Trump Has the Right, But Not the Ability, to Remain Silent
Buckle Up Buckaroos! We’re in for a Wild Ride!
If you were reading, watching, or listening to the news over the weekend, chances are your brain shut down after the 15th time somebody speculated about something having to do with the indictment of former president Trump. Nobody knows what he’s actually charged with, for starters.
The Man himself has been in full victim mode, meaning that according to Trump, everything you might have heard about any criminal activity is the product of far-left socialists bound and determined to bring this great nation down.
Remember what the real issues are in this situation: Does the rule of law only apply to some people? It wasn’t a District Attorney that indicted Trump; it was a grand jury composed of randomly chosen citizens. And slightly more than a decade ago, Republicans thought paying hush money to cover up was a crime–with then-candidate for the Democratic nomination, John Edwards
While the exact timing of this first indictment may have come as a surprise, Trump’s strategy for dealing with expectation that charges were coming soon had been in motion for a couple weeks.
First up, he played the nation (including me) by claiming he was to be indicted on March 21. In real life, he didn’t know anything about when, where, what, or even whether he faced criminal charges. For the next ten days the media mantra was Trump, more Trump, and even more Trump.
From the New York Times:
Never mind that any defense attorney worth the law degree would prefer he keep quiet; no one who knows Mr. Trump could reasonably expect that. He has already trashed the prosecutor (“degenerate psychopath”) and the judge in the case (“HATES ME”) and absent a court-issued gag order surely will continue to. His public comments could ultimately be used against him in a court of law, but to him that hardly seems like a reason to stay silent.
“The trick, of course, is to take up all the air — demand all the attention, all the time, make everything, including his own indictment, into an opportunistic moment,” said Gwenda Blair, author of “The Trumps,” the definitive multigenerational biography of the former president’s family. So far, she added, he has done so “by combining exaggerated hyperbole with a claim to ultimate patriotism and religious zeal — quite the ultimate power package.”
Once the news of Trump’s indictment came out, his campaign raised $4 million thanks to an email blast. I really wish there was a hidden camera at Mar a Lago so people could see Trump laughing about what suckers they are. All they would have to do is look at past campaign financial statements for verification.
Most of the rest of the political right in this country raced to defend the former president. His ostensible political opponents for the upcoming presidential primaries apparently weren’t willing to take the advice of former White House advisor Richard Grenell who said they all should drop out of the race.
The MAGA media machine went full on trying to apply every frightening adjective in the book, and suggesting (wink, wink) violence was coming. Righties in the conventional media prattled on about the bad precedent happening, how weak the government’s case was, and how this event ensured a win in 2024 for the former president.
All of this noise is supposed to reach a crescendo on Tuesday. Congress critter Marjorie Taylor-Greene will take time out from dodging Jewish space lasers and starring in a fluff piece on 60 Minutes to host a rally in New York City with a couple of lowest bottom feeders the right has to offer.
According to the Daily Beast, Greene is central to a larger strategy to weaponize the January 6 insurrection as a campaign issue
Trump’s presentation of the darkest day of his presidency—and one of the darkest in U.S. history—as a righteous hour to be celebrated marked the beginning of how central it will be to his 2024 presidential bid…
…Underneath the surface—largely at the urging of an increasingly influential Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), according to Republicans familiar with their conversations—Trump has prepared for his unprecedented legal conundrum by tying it to the sense of “political persecution” that is widely felt within the MAGA base in the aftermath of Jan. 6.
The former President will be charged and booked at 10:15 PDT on Tuesday. Then he’ll fly back to Florida, where he’ll do a “broadcast to the nation” (4:15 San Diego time). One thing to watch: how many elected officials and notables respond to Trump’s invitations to stand with him during the broadcast.
A crucial test for the media will be how much they enable the Trump-beat of chaos. Sure, his cheerleaders at Fox and OAN will broadcast it live; but will the other broadcast media show enough maturity to report any news rather than serve as a platform?
You’d think the media might have learned from its errors in both-sidesing Trump’s radical rhetoric, but don’t get your hopes too high. As Oliver Willis notes:
The individual members of the media may personally hold some positions that are identified with liberalism, such as supporting diversity and not being open bigots, but their work product shows the signs — over and over again — of people overcorrecting in favor of conservatism or just nakedly profiteering from producing material that is friendly to the conservative cause
It’s entirely possible Trump won’t have much he can legally say, since his lawyers told the Daily Mail they expect the judge in this case will slap a gag order on him. Maybe the judge is concerned about all the threats he personally is getting, since Trump ranted on social media about him. A penalty for breaking the order could be jail time in an otherwise sane universe..
The need to land blows on his perceived enemies is one way of defining Trump as a wannabe authoritarian leader. In a democracy the norm is that leaders are expected to do things on behalf of the people along with dealing with politics. While chief executives lining their pockets isn’t a new thing, at least they went through the motions.
Trump is the assault on our nation he is screaming about. The man child is facing consequences for his behaviors for the first time. Whether or not he can get people to buy into his “I’m a victim” story is something we’ll have to see in the coming months.
Here’s Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump with the bigger picture:
Republicans are hell-bent on destroying our democracy. By doubling-down on their defense of Donald and amping up their attacks on Bragg and the legitimacy of his case, they aren’t simply trying to drum up support for Donald, they’re attempting to undermine the American people’s faith in the rule of law, just as Donald has been undermining the American people’s faith in the legitimacy of our free and fair elections since 2016.
As David Corn recently put it in his newsletter Our Land, “Donald Trump has been a one-man stress test for the American political system. The framers did not envision such a dishonest, narcissistic scoundrel winning the highest office of the land.” The deficiencies of the framers are a subject for another time but a very real one is the fact that the Constitution does not preclude the indicted or the incarcerated from running for the highest office in the land.
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There were important developments concerning the former president’s legal troubles over the weekend.
1.
The biggie is a breaking news story on Sunday afternoon from the Washington Post concerning the investigation into classified documents taken by the ex-president to Mar a Lago.
The emails and texts of Molly Michael, an assistant to the former president who followed him from the White House to Florida, are now in the prosecutor's hands.
Justice Department and FBI investigators have amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction by former president Donald Trump in the investigation into top-secret documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home, according to people familiar with the matter.
The additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.
The new details highlight the degree to which special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers at Trump’s Florida home and private club has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case — whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records.
2.
Michael Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, told CNN that his client provided Manhattan prosecutors with documentation about a Trump hush-money payment to a second woman who claims to have had an affair with him. This suggests Alvin Bragg's case could be broader than the Stormy Daniels payment.
3.
Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki that he was ordered by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to shut down an earlier federal hush money investigation.
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Thanks are in order, since I totally stole the idea for today’s headline from @RachelLaing
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As I have said before and no doubt will again, I surely hope that tomorrow's indictment is only the first of many more indictments. I hope they all lead to charges, arrests, trials, and sentencing. While I can't bear the sound of his voice, I hope that there will be no gag orders on him because he will perjure himself. He will provide more stuff for the persecution to pin against him.
Although I would like to see this perp walk of shame although the temptation to gloat might overwhelm me.
Sincerely hoping I do not see Networks posting an empty stage awaiting comments from Donald Trump after the inditement is known tomorrow as they did during the 2016 campaign for President. We must remember the rules of The Grand Jury and NOT the rules of Trump!