This is another rant about Trump. But not entirely.
As we know, on August 1, Deranged Jack Smith (this is his first name now, apparently) released the federal charges against Donald Trump in regard to the January 6 case, and then the week after that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis released state RICO charges against not only Trump but 18 co-conspirators including Rudy Guiliani and other insiders like John Eastman. Why does this matter compared to the other charges piling up on Trump? Because this is a state case, and a hypothetical President Trump or other Republican president cannot pardon state charges. Moreover pardons in Georgia are handled by panel, so the Republican Governor of Georgia cannot pardon Trump even if he were inclined to do so (which he is NOT). Moreover, the premise of a RICO case is that a criminal conspiracy existed. Unlike Smith’s federal cases, Willis does not need to entertain Trump’s bogus defense that he “really believed” he won and “didn’t think” he was doing anything wrong. All the State needs to do is establish that a conspiracy existed and that Trump was the focus of it.
Trump has been responding in his usual manner: with bullying and sleaze. He suggested that the former Lieutenant Governor in Georgia not testify against him, calling him a “nasty disaster” because he wouldn’t entertain Trump’s fantasy scenario that the election was stolen. He calls District Attorney Fani Willis a racist (remember, the world is run by Black people and they’re all trying to keep the Orange man down). On one of his weekend speeches, Trump decided to excrete this little story about how this certain DA had a case against a criminal in the past and ended up having an affair with him. Totally unproven, of course, but Trump’s fan club of not-so-closet racists ate it right up. Like caviar, or other Russian imports.
August 15, Trump posted on Truf Censhal saying “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 AM on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others – There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”
Rigger, please.
‘Course, Mr. Alligator Mouth Hummingbird Ass ended up retracting all this last Thursday, saying “Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful Indictment”. Yes, Donnie. Because that’s where cases are tried. In court. I’m sure your lawyers would prefer it that way, as, unlike you, they have training and qualifications and know what the fuck they’re doing.
The irony being that Trump clearly wants to pull an OJ and try this case in the media, but it would actually be easier to try it in court, because if Trump had competent lawyers (hypothetically) they could find all manner of technicalities to remove or mitigate charges, whereas the more he wants to turn it into a media spectacle, the more guilty and defensive he looks and the more likely it is he will turn off the people who he needs to vote for him. And since his transparent strategy has been to muck with things until the election in the hopes he will actually win, so he can declare himself God-Emperor and make Smith’s charges (at least) go away, that’s counterproductive.
But speaking of Trump being chickenshit, the other news this week is that Donnie decided not to attend the little debate of presidential candidates scheduled for Wednesday on Fox. Instead he’s releasing an interview he pre-recorded with Fox News exile and fellow professional racist Tucker Carlson.
In a New York Times article, the decision is framed largely from Trump’s perspective as a desire to get back at Fox for not uncritically reporting his positions 100 percent of the time, and because he seems to think they have it out for him. “Also, they purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not.” Spoiler Alert, Donnie: They’re ALL bad pictures. They’re ALL big orange pictures with a receding chin. Because you are an accident of Nature that never should have been, and you take a roller of orange paint and layer it on your face attempting to look younger. The end result just makes you look like a lobeless Ferengi with a Tribble toupee.
In truth, there are good reasons for Trump to avoid a debate, because it reduces his legal liability or chance of embarrassing himself if he goes “unscripted” with somebody like Chris Christie who might actually take advantage. Also: Trump has refused to sign the Republican National Committee requirement that anybody who participates in the debates has to pledge loyalty to whoever ends up being the nominee. (As Donnie’s wives could tell you, one word he can’t understand is ‘loyalty’) But given how most polls show Trump far ahead of not only Ron DeSantis but DeSantis and any two other candidates combined, it’s easy to believe the stated position that Trump’s not participating because his lead is so big he doesn’t need to compete.
There are now eight “qualified” candidates for the debate, not including Trump, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to help the moderation if they don’t have to keep cutting Trump’s mic when it’s not his turn, going MommeeMommeeMommeeLookitmeLookitmeLookitmeLOOK AT ME YOU GODDAMN BITCH, but it’s going to be another one of those points to raise the question as to why any of these guys are even there.
But if any of this legal folderol actually undermines Trump’s performance in primaries, it means the debate matters because it raises the question of whether there even is any such thing as a Republican Party outside of Trump. And so far, all signs point to No.
Most institutions operate on a premise of “monkey see, monkey do”, especially the Republican Party, which is owned by the biggest howler monkey in the world. Which is why you see the more ambitious Republicans trying to out-Trump Trump because they perceive that’s where the Party is going.
Take entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s been getting a lot of press recently. Ramaswamy had an interview with conservative Hugh Hewitt and said that once we develop our own semiconductor supply, China can have Taiwan: “they have unfinished nationalistic business dating back to their civil war in 1949,” he added. “And if that’s the sole basis for Xi Jinping going after Taiwan after we have semiconductor independence, then you know what? I am not going to send our sons and daughters to die over that conflict. And that’s consistent with my position on Ukraine as well.” In that regard, Ramaswamy told CNN’s Jim Acosta “I would freeze the current lines of control and that would leave parts of the Donbas region with Russia, I would also further make a commitment that NATO would not admit Ukraine to NATO.” Acosta told the presidential hopeful “that sounds like a win for Putin,” which Ramaswamy countered, “Our goal should not be for Putin to lose, our goal should be for America to win.”
May I ask, in what world does America not lose if Putin is winning?
The logical answer is, only a world where America is a partner of Putin and not a balance against him. And given Putin’s absolutism, this necessarily means an unequal partnership where America is subservient to Putin.
And given that Putin has had to make himself largely subservient to Xi Jinping just to keep running his war, that would make China the greatest partner in the triumvirate. In any event, we could no longer say we were leading the “free world.”
And then of course, you have DeSantis, who has all along based his politics on following Trump’s lead and now wonders why nobody thinks he’d be a better leader. But apparently he’s gonna keep doing that. In a now well-publicized leak that is not likely to improve his polls, DeSantis’ debate advisers told him “Defend Trump when Chris Christie attacks him” and “Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times.” I mean usually when somebody leaks your strategy you adapt and try something else that the enemy hasn’t prepared for, but DeSantis hasn’t been that flexible so far.
No surprise though that he and other candidates still want to defend Trump when the whole premise of the debate is that one of them is for some reason unexplained supposed to be a better choice. Especially when Mike Pence’s whole position is, “Look, Donald Trump tried to stop the proceeding of an election process and tried to have me lynched but I don’t think he did anything illegal.” And of course most of these guys are pledging to pardon Trump if he’s found guilty, if they get elected, which really begs the question, why do you think your chances of beating Trump to the nomination, let alone beating Biden, are greater than Trump’s chances of beating the rap?
Not to mention that the nominally better choices like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, while certainly preferable to Trump and his mini-Trumps, are still part of the same Republican Party that has its own issues with credibility, especially Christie, who was a problematic Governor of New Jersey and a former Trump enabler. I mean, better that he turns back to the side of reason rather than riding the toilet rim all the way down like the other cultists, but objectively speaking there’s not much to vote for if you’re an independent, let alone a liberal.
As for where the Republican Party’s collective mindset is and what they have to offer the country at large, let’s prep with one of the several bingo cards being offered on social media:
In this, I keep going back to a quote I’ve used before that really explains how the Right went where it did. There was an article in Reason Magazine, March 2017, after Trump got in the White House, and they were having an interview with Congressman Thomas Massie (BR.-Kentucky) who at the time was described as “libertarian-leaning.” And they were talking about how Trump was attacking the Freedom Caucus and the various other small-l libertarian, “ideological” people, and the question was: “As a person like you, a congressman like you, when you are in the Freedom Caucus, when you’re lined up ideologically, and you have a president that is like this, what is it like for governing, and what is your hope like for the future?”
And Massie said: “Well, I’m still hopeful, okay? There are moments when populism lines up with libertarianism. But let me tell you about a realization that I came to when I was in Iowa campaigning for Senator Rand Paul to be president.
“You see in 2012, his dad did very well in Iowa, got like a quarter of the vote and a quarter of the vote in New Hampshire, and did very well in Nevada. I ran in 2012 on the same sort of libertarian ideas. Senator Rand Paul had blown a hole through the establishment Republican Party in Kentucky in 2010 on libertarian/republican ideas, and so I thought the libertarian ideology within the Republican party was really catching on, that it was popular. But then when I went to Iowa I saw that the same people that had voted for Ron Paul weren’t voting for Rand Paul, they were voting for Donald Trump. And the same thing happened in Kentucky, the people who were my voters ended up voting for Donald Trump in the primary. And so I was in a funk because how could these people let us down? How could they go from being libertarian ideologues to voting for Donald Trump? And then I realized what it was: They weren’t voting for the libertarian in the race, they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race when they voted for me and Rand and Ron earlier. So Trump just won, you know, that category, but dumped the ideological baggage.”
I should think, especially if the left-socialist political philosophy becomes dominant simply for lack of a serious alternative, that people will once again start examining the potential of a limited constitutional government that acts as a referee in private affairs and not as an interested party. But this is clearly not cool even in the actual Libertarian Party, let alone the larger Right political spectrum. In the short term, “conservatives” don’t want a serious political philosophy that can get the public behind it and change the government long-term. They want the craziest son of a bitch in the race. This is especially clear given how Massie, and the Freedom Caucus collectively, went from being a libertarian counter on Trumpnik populism to yet another extension of it.
If these guys had anything to offer other than being not “woke”, and if their actual policies on issues like abortion were not so deeply unpopular and counterproductive, they might be competitive without Trump. As it is, all they can offer is being the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And nobody can do that better than Trump. So in the unlikely event that Trump can’t make it to the finish line, this debate is significant only in that it confirms the real problem. The problem is not Trump per se. The problem is a voter base that seriously thinks Trump is the best choice.