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Most Republicans have rallied around the criminal former president who may or may not face criminal indictment today (it’s anyone’s guess) in connection with a hush-money investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney’s office involving payments to actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep quiet about his affair with her.
The Republicans say, as they have said for years, that anything that doesn’t kill Donald Trump only makes him stronger. They tell us an indictment will incite the Republican base. According to Lindsay Graham, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did “more to help Donald Trump get elected president than any single person in America today.”
Naturally, this gets pushback. The Post’s Jennifer Rubin said “an indictment’s long-term impact might be anything but positive.”
Politico’s Alexander Burns said an indictment would magnify Trump’s current weaknesses : “His base of support is too small, his political imagination too depleted and his instinct for self-absorption too overwhelming for him to marshal a broad, lasting backlash.”
Both are wrong, but not for the reasons you think.
An indictment would probably hurt Trump in terms of general election voters. The same can’t be said for the base of his party.
A problem for the GOP
I’m reminded of Jason Sattler’s recent piece in which he knocked down the idea that the 2022 midterms proved the Maga movement had run out of gas. Sure, he said, Trump’s hand-picked candidates failed after securing nominations and entering the general election.
Jason’s point, however, is that this point is beside the point.
The point is that each candidate, Jason said, burned through their primary opponents. In that sense, Trump’s power was clear. That, Jason said, is how we should measure his imprint on the Republicans, not whether his acolytes defeat Democratic opponents. Trump is still the Republican Party’s center of gravity. That’s not a problem for him.
That’s a problem for the Republican Party.
The primary is the thing
I agree with Rubin, Burns and others.
An indictment is going to alienate respectable white people – which is to say, “swing voters” – who care about appearing respectable among other white people who themselves care about appearing respectable. Respectable people always side with law and order.
Respectable white people constitute that great globular middle of American politics, and as such, they determine which of the political parties prevails most of the time during any given historical period. If you don’t win over respectable white people, you don’t win at all.
But while respectable white people do make or break candidates in general elections, they do not have the same or similar influence on the internal process of nominating a party’s presidential candidate.
That’s up to the party, especially the base voters of the party, who appear to believe that the covid is a Chinese bioweapon, that the J6 insurrection was an inside job and that Trump was robbed in 2020.
Burns said that candidates can’t tell voters that he’s a warrior for their cause when he’s “consumed with narrow, personal complaints and crackpot conspiracy theories” to which I can only respond:
Yesterday did happen.
What Trump does best
The Republican base has been primed for years to believe in the existence of a deep state trying to bring Trump down, in the weaponization of the government against “conservatives” and the waves of wokeness cascading from George Soros’ penthouse.
That’s why things like the following, from Burns, are baffling.
“Plenty of Americans can see themselves in an older white man scorned by liberals and the media for his crude manner and bigoted ideas. Fewer are likely to see themselves in a wealthy husband paying hush money to conceal his debauched sex life and whining about the unfairness of his circumstances in every public outing.”
Like yesterday never happened.
Trump must expand support, Burns said, “not merely rev up people who already care deeply about his every utterance and obsession.” Yes, he does – for the general election. As for the race for the GOP’s nominaton, revving up “people who already care deeply about his every utterance and obsession” is what Donald Trump does best.
Are we going to say that supporters who will do anything, like storm the US Capitol on an attempted takeover of the US government, are going to be put off by a criminal indictment? They will carry him over unless Republican elites mount a hostile couteroffensive to stop him.
So far, I don’t see that happening.
Conditions are set
It’s true, as Jennifer Rubin wrote, that beyond a few sycophants in the House, many elected Republicans are quiet. But let’s not take that as a sign of disapproval or, much less, that the party is ready to abandon him. Why? Because none of us, as far as I know, was born yesterday.
Over and over, during Trump’s presidency, he would say something that only a dictator would say. The newsspeakers would race over to the party elders, what I call the Stern Fathers of the Party, such as Senate leader Mitch McConnell, for comment. McConnell would say something bland, just enough to provide cover to the GOP’s craycray but not enough to upend the power of Trump’s personality cult.
I would take silence by the Stern Fathers of the Party less as evidence of Trump’s declining influence and more as another gambit in which they wait to see the distance Trump is capable of going while anticipating the opportunties that arise from his having gone there.
None of us was born yesterday. None of us should be saying, as if we knew for a fact, that an indictment is going to hurt Trump. That no candidate in our history has ever run for president under indictment does not mean it won’t happen. The conditions are already set.
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A serial prankster recently pulled off a tremendous feat by infiltrating a right-wing news outlet and spewing harsh truths about former President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, March 21, footage of the prankster's quick interview began circulating on social media. According to HuffPost, Jason Selvig, one-half of the politically progressive comedic group, The Good Liars, appeared on an online streaming segment for Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN).
As the news outlet was covering the Trump rallies in New York ahead of his impending arrest, Selvig appeared on camera to weigh in.
READ MORE: Google Protest Hoax May Have Been Theater, But It Contains a Truth About Our Angst-Ridden Times
“This is a political prosecution, it has to be,” Selvig said during the interview. “That’s the only way it could be happening right now.”
“The only other option is that Donald Trump lost by 7 million votes and is a loser who can’t deal with the fact that he lost the election because he based his whole personality on being a winner and calling people losers," he added.
READ MORE: Democracy in the 2010s: The decline of Kanye West-ern civilization
Selvig's remarks come as Republican leaders and lawmakers have thrown allegations of political motivation at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over his office's investigation into a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had an affair.
Lawmakers like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have all verbalized their concerns.
As Republicans rally behind Trump in the midst of this investigation, there are also predictions about a possible arrest and indictment of the former president — and how such actions may shift the presidential campaign trajectory in Trump's favor.
"If you want to talk about how to unify Republicans behind Donald Trump in the primary, having an unhinged left-wing prosecution, complete with perhaps a perp walk for the cameras, that ends up being thrown out and ends in failure could be the single biggest in-kind gift to the Donald Trump campaign of this entire cycle,” Cruz (R-Texas) said during a segment of his podcast on Monday, March 20.
Although Trump has warned that he could be arrested as early as today, no arrest has been made, as of yet.
Watch the video below or at this link.
READ MORE: Half of Twitter’s top advertisers flee as Elon Musk welcomes Trump back
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Trump lawyer could be sidelined over communications with Stormy Daniels just handed to DA: CNN
March 22, 2023
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has received communications between Stormy Daniels and an attorney representing Donald Trump, CNN reports.
The communiques between the adult-film star and Joe Tacopina date back to 2018, when Daniels was seeking legal counsel, according to her current attorney, Clark Brewster, who indicated the exchanges show that his client disclosed confidential information.
The latest revelation comes as all indications are that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is nearing a decision on whether to indict Trump over alleged hush money payments to Daniels, and threatens to sideline the celebrity attorney from defending the former president, according to CNN.
Tacopina dismissed the notion that a conflict of interest exists or that Daniels shared confidential information with his office, said he did not meet or speak with Daniels.
But Tacopina during a 2018 appearance with CNN’s Don Lemon said he may have been in contact with Daniels before she found a new lawyer.
RELATED: Trump bombshell: Lawyer won’t admit former president lost Georgia during MSNBC grilling
"I can't really talk about my impressions or any conversations we'd had because there is an attorney-client privilege that attaches even to a consultation," Tacopina said in the 2018 interview.
But Tacopina's firm after the video surfaced issued a statement denying that "there was no attorney-client relationship" between him and Daniels.
According to CNN’s Kristen Holmes and Tierney Sneed: “It would ultimately be up to a judge to decide whether the communications amount to a conflict of interest that requires disqualification or some other limitation on the advocacy Tacopina can do on behalf of the former president, if a case is brought against Trump.”
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