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I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but Trump has been sounding a bit, well, normal on the trail recently. He took a relatively moderate stance on abortion regulations, he’s not saying much about Gaza, and he’s standing behind Mike Johnson in spite of the Ukraine aid bill. Trump always feeds red meat to the base and never moves to the center, so what’s going on here? Is he actually becoming a more conventional GOP candidate?

I think the polls have convinced him that he blundered into a successful strategy by refusing to participate in the debates. The less he speaks about issues in public, and the more moderate he sounds when he does, the better he comes across to swing voters who are unhappy with the status quo.

Of course, his legal problems may blow this strategy to smithereens. So might his lack of oral discipline. And don’t expect the moderate version of Trump to remain in place if he actually wins the election. Once given the opportunity to exercise absolute power, he will use it, because if there is one thing we know for sure about the man on golf cart, it is that he considers himself to be above the law.

Based on what I have read in the NYT, here are my reactions:

1. As expected, the prosecution is emphasizing the big picture–a fraud on the American people prior to the 2016 election. The case wouldn’t be worth the effort if it didn’t stand for something more than putting false information in business records.
2. Pecker is a logical choice for the first witness.
3. While I am not completely sure of this, because the NYT postings were not altogether clear on the matter, it appears that the Trump team is using a mud on the wall approach rather than creating a consistent narrative on their own. That’s a fairly normal approach to the average criminal trial, but will it work here with either the jury or the court of public opinion? I have my doubts.

The movie “Civil War” is getting a lot of attention from pundits and moviegoers alike. I haven’t seen it, and don’t really intend to, but it is clear from the reviews that it is intended to remind us of the real life consequences of a civil war. There is no attempt made to describe its causes.

I have written extensively about the difficulties involved in secession in the 21st century. I don’t believe a civil war on the scale of the first one is plausible. There are two scenarios, however, in which I can imagine a degree of political violence in this country that would have been unthinkable until recently:

1. Trump loses the popular vote but wins in the Electoral College. Demonstrations that include some property damage and a few personal injuries break out in blue state cities. Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and sends troops to shoot down the demonstrators. The left doesn’t have guns, and it continues to believe in liberal democracy, so it does not unite to fight back. The response is limited to targeted killings of reactionary officials by a handful of militants. It achieves little.
2. Trump loses both the popular vote and in the Electoral College. He, of course, refuses to accept the outcome. In rural areas, particularly in red states, some local and state officials, backed by law enforcement and militias, announce they do not recognize Biden as their president and will no longer cooperate with or take direction from any federal officials except those working for Trump. In the end, after unsuccessful attempts at negotiation, Biden is compelled to invoke the Insurrection Act to arrest the rebels. This cannot be done without some violence, assassination attempts ensue, and militia activity increases dramatically. The reactionary right as a whole does not rise, however, and the attempts at insurrection ultimately fail.

The jury selection process was a bit faster than I anticipated. The evidentiary rulings have been unexceptional. In short, nothing extraordinary, from a legal perspective, has happened yet.

The three things that I will be looking for in the following weeks are:

1. WHEN WILL COHEN TESTIFY? Cohen is the principal witness in this case because he has personal knowledge of what Trump said, meant, and did. He is, on its face, also the least credible witness against the man on golf cart. When will the prosecution put him on? Personally, I would call him around the middle of the case in order to bolster his credibility both before and after he testifies, but we’ll see.
2. HOW WILL TRUMP’S ATTORNEYS IMPEACH COHEN? Many–maybe most–of Cohen’s notable lies were told to advance Trump’s interests. Asking him about them probably isn’t going to bolster Trump’s case. The lawyers will have to look for something else.
3. WILL TRUMP TESTIFY? He will make a dreadful witness, because he will be both aggressive and evasive. Defense counsel will be praying they don’t have to put him on the stand. Will they succeed? TBD.

On the GOP stance on Ukraine.

Their support for the war’s on the wane.

But the aid bill just passed.

The far right is aghast

But their loss is America’s gain.

J.D. Vance argued a few days ago in an NYT column that the Ukrainians simply don’t have the resources or the manpower to win back all of their territory, even with American help. He may well be right; I have said the same thing myself. Is that a valid reason to deny them military aid?

Vance’s position doesn’t even make sense. Is doing what is necessary to guarantee the survival of Ukraine as an independent state somehow far less compelling than helping it win back the Donbas? Of course not!

The fact is that Vance is a Putin appeaser. There are three possible reasons for that:

1. He admires Putin and believes he should be rewarded for being an anti-woke warrior;
2. He believes, like Ramaswamy, that Putin is one of us, and can be flipped in the existential war against China; or
3. He just doesn’t think Ukraine is worth fighting over, and he doesn’t see Putin as a threat to the rest of Europe. China is the priority.

I don’t see a lot of evidence for #1. The other options sound like a British right-winger arguing that Hitler is less of a threat than Stalin. How did that turn out?

You have to know that Trump absolutely loathes being in a courtroom in Manhattan every day. Why? Because he’s used to being the man! He’s in charge! Everyone and everything revolves around him and his whims. But in this courtroom, he’s so damn powerless! The judge, the lawyers, and even a bunch of New York nobodies get to decide what happens to him, and he has to shut up and take it. He can’t even leave when he wants to. It’s an outrage!

Welcome to our world, big boy. You have five more weeks to go, if the judge is right. Enjoy every minute of it.

Both the woke left and the reactionary right want to shut their opponents up. In the case of the wokes, the instrument of choice is a mob on the internet; the right, on the other hand, uses the government to do its dirty work. Both groups claim to support free speech, but only liberals really do.

Over the last two years, the right has been winning on this issue. First, it succeeded in shutting down discussions of race and gender in schools in red states; more recently, it has weaponized antisemitism for two purposes: to create a wedge between liberal and progressive voters before the election; and to brand the views of the latter as morally illegitimate.

There are lessons in this for both woke progressives and liberals. For liberals, it is essential to protect the right of progressives to speak, even when, as in the case of Gaza, they may not agree with progressive opinions; the decision of the administration of Columbia University to fold in front of GOP hardliners and crack down on pro-Palestinian demonstrators was a terrible mistake. Progressives, for their part, need to understand that the culture wars are a war on them, not the moderate left, and that only the liberals they so enjoy abusing stand between them and enforced silence.

The text of the official proceeding statute that was used to prosecute some of the January 6 rioters pretty clearly supports the government’s position. Several of our reactionary Supreme Court justices claim to be textualists. And yet, it appears that the Court is likely to let the defendants off the hook based on concerns that the statute could be used to penalize legitimate political activities protected by the First Amendment.

The concerns are reasonable, and in the hands of other jurists, they are defensible. But for someone who claims to be a fundamentalist on the plain meaning of statutes–just read the words and let the chips fall where they may regardless of policy implications–they look like hypocrisy motivated by partisan politics.

When Trump, as he often does, makes mutually exclusive promises to different groups, which ones should we believe? Here is my analysis:

1. Promises that operate in the financial or psychological best interests of the narcissist-in-chief can be trusted.
2. Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.
3. If there is a history of Trump being talked out of something by the adults in the room, don’t rely on the adults prevailing in the second Trump term, because they won’t be there.

With these principles in mind, what can we expect from Trump 2.0? Here’s a partial list:

1. Tariffs, and lots of them. Trump has always been a mercantilist.
2. Tax cuts and deregulation for business. Trump is a faux populist, not a real one.
3. Lots of talk about nuclear war, but no real action. Trump’s one virtue is that he isn’t a warmonger–he just plays one on TV.
4. Plenty of petty corruption, just as before.
5. An end to as many federal programs as he can find addressing climate change.
6. No federal abortion ban, but plenty of regulatory actions behind the scenes to please the anti-abortion base.
7. An end to America’s support of Ukraine, with lots of kind words for Putin.
8. More attempts to manage trade with China in exchange for a free hand with Taiwan.
9. A reduced commitment to NATO.
10. Expensive and draconian measures to reduce immigration, followed by a refusal to follow court orders overturning them.

America had two different foreign policies during the Trump years. The one run by the foreign policy apparatus was conventional and Republican, while Trump himself embraced dictators, downplayed human rights, offended allies, mused openly about nuclear war, and focused to an absurd degree on trade deficits. Mike Pompeo handled the dissonance by pretending it didn’t exist and by stomping out of the room when reporters insisted it did. Can we expect more of the same in a second Trump term?

Yes, because the confusion keeps Trump’s options open, which is almost always one of his principal objectives. My prediction comes with a caveat, however; it will be much more difficult to recruit prominent people to serve as Trump’s straight man this time around. The adults in the room will be gone, because everyone saw what happened to them in the first term. Who will want to play the good cop for our friends?

Trump, of course, claims to be the retribution for the oppressed white American Christians who are constantly mocked by the coastal elites. His rhetoric is angry and reactionary. At the same time, he is apparently telling potential donors that he will govern as a traditional Republican, albeit as one who is a bit rough with his mouth. This means there will be tax cuts and deregulation galore for business interests; his faux economic populism is just a distraction to keep the base on side.

This kind of dishonest dualism on social and economic issues is a feature, not a bug, of Trumpism. You could argue that it is a cynical but effective way of bridging the gap between the PBP and Reactionary factions of the Republican Party. It also keeps Trump’s options open as long as possible, which is another feature of his form of government.

The obvious question, of course, is what should America believe? In my next post on this subject, I will discuss how Trumpian dualism also pervades his foreign policy style. In the concluding post, I will tell you what you can trust, what you can’t, and why.

Rural resentment of American urban elites is a theme that goes back to Jefferson’s time. The most dramatic example of it, of course, was the Populist movement of the 1890s. Is it in any way comparable to what we see today?

No. William Jennings Bryan was genuinely interested in improving the lot of rural residents. He had a policy platform that was designed to do exactly that. He never preached resentment as an end in itself.

Trump, on the other hand, has no plan to improve the lives of the people he claims to represent. Fortunately for him, they don’t seem to mind; for example, his China tariffs resulted in retaliation and cost American farmers one of their best markets, but they support him anyway, because he is their retribution.

We know what the prosecution’s story is in the Trump trial, but what will the defense say? As far as I can tell, it has two wildly different potential defenses:

1. The case against Trump is a pack of lies from beginning to end. There was no affair and no payment of hush money. Trump is as innocent as the driven snow.
2. There was an affair and a payment of hush money, but it wasn’t motivated by any political concerns. As a result, there is no legal tie to a felony, and even if the records were falsified, it was only a misdemeanor.

My guess is that Trump will prefer #1, which is consistent with his public comments on the matter, but his lawyers will prefer #2. Who will win this battle? We’ll see.

Ross Douthat observes that, while issues pertaining to Trump’s self-regard are non-negotiable, virtually all matters of policy are. He thinks this kind of cynical populism is a strength of the man on golf cart and advises Biden to follow his example. Is he right about both Trump and Biden?

He is absolutely correct about Trump, with one exception; an extensive record shows that the man on golf cart is genuinely wedded to his reactionary ideas about mercantilism and returning America to the economy of the 1950s. As to Biden, let’s consider Douthat’s examples of how the current president could triangulate successfully:

1. On Gaza, Douthat admits that Biden has taken an intermediate path and received credit for it from no one. In reality, Biden is not triangulating on Gaza; he is taking a consistent, principled, well-defined path towards ultimately improving the Middle East that has not really borne fruit yet.
2. On immigration, Biden has clearly moved to the center over the last few months, as Douthat would wish. That process has just taken too long for some members of the center. One of the factors to consider here, however, is that the left has had success litigating immigration cases against the administration based on the theory that even Biden’s supposedly lenient policies have been indistinguishable from Trump’s. That would come as news to most people, but it’s true; in that sense, Biden has been triangulating from his first day in office.
3. On abortion, a large majority of the public supports Biden and opposes the right. Why would he move off a popular position?
4. On electric cars, the latest rules have slowed down the pace of the transition somewhat. Should Biden trumpet that as a wise concession to public opinion at the risk of offending the blue base? I have my doubts.

The bottom line here is that Biden was bound to do plenty of triangulation the minute the blue team lost control of the House of Representatives. He’s already doing that. To go much beyond what he is already doing would offend the blue base without winning over many swing voters, most of whom will be making a decision based on Trump’s behavior and the state of the economy in any event.