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Item one: Donald Trump’s walk through legal hell has just begun

Sometime this month, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron will decide how much Donald Trump should pay in penalties in the fraud case brought by New York State Attorney General Letitia James. Engoron has already ruled that Trump did commit fraud, so now it’s just a matter of the money. Engoron has been decidedly unimpressed by Trump’s lawyers’ arguments throughout the proceeding, so it seems reasonable to think Engoron will come close to, match, or maybe even exceed James’s request of $370 million.

According to Lisa Rubin of MSNBC, speaking on Morning Joe Friday morning, the very theatricality of Trump and his attorneys’ denials can be a factor in the judge’s determination—that is, if Engoron determines that Trump and his lawyers’ lies are egregiously flamboyant and obvious, that can help dictate the penalty amount. Rubin predicted that the amount would be “in the hundreds of millions” of dollars and that perhaps Engoron would drop the nuclear penalty on Trump and his family—barring them from doing business in New York again.

Meanwhile, as Engoron is deliberating, another trial is about to begin. The E. Jean Carroll defamation trial will open next Tuesday, the day after the Iowa caucuses. Last year, a jury found that Trump had lied about not sexually abusing Carroll years ago, and awarded her $5 million. Trump appealed. Last summer, the judge in the case clarified, amid intense media debate and speculation, that Trump did in fact “rape” Carroll. 

Meanwhile, on the political front, Trump will win Monday’s Iowa caucuses. The following Tuesday, January 23, New Hampshirites will go to the polls. One poll that got a ton of attention showed Nikki Haley within seven points of Trump. She has some momentum, but in the polling averages, Trump still has a double-digit lead. And he’ll be coming off a massive win in Iowa. So let’s say for the moment that Trump wins New Hampshire handily too.

The media narrative with respect to the Trump lawsuits will be what it has been, except on steroids: Trump’s legal woes only help him. That’s true with respect to Republican voters. But there are a lot of reasons to think that that piece of conventional wisdom will be dead wrong when it comes to other voters.

First of all, New Hampshire may well prove this point. Independents can vote in New Hampshire primaries and have a history of being cranky and unpredictable. Now let’s assume that Trump doesn’t win the Granite State handily—he wins it narrowly or maybe even loses. If that happens, Haley will be succeeding on the strength of those independent voters. And that will constitute a big and important switch that’s worth paying attention to.

In 2016, independents made up 42 percent of the electorate in the state’s GOP primary, and Trump cleaned up among them: He got 36 percent of the independent vote, while his closest competitor, John Kasich, got 18 percent.

If Trump loses independents in New Hampshire to Haley—even if he still wins overall—that will be a big sign that the Trump show isn’t playing well beyond the MAGA base. We’d have to wait until the results to see what these voters say about why they didn’t vote for Trump. But it’s hardly a stretch to think that Trump’s legal problems have to be part of the story. 

The media aren’t paying attention to this at all. Case in point: Last week, there was a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll that got a lot of attention. In its write-up, the Post highlighted the fact that three years after January 6, Republicans were if anything more loyal to Trump, not less. The rest of the media largely followed that lead, so the story of that poll became yet another “Trump can get away with anything” story.

But other results from the poll that got a lot less attention told a different story. The survey asked people if the Justice Department, in charging Trump for insurrection, was holding him accountable as it would anyone else or was targeting him unfairly. A comfortable majority, 57 percent, said he was being treated fairly. That’s the exact percentage of independents who said the same, compared to 90 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of Republicans.

In other words: The Republican base, as is so often the case in these kinds of polls, is a total outlier that distorts the overall results. What does this tell us? I think it’s clear. As the primary “drama” winds down, and as the courtroom drama heats up—and both of these are likely to happen in early March—we’ll see the trials start to take more of a toll on Trump. If the Jack Smith insurrection trial proceeds as originally planned on March 4 (that’s now in abeyance pending resolution of a Trump appeal), Trump’s remaining and mathematically meaningless primary wins are going to get a lot less attention than what’s going on in that Washington courtroom.

Don’t buy the narrative that none of this hurts Trump. It will. He’s not being persecuted. He’s a scumbag who did lie about his property values, who did rape Carroll, who did lead an insurrection, who did take classified documents (he doesn’t dispute this—he just says he was allowed to do anything he pleased), and God knows what else. Republicans may not care. But I think real Americans do.

Item two: Oh, Mike Johnson, what did you expect?

As The New Republic’s Grace Segers reported Thursday, the red-hots in the House GOP caucus, or at least some of them, want to throw Speaker Mike Johnson out. The morning newsletters on Friday morning are reporting that the hard right has rejected the deal Johnson cut with Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer to fund the government and prevent a shutdown. This—making a deal with the other party—is of course an act of apostasy. 

So Johnson faces essentially the same choice faced by Kevin McCarthy a few weeks ago: Make a deal, govern, be responsible, and lose your job; or bow to the wishes of the Freedom Caucus and let the government shut down. 

How many times are we going to go through this? Do the hard-righters in the House GOP really think they can elect someone as their leader who will be able to do things any differently? The job of speaker is to cut a deal, fund the government. There is no way around that. Any hope that some speaker can magically do otherwise is fantasy. This is the inevitable result when you send someone off to do a job that you in fact don’t want him to do.

I do think there’s a chance that Johnson could cut a deal with Schumer and survive as speaker, because the number of GOP House members who really do want to burn the place down is still probably not large enough to derail a deal. So for now, this is just a comedy. But one day in the not too distant future, if the GOP maintains control of the House, and after they’ve gone through enough speakers who “capitulated” to Schumer, it will turn into tragedy.

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Item three: Florida and the devil’s dictionary

It was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere in this great country of ours, banned the dictionary. It happened this week in Escambia County, Florida, in the Panhandle (natch), after an investigation concluded that the dictionary, some encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not potentially violated House Bill 1069 and its proscriptions on school materials having sexual content. The county has now pulled some 2,800 titles from its shelves.

All this talk of dictionaries leads me to Ambrose Bierce’s great work The Devil’s Dictionary, which has probably also been banned by the elders of Escambia. Bierce was obviously a deep-state Marxist-fascist-Communist vermin. See for yourself:

Censor: An officer of certain governments employed to suppress the works of genius.

Moral: Conforming to a local and mutable standard of right. Having the quality of general expediency.

Religion: A daughter of hope and fear, explaining to ignorance the nature of the unknowable. 

Patriot: One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

And so on. I hope that if they’ve somehow overlooked it, the Javerts of Escambia swoop in and get this filth away from their impressionable children.

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Quiz time!

Last week’s quiz: “Cast off the shackles of yesterday!” In honor of the death of the great Glynis Johns at the age of 100, a quiz (largely) about Mary Poppins. 

1. Johns played Mrs. Winifred Banks in the 1964 screen classic. In addition to being a proper British housewife, she was passionate about what cause?

A. Workers’ rights

B. Opposition to World War I

C. Women’s suffrage

D. Elimination of the House of Lords

Answer: C, women’s suffrage. And by the way, the great lyrics to “Sister Suffragette”: 

Though we adore men individually

We agree that as a group they’re rather stupid!

Cast off the shackles of yesterday!

Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!

Our daughters’ daughters will adore us

And they’ll sing in grateful chorus

“Well done, Sister Suffragette!”

2. Mary Poppins was the highest-grossing film of 1964. Rank these other four films that finished in the top 10 in order of their place.

A. A Hard Day’s Night

B. Goldfinger

C. The Pink Panther

D. My Fair Lady

Answer: My Fair Lady was number two that year; Goldfinger number three, Pink Panther nine, and Hard Day’s Night 10. Selected other top 10 entries: From Russia With Love, A Shot in the Dark, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. 

3. Who among these four was not considered for the lead role before Disney landed Julie Andrews?

A. Bette Davis

B. Angela Lansbury

C. Gwen Verdon

D. Julie Harris

Answer: C, Gwen Verdon. Rather incredibly, because she was a highly talented song and dance person of the era, although a bit older than Andrews. But … Bette Davis?!?! Dear Lord. She is mentioned as having been considered here.

4. What’s the name of the illustrious brother songwriting duo who wrote the amazing score?

A. The Eisner brothers

B. The Sherman brothers

C. The Newley brothers

D. The Menken brothers

Answer: B, Robert and Richard Sherman. They also wrote “It’s a Small World (After All),” all the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang songs, and, interestingly, the pop hit “You’re Sixteen.”

5. In the song “Feed the Birds,” where does the old lady mentioned in the song sell her seed bags for “tuppence a bag”?

A. At St. Paul’s Cathedral

B. At Westminster Abbey

C. At the British Museum

D. At Kensington Palace

Answer: A, St. Paul’s. Please don’t tell me if you didn’t know that one.

6. Johns’s other most acclaimed role would win her a Tony in 1973. For what show, and especially her rendition of what song, was she nominated?

A. Cabaret, “Maybe This Time”

B. Fiddler on the Roof, “Sunrise, Sunset”

C. Pippin, “I Guess I’ll Miss the Man”

D. A Little Night Music, “Send in the Clowns”

Answer: D, Night Music. “Clowns” is brilliant of course, but I’ll still take “Sister Suffragette.” All right, that was a little tongue-in-cheek.

This week’s quiz: The sport that swallowed America: Pro football in popular culture. Because the playoffs start this weekend. You don’t need to know football to do well here. It’s more of a pop-cult quiz, really.

1. In 1960, a CBS television special—narrated by news anchor Walter Cronkite, no less—took viewers inside “the violent world” of a star NFL defensive player. Part of the CBS series The Twentieth Century, it was the first time pro football was really elevated to that kind of place in the culture. Who was the player?

A. Dick Butkus

B. Gino Marchetti

C. Sam Huff

D. Ray Nitschke

2. Joe Namath was the first true celebrity football player, with almost rock-star status in the culture for a few years. In 1974, he made a TV commercial that was controversial because he wore what in it?

A. A dress

B. Pantyhose

C. A fur coat

D. An “I Hate Nixon” T-shirt

3. Sometimes, a whole team captures the public imagination in such a way that the team transcends the sport. Which 1980s team did that with its music video (still a newish medium then) called “The Super Bowl Shuffle”?

A. Chicago Bears

B. San Francisco 49ers

C. Dallas Cowboys

D. Oakland Raiders

4. This star offensive player, who also played pro baseball, became a huge pop-culture icon and is the only player ever to have played in both a Super Bowl and a World Series.

A. Bo Jackson

B. Jim Thorpe

C. Drew Henson

D. Deion Sanders

5. Match the pro football movie to the quick plot synopsis.

6. We all know about Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. Match these other NFL players to celebrity women they either dated or married.

See? That was designed very much with the non–football fan in mind. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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