One of the toughest jobs in America these days (or actually, any day for the past 40+ years or so) must be “Donald Trump defense attorney.” Exhibiting little regard for what was certainly the advice of his lawyers, Trump sat down for an interview with FOX News last week and fielded questions about his possession of classified documents. Trump’s prior public comments about the case already had him in hot water; everything he said last Monday only turned up the heat. Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal described Trump’s answers as an “admission of guilt.”
To begin with, Trump once again insisted the documents were his. Given the labels on the documents, they clearly were not. He then said he wasn’t able to comply with the DOJ’s subpoena because the boxes containing the documents were mixed in with the rest of his personal belongings. Here’s the exchange:
FOX News host Bret Baier: Why not just hand [the documents] over then?
Trump: Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen. [BTW, that link I added not only proves how very busy Trump’s been, but also how honest he is.]
Baier: But according to the indictment, you then tell this aide to move [the boxes] to other locations after telling your lawyers to say you’ve fully complied with the subpoena when you hadn’t.
Trump: But before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things, golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things.
That’s basically an admission Trump knew the boxes contained the material the DOJ was asking for even after he told the DOJ he had completely complied with its subpoena. (Would someone also point out it would not be hard for a man of Trump’s self-proclaimed abilities and resources to sort through his boxes and separate his shirts—ahem, pardon me, golf shirts—from his—again, pardon me, the government’s—classified documents.)
Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s case is pretty tight even without Trump helping his cause. Trump’s legal peril is real, too. This past week, a former FBI intelligence analyst living in Dodge City, Kansas, who kept hundreds of documents in her home (including, the article notes, in her bathroom) was sentenced to four years in prison for violating the same part of the Espionage Act Trump is charged with flouting.
The question, then, is if Trump, after all this time and all the political and legal ordeals he’s put this country through, has finally done himself in.
On the face of it, the question is just plain ridiculous. Trump should have been done in dozens of times before. He should have been done in minutes after descending the escalator eight years ago. He should have been done in after the Access Hollywood tape. He should have been done in after asking Volodymyr Zelenskyy for dirt on Joe Biden in exchange for congressionally-mandated military aid. He should have been toast after 1/6. But here he is, two-and-a-half years later, the runaway favorite to win the Republican nomination for president. According to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, Trump’s polling position in the Republican primary has barely moved since this second indictment: The day before the indictment, he averaged 53.8% in the polls, and ten days later he averaged 53.5%. His closest rival, Ron DeSantis, hasn’t moved off his average of right around 20% for most of the past month, and DeSantis’s trajectory since the start of the year has been downward. No other candidate is making waves in the race. Trump has a hold on the Republican Party, and there are no signs his base will abandon him.
This time around feels a little different, though. For starters, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll, 65% of Americans think the charges against Trump are either very serious (45%) or somewhat serious (20%) compared to 29% who think they are either not too serious (13%) or not serious at all (16%). The same poll found 60% of Americans think Trump handled the classified documents episode inappropriately compared to 26% who think he acted appropriately. That suggests a solid majority of Americans thinks what Trump did is both serious and wrong.
That picture gets a little more complicated if you dig deeper into the poll, however. Asked if Trump should be prosecuted for hording the documents, only 51% think he should be compared to 41% who think he shouldn’t. Additionally, 62% of Americans think the DOJ’s investigation is politically motivated while only 34% think it is motivated by the law. Those results suggest there’s a segment of the population who thinks law enforcement is handling Trump’s case differently from Joe Biden’s classified documents case as well as the case involving Hunter Biden.
The difference between those who think Trump handled the documents inappropriately (60%) and those who think he should be prosecuted (51%) is a politically significant number. I assume if you think Trump should be prosecuted, you’re probably not voting for him in 2024 (although I’m sure there are a few people out there who would vote for an incarcerated convict whom they think deserves to be behind bars, particularly if they’re not fond of the other option.) Trump is in a pretty bad spot if half the country already won’t vote for him, and he risks losing in a landslide if that 9% who thinks he acted inappropriately but aren’t ready to say he should be prosecuted concludes they’re fine with putting Trump on trial.
For his part, Trump isn’t all that concerned with the legal details of his case. I suspect he knows, according to the letter of the law, that he’s screwed. If he hopes to avoid jail time, he’ll need to delay his trial past the election, win the election, then order the DOJ to end the prosecution once he takes office. Trump’s legal strategy, then, is basically a political strategy: Convince an electorally significant portion of the population the system is treating him unfairly (weird how the only systemic discrimination taking place in the U.S. disadvantages Trump) and once again legitimize voting for him as the ultimate political disruptor. Trump’s target for that message would be the segment of voters between the 41% who think he shouldn’t be prosecuted and the 62% who think the DOJ’s investigation is politically motivated. Given the quirks of the Electoral College—which only requires a relatively small number of voters in the right places to shift their votes to Trump for Trump to win—that strategy could work.
Complicating that strategy, however, is that Trump, at the moment, does not have the same advantages within the Republican Party he once enjoyed. To begin with, he’s not a sitting president or even his party’s nominee, so a Republican voter’s support for Trump isn’t about defending their party’s hold on power or even the top of their ticket. It also isn’t about winning an open race. Sure, Republican voters would love to win the White House any time they can, and it would be great to evict a Democrat in the process, but the prospect of loss is a more powerful motivator than the prospect of gain, and a wide-open race would draw more voters than an uphill race against an incumbent. Furthermore, Republican voters who are not enamored with Trump may regard the circumstances of the 2024 election differently than the circumstances surrounding the elections of 2016 and 2020. A term-limited Joe Biden is less of a threat than Hillary Clinton. Control of the Supreme Court isn’t at stake. Control of Congress is on the line, but Republican voters in majority-maker districts probably know by now that Trump and MAGA candidates are actually liabilities in those races. All that makes it easier for Trump-skeptical Republican voters to break with Trump.
Trump has also alienated a number of elected Republican leaders (particularly in the Senate) so they’re not leaping to his defense. Now, sure, Trump doesn’t need their support and actually benefits from running against the Republican establishment, but he’s also working overtime to project an air of inevitability and invincibility during the primary campaign. If prominent party leaders are signaling to voters they should not only survey the field of GOP candidates but that they themselves are less than enthusiastic about (and perhaps even opposed to) a third Trump presidential campaign, Republican voters who feel the same way may begin to drift. Trump can’t afford to lose even a small percentage of reluctantly-Trump Republican voters.
Perhaps most significantly, however, Trump has rivals for the nomination, and while they may stand by Trump’s claims about the DOJ’s unfair treatment of him vis-à-vis the Bidens, it does seem many of them are prepared to criticize Trump for the way he handled the classified documents. It may not seem to matter much if candidates who have no chance at winning the Republican nomination like Mike Pence or Chris Christie condemn Trump, but it does create the space within the party to not only critique but oppose Trump, which again could lead disaffected Republicans to sit the election out. Someone like Christie will beat that drum incessantly for the next year-and-a-half as well.
Trump’s path to the White House has always been a rather narrow one, albeit one aided significantly by the country’s current political geography. Trump counts on victories in solid red states, which gets him a long way to 270 electoral votes, but then has to eke out wins in toss-up states, the popular vote be damned. He’s pulled that off once and almost twice, but given the political trajectories of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin when Trump and MAGA candidates are on the ballot, it’s getting harder to do that even without the extra burden of indictment.
One could argue the only thing keeping Trump competitive in the race at this point is the poor standing of his presumed opponent, President Joe Biden, whose aggregated approval rating at FiveThirtyEight currently sits in the low 40s. His standing among nearly every demographic group is lacking. It’s a mystery to me why Biden doesn’t get more credit for his steady if unspectacular leadership; I would guess it’s a combination of post-pandemic economic unease (specifically inflation), a sense the country is struggling to police its borders and its streets, concerns about his ability to do his job well given his age, and disappointment among young liberals that he hasn’t delivered on some of his campaign promises. The opportunity is there for Biden to alleviate these concerns, but if he doesn’t and voters are either uninspired to turn out for him or see him as having as many drawbacks as his predecessor, Trump will remain very competitive. (It’s also worth noting at this point that the issue of abortion has the potential to stymie the ambitions of any Republican presidential nominee.)
One other factor working in Trump’s favor are potential Democratic primary and third-party challengers. Jonathan Last of The Bulwark is worried Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiracy-driven, anti-vax presidential campaign isn’t a primary campaign but a fifth column, writing “I could be wrong about this, but I believe that Kennedy will absolutely be speaking at a party convention next summer. But it won’t be the Democratic convention. He’ll have a slot speaking at the Republican convention where he will endorse whoever the Republican nominee is.” Meanwhile, Joe Klein is concerned the No Labels organization is a false flag operation that might run a centrist candidate for president and throw the election to Trump. It would be quite ironic if that happened, since the person most often floated as No Labels’ prospective presidential nominee—Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin—has cast the decisive vote for every one of Joe Biden’s major legislative achievements. Those are still far off developments, but American politics is weird these days, meaning those campaigns shouldn’t be discounted.
It seems crazy to imagine Republicans abandoning Trump after standing by him all these years. It’s unlikely there will be a mass Republican movement away from Trump, and I think he’s still the heavy favorite to win the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. But Trump’s domination of the Republican Party doesn’t necessarily mean his electoral prospects are strong. This is just one poll, but consider: A recent CNN survey found Trump’s support in the Republican Party has softened somewhat since his indictment. Less than half of Republican respondents (47%) now name him as their first choice for their party’s nomination, down six points from a May poll. (No other Republican candidate has benefitted from Trump’s decline, however.) Additionally, his favorability rating among Republicans fell from 77% to 67%, while Republicans who say they won’t support him under any circumstance has risen from 16% to 23%.
It’s entirely possible Trump’s indictment has only solidified his bond with his MAGA base while finally severing his support among Republicans who only ever supported him reluctantly. In a general election, that would likely doom his chances (but who knows how anti-Trump Republican partisans will behave when they have to once again choose between Trump and Biden.) It may be too soon to say Trump is toast, but it’s definitely starting to smell like something’s burning.
Signals and Noise
DEVELOPING: An attempt by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, to depose the military leadership of Russia has apparently been averted. For months, Russia has relied on well-trained Wagner units in Ukraine as the conflict has decimated the ranks of Russia’s most adept military units. During that time, Prigozhin—a former henchman of Vladimir Putin’s who some speculate has his sights set on Putin’s job—has expressed frustration with the incompetence of Russia’s military leadership. (For his part, Prigozhin is more right-wing than Putin.) In a series of messages Friday, Prigozhin asserted Russia launched the war in Ukraine on false pretenses, claimed the Russian military had attacked his units, withdrew his forces from Ukraine and occupied the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don (the home of a military command center that oversees operations in Ukraine), sent an armed unit on the road to Moscow, and called on the people to help him oust Russia’s military leadership. On Saturday, however, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal that saw Prigozhin end his mutiny and relocate to Belarus. (Social media sites showed crowds cheering Prigozhin as he left.) It is not clear yet if Wagner’s forces—Russia’s most effective fighting units—will return to the front lines in Ukraine, if Russia can maintain their occupation of Ukraine under these circumstances, or what the episode has done to Putin’s authority in Russia.
Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis of the Washington Post report the DOJ and FBI resisted investigating Trump’s role in the 1/6 riot for over a year out of concern the investigation would appear too partisan.
By Damon Linker: “A Trump Pardon Won’t Save Us” (“The country is walking a dangerous road, with potentially dire consequences. But as much as we might wish that Joe Biden or a future Republican president could simply use the pardon power to drain the “poison out of the system,” in Lowry’s words, there is no such magic wand. Donald Trump got himself into each of these legal messes, and his fate will now ultimately be decided by judges and juries—just as our collective political fate will be determined to a large extent by how Trump and his most devoted supporters respond to these outcomes. The only way out is through.”)
Trump spoke at a fundraiser held at his Bedminster, NJ, golf club for 1/6 defendants and pledged to make a donation to their defense fund. (I bet that donation never ends up in their bank account.)
House Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to vote to impeach Don Trump or discipline Rep. “George Santos,” but they could censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California for (according to the resolution’s sponsor, Anna Paulina Luna [R-FL]) “waking up every morning with one goal: to lie, lie, lie to the American people that there was direct evidence of Russia collusion” with the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. (BTW, Rep. Luna knows a thing or two about lying herself.)
Meanwhile, Punchbowl News reports an impeachment of President Biden is “inevitable.” The only questions are when and what the charges would be.
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert a “little bitch” on the floor of the House after Greene accused Boebert of swiping her plan to impeach Joe Biden. Boebert then told Greene, “We’re through.” Greene responded, “We were never together.” Greene then told Semafor, “She has genuinely been a nasty little bitch to me.” Somewhere in there I think this happened:
Ronald Brownstein writes for CNN about the effect extremely narrow margins of control in Congress have on American politics.
The House Republican Study Committee is again raising the issue of entitlement cuts.
Trump took aim at a 1974 law designed to rein-in Richard Nixon by saying he’d unilaterally cut federal spending if re-elected president.
A 1/6 rioter who wore a MAGA cap while firing a stun gun into the neck of a DC police officer was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison. Upon being sentenced, the rioter proclaimed, “Trump won!”
Special Counsel John Durham was not only eviscerated by House Democrats while testifying about his investigation of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, but David Corn and Dan Friedman of Mother Jones think he may also have lied to Congress.
In another instance of a Supreme Court justice accepting gifts from wealthy benefactors (this time a benefactor with business before the Court), Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica report Justice Samuel Alito went on a luxury fishing trip to Alaska with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. The resort they stayed at charges $1000 a night; Alito’s plane ride on the billionaire’s private jet would have cost Alito $100,000 to charter one way. The person who arranged the trip and put Alito and Singer on the same plane was Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society. “If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet. Alito pre-butted ProPublica’s report in the Wall Street Journal, stating, “I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.” (Not sure the “Had I not taken the bribe, the money would have gone unspent” defense is a good one. But seriously, read Alito’s statement in full. A man as naive as that has no place on the Supreme Court.)
Annie Snider of Politico writes about a recent Supreme Court decision on environmental permits on wetlands: “Congress spent months obsessing over an effort to loosen the rules on federal environmental permits — only for the Supreme Court to eclipse its efforts in a single morning. The court’s May 25 decision shrinking federal wetlands protections took a wrecking ball to an expansive permitting regime that has been in place for nearly 50 years ― and it’s already having a ripple effect in how agencies enforce a wide range of other environmental safeguards. The 5-4 ruling put at least half the country’s marshes, swamps and other wetlands outside the reach of federal water protections, an outcome that could speed the way for pipelines, power lines, highways and housing projects across the U.S.”
The Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization is pushing the Republican Party to back a national 15-week abortion ban. The ban would outlaw abortion nationally after 15 weeks while allowing states to regulate it before then.
Florida recently passed a bill banning abortion after six weeks. Marc Caputo of The Messenger reports on an effort in Florida to approve a new amendment to the state constitution via a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state. Internal polls indicate the measure is supported by 70% of Floridians.
An NBC News poll found 61% of voters disapprove of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. That number includes 80% of female voters age 18-49, 2/3 of suburban women, 60% of independents, and 1/3 of Republicans. A FiveThirtyEight analysis found support for abortion surging following Dobbs.
Self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk has declared the word “cisgender” a slur, making its use on Twitter subject to discipline.
“It’s all going pear-shaped in America. We seem to be going backwards. And that spreads. It’s like a virus that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement is suffering.”—Elton John, reacting to the “growing swell of anger and homophobia” in the United States.
David Weigel of Semafor looks at how Trump and many other Republican presidential candidates have abandoned their support for the First Step Act, which reduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, expanded education and vocational programs in prisons, and moved thousands of prisoners into home confinement or halfway houses. The bill’s co-sponsor, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, still supports his bill, but Trump has not only turned his back on one of the few major bipartisan achievements of his presidency but is calling for death sentences for drug dealers.
Another case of voter fraud, this time in Colorado, and wouldn’t you know it, it involves not Democrats rigging the election, but Republicans submitting forged signatures.
The Federal Trade Commission is suing Amazon over the company’s “nonconsensual enrollment” practice involving Amazon Prime as well as how difficult Amazon makes it to unenroll from Prime.
The Pentagon claims it overestimated the value of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine by $6.2 billion. The could allow the Pentagon to send more weaponry to Ukraine.
President Biden hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a state dinner last week. Zack Beauchamp of Vox looks at how India’s democracy—the largest in the world—has significantly backslid under Modi’s leadership, and how the United States’ rivalry with China—one of India’s biggest geopolitical rivals—has stopped the U.S. from calling out Modi more forcefully.
Keith Bradsher, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu of the New York Times write about how China’s economy has stagnated following its COVID lockdown.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Beijing this past week hoping to improve relations with China. The day after leaving, Biden casually called Xi Jinping a “dictator” during a political fundraiser. Now China’s mad again. (If Biden’s trying to warm relations with China, he should probably avoid calling Xi a dictator. But it seems ridiculous for China to take offense to an honest statement.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to resume efforts to overhaul his nation’s judicial system. Mass protests occurred when Netanyahu tried the same earlier this year.
The New York Times’ David Wallace-Wells writes we are entering a golden age of medical discoveries.
Vincent’s Picks: Season 2 of The Bear
The Bear, last summer’s breakout TV show, is back with a full second season now available to stream in its entirety on Hulu. You can check out my review of the first season here, but I’ll supply a quick summary if your appetite is whetted. The Bear stars Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, an elite chef who returns to his hometown of Chicago to takeover/salvage the Original Beef of Chicagoland, a rundown Italian beef sandwich joint, following the suicide of his brother. The Beef has been mismanaged for years and is barely hanging on; Carmy hopes not only to turn the restaurant around but upgrade the quality of its service and offerings. To that end, he hires the young professionally-trained Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) as sous-chef to help him bring order and culinary expertise to the kitchen. At the same time he must contend with the Beef’s remaining staff, many of whom resent his higher standards. Chief among these is “Cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), a long-time family friend who is the embodiment of a fire accelerant. (In one of the best lines of the second season, Richie tells Carmy’s sister Natalie [Abby Elliott], “I’m not like this because I’m in Van Halen; I’m in Van Halen because I’m like this.”)
Life is very stressful at the Beef. The staff bicker and scream at one another the way a barely functional family would. The sloppy, informal management style means the less than perfect is more than tolerated but it also puts the shop on the brink of collapse. Carmy’s attempt to bring discipline to the restaurant’s operations is much needed, but his ambition and intensity only add to the tension. In many ways, the multicultural Beef is a microcosm of contemporary America, a place where the cherished but outdated ways of old are challenged by new yet disruptive and perhaps out-of-place methods. (I’m not convinced the way to save a greasy spoon is by turning it into a Michelin-rated restaurant.) And like America today, these conflicts aren’t worked out rationally and with civility but by screaming and sabotage, but hey, when the dinner rush is on and there’s money to be made, no one has the time for a more considerate approach.
I’ll avoid spoiling the details of season one, but season two picks up pretty much where the first season let off. The crew is forging ahead with Carmy’s plan to turn “The Beef” into “The Bear,” a fine dining establishment Carmy and Sydney hope can pick up at least one star from Michelin. The physical renovation of the restaurant is a boondoggle, of course, as the walls (when they’re not collapsing of their own free will) are infested with mold, miles of bad wiring, and raccoons. Carmy and Natalie are short on money, too, so they cut the time devoted to the reno in half, which only adds to everyone’s stress.
But don’t assume season two of The Bear is focused on the craziness attendant to the renovation, as that’s mostly pushed to the background. Instead, the second season studies the characters when they step away from the setting of the restaurant. One episode follows Sydney as she visits various eateries in Chicago looking for inspiration. She and Carmy want to feature a “chaos menu” (implying even those who intend to bring order to the place also court mayhem) but Sydney is in a slump and needs to rediscover her touch as a chef. In another episode, Marcus (Lionel Boyce) is sent to Copenhagen to refine his baking skills and discovers it is possible to learn how to be a chef in an environment that isn’t a hot mess. The unrefined Richie fears he won’t have a “purpose” in Carmy’s new place and is loaned out to a three-star restaurant to polish forks and learn how a real restaurant operates. Carmy, meanwhile, reconnects with Claire (Molly Gordon) a girl he knew in high school who gets as much of a rush out of treating patients in the ER as Carmy does navigating a kitchen during the dinner hour. (I feel the need to mention Matty Matheson’s Neil Fak here as well, a supporting character who doesn’t get his own episode but steals every scene he’s in.)
In its second season, The Bear seems to be urging its characters to expand their horizons, to look beyond the walls holding them and their circle of kin and comrades inside. It can be hard for people to spot the toxicity or the habits that nurture that toxicity in their lives if they don’t step into different settings to discover healthier ways of life. (Speaking of toxicity and the need to get away from it…I’ll just mention “Episode 6” here and leave it at that. It’s either the most gripping or the most over-the-top hour of television you’ll watch this decade.)
This season is also reminding its characters to search out and work with “good people.” That’s foreboding since the characters are always thrown back into the tumult of the restaurant whenever they return to it. One could argue it may be better for them if they each went their separate ways and left the craziness that overwhelms them when they’re together behind. But it also seems these characters have an unspoken commitment to one another that demands loyalty. Could their experiences beyond “The Beef” make “The Bear” better, or will it doom the restaurant before they can reopen their doors?
The final two episodes, set during the new restaurant’s opening day, could end up being the best television you’ll watch all year. They’re tense, not only because running a restaurant is tense and each of these characters is a powder keg ready to explode but because this is The Bear and we know how ugly things can get when something goes sideways in the kitchen. Our anxiety is only doubled knowing how much these characters have worked through this season. In particular, Carmy must reckon with what is required of him to manage a world-class fine dining establishment. What Richie said about Van Halen may also apply to him: Carmy’s not like this because he’s in the restaurant business; Carmy’s in the restaurant business because he’s like this. But I’d add this to the mix: Van Halen was also a family affair.