat shielded from the consequences of his actions, but his privilege continues to catapult him into a world of luxury and flattery, even as all he does is leave a trail of ruin in his wake. 

The latest “are you kidding me” example: On Monday, right before Trump finally got the tiniest taste of the justice he deserves for committing decades of criminal fraud in New York, he got bailed out by the state’s appeals court. The judgment against Trump was nearly half a billion, due to a court case that demonstrated he wouldn’t have two nickels to rub together but for his lifetime of fraud. In order to appeal the case, Trump had to first put up the full amount as a bond, which is standard. So Trump went on Truth Social to petulantly claim he had $500 million in cash (even though his legal filings said otherwise). Then in a stunningly undeserved act of mercy, the appeals court reduced the amount of his bond to $175 million and gave Trump 10 more days to find a benefactor to pay it for him. 

Once again, Trump gets bailed out by people he would happily feed to a pack of ravenous wolves for a penny. The unfairness of it is staggering. He’s not repentant. On the contrary, Trump famously spent the entire trial throwing childish tantrums in court, outraged at the very idea that he should be treated like ordinary people, who tend to face punishment when caught committing crimes. He was already let off easy for that, as well. Most people who make scenes and unsubtly threaten court staff would find themselves cooling off in jail for contempt, but the judge backed off in the face of the force field of rich white boy protection that has surrounded Trump his whole life. 

Read the rest. It’s infuriating.

He’s a very, very lucky guy but he did lose the 2020 election and he have to ensure that he loses the 2024 election as well. Whether he’s ever held accountable beyond that gets more unlikely every day.

Four Years Ago Today

Published by digby on March 26, 2024

The Radical Anti-abortion Agenda 2025

Published by digby on March 26, 2024

Some highlights relating to abortion:

[C]onservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win
in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a
mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn
children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states
and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should
push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In
particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the
most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying
existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with
statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently
pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women
who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the heroism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially
adoption, should receive federal and state support.

In summary, the next President has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in
restoring a culture of life in America again.

In addition, the next conservative Administration should rescind President
Biden’s 2022 Gender Policy and refocus it on Women, Children, and Families
and revise the agency’s regulation on “Integrating Gender Equality and Female
Empowerment in USAID’s Program Cycle.”10 It should remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications
and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following
terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc. It should also remove references to
“abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and controversial sexual education materials

Respect for Life and Conscience. The CDC should eliminate programs and
projects that do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine
family formation. It should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care.
It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that
it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health
and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks
of intentionally taking a human life through abortion.

The CDC oversaw and funded the development and testing of the COVID-19
vaccines with aborted fetal cell lines, insensitive to the consciences of tens of
thousands to hundreds of thousands of people who objected to taking a vaccine with such a link to abortion. As evidenced by litigation across the country,
it is likely that thousands were fired unjustly because of the exercise of their
consciences or faith on this question, which could have been avoided with a
modicum of concern for this issue from CDC. There is never any justification for
ending a child’s life as part of research, and the research benefits from splicing or
growing aborted fetal cells and aborted baby body parts can easily be provided
by alternative sources. All such research should be prohibited as a matter of
law and policy.

CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of
modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop
publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed
“rhythm” or “calendar” methods. CDC should fund studies exploring the evidence-based methods used in cutting-edge fertility awareness.

Data Collection. The CDC’s abortion surveillance and maternity mortality
reporting systems are woefully inadequate. CDC abortion data are reported by
states on a voluntary basis, and California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not
submit abortion data at all. Accurate and reliable statistical data about abortion,
abortion survivors, and abortion-related maternal deaths are essential to timely,
reliable public health and policy analysis.

Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS
should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every
state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what
gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and
by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category:
spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child
(such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should
require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every
instance of children being born alive after an abortion. Moreover, abortion should
be clearly defined as only those procedures that intentionally end an unborn child’s
life. Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should
never be conflated with abortion.

Comparisons between live births and abortion should be tracked across various demographic indicators to assess whether certain populations are targeted by
abortion providers and whether better prenatal physical, mental, and social care
improves infant outcomes

Those are just some random references. The document is obsessed with it.

Tragic Morning In Baltimore

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2024

SCOTUS could make bad worse across the U.S.

You’ve heard by now that a container ship leaving Baltimore harbor struck and collapsed the Key Bridge at 1:28 a.m. Rescue operations are underway. A few people have been rescued from the water; others are believed missing.

The FBI’s Baltimore field office declared it saw “no specific and credible information to suggest any ties to terrorism at this time.” That did not prevent X shitposters from suggesting it. Sure, 1:28 a.m. would be the perfect time for a mass-casualty attack. Morons.

CNN (about 9:20 a.m. ET):

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed early Tuesday morning after it was struck by a 984-foot cargo ship.

Here’s what we know:

  • What happened? Video shows the moment the entire bridge structure falls into the water, as the ship hits one of the bridges pillars. CNN analysis shows that the ships lights flickered and it veered off course before it hit the bridge.
  • How many people are missing? Baltimore’s Fire Chief James Wallace said at least two people have been rescued, but they are searching for upwards of at least seven others. The Maryland Transportation Secretary also confirmed there were contractors working on the bridge at the time of its collapse. Officials noted that the number of missing people could change.
  • How have authorities responded? Wallace said authorities are carrying out a search and rescue operation using sonar and infrared technologies as well as drones. He said they have identified vehicles submerged in the water. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency following the collapse of the bridge. The Baltimore branch of the FBI is also at the scene, however the Baltimore police chief said there was no indication of terrorism as a motivating factor.
  • What was on board the ship? The ship was chartered by Danish shipping company Maersk and was carrying their customers’ cargo, the Danish shipping company told CNN. The company said no Maersk crew or personnel were onboard the vessel. It said the ship, DALI, is operated by charter vessel company Synergy Group. 

Frightening video:

Stay tuned.

Just now, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in a case brought to roll back FDA access to pharmaceutical abortion via widely used mifepristone, first approved in 2000 (Washington Post):

The justices will examine rule changes in 2016 and 2021 that, among other things, made the drug available by mail and from a medical provider other than a doctor. Their eventual ruling won’t remove mifepristone from the market but could make it harder to obtain.

At issue, via SCOTUSblog:

Issues: (1) Whether respondents have Article III standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s 2016 and 2021 actions with respect to mifepristone’s approved conditions of use; (2) whether the FDA’s 2016 and 2021 actions were arbitrary and capricious; and (3) whether the district court properly granted preliminary relief.

Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has political as well as medical implications:

It was a telling moment in abortion politics: A federal judge in Texas last year moved to cut off the most popular method to end a pregnancy — and Republicans skipped the celebration.

The reason for the muted response to the ruling, which suspended federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone? Republicans didn’t want to talk about it because the abortion issue had already stung them politically. They were the proverbial dog who caught the car. They finally got the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade after decades of trying, and they soon found that Americans didn’t much like abortion rights being curtailed.

But starting Tuesday, it could become significantly more difficult for Republicans to ignore the electoral liability.

What a morning.

The live feed is here.

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The Campaign You’ve Been Waiting For

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 26, 2024

There are rules here?

The Biden-Harris campaign has taken off the gloves. That was clear from Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. But that night was not a one-off. Donald “91 Counts” Trump is overwhelmed with so many legal fights and threats to his liquidity (and freedom) that he has nearly run out of bandwidth for campaigning for president. Biden-Harris means to increase the pressure and prod Trump’s delicate ego at every opportunity.

“This is the campaign I’ve been waiting for,” Ron Filipkowski posted in response to a bruising press statement from the Biden-Harris campaign (CNBC):

A court ruling that slashed Donald Trump’s civil fraud appeal bond was a financial win for the former president. But the campaign of his rival, President Joe Biden, found a way to capitalize on the news.

“Donald Trump is weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for President,” the Biden campaign said in a searing statement Monday afternoon.

“He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have,” said Biden campaign spokesman James Singer, in response to a Trump press conference earlier in the day.

“His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda,” Singer said in a statement.

“America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”

Trump campaign spokesmen did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

John Dean called it “a ketchup tossing worthy analysis.”

Mr. Death Tax, GOP pundit/pollster Frank Luntz, responded with a snarky, “No longer the party of ‘when they go low, we go high.'”

DNC chair Jaime Harrison clapped back:

“There are rules here? Oh, no. There are no rules here,” the fictional Terence Mann might reply while wielding a crowbar (he ultimately did not use).

The Biden-Harris team also trolled Trump on Monday for bragging about winning golf championships at a resort he owns and operates.

Elsewhere on the internet, video circulated from last year of the “champion” playing another of his courses.

Spocko noted that while Trump managed to get his half-billion-dollar bond slashed down to $175 million on Monday, he will likely seek revenge on those bankers who laughed at his predicament. MAGA followers may issue new threats against Trump’s targets and even attempt to carry them out. Rachel Maddow Monday night

“I want to ENJOY watching Trump squirm,” Spocko wrote. “I also know that Trump is like a cornered animal and he will extract vengeance on people who aren’t supporting him and who laugh at him. This time around he is promising a blood bath. That’s not funny.”

No, it’s not. But neither is this. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night interviewed Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about preparations for the fall elections that include combat training and stocking tourniquets in a state that’s ground zero for election deniers.

These are the sorts of people backing Trump in his efforts to make himself dictator through legal means. No, it’s not funny. Not at all.

Or this.

Or this.

Michelle Obama meant well with her comment contrasting Republicans and Democrats. But mockery is not bullying, and different from viscious taunts and threats. Or advocating real violence. Mockery has the benefit of adding to the psychic load Trump already cannot handle. Plus, as I’ve said time and again, Americans want to root for a fighter, to cheer for the underdog who punches back. The fictional George McFly who meekly takes it is cringe-worthy. Nobody wants to vote for him. The guy who cold-cocks Biff Tannen elicts cheers.

Team Biden-Harris has figured that out. Troll away.

Update: Added Right Wing Watch link to clip of “Antisemitic white nationalist Christian fascist Nick Fuentes.”

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It’s A Good Economy, Stupid

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

TNR’s Michael Tomasky with the word:

I’m going to tell you something that I’m pretty sure you don’t know—and that you probably won’t even believe. Ready? Real wages are now growing in the United States at a pace faster than the spike in the cost of living since the pandemic. More than that: For the first time in decades, wage growth is consistently stronger in the middle and at the bottom than at the top.

See, I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. But it’s right there in a recent study by David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, three well-known economists. Dube just wrote up the results at Project Syndicate, emphasizing: “Importantly, the real wages of the middle quintile are not only higher today than they were before the pandemic, but slightly higher than we would expect based on 2015-19 trends. In other words, the typical American worker’s purchasing power has grown at least as much as it likely would have in the absence of the global challenges posed by the pandemic and geopolitical conflicts.”

If you’re waiting to see this reported in the mainstream media, except by me and my colleague Tim Noah and a small handful of other people, I advise you to stop. It’s not going to happen. In the mainstream media, there’s still largely one Joe Biden–era economic story: inflation, gas prices, people feeling worse off than they did four years ago, and ooh, did he just forget someone’s name again?

He goes on to make the point that, yes, people are affected by higher gas prices and you can’t tell people to feel better about something they genuinely don’t feel better about, which is true. But it’s also important to note, as Paul Krugman has been doing relentlessly, that according to the consumer satisfaction surveys, when people are asked if their own personal finances are good, a large majority says yes, when asked if the national economy is good a large majority says no which indicates that this isn’t about most people feeling the strain in their own lives it’s about what they hear about the national economy which is an abstraction that they’re getting from the media narrative.

He also brings up the fact that the “are you better off than you were four years ago” ploy is ridiculous and that Biden is already hitting that hard in a new ad:

There are two issues the Biden campaign needs to stress going forward. The first is the one raised by this new ad—how much is to be gained politically by reminding the American people of Trump’s hideous handling of the outbreak. I think at this point it’s hard to say. People remember nothing. They probably think it wasn’t Trump’s fault, and he did OK. It’s true that it wasn’t his fault, and let’s remember that he did lay out the money for Operation Warp Speed.

But he did a lot of things wrong, including lying to the American people about the virus’s severity and standing up there at those nightly press conferences making a total ass of himself. A few hundred thousand people died who didn’t have to die. It’s essential to remind voters of that, to tell that narrative. He was a disaster and an embarrassment.

The second issue is the broader comparison of the two economies. Trump’s pre-pandemic economy, as I’ve written before, was good. Trump haters can’t deny it. It wasn’t because of anything he did. He passed a tax cut for the rich. It goosed demand a little, and it did help the stock market. Median household income rose dramatically in one year, from 2018 to 2019.

But it was not the greatest economy in the history of the universe. Trump’s jobs numbers in his first two years lagged behind Barack Obama’s in his last two, 4.5 million to 5.2 million. And both are way behind Biden’s first two-year total of nearly 11 million. And wages, as I noted above, are up. And they’re especially up for the middle class and the poor. This is what “middle-out economics” means.

Granted, Democrats have to be careful how they talk about all this. But they have to find a way, and it has to be completely free of the backtracking and apologetics Democrats so often display. Jobs are up. Wages are up. The stock market is way up. Inequality is down. The deficit is down. Big laws passed under Biden are opening factories and putting people to work. It’s all true.

You don’t have to let Trump’s lies stand just because you don’t want to be insensitive to those people who are having a rough time. In fact, it would be political malpractice to do it. He floated on the good economy he inherited from Obama until disaster hit and then he screwed everything up with a disastrous pandemic response. And his entire term was constant, overwhelming chaos. On the other hand, as Tomasky writes:

Biden inherited a horrible economy, got us out of that crisis, suffered through a price crisis that also affected the rest of the developed world, but is now presiding over the greatest monthly job growth in history (yes, at 289,000 a month) and is keeping his core campaign promise of shifting wealth from the top to the middle and the bottom. Why is it so hard to tell that story, Democrats?

It is not difficult.

Trump: Criminal Folk Hero

Published by digby on March 25, 2024

Here’s another excellent insight about Trump’s seemingly inexplicable appeal by Samuel Earle in the NY Times:

In recent months, Donald Trump has been trying out a new routine. At rallies and town halls across the country, he compares himself to Al Capone. “He was seriously tough, right?” Mr. Trump told a rally in Iowa in October, in an early rendition of the act. But “he was only indicted one time; I’ve been indicted four times.” (Capone was, in fact, indicted at least six times.) The implication is not just that Mr. Trump is being unfairly persecuted but also that he is four times as tough as Capone. “If you looked at him in the wrong way,” Mr. Trump explained, “he blew your brains out.”

Mr. Trump’s eagerness to invoke Capone reflects an important shift in the image he wants to project to the world. In 2016, Mr. Trump played the reality TV star and businessman who would shake up politics, shock and entertain. In 2020, Mr. Trump was the strongman, desperately trying to hold on to power by whatever means possible. In 2024, Mr. Trump is in his third act: the American gangster, heir to Al Capone — besieged by the authorities, charged with countless egregious felonies but surviving and thriving nonetheless, with an air of macho invincibility.

The evidence of Mr. Trump’s mobster pivot is everywhere. He rants endlessly about his legal cases in his stump speeches. On Truth Social, he boasts about having a bigger team of lawyers “than any human being in the history of our Country, including even the late great gangster, Alphonse Capone!” His team has used his mug shot — taken after he was indicted on a charge of racketeering in August — on T-shirts, mugs, Christmas wrapping, bumper stickers, beer coolers and even NFTs. They’ve sold off parts of the blue suit he was wearing in that now-infamous photo for more than $4,000 a piece (it came with a dinner with Mr. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort).

He does seem to be fully embracing his mob boss image, doesn’t he? Why would he do that?

It’s a canny piece of marketing. A violent mobster and a self-mythologizing millionaire, Capone sanitized his crimes by cultivating an aura of celebrity and bravery, grounded in distrust of the state and a narrative of unfair persecution. The public lapped it up. “Everybody sympathizes with him,” Vanity Fair noted of Capone in 1931, as the authorities closed in on him. “Al has made murder a popular amusement.” In similar fashion, Mr. Trump tries to turn his indictments into amusement, inviting his supporters to play along. “They’re not after me, they’re after you — I’m just standing in the way!” he says, a line that greets visitors to his website, as well.

Mr. Trump clearly hopes that his Al Capone act will offer at least some cover from the four indictments he faces. And there is a twisted logic to what he is doing: By adopting the guise of the gangster, he is able to recast his lawbreaking as vigilante justice — a subversive attempt to preserve order and peace — and transform himself into a folk hero.

Criminal as folk hero? Why not?

In an essay from 1948, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” the critic Robert Warshow sought to explain the unique appeal of gangster fables in American life. He saw the gangster as a quintessentially American figure, the dark shadow of the country’s sunnier self-conception. “The gangster speaks for us,” Warshow wrote, “expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life.”

It is easy to see why gangster fables appeal to so many Republican voters today. They are stories of immigrant assimilation and success, laced with anti-immigrant sentiment and rivalry. Their heroes are creatures of the big city — those nests of Republican neuroses — who tame its excesses through force but never forget God or their family along the way. In many ways, minus the murder, they are ideal conservative citizens: enterprising, loyal, distrustful of government; prone to occasional ethical lapses, but who’s perfect?

Mr. Trump knows that in America, crooks can be the good guys. When the state is seen as corrupt, the crook becomes a kind of Everyman, bravely beating the system at its own game. This is the cynical logic that the gangster and the right-wing populist share: Everyone’s as bad as anyone else, so anything goes. “A crook is a crook,” Capone once said. “But a guy who pretends he is enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician, who gives about half his time to covering up so that no one will know he’s a thief.”

It’s a worldview powerful enough to convince voters that even the prized institutions of liberal democracy — a free press, open elections, the rule of law — are fronts in the biggest racket of them all. This conceit has a rich pedigree in reactionary politics. “Would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones,” Hannah Arendt warned.

The gangster’s brutality also taps into what Warshow and others of his generation saw as the sadism in the American mind: the pleasure the public takes in seeing the gangster’s “unlimited possibility of aggression” inflicted upon others. The gangster is nothing without this license for violence, without the simple fact that, as Warshow put it, “he hurts people.” He intimidates his rivals and crushes his enemies. His cruelty is the point. The public can then enjoy “the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.” “He is what we want to be and what we are afraid we may become,” Warshow wrote. Reverence and repulsion are all wrapped up.

[…]

“I often say Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals,” Mr. Trump said in December. It was an interesting framing: “if you like criminals”? Mr. Trump has a hunch, and it’s more than just projection, that many Americans do.

This is so Trump. He’s been exposed as a criminal and instead of protesting it he says the system is rigged or the law doesn’t apply to him: “Yeah, I did it. Waddyagonnadoaboudit?

There are plenty of Americans who love sadism and see mobsters as folk heroes, especially since they’re cultural icons in the movies and TV. But Trump is something else as well — he’s a richie-rich, con-man liar which people don’t love nearly as much when they realize they’ve been had so it may end up working against him in the long run. Right now it’s working like a charm.

I will personally never understand how anyone can be taken in by that obvious imbecile. But there are reasons and I’m always interested to hear what they might be because I just can’t see it myself. I do know that many people revere criminals as folk heroes and he’s embraced the image, so that piece of it does make sense. Whatever it takes…