Dissent in the ranks It’s important to remember that as crazy as MAGA Republicans are now that the presidential election and the future of the Supreme Court does not hinge on the large numbers of voters chanting Don-ald Trump, Don-ald Trump like zombified extras in The Mummy. Trump is bleeding support he cannot afford to lose. The old, “death by a thousand cuts” routine worked against Hillary Clinton in 2016. It can work for Democrats and Joe Biden in 2024. Greg Sargent points to an item lost in Politico’s Playbook coverage of Trump’s effort to defund Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Trump prosecutions: “I don’t think it’s a good idea unless you can show that [the prosecutors] acted in bad faith or fraud or something like that,” Rep. Mike Simpson, a senior appropriator, told Playbook, speaking about the defund-Smith push. He denounced the idea as “stupid,” adding of prosecutors: “They’re just doing their job—even though I disagree with what they did.” Wait, what? Trump’s prosecutorial tormentors are not acting in bad faith or being fraudulent? Do tell! Simpson apparently thought he was just rebuffing a tough question, but he also badly undermined a core argument of Trump and his propagandists: that the prosecutions of Trump are wholly illegitimate, exposing the “deep state” as irredeemably corrupt to its very core. Now comes along a top Republican who disagrees with the prosecutions of Trump on their interpretation of the law, but appears to allow that the special counsel’s office is not abusing its institutional role in…