Cromwell

Like many people, I suspect, I was toggling between the New York trial and the oral argument on Trump’s immunity defense this morning. As to the former, the prosecution did a good job, through David Pecker, of showing the jury how catch and kill worked and how Trump was personally involved. I will admit, however, that even I couldn’t imagine that Trump would congratulate Pecker for the success of the scheme in front of James Comey. That tells you everything you need to know about how Trump thinks the federal government works.

The oral argument, on the other hand, was awful. First of all, the Supreme Court should never have heard this case, as the D.C. Circuit wrote a perfectly good opinion. Second, the argument should have focused on whether the specific immunity claim raised by Trump was supported by text in the Constitution, legislative history, or case law (spoiler alert–it isn’t). I didn’t see any of that in the discussion. Instead, the reactionaries on the Court seem to be determined to write some sort of new broad immunity rule into the Constitution based on nothing except their individual views about how American liberal democracy should work; in other words, they want to be the Founding Fathers, not the interpreters of text, even though they claim to be textualists.

In addition, the coming decision is more likely than not to delay the Trump trial to the point that it cannot happen before the election. This is the judicial equivalent of catch and kill.

American foreign policy under Trump was unpredictable, due to the man on golf cart’s capriciousness and his ongoing conflicts with his own administration. Some of Trump’s admirers have identified this in retrospect as an asset. If you’re Putin or Xi, they say, you don’t dare do anything that would trigger the crazy cop. The invasion of Ukraine is just one example of something that wouldn’t have happened if Trump had been in charge, according to them.

In reality, the crazy cop approach to foreign policy is likely to result in allies who choose to go their own way. The EU, for example, is not a larger version of Lindsey Graham; it isn’t going to change positions on a dime just to stay in line with Trump. More of our friends will seek nuclear weapons in lieu of counting on a thoroughly unreliable and self-absorbed ally. The result will be far more instability in the world, not less.

Mike Johnson is running the House the same way McCarthy did; he’s using a coalition of moderates to get essential legislation through the system, while giving the extremists the opportunity to do whatever they want on other issues. But McCarthy was defenestrated, while Johnson clearly won’t be, as he has support from the Democrats. What accounts for the difference?

Three things: experience; personality; and circumstances. The Democrats have learned that most of the alternatives are worse; Johnson doesn’t lie to them, as McCarthy did; and there is little benefit to either side (other than the extremists) to having another round of chaos with the election looming in about six months. Even Trump clearly thinks so.

The Biden victory in November came as a huge shock to GOP voters who had been assured by Fox News that a Trump triumph was a sure thing. In red areas in many parts of the country, local officials, supported by law enforcement and backed by militias, announced that they would only cooperate with and take direction from Trump and his agents. One of these states in which this occurred was Florida.

DeSantis was put in a difficult position. On the one hand, he had ambitions to run for president in 2028; maintaining good relations with the base was of extreme importance to him. On the other hand, he knew he would lose all credibility with the respectable elements of the GOP if he sided openly with the insurrectionists against the legitimate government. What was he to do?

Predictably, he stalled and temporized. He talked somewhat equivocally about the legitimate grievances of the insurrectionists and called for a negotiated solution. In the end, the federal government took charge and put an end to the insurrection without his help. He naturally portrayed himself as a martyr in the battle against the deep state. The base lapped it up.

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?