“He’s scared s—less” That is why Trump, who pleaded not guilty this week, is under indictment on 37 federal felony charges. Not because he listens to idiots. Although, that is a factor, the Washington Post reveals: One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department. The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents. Trump would not have it. Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said.
Uncategorized
Governance doesn’t bleed It should be no surprise by now that the press covers the circus before it turning to boring non-nonsense. The former president’s performances fascinate (and draw eyeballs and clicks) in the way The Joker is an iconic Batman villain. His antics bleed and lead. The challenge in how the news covers Donald Trump “news” is to cover what is news and not what is more Trumpish nonsense, suggests Brian Stelter, formerly of CNN. “Formerly,” because as a media critic he routinely “said the quiet part out loud” about the fecklessness of major news coverage. It got him cancelled. News sources don’t like having their dirty laundry exposed in public. The problem for Democrats is that taking governing seriously is not headline news. If their daily activities are not as eye-catching as frontal nudity or AR-15 parades or street violence, it is easy to assume they are doing nothing. Just yesterday, an acquaintance on Twitter complained that as Republicans cheer Trump’s violations of law and civic norms, Democrats mostly stand by and do nothing. Two impeachments? Nothing.
It’s the only way to truly prove your devotion The National Review agrees with Coulter. Some people have been skeptical about the presence of motivational speaker/venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race. My colleague Charlie Cooke cruelly accused him of “not really running for president.” An even less reputable writer irresponsibly declared that he had “voluntarily enserfed himself” to Donald Trump, which is the sort of tasteless language that I’m glad National Review no longer tolerates. And with good reason, because Vivek Ramaswamy has proven himself worthy of his candidacy with a truly selfless act: He has called upon all of Donald Trump’s other opponents to sign a promise to pardon Trump of all his crimes regardless of guilt or innocence if they win office. Some opponents of the former president might have taken a combative position in regard to his indictment on 37 counts of stealing and withholding national secrets and more; others might sit on the fence.
I wrote about this a while back but since they seem determined to throw the election to Trump it’s worth reiterating. Here’s Rick Wilson on twitter: Good morning. If any of you are still bamboozled by Nancy Jacobsen and Mark Penn’s @NoLabelsOrg‘s actual intentions let me hook you up. They claim to be moderate, centrist problem solvers who are running a 3rd part effort to “give Americans more choices.” Nancy is one of DC’s most powerful, influential, and connected players. A Swamp Empress. Richer than God. She and Mark Penn are angry, though. Very, very angry. At whom, you ask? Well, Democrats. They were exiled from Clinton world. Obamas, same. They’ve been on a jihad ever since. Mark has dozens of Fox hits defending and praising Trump. Their major donors are the EXACT same billionaires funding Ron DeSantis. (Yeah, Nancy hides her donors, but girl, your org leaks because your staff hates you.) They formed No Labels as a long con, a way to break the Democrats, get rich doing it (and again, they are VERY rich), and punish their imagined enemies.
Yeah, nobody got anything. Surprised? Miami New Times reports: Trump opted to decompress with a trip to Versailles in Little Havana. The iconic restaurant has long been a pit stop for politicians seeking to curry favor with Miami’s Cuban voters. Trump and his entourage arrived at Versailles shortly after leaving the courthouse and made straight for the bakery. The local press was on hand to capture footage of the large crowd milling outside to greet their man. Inside the bakery, Trump supporters fawned over their man, regaling the soon-to-turn-77-year-old with a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” a day early and holding a group prayer. Former MMA fighter Jorge Masvidal, sporting a University of Miami ball cap, hailed Trump as “everybody’s favorite president of all time” after embracing the former leader of the free world.
Get a load of the polling on Trump and the documents: As the country reckons with an unprecedented federal indictment of a former president, one of the most significant hurdles to a public resolution is arriving at a shared set of basic facts and priorities. And that’s particularly a challenge with the American right. Multiple polls focused on the Trump classified documents case suggest that many, if not most, Republicans don’t particularly appreciate the potential gravity of the situation or its details. And it can’t simply be explained by mere partisanship. One of the inescapable facts of the situation is that Trump got himself in trouble not because he took the documents in the first place, but because he declined to return them. The indictment only charges conduct after the government subpoenaed Trump’s documents in May 2022. After that subpoena, Trump only returned some of his remaining classified documents before the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago turned up more. The Washington Post recapped how Trump’s fateful decision not to return the documents resulted from rejecting his lawyers’ advice.
… ’til your daddy takes the country away I’ve long written that one of Trump’s great gift is that, for his followers, he makes politics fun. This NYT newsletter piece observes that phenomenon: When Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges in New York City two months ago, I tried to make sense of the political fallout with my colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst. After poring over traditional markers about fund-raising and poll numbers, Nate mentioned another standard I’ve been thinking about over the past few days: Do Trump’s legal challenges make him more (or less) fun? The question is awkward, as it suggests that the reasons some Americans are drawn to politicians are divorced from the seriousness of their office. But after Trump’s arraignment in federal court in Miami this week, I’m reminded of its importance. Nate wasn’t calling Trump fun as a self-evident fact, but rather identifying a set of voters who are attracted to showmanship and celebrity, are distinct from Trump’s base and follow politics only casually, if at all. These voters matter for Trump’s 2024 campaign.
They really, really hate the LGBTQ, don’t they? Did we ever think otherwise? Saturday was a tale of two flags. One was flown at the White House: a rainbow Pride flag, specifically the trans- and racially inclusive “Progress” variation. “Today, the People’s House—your house—sends a clear message to the country and to the world,” President Biden tweeted, alongside an image of the flag hanging from the south portico. “America is a nation of pride.” The other one was held aloft—or rather, several of them were—in a small demonstration outside the entrance to Disney World in Orlando, Florida: the Nazi swastika. Some of the demonstrators were reportedly with the neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement, and they also held signs with anti-gay slurs that need not be reproduced here. You don’t have to guess which flag the leading right-wing sycophants were up in arms about. “America has been humiliated, debauched and debased. A warning about how civilizations unravel from within,” former Trump adviser Stephen Miller tweeted.
… Desantis, that is What Rosenberg says is very important. DeSantis’ extremist positions are even losing him traction in the Republican party! It’s destroying him in a general election. I think that even if Trump doesn’t make it to the convention for some reason, DeSantis is too damaged to win. He can’t pivot away from fascism.
Low-paid migrant workers, including cleaners at the Department for Education, are taking coordinated strike action in London