Donald Trump stands naked before the law. He has no real defenders. He’s having trouble hiring lawyers. He couldn’t even assemble much of his usual mob at the Miami Court House on indictment day. Oh, there are the usual Republican noisemakers whatabouting witlessly. But notice: none of them are defending Trump or what he did. A significant number, even wingers like Colorado’s Rep. Ken Buck, are saying that the charges against Trump are serious business. “He’s scared s---less,” John Kelly, his former chief of staff, told the Washington Post. “For the first time in his life, it looks like he’s being held accountable. Up until this point in his life, it’s like, I’m not going to pay you, take me to court. He’s never been held accountable before.”
I must admit, my previous default position—”advantage Trump”—is looking a bit wobbly in the immediate aftermath of the indictment. His political defense seems same-old; his tactics are stale; his mental illness more alarming. His strength rests, as always, on his impenetrable electoral cult…but what about the persuadable deplorables at the margins? Can they be moved? Here’s how The Wall Street Journal’s editorial elitists attempted to speak to them:
GOP primary voters can benefit from reading the latest Trump indictment and asking what it means for a second Trump term. The facts alleged show that Mr. Trump has again played into the hands of his enemies. His actions were reckless, arrogant and remarkably self-destructive. This is the same Donald Trump they will get if they nominate him for a third time.
I put the odds that Trumpers will finally listen to reason at zero. This is a small victory for the Sanity Caucus: previously, the odds were less than zero. But the flimsiness of the whataboutism may be a telling sign. I mean, we’re back regurgitating Hillary Clinton’s email server? (Hillary’s “But Her Emails” baseball cap may be the first clever thing she’s done as a politician.) Trumpers don’t read Ruth Marcus, but I suspect the weight of her email argument and general public exhaustion with the subject will undermine this line of attack over time:
I have no brief for Clinton’s behavior in setting up a private, insecure email server to get around the State Department’s clunky, antiquated email system. It was sloppy, and Clinton made matters worse when she had her lawyers unilaterally erase 30,000 emails they deemed personal.
But: Clinton didn’t keep classified documents or transmit them on the server. Rather, the emails sent on the server referred to classified information; they did not, with the exception of three email chains that had a paragraph or two marked “(C),” for confidential — contain other flags that the material was classified…If anything, there was “evidence of a conscious effort to avoid sending classified information by writing around the most sensitive material,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded. [emphasis mine]
And then there’s the pathetic attempt of Senator Chuck Grassley—the Republican Dianne Feinstein—to implicate Joe Biden in sleazy Hunter’s Ukranian business dealings. The “information” “uncovered” by Grassley was already reviewed and rejected by Trump’s own Justice Department. The campaign by congressional Republicans to gather dirt on the President has been roundly dismissed as a joke. (Although it would be nice if the DOJ finally came to some conclusion about Hunter’s criminality.)
Exposure of the shoddy and purposely misleading nature of whataboutism will have no visible impact on the MAGA cult. But the weakness of the argument—the fact that the charges against Trump really are serious, and might get seriouser—may, in time, seep into the Trumpist bloodstream. Especially if the arguments made by Chris Christie begin to erode support for Trump among those Republicans—the marginal deplorables—who reflexively back him because the Democrats brought the indictments:
“This is vanity run amok…He is now going to put this country through this, when we didn’t have to go through it…We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming D.O.J. How about, blame him? He did it.”
And about Trump’s stolen election tantrum:
“It’s a child’s reaction. And I just — I beg you to think about this,” he told the Republican-leaning audience. “Don’t allow the showmanship to obscure the facts. The facts are, he lost to Joe Biden. And he lost to Joe Biden, in my opinion, because he lost independent voters.”
Christie said those things during a CNN Town Meeting with Anderson Cooper. It was an exhilarating 90 minutes, and not only because of Christie’s candor. We knew the attacks on Trump were coming. But the surprise—and I must say, it was a relief—was the joy that came from watching a terrific stand-up politician at work. I had almost forgotten what that was like. Christie speaks plain English. He is self-deprecating. He was fluent and reasonable—even when I disagreed with his positions—on a broad swath of issues. And, better still, he took a Sanity stance on the process of politics itself:
With all due respect to these governors from red states who have Republican legislatures — man, I’m telling you, I would have given my own right arm to have a Republican legislature for a week…But what I learned was that, sometimes, getting 60 percent of what you want isn’t bad.”
In Washington, he continued, “you’re going to want somebody tough, who’s a fighter, but who fights to get to an end, to accomplish something for you. We can all fight to get headlines.”
And he even pulled a John McCain at one point, fielding a question from a man who’d lost his son in a mass shooting: “I’m mad because I don’t have a great answer,” Christie admitted. (His answer might have been better if he weren’t hog-tied to the National Rifle Association.)
This is not to endorse Chris Christie. This is not even to suggest that his campaign is going anywhere; it probably isn’t. But it’s a pleasure to see politics practiced well. That’s why a great many of us became political junkies in the first place: John Kennedy said, “Ask not…” Ronald Reagan said, “Tear down this wall…” Bill Clinton could turn any town meeting into a group therapy session. George W. Bush had a magic moment with a megaphone. Barack Obama sang “Amazing Grace…” As a journalist, I lived in hope that I might witness something like Robert Kennedy reciting Aeschylus to an angry crowd of blacks after Martin Luther King was murdered, and calming them. The possibilities of courage and nobility exist in a democracy.
Such moments are thrilling, but also something more. They bind us together; they inspire us. They make us—at least, they make me—proud to be Americans. They are the essence of leadership, propelling us through difficult times. Donald Trump has done the opposite. He has made a mockery of public rhetoric. He has stolen the dignity and honor from public life—and he has certainly stolen the joy. He has destroyed the pleasure that many of us feel just by participating in the ceremonies of democracy, the possibility that we might create a more perfect union in the course of our debates. The only pleasures he provides are sadistic and juvenile. He is not a creature of the swamp, but of the sewer.
A few days ago, I was fearful that the Jack Smith indictment would work to Trump’s advantage—as has almost every other attempt by the forces of propriety to censure him. It still might. He remains the most likely Republican nominee. But for 90 minutes, Chris Christie provided an antidote: a demonstration of the power that a fluent, informed, compelling candidate can have. It was a reminder of the inherent strength of the democracy that Donald Trump is trying to overthrow.
You are sane in a very insane time. Please comment on the No Labels effort. I think it's perilous, but would love to know your view.
Maybe the "Trumpers" wouldn't be so outraged if the law was applied equally without a double standard. Was Joe Biden's garage more secure than Trump's bathroom? Was Hillary Clinton's destroying the documents she was subpoenaed to turn over less egregious? Why do you "Libsters" fail to recognize or choose to ignore the discrepancies? If I don't receive a response from you, which I'm sure I won't, it signifies to me that you have no cogent or intelligent response.