Post-match: The Post Presidency :: Trump Faces The Music Thread

Do we got him now?

 

Jury's still out. No really - they're getting slices.

 

That is her name.
She has said publicly she prefers to be called that.
In one interview I saw she said that only her mother uses her "birth" name Stephanie Gregory or her married name Stephanie Clifford .

 

Josh at TPM has some interesting analysis on the De Santis / Trump situation with regard to the potential indictments. Let's just say Meatball Ron is not in a comfortable situation.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, under pressure from Trump allies, is taking his first stab at addressing the Trump indictment situation. It shows both his inevitable strategy and the inherent difficulty of the situation. He pleads little knowledge of how it works when you pay “hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just, I can’t speak to that.” But he also insists that Alvin Bragg is a “Soros-funded prosecutor and so he like other Soros funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.” The approach isn’t surprising: Deep State/Soros yada and also did you hear he paid hush money to a porn star he had sex with?

This is needless to say a hard balance to manage and involves quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. Trump’s supporters clearly think they can grind DeSantis up with this situation even as Trump is clearly hating life. And they may be right.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/first-look-at-the-desantis-trump-storm

 

It won't work. You're either fully committed to defending Trump or you're a traitor and a usurper; there's no middle ground.

This is why I find it baffling that the GOP didn't convict Trump when he gave them their opportunity in Jan 2021.

On the one hand, I get it; they're amoral cowards who thought they were taking the path of least resistance. But even so - why would you create a situation where Trump remains the party's most important leader, and where the de facto 2024 GOP platform consists of defending every horrible thing he's ever done or is currently doing? What's the scenario where that works out better than taking the short-term political hit, canceling Trump's future presidential prospects, and waiting for him to shrink into irrelevance?

Ten more senators would have been sufficient. It's crazy that they voluntarily decided to subject themselves to years more of this.

 

Meh....anyone here that thinks that 75 million Magatroids are gonna abandon Donny Boy hasn't been paying attention!

 

That's precisely why Republican senators should have seized their fleeting chance to take the 2024 question out of the hands of their Trump-loving voters.

If Door Number 1 is "Your personal reputation, political future, and day-to-day existence will depend on the whims and public image of an emotionally unstable narcissist with glaring moral and mental deficiencies" - you should probably go for Door Number 2, if you can.

 

Surely, Republican leaders assumed in January 2021 that Trump was such a despised figure for having incited the insurrection that they wouldn't have to say anything and he would go away in shame. Once again, underestimating Republican voters is always a loser's bet.

 

Talk about facing the music.

Donald J. Trump and J6 Prison Choir’s “Justice for All” enters Billboard’s #DigitalSongSales chart (dated March 25) at No. 1.

#Notacult

Donald J. Trump and J6 Prison Choir’s “Justice for All” enters Billboard’s #DigitalSongSales chart (dated March 25) at No. 1. https://t.co/AqBcyFa4a8

— billboard (@billboard) March 20, 2023

 

Agreed, but I'd call it overestimating (rather than underestimating) Republican voters.

I think that Republican elites are reluctant to face the actual reality of their core electorate, in large part because it would hurt their egos. They've gotten accustomed to defending their base against accusations of bigotry, paranoia and stupidity; those defenses are efforts to work the media refs, but also are a way to convince themselves that there's something respectable about their undertakings. Even seven years after Trump bullied his way to the GOP nomination, the delusion persists.

 

We need to accept that Republicans are not rational actors and that a majority Republicans, including many (if not most) of the ones in Congress, want Trump.

Look at who is the Speaker of the House.

Look at who they have placed at the head of committees.

Look at how they consistently sabotage efforts to hold Trump accountable.

They are part of the cult.

They are not rational actors.

 

They are rational. These actions fulfill their needs of defending those with capital, white supremacy, Christian supremacy, homophobia and misogyny.
The thing that they are not is moral.

 

There's an increasing number and increasing influence of true believers, especially in the House. But I suspect that all but a few Republican senators secretly hate Trump, for reasons similar to those expressed by Tucker Carlson. The current situation is not where Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz wanted to be at this point in their political career. And every single senator (except maybe the idiot Tuberville) understands why the GOP blew their chance at a Senate majority in 2022.

Among some of Trump's most prominent supporters - people like Stefanik, McCarthy, Vance - it's more a calculation that they can use him and his loyalists to their individual political advantage. That's actually worked out well for some of their personal ambitions, at least for now; hasn't worked so well for their party as a whole.

 

Man, I really want to like Hidden Brain, but Shankar Vedantam asks great questions and answers them poorly, at a high school level.

 

Yes, I mean her "acting name".

Relax. Have a beer.

 

Yes! Yes!