Item one: Will one elected Republican—one—say we need to respect the legal process? |
The only thing that was more fun yesterday than watching the Trump verdict come in was watching Republicans and assorted right-wingers sputter in outrage. I flipped on Fox News not long after the verdict was announced and caught Jeanine Pirro in the middle of an unhinged rant. "We have gone over a cliff in America," she howled, concluding: "And in the end, with all this smoke and mirrors, at 34 counts, and a hooker, and a guy [who] according to a federal judge is a
serial perjurer, we have convicted a former president of the United States of America." In a way, she got that last part right, even if her description of Stormy Daniels is unfair. But yes, Jeanine: That’s how the legal system works. If a jury returns 34 guilty counts in less than 10 hours of deliberation, it’s pretty clear that the prosecutor made his case. The jury of Donald Trump’s peers found Daniels and Michael Cohen to be credible witnesses. That must really frost the MAGA elites on Fox. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche tried and tried to discredit them, especially Cohen. Obviously, the jury wasn’t buying what he was selling. And by the way: If Cohen and Daniels were such terrible witnesses, you know what action by the defense could have immediately canceled them out? Having Trump take the stand! He threatened that he was going to, but that was obviously bullshit, just like everything he says. Trump can’t take a witness stand, as any credible lawyer knows, because he lies every time he opens his jowly mouth. But if the alternate universe they live in on Fox was real, then Trump should definitely have taken the stand, because he would have obliterated Cohen and Daniels with his righteous truth-telling.
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Tune in on June 8 for a high-profile event that will feature authors who are currently banned; fellow writers who have taken up the cause; and teachers, librarians, and students who have been directly impacted by the book bans that are sweeping America. Guests include: Lauren Groff, Ellen Hopkins, George M. Johnson, Jacqueline Woodson, and more.
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But of course he didn’t. Because every word he has said about this is a lie. He had sex with her. He paid her off. It was obviously about the 2016 campaign. We’ve known all these things for years, but, the law being what it is, we had to say "allegedly" and "if proven" and things like that, and we had to print Trump’s disavowals. Now we don’t. He did it. Not in that alternate universe, though. Republicans … well, you know what they did after the verdict. Especially the vice presidential supplicants. Senator Tim Scott was maybe the most extreme, but actually all of them—Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Elise Stefanik, J.D. Vance, and more—were over the top. That, we’d expect. More interesting were the elder statespersons of the party, who are to a person moral cowards but aren’t exactly card-carrying MAGA-heads. Senator John Barrasso: "The case in New York against President Trump has never been about justice. Democrats are weaponizing the justice system against a political opponent." Mitch McConnell: "These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal." But the dumbest of them all was Susan Collins’s statement, especially this part: "The district attorney, who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump, brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct." She got pounded on X/Twitter all night. It’s pretty hard to say that criminal charges are corrupt and illegitimate after a jury handed down an unequivocal thunderclap of a verdict like that. We should pause for a moment and think about the contempt for the justice system inherent in Collins’s words. Maybe she became disillusioned after her buddy Brett Kavanaugh voted to overturn Roe. Her smear of Alvin Bragg is a common one on the right. The reality is more complicated. Bragg was running for district attorney in 2021. Of course, Trump came up during the campaign—a lot. The incumbent D.A. at the time, Cy Vance, had opened an investigation into the Trump Organization. So naturally, Bragg and his main opponent were frequently asked what they’d do about Trump. And Bragg did boast about his prior work in the office of the state attorney general bringing "hundreds" of actions against Trump. But he did not say he was going to pursue Trump, and the campaign also turned on other issues. And when Bragg did take office, what did he do? He ended the Trump Organization probe that Vance had opened. Two of his top prosecutors resigned in disgust over it. That probe was taken up by Letitia James, and it resulted, as we know, in a judge ruling that Trump had committed fraud for years and levying a hefty fine. One has to wonder why Collins went out of her way to make this kind of statement. Maine isn’t exactly MAGA-land. She’s probably in her last term. On a personal level, Trump probably has very little use for her, and she probably doesn’t care much for him. So … why? Because the cancer runs so deep now in the organs of the Republican Party that no officeholder is cancer-free. Did one GOP officeholder say we should respect the jury system? Yes, I know of Larry Hogan’s statement. But he is not currently an officeholder, with constituents to offend. And look at what Trump’s campaign manager said in response to Hogan. That guarantees that no one else will try to say anything measured. The party is an appendage of one man. Republicans want to talk about banana republics? They are the Banana Republicans. This is like Argentina under Perón or the Philippines under Marcos. And to what manner of man are they appended? Let’s review. He’s a rapist—yes, a judge used that word and said it was accurate, after, remember, another jury of Trump’s peers ruled against him. He’s a massive tax cheat. Six of his political associates, plus Allen Weisselberg (and Cohen, if you want to count him), have been sentenced to prison. Three took plea deals to avoid prison. And now, he’s a convicted felon. The emperor is stripped barer and barer with each passing month, and the Republican response is to praise his finery more passionately than ever.
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Item two: But will it matter? |
The conventional wisdom right now is that the verdict won’t matter much by Election Day, and maybe that’s right. It’s a long way away, and a million things will happen between now and then. Trump will do and say worse things, probably starting today. But you might be interested to know that one person who seems to think it will matter is Karl Rove. On Morning Joe today, they showed a clip of Rove speaking on Fox, citing polls that show up to 11 percent of voters saying a guilty verdict could well influence their vote. Trump leads, Rove said, by half a percentage point in Michigan, 2 percent in Pennsylvania, and three-tenths of a percent in Wisconsin; if 5 to 11 percent of voters say they may change their minds because of a guilty verdict, that obviously matters. I generally agree with that. But, as I wrote Monday, it’s up to the Democrats to make it matter. They have to make it part of the campaign against him. They need to say "convicted felon Donald Trump" over and over and over. Another thing to think about: This isn’t over. Trump is going to appeal. Presumably, he is also going to be talking and talking, and ranting and ranting, about this. He’s going to keep the issue alive because he surely believes, and probably correctly, that it riles up his base. So the topic will remain as part of the conversation. And Trump, being Trump, may well say openly that if he gets back to the White House, he’s going to do something like put Alvin Bragg in jail. If, in that context, Democrats don’t talk about it … well, that’s Democratic messaging for you. "Lawless" is part of the story they want to tell about Trump, it seems to me. Combine the insurrection and this conviction and his other legal defeats with the things he’s said about how he’ll abuse his powers in a second term. If initial polls show people don’t care, don’t drop it. Find a way to make them care! This is what Democrats rarely do: find a way to make the general electorate share their convictions. If ever they need to, it’s now.
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Last week’s quiz: "And the livin’ is easy." Since it was Memorial Day weekend—songs about summer.
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1. The above line, "and the livin’ is easy," is from what summertime song?
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A. "A Summer Song," by Chad & Jeremy B. "Summertime," by George Gershwin C. "Hot Fun in the Summertime," by Sly and the Family Stone D. "Summertime Sadness," by Lana Del Rey
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Answer: B, Gershwin. All four of the above are great songs. My daughter tipped me to Lana, she’s excellent.
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2. Antonio Vivaldi wrote a poem to accompany each movement of The Four Seasons. What happens in the "Summer" section of the work, according to the poem?
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A. A storm destroys a farmer’s crops. B. A young man falls in love. C. A flood buries a village under water. D. A huntsman kills a boar.
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Answer: A, storm; crops. It’s in a minor key (G minor), so you know something bad happens. You can see the poem here.
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3. In Alice Cooper’s "School’s Out," what word rhymes with "intelligence"?
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A. Elegance B. Relevance C. Elephants D. There is no rhyme.
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Answer: D, no rhyme. But I made a mistake, relying on some online lyric purveyor instead of my memory, which is spotty in general but with respect to lyrics to 1970s singles something close to flawless. The second verse, which is pure genius (note the double entendre in the first two lines), goes: "Well we got no class / And we got no principals / And we got no innocence / We can’t even think up a word that rhymes."
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4. Perhaps the all-time greatest summer song is 1970’s "In the Summertime," by Mungo Jerry. What was the inspiration for the band’s name?
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A. A character in T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats B. "Mungo Jerry" was a particularly potent form of skunk weed available on the streets of their Middlesex hometown. C. It was the nickname of a well-known busker in Shantytown in Kingston, Jamaica. D. It was the lead singer’s real name.
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Answer: A, Eliot. Explanation here. It was pre-Cats, so it’s defensible.
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5. In the Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 "Summer in the City," what is the "cool cat" in the second verse looking for?
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A. A ride B. A kitty C. A Caddy D. A place to hide from the heat
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Answer: B, "Cool cat, lookin’ for a kitty / Gonna look in every corner of the city." What a song. Nice B minor to B major shift in the move from the verse to the chorus.
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6. Which of these acts has not covered "Under the Boardwalk," the 1964 Drifters hit written by Kenny Young and Arthur Resnick?
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A. Bette Midler B. Bruce Willis C. The Muppets D. Linda Ronstadt
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Answer: D, Ronstadt, at least according to this list, which I generally find pretty reliable.
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It can happen here. And if it does, here is what might become of the country.
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This week’s quiz: It’s called a what?! Things with weird names that you probably don’t know.
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1. Let’s start with the above punctuation—a question mark followed by an exclamation point. It has a name. What is it?
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A. Snarkle B. Percontation C. Interrobang D. Pilcrow
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A. That little plastic coating on the end of a shoelace B. The ring around a hole on the side of a flag C. The indentation in the top of a toothpaste tube D. The heel crease in a sock
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3. What in the world is an antimacassar?
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A. The end of a hammer that doesn’t strike nails B. A word that means the opposite of what it sounds like it should mean C. A kill switch on a piece of exercise equipment D. A cloth placed on the back of a chair where the head might rest, as on an airplane seat
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4. That little wired cage that surrounds the cork in a bottle of champagne? Why, that is a(n) …
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A. Agraffe B. Grillagere C. Cotte de Mailles D. Louis-seize
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5. Those decorative separators made of wood or vinyl (or whatever) between the panes of a multi-paned window are called the …
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A. Sills B. Grilles C. Lintels D. Mullions
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6. In diner lingo, what do they call "Adam and Eve on a raft"?
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A. Sausage and scrapple on a bagel B. Two poached eggs on toast C. Two sunny-side-up eggs on an English muffin D. Two bacon strips and two slices of American cheese on top of scrambled eggs
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